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posted by Blackmoore on Tuesday December 09 2014, @11:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the painful-truths dept.

The NYT reports that with the release of the long-awaited Senate report on the use of torture by the United States government — a detailed account that will shed an unsparing light on the Central Intelligence Agency’s darkest practices after the September 2001 terrorist attacks, the US is bracing itself for the risk that it will set off a backlash overseas. Some leading Republican lawmakers have warned against releasing the report, saying that domestic and foreign intelligence reports indicate that a detailed account of the brutal interrogation methods used by the CIA during the George W. Bush administration could incite unrest and violence, even resulting in the deaths of Americans. The White House acknowledged that the report could pose a “greater risk” to American installations and personnel in countries like Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, Libya and Iraq. But it said that the government had months to plan for the reverberations from its report — indeed, years — and that those risks should not delay the release of the report by the Senate Intelligence Committee. “When would be a good time to release this report?” the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, asked. “It’s difficult to imagine one, particularly given the painful details that will be included.”

Among the administration’s concerns is that terrorist groups will exploit the disclosures in the report for propaganda value. The Islamic State already clads its American hostages in orange jumpsuits, like those worn by prisoners in CIA interrogations. Hostages held by the Islamic State in Syria were subjected to waterboarding, one of the practices used by the CIA to extract information from suspected terrorists. The 480-page document reveals the results of Senate investigation into the CIA's use of torture and other techniques that violate international law against prisoners held on terrorism-related charges. Though many details of the Senate's findings will remain classified – the document is a summary of a 6,000-page report that is not being released – the report is expected to conclude that the methods used by the CIA to interrogate prisoners during the post-9/11 years were more extreme than previously admitted and produced no intelligence that could not have been acquired through legal means.

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 10 2014, @08:50PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 10 2014, @08:50PM (#124859)

    Hypothetical scenario: terrorist has planted a nuke somewhere in NYC, there's five minutes left on the clock and you need to know how to defuse it. You've got the guy, you know 100% that he's the guy, but he's not talking. For this scenario, torture is absolutely illegal, and will get you sent to prison probably for life. Let's also assume that you are reasonably confident that you can get the info out of him with torture, and save tens of millions of lives, and that no other option will work in time.

    This scenario is a fallacy, doesn't exist and never will exist. 1) if you have 5min left, there is never enough time to diffuse the device 2) the only thing the dude you're about to torture has to do to succeed is one or more of the following: die or withstand until the clock runs out (either of which, for the right cause, may be desired by said dude - heck, it may even be the plan all along) If you find yourself in the scenario you describe above, then you've lost. Deal with it. Torturing the dude amounts to nothing more than revenge (but then again, if you're a citizen of the USA, you do seem to condone revenge -as opposed to justice- in your 'justice system' already, so I'm not that surprised) I'll join in with what another reply to your post already mentioned: you're a horrible person, vanish!