Wednesday, December 18, 2013

So Leon Panetta -- And The Senators Agree -- About What We Were Concerned About, Post 9-11: Torture Is Purposeless And Immoral


So, almost a decade later, we are finally getting the wisps of confirmation that independent branches of our federal government were "scathingly critical" of the Bush-Cheney (but mostly Cheney) CIA led interrogation techniques.

Probably the single greatest piece of wisdom from it all is this: The. Torture. Yielded. Almost. No. Reliable. Information. Chambers v. Florida (1940). Brown v. Mississippi (1936). Those ignorant of history -- are doomed to repeat it.

For our childrens', and grandchildrens' sake -- let us keep repeating that inexorable truth. It is almost more important than the fact that both our founding documents, and our moral conscience, suggest that torture is wrong. If there is nearly naught -- in the way of reliable intel from torture -- the motivation to employ it will dissipate. In any event, here is the NYT version -- do go read it all:

. . . .The Senate report, totaling more than 6,000 pages, was completed last December but has yet to be declassified. According to people who have read the study, it is unsparing in its criticism of the now-defunct interrogation program and presents a chronicle of C.I.A. officials’ repeatedly misleading the White House, Congress and the public about the value of brutal methods that, in the end, produced little valuable intelligence.

Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, disclosed the existence of the internal C.I.A. report during an Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday. He said he believed it was begun several years ago and “is consistent with the Intelligence’s Committee’s report” although it “conflicts with the official C.I.A. response to the committee’s report.”

“If this is true,” Mr. Udall said during a hearing on the nomination of Caroline D. Krass to be the C.I.A.’s top lawyer, “this raises fundamental questions about why a review the C.I.A. conducted internally years ago — and never provided to the committee — is so different from the C.I.A.’s formal response to the committee study. . . .”


As Mr. Cheney's LVAS whirs in his chest -- a steady, smooth hydro-mechanical sound -- with no reassuring thump, followed immediately by a returning echoed thump of a human pulse -- I would hope that the above sinks in.

He has certainly read it by now. Just like his missing pulse -- Mr. Cheney is, in my estimation, at least -- somehow less human for having demanded, directed and orchestrated the torture of perhaps into the high hundreds of mostly entirely innocent detainees. He has demeaned us all by turning his back on our founding documents.

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