CIA “torture” report released by Senate

So, ignoring the warnings that it would put Americans at risk around the world, the highly partisan Senate did that anyway. Because, you know, what are the lives of a few Americans compared to them being removed from their seats of power? The Washington Post is shocked by what they read in the report. Apparently they’re much less shocked by videos of Americans having their heads removed on video screens around the world. They’re much less shocked that Americans and Europeans are heading off to Syria by the thousands to join the organization that sprung from al Qaeda. Those terrorists are heartened by Senator Feinstein;

In her foreword to the report, Feinstein does not characterize the CIA’s actions as torture, but said the trauma of Sept. 11 led the agency to employ “brutal interrogation techniques in violation of U.S. law, treaty obligations and our values.” The report should serve as “a warning for the future,” she said. “We cannot again allow history to be forgotten and grievous past mistakes to be repeated.”

Yeah, if pumping water up the anus of a terrorist is something that makes them talk, they can use my hose. The report focuses on the treatment of Abu Zubaida. He operated the Khalden Camp which trained al Qaeda operatives and Taliban soldiers. He was convicted in absentia and sentenced to death by Jordan for plotting bombings of US and Israeli targets there. He had ties to Ahmed Ressam, the “Millennium Bomber” who was foiled at the Canadian/US border.

Zubaida was shot by Pakistani intelligence officials when they arrested him. When he was turned over to the FBI, those agents took him straight to the hospital for treatment. I wonder if John McCain wishes that he had been treated as humanely by the North Vietnamese troops who captured him when he was injured?

But this is what the report said about his treatment;

One of the most lengthy sections describes the interrogation of the CIA’s first prisoner, Abu Zubaida, who was detained in Pakistan in March 2002. Zubaida, badly injured when he was captured, was largely cooperative when jointly questioned by the CIA and FBI but was then subjected to confusing and increasingly violent interrogation as the agency assumed control.

After being transferred to a site in Thailand, Zubaida was placed in isolation for 47 days, a period during which the presumably important source on al-Qaida faced no questions. Then, at 11:50 a.m. on Aug. 4, 2002, the CIA launched a round-the-clock interrogation assault — slamming Zubaida against walls, stuffing him into a coffin-sized box and waterboarding him until he coughed, vomited and had “involuntary spasms of the torso and extremities.”

The treatment continued for 17 days. At one point, the waterboarding left Zubaida “completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth.” CIA memos described employees who were distraught and concerned about the legality of what they had witnessed. One said that “two, perhaps three” were “likely to elect transfer.”

Good. Even if they didn’t get any information out of him, he was obviously a terrorist and deserved everything he got. And you’ll note that no one chopped off his head during this treatment.

Zubaida was waterboarded 83 times and kept in cramped boxes for nearly 300 hours. In October 2002, Bush was informed in his daily intelligence briefing that Zubaida was still withholding “significant threat information,” despite views from the black site that he had been truthful from the outset and was “compliant and cooperative,” the report said.

The document provides a similarly detailed account of the interrogation of the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who fed his interrogators a stream of falsehoods and intelligence fragments. Waterboarding was supposed to simulate suffocation with a damp cloth and a trickle of liquid. But with Mohammed, CIA operatives used their hands to form a standing pool of water over his mouth. KSM, as he is known in agency documents, was ingesting “a LOT of water,” a CIA medical officer wrote, saying that the application had been so altered that “we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”

From Wiki;

In March 2007, through the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] confessed to masterminding the September 11 attacks, the Richard Reid shoe bombing attempt to blow up an airliner, the Bali nightclub bombing in Indonesia, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the murder of Daniel Pearl, and various foiled attacks, as well as numerous other crimes.

And now I’m supposed to regret that treatment of a fellow who had a hand in nearly every terrorist plot for the decade before his arrest? Yeah, let me dig deep for some GAF.

I wonder if the media will shove a microphone in the face of any Democrat Senator who took part in the release of the report and ask them if they regret the loss of any lives that result from this release. And have no doubt, that the release of this report is purely political. Most of the members of Congress were fully aware of the interrogation techniques that were employed at the time they were used, but now suddenly it’s “never again” as they’re being shown the door.

According to Fox News, six thousand Marines in Europe are on “high alert” as a Crisis Response Force solely because the Senate Democrats released this report.

The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal writes that they’re convinced that the interrogation techniques used by the CIA saved lives;

What is wrong with the committee’s report?

First, its claim that the CIA’s interrogation program was ineffective in producing intelligence that helped us disrupt, capture, or kill terrorists is just not accurate. The program was invaluable in three critical ways:

• It led to the capture of senior al Qaeda operatives, thereby removing them from the battlefield.

• It led to the disruption of terrorist plots and prevented mass casualty attacks, saving American and Allied lives.

• It added enormously to what we knew about al Qaeda as an organization and therefore informed our approaches on how best to attack, thwart and degrade it.

A powerful example of the interrogation program’s importance is the information obtained from Abu Zubaydah, a senior al Qaeda operative, and from Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, known as KSM, the 9/11 mastermind. We are convinced that both would not have talked absent the interrogation program.

By the way, John McCain was quoted as saying “This question isn’t about our enemies. It’s about us. It’s about who we were, who we are and who we aspire to be. It’s about how we represent ourselves to the world.” The Senate report is not accurate – like any report that comes out of Congress – everything is a compromise vote. They only release information that the Democrat majority allows to be released. Butthurt McCain voting with them insures that nothing even close to accurate is going to be in the report.

The world needs to know that we’re tired of taking their shit. The whining and hand-wringing by the Senate doesn’t send that message.

Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Terror War