LATimes | There’s a lot to be appalled about in the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee’s CIA torture report -- and yes, what the CIA did was torture.
Beyond the atrocious physical abuse of detainees, the report details
the agency’s incompetence -- it doesn’t know how many people it detained
-- and its willful efforts to hide its misdeeds by lying to the president and Congress and maintaining a disinformation campaign with the media.
As others have noted, the conduct by the CIA and some of its contractors
was inhumane and disgusting, regardless of whether they thought they
were covered by Bush administration attorney John Yoo's legal rationalization. Much has been made that in the end, the “intelligence” the agents squeezed out of their victims was of little value,
which makes a point of painful irony but obscures the darker reality.
Even if the CIA had tortured a morsel of useful information out of
someone, they still resorted to indefensible practices.
Imagine what the U.S. reaction -- from government officials to everyday
people -- would be if we learned that agents of another country had
grabbed people from outside its borders, spirited them away to
clandestine chambers in third countries,
and tortured them. Special forces would be deployed. The United Nations
Security Council would convene. Sanctions would be imposed amid talk of
isolating a rogue nation from the civilized world.
But because it was the U.S., it's likely nothing will happen despite calls for prosecutions. The Justice Department, which has already passed on prosecutions once, affirmed Tuesday that it will not reopen investigations into possible illegal acts committed by CIA agents and officials, or the people hired by them (yes, the U.S. even outsources torture).
If it is true that we are at war with terrorist organizations, then how is it not a war crime
when U.S. agents take prisoners to secret complexes, deprive them of
sleep, force them to stand on broken feet, manacle their hands above
their heads, and “feed” them rectally?
Torture is illegal.
Letting those responsible for such inhumane acts slip away without
being brought to justice compounds the crime. We like to think of
ourselves as a nation governed by laws, but to shrug off torture by
agents of our own government tells the world that we not only find the
crimes inconsequential, but we’ve turned off the international beacon of
justice.
The Times editorial board read the report for what it is: An indictment:
