"The country" doesn't admit that "the country" did this. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence "admits" that the Central Intelligence Agency did this, while at the same time insulating everyone else -- even in the Executive Branch -- from involvement, based on "the CIA was lying to everyone, including the White House, who totally didn't mean for this to happen."
> For me, that's hope that we're still in a position to learn from our wrongs, and that the checks-and-balances are still somewhat in-tact.
Checks and balances aren't admitting after the fact that actions which meet the definition of torture and war crimes in both US domestic law and international law which the US has treaty-based obligations to uphold occurred (while, except for the "personal opinion" of the chair in the introduction, not actually admitting the legal conclusions demanded by those facts), checks-and-balances is actually imposing some accountability on the perpetrators of those crimes.
AFAICT, there are no "checks-and-balances" in evidence yet.
And there's the problem.
Imagine, if you will, that your son is taken against his will by say, Iran, because your son has ties to someone who threw a grenade that killed an Iranian. Your son is tortured in much the same way the report states.
Do you care which committee didn't do a thing, or who voted for a thing, or lobbied another? You blame the country. The voting public, the non-voting public, their philosophies, culture, politicians, their military. They collectively represent the individuals who did that despicable stuff to your son.
And it's what perpetuates the hate, the wars, the fear.
It's much worse than that, we'll just flat out kill you with a drone strike, even if you're an American citizen[1][2].
[1]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/23/obama-anwar-al-awla...
[2]UPDATE - found the better article: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/how-team...
Kiriakou was charged with using numerous forms of classified information about foreign intelligence operations in order to promote a book, and, in doing so, outing a still-undercover foreign operative involved in the Zubaydah case. That operative had allegedly been under cover for over 20 years.
If you read the filings, you'll also see that Kiriakou claims to have outed the program accidentally --- in other words, that the leak didn't occur because he was deliberately blowing the whistle on the program, but instead by accident (or, as the USG would have it, negligence).
However terribly Zubaydah was treated by the CIA, we should probably remain clear on the fact that he was believed by everyone involved, including Kiriakou, to have been an integral part of the Al Qaeda network.
The case files are not themselves dispositive; I merely comment to suggest that it's harder to judge the Kiriakou case than it immediately seems.
I share the prevailing sentiment that our failure to prosecute CIA employees at all levels for torture is frustrating, and a miscarriage of justice. Though I'm not particularly interested in discussing that on HN.
Is that supposed to be a rationalization for his treatment?
You could sum that case up by saying that Kiriakou is accused of two major harms to the USG: first, outing a 20-year undercover operative, and second, potentially compromising the Zubaydah case. It would be an easy message board rebuttal to say, "well, it turns out Zubaydah was a pawn with virtually no value to the USG or Al Qaeda, so compromising him was not a big deal". But, at the time when Kiriakou was alleged to have leaked secrets to promote his book, nobody believed that about Zubaydah. He was instead believed to have a key operational role in Al Qaeda, and compromising him to promote a book would have been a grave matter.
It is hard to explain the nuance of this case without sounding like I'm taking a side in it. CIA is also accused throughout the Senate report of leaking secrets to polish its own reputation. The only issue I'd have a problem with is the idea that Kiriakou's actions were heroic. By his own stipulations that appears not to be the case.
I'll say this again: I'm may be more ambivalent than most of HN when it comes to surveillance and law enforcement and regulation, but I am not ambivalent about torture or, for that matter, the CIA, or criminal liability for the CIA.
I should have to make that disclaimer, but obviously I do.
"However terribly Zubaydah was treated by the CIA, we should probably remain clear on the fact that he was believed by everyone involved, including Kiriakou, to have been an integral part of the Al Qaeda network."
which seems totally unrelated to anything you have posted above, which was what make it stand out in the first place.
I cannot see any other way of interpreting it than the way I mentioned in my previous post, could you clarify what you meant by this since I am obviously not getting your meaning?
If the report leads to no action, where is the good in releasing it?
Real risk for real people has been created. It's not theoretical. Actual innocent people have been placed in danger.
If there's no good coming from the report, was it worth placing those people in danger?
Risk of what?
> Actual innocent people have been placed in danger.
Who?
I'm not attempting to argue the point. I haven't read the report. It just seems a strong statement to make that innocent bystanders (with no connection to torture) have been put at risk (of what?).
I'm curious how legitimate this claim is since to be honest it reads a bit like FUD (that's just how it comes off; but I'm just looking for a rationale).
People working for the US government overseas. Or just Americans. Or even just westerners in general.
Security is heightened, units are on alert worldwide. The risk is real and serious.
