EDITORIAL

Who are we?

Posted 12/11/14

Already, the Senate report about the CIA and torture has sparked partisan outrage among Republicans, who know it doesn’t reflect well on the two administrations of George W. Bush. But, in their …

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EDITORIAL

Who are we?

Posted

Already, the Senate report about the CIA and torture has sparked partisan outrage among Republicans, who know it doesn’t reflect well on the two administrations of George W. Bush. But, in their haste to condemn a largely Democratic report, they are losing sight of the larger picture of who we are and what we mean to the world.

We are not gullible enough to think that some Democrats are taking pleasure in the discomfort the report gives to the Republican Party. But those Democrats are being small-minded. Every American should be ashamed and troubled that any of the activities outlined in the report are true. If it were solely party partisans who reported to the Senate Committee and came to the conclusion that wrong was done, you could justify the partisan posturing of the Republicans. But, as the reports showed time and time again, people in the CIA, the FBI and the Bush administration have expressed their horror of what was done in the name of security and described how their dissent froze them out of the debate about the methods and results of “enhanced interrogations.”

What seems to be emerging is an agency that somehow came under the thrall of two individuals who sold the agency on their methods and then lied about the results they got with them. A fuller investigation should be conducted of the two so-called psychologists who apparently made more than $80 million as privately contracted interrogation experts. And they made that money plagiarizing a manual that was created to help our military resist torture from the other side and turned it into a how-to-torture manual for lower-level intelligence officers. Neither “psychologist” was an expert at interrogation or had anything beyond gossip about the culture or mentality that produces an Al-Qaeda recruit.

For his part, President Obama did the nation and the world a disservice when he didn’t pursue the rumors and facts that were available to him when he took office. For a man who is accused of being too obsessed with his “legacy,” he seems to have taken a tragically short view of what history will say about this period in American history.

As for the Republican apologists for the crimes and criminals, we can only remind them of what the late Senator Patrick Moynihan once said: “You, sir, are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.”

Comments

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  • davebarry109

    What in the report was torture? Sleep deprivation? Water boarding? Banging someone off a wall? These are not nice things but are they torture? Our enemies are raping and beheading on a mass scale but we worry about terrorists not getting enough sleep? Our enemies have made cripples out of 50,000 American soldiers by blowing them up with IEDs. Our enemies take young woman and little girls as sex slaves. You are right though. We should not put them in Gitmo where they only get 3 meals a day, cable TV, new recreation facilities, world class medical and dental care....that is torture.

    Thursday, December 11, 2014 Report this

  • RoyDempsey

    I agree davebarry109, torture was also watching Americans having to make a decision of burning to death or jumping from the 90th floor of the World Trade Center. John Howell should be grateful for the work that has up to this point kept us safe. But the question is, why did this report need to be released?

    Thursday, December 11, 2014 Report this

  • RichardLangseth

    Waterboarding an individual 185 times seems like torture to me. After World War 2, Japanese officers were executed for waterboarding U.S. soldiers - the courtsmartial found the practice to be torture. "Banging" someone off the wall is clearly torture. Sleep deprivation leads to death. The Senate committee found no cases where this treatment led to any new information.

    This report needed to be made public so that we Americans could find out just how far our secret government goes into the international hot waters when dealing with citizens of other countries.

    Tuesday, December 16, 2014 Report this

  • JohnStark

    Clearly, CIA and US military officers are not properly educated in the process of extracting information from prisoners. Next time they should say "Pretty please". We would be laughed at by our enemies. But with the release of this report, they're already laughing at us. Polls show an overwhelming majority of Americans support the CIA. Let them do their jobs.

    Sunday, December 21, 2014 Report this

  • ronruggieri

    As a citizen of the United States I am appalled by this CIA torture scandal. Just follow the web site WATCHING AMERICA to learn that world public opinion condemns these war crimes. The guilty here should face trial in an international war crimes tribunal. Those quack psychologists are completely despicable human beings. And should be WANTED in post offices all around the world.

    I recall the words of the Nobel Prize winning French writer Albert Camus who more than 50 years ago was protesting the use of torture by the French military during the Algerian revolution: " I would like to love my country and still love justice ", Camus wrote. He also wrote : " In fighting our enemies let us not come to resemble them ".

    ( http://radicalrons.blogspot.com/ )

    Monday, December 29, 2014 Report this