Bush/Cheney and CIA Torture

Unrepentant War Criminals

Today's Washington Post has a piece noting that after years of being near political outcasts the Bush family is back in the lime light - sadly, the family that brought us the disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan and threw away thousands of American lives and squandered countless billions of dollars is in the limelight for the wrong reason.  Does anyone really give a damn about the paintings by the cretinous George W?   If they do, it is a testament to just how fucked up many Americans' values have become.  The more important piece in the Washington Post looks at the CIA torture program launched by Bush/Cheney and the war crimes that are the true defining aspect of those eight dark years of America's history.  Worse yet, the American public was lied to by both the CIA and Bush Cheney.  I remain of the view that both Bush and Cheney need to be tried for war crimes and dealt with as the Allies dealt with German and Japanese officials following World War II.  Until that happens, America has no moral credibility in the world.  Here are article highlights:

A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the CIA misled the government and the public about aspects of its brutal interrogation program for years — concealing details about the severity of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in fact surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques.

The report, built around detailed chronologies of dozens of CIA detainees, documents a long-standing pattern of unsubstantiated claims as agency officials sought permission to use — and later tried to defend — excruciating interrogation methods that yielded little, if any, significant intelligence, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed the document. 

The 6,300-page report includes what officials described as damning new disclosures about a sprawling network of secret detention facilities, or “black sites,” that was dismantled by President Obama in 2009. 

Classified files reviewed by committee investigators reveal internal divisions over the interrogation program, officials said, including one case in which CIA employees left the agency’s secret prison in Thailand after becoming disturbed by the brutal measures being employed there. The report also cites cases in which officials at CIA headquarters demanded the continued use of harsh interrogation techniques even after analysts were convinced that prisoners had no more information to give.

The Senate Intelligence Committee is expected to vote Thursday to send an executive summary of the report to Obama for declassification. U.S. officials said it could be months before that section, which contains roughly 20 conclusions and spans about 400 pages, is released to the public.

The report’s release also could resurrect a long-standing feud between the CIA and the FBI, where many officials were dismayed by the agency’s use of methods that Obama and others later labeled torture.
  
The Senate report is by far the most comprehensive account to date of a highly classified program that was established within months of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a time of widespread concern that an additional wave of terrorist plots had already been set in motion.

Officials said millions of records make clear that the CIA’s ability to obtain the most valuable intelligence against al-Qaeda — including tips that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011 — had little, if anything, to do with “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

The American public needs to be forced to realize that its government under Bush and Cheney engaged in conduct more akin to Nazi Germany than what those who wrap themselves in the American flag like to hold up as this nation's image.  Again, until those who ordered such barbarous practices are held accountable, America has no moral credibility.