Remember, radical elements killed people over a silly video on youtube. This is much more inflammatory.
[1] http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2014/12/09/lv-mcc...
You can't make moral judgements from a viewpoint that assumes knowledge of the future.
> You can't make moral judgements from a viewpoint that assumes knowledge of the future.
Actually, you can. It's one of the main categories of normative ethics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_ethics#Normative_eth...
"Consequentialism (Teleology) argues that the morality of an action is contingent on the action's outcome or result", this particular category includes one of the most famous theories of ethics, utilitarianism.
Your problem with it is valid, however. As far as I've understood from my study of the subject matter, no ethical theory is perfect, not even utilitarianism.
Check out the wiki page for the other categories. Personally I like virtue ethics, keeps me on my toes and critical. I wouldn't recommend it though, I'd prefer if the rest of the world was utilitarian :-P cough
Incentives for information: 1.) Extract information. 2.) The information should be useful.
Incentives for intimidation: 1.) Information extraction is of no concern. 2.) The torture should be so shocking, and awesome, that George Carlin style many extra syllables need to be added to the word "tor-ture" like when Diane Feinstein says the supersized Orwellian phrase that "tor-ture" has become. 3.) The details of the torture should be made public.
Doesn't seem shocking these days. Can't prosecute the good ol boys club.
[0] - http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/cia-torture-report/doj-stan...
https://www.aclu.org/national-security/fact-sheet-extraordin...
Beginning in the early 1990s and continuing to this day, the Central Intelligence Agency, together with other U.S. government agencies, has utilized an intelligence-gathering program involving the transfer of foreign nationals suspected of involvement in terrorism
The current policy traces its roots to the administration of former President Bill Clinton. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, however, what had been a limited program expanded dramatically,
Let me be perfectly clear when I say this. It shouldn't matter which party started this, ITS WRONG.
This is not about extraordinary rendition -- which certainly is an extremely disturbing practice, and by all accounts seems to have included instances where prisoners were tortured by other countries with the knowledge and at least tacit consent of the US in violation of US obligations under international law.
This is about systematic torture directly executed by an agency of the United States government, under false pretenses, and while making damaging deceptions about the program to other entities within the US government.
There is certainly an extent to which it fits in with a common pattern with extraordinary rendition, but its not the same thing.
You must have missed this part of my post:
Let me be perfectly clear when I say this. It shouldn't matter which party started this, ITS WRONG.
Sure glad all the downvoters actually read my ENTIRE post before they started getting trigger happy with their downvotes.
That's what we're talking about here: the actual meaning of "gloves off". And no, this was categorically NOT something that started on Clinton's watch. It's started on Bush's watch, specifically at the direction of Cheney and his legal counsel David Addington, using legal justifications drafted by John Yoo.
Bush, not Clinton, got it?
And just so you're clear, this is not a defense of Democrats. After all, nobody has done more to forestall this report than the Democrat Barack Obama. In many ways, he's the worst offender here as it was his administration that elected to protect the people involved instead of punishing them, which serves to normalize something that absolutely should not be normalized. After all, the deepest institutional damage is done not by those who abuse their authority, but by those who allow the abusers to get away with it (see the systematic sexual abuse of children and the problems the Catholic Church caused itself by concealing it for another case in point).
I should add that the Obama Administration's conduct would be slightly less galling if it weren't part of a pattern, but the fact that James Clapper suffered no consequence for lying to Congress about the NSA's constitutional violations means that this is bigger than the CIA. If you get to the root of it, it's really about the goddamn nightmare of a lawless and amoral security state given big budgets and free reign stemming from the insane over-reaction to 9/11 that has since been enshrined in the Patriot Act.
That's the real heart of darkness here. Well, that and the cowering bedwetting chickenshits who don't support the whole "land of the free home of the brave" thing, and would rather hand the country to people like Cheney, Addington, Yoo, etc. and not think twice about the damage they're doing.
And those people? The fear driven chickenshits? Overwhelmingly Republican. It's the FOX News demographic, essentially. (FOX News, not coincidentally, has been a big supporter of torture. Like Cheney, they consider it evidence of "toughness", not idiocy.)
Well, in the past they've said that. Mostly now, they seem to be more avoiding commenting on the substance at all, and just saying that its wrong to publish the report.
Saying sorry afterwards doesn't do anything for those wronged. Admission doesn't take away pain, humiliation and fear.
Admitting wrong doing and offering solutions to prevent this from ever happening again are the first steps towards rebuilding what is undoubtedly going to be a much damaged world wide reputation.
Even releasing this report was a step forward.
