Your Guide to CIA Torture and Its Sick, Sad American Apologists
Adam Weinstein
Filed to: torture Tuesday 12:37pm
fortressamerica.gawker.com
In one of its last acts before Republicans take leadership, the Senate intelligence committee today released another report again acknowledging that yes, the United States tortured people in the war on terror—and no, it didn't really help much. Here's what we know today.
How did we torture people?
Well, there's the waterboarding, which even a machismo-obsessed Oxfordian could see was torture seconds into a grandstanding attempt to endure it. Today's report confirms that even the interrogators saw waterboarding sessions against 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad as "a series of near drownings":
But there's so much more. Here are some practices the Army's interrogation manual (now) expressly prohibits—practices U.S. forces, their hired goons, and their international proxies have all been accused of using since 9/11:
- Forcing the detainee to be naked, perform sexual acts, or pose in a sexual manner.
- Placing hoods or sacks over the head of a detainee; using duct tape over the eyes.
- Applying beatings, electric shock, burns, or other forms of physical pain.
- "Waterboarding."
- Using military working dogs.
- Inducing hypothermia or heat injury.
- Conducting mock executions.
- Depriving the detainee of necessary food, water, or medical care.
And more. Detainees under U.S. supervision in places like Guantanamo have turned up dead, with legs battered to the point of liquefaction. This excerpt from today's Senate report is illustrative:
Other detainees have been handed over to sadism-happy global allies and simply disappeared. As security reporter Spencer Ackerman put it for Wired last year: " More Than 50 Countries Helped the CIA Outsource Torture." From today's report:
The tragic truth of the matter is that we don't know the full extent of what awful shit was done to people in the name of American security, and nothwithstanding today's release, we probably never will.
Why did we torture people?
Ostensibly, it was to extract intelligence out of terrorists to prevent future attacks against Americans. In the face of years of evidence disputing this thesis, much of the op-ed and TV pushback from Bush-era architects of the torture policy amounts to: "Nuh-uh." The amount of ink spilled over whether torture is "effective" in the past decade and a half has been breathtaking. (Not as breathtaking as waterboarding, of course.)
The Senate report released today, however, again says torture was ineffective: Every one of 20 major cases cited as successes by torture defenders was overblown or "found to be wrong in fundamental respects." Worse, the report says, the CIA deliberately lied to perpetuate the idea that inflicting pain and distress got shit done:
But lefty security reporter Marcy Wheeler, formerly of The Intercept, points out that U.S. officials have historically cited another justification: "exploitation," an ominous catchall referring to captors' use of prisoners for, well, whatever. Want to know specifics? Too bad. Here's what the definition looks like in a previous Senate torture report:
Perhaps exploitation includes coercing prisoners to work for U.S. interests after their release. Perhaps it includes forced participation in U.S. messaging—or, as Wheeler bluntly puts it, "propaganda."
How can anybody defend this?
First, by denying that it's torture. Remember the " enhanced interrogation techniques" meme? (Early rumors that even today's Senate report would avoid the word "torture" were, in fact, untrue; the word appears 131 times.)
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