Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Torturing Assholes

All the world should be outraged by the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee's report on CIA torture (link here to executive summary -- full report remains secret).

Many torture horrors are admitted, generously labeled "abuses and countless mistakes" (p.2 in U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein's foreword). It must be remembered government inflicted these torments on people prior to trial or conviction. Most captives were never legally tried, and some were tortured to death.

Surely government agents & outside contractors treated prisoners / captives / hostages with barbaric cruelty. This included (p.100) stripping the detainee, pushing their head down below their body, jamming a hose up their arse, and powering water into their guts -- the report's euphemism is "rectal rehydration as a means of behavior control"...

Oversight has been minimal and ineffective. The severity of American tortures, and the number tortured, is still wholly unknown.

Highlighting detainees subject to "enhanced interrogation techniques" the CIA's Director ordered officials to keep the count at 98 (report p. 476) -- so any "true" torture count is horribly tainted. But surely those mistreated, including our own armed forces, number in the millions.

Wartime diaries can supply great insights into warfare - and (link) recent beatings, muggings, and torture by less-responsible American forces.

The result of all such brutality? America is feared, but justifiably hated around the world.

Who'll be thrown to the wolves? The outsourcing company formed & hired for interrogation billed the CIA over $81 million (see Findings & Conclusions, p.11 of 19). Such funds seem substantial for a limited partnership (Mitchell Jessen and Associates) but the two main American psychologists are now being dubbed "Torture Teachers" (see also "The American Mengeles: Drs. Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell").

Shareholders in Halliburton & Blackwater corporations gained billions in taxpayer monies. Even the cost of the Senate report was over US$40 million. Damage to U.S. reputation? Priceless. Remember the smirks of George Bush, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and their henchmen? They beggared the USA. Imprison all these swindlers with their colleague Bernie Madoff !

U.S. involvement in the ongoing wars for the Middle East cannot be justified. Claims of "keeping us secure" are bullshit - top people at the policy level didn't & do not care if Joe America lives or starves to death. The rich got richer.

http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/study2014/sscistudy1.pdf