[0] - http://www.tealeafnation.com/2012/12/has-japan-ever-apologiz...
The question on my mind, were their CIA operatives that refused to comply with orders? Take the various police brutality cases, what's lost in the echochamber about it all is that these guys volunteer to be police, nobody is forced to, some of them want to carry guns, that really changes the situation a bit when an unarmed person ends up dead. The CIA has the same problem here, I know there are people in the CIA that "want to kick some terrorist ass." I'd feel better if there were some outspoken CIA operatives who were coming out saying that they refused to take part. If not, it's not just an ugly stain but the whole organization is broken, they have no respect for law..
in case of US concentration camps there also was one man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kiriakou he is still in prison, because ratting on your fellow men is against the law
There usually are no 'good cops' either, because doing something in the face of evil marks you as a traitor
Japanese internment is still rarely talked about and in some states rarely taught in schools(!).
I really wish there was a way for to accurately evaluate these statements. I learned about this by age 10 from my mother, it was mentioned multiple times in high school, it is occasionally referenced in conversation online and in person, and comes up on my Fort Minor pandora station about once every 4 hours of playtime. But I live in a liberal social circle that places a high value on learning history.
Compare to this memo, where you have roughly half of the politically involved population of the country criticizing its release as if the memo itself is somehow reprehensible, and not saying one word about the activities it describes.
It's important to teach about what happened in those camps and to understand why they were wrong. Drawing inappropriate comparisons between those camps and the absolute atrocities in this report isn't helpful.
Nobody did. I said that Americans looked the other way. Nothing more, nothing less.
You're clearly reading more into what I said than what I actually said verbatim.
I'm surprised that you think torture is not an atrocity. The US claims to be "giving the gift of democracy" and "spreading freedom". Ignoring international conventions on the rights of prisoners of war (and do not start the weaselly bullshit about whether these people are POWs or not) doesn't seem to be a good way of liberating a nation.
Because if the CIA was just ignoring the rules, they wouldn't be trying to lawyer their way around what's "enhanced interrogation" versus "torture." They'd just be pulling out fingernails.
> Ignoring international conventions on the rights of prisoners of war
You fundamentally misunderstand the rationale behind these conventions. The reason we don't torture the soldiers of civilized nations is because we assume that they will reciprocate when it comes to our soldiers. Stateless militants can't be expected to do that, so the rationale for following those international conventions disappears.
Anyhow, there is also the Convention Against Torture isn't even related to conflict or POWs, but applies universally, and obliges parties to it (including the US) to prosecute (not merely avoid engaging in) torture, whoever does it, wherever they do it, and in whatever context they do it. Torturers are hostis humani generis, the common enemy of all mankind.
Also the fact that these conventions were valid for any war the signing country was involved in, not only those against other who signed (correct me if I'm wrong) seems to point in the same direction, no?
Also, downvote brigade: Fine, I totally agree that rayiner was downvoted and flagkilled twice. rayiner deserved that IMO.
However stop downvoting when he or others are providing insights, even if that insight is uncomfortable, OK?
It's true that is the scale of awful behavior, the CIA's program would rate something like 3 or 4 out of 10 - other regimes have engaged in things like pulling out people's fingernails, administering electric shocks, actually killing or raping family members rather than simply threatening to do so so, and worse - much worse. It's also true that atrocious actions by the US during the 'war on terror' are less bad than prior atrocities in previous conflicts like Vietnam or the Phillippine-American war of 1899-1902, a largely-forgotten conflict which would be considered genocidal by modern standards (and which is very much worth studying because it has so many similarities to the war on terror - gruesome murders by the rebels, widespread use of waterboarding by the US (then called the 'water cure'), subsequent political fallout and so on).
But even when we look at these things from a purely utilitarian standpoint rather than an idealistic one, the fact is that it our ability to project soft power - that is, to promulgate our values internationally so as to further our interests - is severely impaired by our all-too-apparent willingness to abandon the standards we propound in the areas of human rights and so forth. I'm not too impressed by the authoritarian regime in Cuba, for example, but the fact that we have a mini-Gulag in Guantanamo Bay makes it impossible for the US to criticize that regime in any meaningful fashion - even when it does the same or worse, it can fall back on a Tu quoque argument, and while that's a logical fallacy it's nevertheless a very effective one. On a more serious level, it has severely blunted our ability (along with that of the UK and other coalition countries, albeit to a lesser extent) to put pressure on North Korea over that country's appalling human rights record.
