Saturday, April 20, 2013

America’s Torture Years

A detailed look at America’s torture years
Apr 20 2013 - For the past two years, I’ve been part of a bipartisan task force assembled by the Constitution Project to examine American detainee treatment policies since the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C.

The 500-page book we have just published is the most comprehensive and detailed account yet available of what has been done in all our names at CIA black sites, Guantanamo and detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is based on public record information and dozens of interviews conducted in the United States and overseas.

The truth of what took place should shock everyone’s conscience.

Yes, we brutally tortured a whole lot of people. Yes, torture was approved at the very highest levels of our government. Yes, it was illegal. Yes, no one above flunky level has been accountable for any of it. Yes, torture appears not to have produced intelligence that saved lives. Yes, we at times tortured the wrong people. Yes, we don’t care. Yes, torture can never be justified, period. Yes, people who do the actual wet work pay a heavy price.

Yes, we don’t care.

An especially baffling part of America’s trip to the dark side was how the CIA’s secret rendition program made itself available to Libya’s dictator, Muammar Gaddafi. Many of the CIA’s prisoners were snatched abroad, bundled onto CIA jets and taken to black-site prisons for special treatment that was illegal in the U.S. read more>>>


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