CIA Torture, Read All About It

Scott Stantis via US News & World Report

Scott Stantis via US News & World Report

Less than a year after a Senate panel reported in detail shocking acts of CIA torture, former CIA officials have responded. A book released on Wednesday, authored by some of the same high-level intelligence officials who oversaw the now-infamous torture program after the September 11 attacks, is intended to rebut the story of torture laid out in the landmark Senate “torture report.”

The book – titled “Rebuttal: The CIA Responds to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Study of Its Detention and Interrogation Program” – has already drawn harsh criticism. California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who led the Senate panel’s investigation into CIA torture, has already slammed the book as failing to respond to her report’s allegations. Many others will surely soon criticize the book’s narrative.

But such commentary is missing the point. The book’s contents are not the story. What’s remarkable is its very existence.

Torture is indisputably, unequivocally illegal. Any protests that torture can be justified in national security emergencies are simply irrelevant to the conversation. The domestic and international laws which forbid torture do not include exemptions for any reason. In fact, it is because of the extraordinary lengths to which governments will go in the name of security that such laws exist. The fear that led officials to engage in torture is the same fear that fuels a global endless war. Read more

Read the full article at US News & World Report

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2 thoughts on “CIA Torture, Read All About It

  1. I am against torture. You are against torture. The torturers are even against it. As admitted herein, it is engaged in out of fear, which means most–if not all of us–wpuld engaged in it if scared enough and beliwving it would help save lives–tberefore, the O N L Y thing that will stop it is severe punishment.

  2. Anyone who has tortured another person should spend his or her life in prison. They deserve to be tortured themselves, especially the persons high up on the chain of command who order such things.

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