The basic problem for the US is this: we don't necessarily aspire to hegemony, but a de facto hegemony is the best guarantor of our long-term interests. We can't impose that by force, or want to, but we can get close by exercising soft economic and ideological power backed up with the availability of force against those who directly threaten our interests. At times the world is too messy and we'd like to take our ball and go home - let everyone else think what they like, the US land mass and economy is large enough for us to function as an autarky in an unconnected world. But the reality of a global technological world is that oceans no longer serve as impassable moats; disengagement and indifference to the emergence of other hegemonic powers would sooner or later result in disadvantage.
In war, we justify things a lot more morally ambiguous than a police officer shooting an armed criminal that's an imminent threat. Workers at a munitions factory who are just carting things around? Those folks get killed in war in airstrikes that are totally consistent with international conventions. Is waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed worse than blowing up some sap who just showed up to work on the wrong day? I just find it ridiculous to play that line drawing exercise.
I agree 100% with the rest of your analysis, though. Whatever the moral case may be, we shouldn't engage in enhanced interrogation because it yields low-value or even misleading information at the cost of tremendous political capital.
I agree that trying to establish bright-line rules often seems a futile exercise because it's so easy to come up with ethical inconsistencies. I do have a theory about the moral calculus of conflict but it's inchoate and this comment isn't really the place for it. To sketch the outline, though, the severity of a given outcome in a conflict can be mitigated by the degree of risk involved in bringing it about; so while the imposition involved in sleep deprivation or keeping someone cold is mild compared to someone being horribly maimed by a piece of shrapnel, it's the massive prior asymmetry between captor and prisoner that's problematic in the case of torture. Of course, you could argue that this asymmetry is also strong where only one side in a conflict has an air force or where one side is using remote-controlled military assets like drones, whose 'pilots' experience no physical risks whatsoever. This is going to become a huge problem within a few short years with robotic infantry assets - as soon as they're 'good enough' to deploy effectively there will be huge pressure to do so, even if they are just slightly extending forward positions over a short distance.
Yes. Waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is viewed by the vast majority to be morally far much worse than bombing a munitions factory. That is why doing it costs the tremendous political capital.
The deaths caused by the aggressor of a war are not consistent with international conventions, they are, in the words of a judge in at the Nuremberg tribunals, the consequence of the ultimate war crime.
The moral high ground is very valuable real estate indeed, and the US does hurt itself by doing things that reflect poorly in the eyes of the global public. But we're rightfully and pragmatically more concerned about artillery and soldiers occupying plain old fashioned military high ground. We interrogate to prevent people who openly wish us harm from gaining the power to turn their words into deeds. You can always earn cool points by pointing out historical atrocities, but in the end what matters is that we're still here, alive and prospering. Do you honestly believe that if the US government always behaved like perfect angels that N Korea or Cuba would suddenly listen to our moral lectures? That our behavior would somehow inspire them to change the fundamental cultural mores that come from decades of national poverty and the mindset that comes along with it? Because I don't think it will. Human rights violations will still exist even if we behave with moral perfection. Sometimes the best way to stop the bad guys isn't to set a good example, but instead to waterboard someone until he tells you where to send a SEAL team.
For better or worse, the US has the sanctioned role of providing security for the world. If that means we have to strip someone naked and throw them against a wall then so be it. It's unpleasant, but it sure as hell beats the alternatives.
Much as police violence in custody has often been defended with the argument that the police were attempting to obtain information that would lead to a conviction.
It isn't done for revenge or in situations where the stakes are anything less than the life and death of innocent people. Someone who has information on a literal ticking time bomb is the very definition of a threat to the public.
Ostensibly, but for one thing there is usually no actual ticking time bomb because we don't live in the universe of 24, and for another if there was a ticking time bomb there'd be no way to protect against misinformation about its location until it was too late.
The TTB argument implicitly assumes that intelligence gained through torture will be correct and actionable, but this isn't backed up by evidence. If the bomb is on West 63rd street and the torture subject directs you to East 47th street, you won't know you've been lied to until you get there and find out there is no bomb. Conversely, what if the person does not actually know what you want to know, like the 26 detainees mentioned in the report who were picked up despite not being suitable targets for interrogation? When they keep saying they don't know where the ticking time bomb is, how do you tell that they're not just holding out on you?
For better or worse, the US has the sanctioned role of providing security for the world.
Hmmm, no. As I outlined above, its in our interests to hold such a position at present. I think you need to think a bit longer about this, because your views on this subject seem rather shallow.
Actually, it doesn't, as the CIA admits. So much so that they had to lie about its effectiveness.
I can imagine torture that's worse than death. I don't think any of the things revealed in the article qualify. Which is precisely what I'm getting at. If you're not a pacifist and you think it's okay to kill people in war, I think you have to go to pretty tortured lengths to say that these enhanced interrogation techniques are unjustifiable in light of that. If you're a pacifist who doesn't think that killing is justifiable in the first place, that's a totally different thing.
Reading Solzhenitsyn in the context of today's news might be worthwhile for people. If people can read all that, note the similarities between the NKVD's tactics and attitude toward the law and the CIA's, and walk away contentedly thinking to themselves "but our guys have good intentions and are a lot more selective!" we are hosed as a country.
I understand the frustration, but please do not violate the site guidelines like this.
The comment would be appropriate and stronger with just the first question.
I imagine this thread is all sorts of "fun" for you right now....
Thanks for respecting the guidelines. It matters a lot for established users to set good examples.
Anyway, thanks for your work in keeping the place in line.
Also, just being locked up with nothing to do can be painful in itself.
Well consider me convinced! We definitely need to limit immigration to America otherwise we could end up with large numbers of people whose cultural norms allow them to condone torture and try to make jokes about it! Can you imagine what a cluster fuck this nation would be if the majority view was that repeated anal rape leading to multiple attempts at self-harm was something to be made light of!? No we definitely need to make sure that we only accept a small enough number of immigrants that we can ensure that things like the concept of the rule of law, the right to trial, and the right to not be, you know FUCKING TORTURED, are fully assimilated by them. Gods knows what things would be like if they somehow managed to not internalize these concepts.
You're also making assumptions that people die instantly on the battlefield and in drone attacks. That's not the case. They can (and do) die in slow, lingering, painful ways in such cases.
My point is being locked up indefinitely and tortured again and again. Waiting for pain is also painful unless you are very mentally strong.
Does this surprise you? It shouldn't.
That is: the actions outlined in this summary of a report, and in other tacit admissions by US elected leaders, go way beyond arguing that the actions are "legal" or "illegal". The actions outlined in the summary speak to a government that does not care about most human beings at all.
All of morality is not contained within the law. Segregation was legal for a while. Apartheid was legal for a while.
To the contrary. I think you have to have a very legalistic dedication to procedural due process to assert that people abroad advocating the violent overthrow of the United States should have the same rights as ordinary accused in the United States.
Beyond that, if it's good policy for US citizens to have freedom of speech, or right to a fair trial, or to not be tortured, then it's good policy for all humans to have those rights.
By asserting the "random person in the street" argument, you're asserting a tyranny of the majority. You should know better. Shame on you.
I never was fond of you, but this confirms that you're truly a vile human. I cannot believe that there is an actual torture apologist on HN.
In your follow-up comment, you rationalize it by saying that they are not worthy of the same treatment as those from civilized nations.
I don't know if you're a sociopath or you harbor a lot of hate and anger, but in either case, I hope you get the help you need before you hurt someone.
And even now there will be people who say that this was too much, but a little bit of torture is necessary.
Just look at what people were saying a out water boarding - "it's not really torture".
How many detainees are still held without trial?
Let's put it this way: unless you're not horrified to have such a procedure happen to you, your wife, child, etc, it IS torture.
Jubal Early: You oughta be shot. Or stabbed, lose a leg. To be a surgeon, you know? Know what kind of pain you're dealing with. They make psychiatrists get psychoanalyzed before they can get certified, but they don't make a surgeon get cut on. That seem right to you?
Pft. You're not getting off that easy.
The "saving grace" for Germany was going to international trial for the crimes committed, something the US actively refuses to do, AND hanging their heads in collective national shame for the atrocities they allowed happen in their name, scared shitless what a country is capable of when not kept in check by its people, fearing and strongly dismissing anything remotely reeking like nazism, even up to the point of partially giving up their own freedom of speech, ever since. I don't see the US doing anything similar any time soon. "It's our FREEDOMS! We must have our FREEDOMS!"
Sorry I'm just really angry and sad.
I hope the US is truly sorry about this, but they will have to show how sorry they are. Words are not enough.
Germany, has gone out of its way to punish the guilty, and to change their national culture, and imprint their new culture with the taboos necessary to ensure those atrocities can never happen again. No country in the history of the world has ever been so sorry as Germany, and their reaction to the shameful things they did deserves admiration and respect.
If the US wants to deserve similar admiration and respect, they have to show it. They have to prove it, by putting all these people behind bars at the very least.
It's mostly able to admit it because nothing will change, that is: such exposes are inconsequential.
If those kind of reports could change things, they wouldn't happen at all.
This would end with a few questions, some pats in the back, and business as usual.