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I was going to simply ignore David Cole’s annoying NYT op-ed, asking if the CIA got a bad rap with the SSCI Torture Report, until I saw the claims he made in his JustSecurity post on it. Like many others, I commented on and wrote about the Torture Report when it was initially released in December, […]
I’m just now getting around to the GOP rebuttal to the Senate Report. While it does raise a few decent points, it engages in a whole slew of the kind of word games the Bush Administration used to hide torture in the first place (I honestly would love to read a serious study of this […]
Over four years ago, I wrote a post noting how, in the two days after Jose Rodriguez and one of his Counterterrorism Lawyers briefed Nancy Pelosi and Porter Goss in September 2002 they might use torture prospectively, they 1) moved closer to deciding to destroy the torture tapes and 2) altered their initial record of the […]
One curious revelation in the Torture Report is the specific stories invented by the torturers. One of those is the oft-repeated claim that Abu Zubaydah said detainees were only permitted to start talking after they had reached the limits of their ability to endure torture. The CIA has consistently represented that Abu Zubaydah stated that […]
John Sifton has a piece at JustSecurity on a key new detail in the torture report: a description of a letter the CIA lawyers were sending around discussing getting an advance declination (though unless I’m misreading the report, this email chain is dated July 8, not April). But perhaps the most important revelation in the report is […]
Back in 2010, I pointed out a key problem with Jay Bybee lawyer Maureen Mahoney’s defense of Bybee’s endorsement of the torture memos. Mahoney spends three pages of her response (PDF pages 81 to 84) trying to justify the Bybee Memo’s unsupported reliance on a ticking time bomb scenario. After spending most of the discussion […]
Okay, here are the critical working documents: The SSCI Torture Report The Minority Response to SSCI Torture Report Dianne Feinstein’s Statement But, without any question, my best early takeaway key is that the United States Government, knew, they bloody well knew, at the highest levels, that what was going on in their citizens’ name, legally constituted […]
We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. Partly by design, the debate about torture that has already started in advance of tomorrow’s Torture Report release is focused on efficacy, with efficacy defined as obtaining valuable intelligence. Torture apologists say torture provided intelligence that helped to find Osama bin Laden. Torture […]
At the request of some on Twitter, I’m bringing together a Twitter rant of some facts on torture here. 1) Contrary to popular belief, torture was not authorized primarily by the OLC memos John Yoo wrote. It was first authorized by the September 17, 2001 Memorandum of Notification (that is, a Presidential Finding) crafted by Cofer […]
The UN just released its report on US compliance with the Convention Against Torture. It is scathing, in may respects (including with respect to cops shooting black men). In addition, it includes four different criticisms about our failure to provide justice for torture. It criticizes the Durham investigation, especially the failure to interview torture victims. The […]
