CIA IG Report: Waterboarding was not "justified" - went "beyond" authorized limits

[sabra]

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=8402999&page=2

<snip>

The report, compiled by former Inspector General John L. Helgerson, concluded that the CIA waterboarding was not "justified" and that went "beyond" the limits of what the Department of Justice authorized. From the beginning, the report read, CIA officers involved in the program were worried about their personal reputations being "seriously damaged" and that public disclosure of the program would limit the "reputation and effectiveness of the agency itself."

Concerns of the waterboarding were widespread among those who knew of the waterboarding as an interrogation tactic. The Office of Medical Service, the agency's in-house team of doctors who were required to monitor the detainees while they were being waterboarded, noted to the IG staff that potential gains and "power" of the waterboarding to get detainees to talk was "exaggerated" and "appreciably overstated."

According to a former senior CIA official, the IG investigations into waterboarding—even before it was completed—made CIA officials nervous. On June 29, 2003, Director of CIA George Tenet went to the White House to discuss the "expanded use of (waterboarding)" with several senior administration officials. According to the former official, Tenet and CIA general Counsel John Rizzo informed attorney general John Ashcroft on the overuse of waterboarding on three al Qaeda detainees. According to the source, "The attorney general was fully informed of the severity of the situation and gave his approval."

Helgerson released a statement today that said, in part that waterboarding was used in a way that made it "inconsistent" with the understanding between CIA and the Department of Justice. The Department of Justice, Helgerson said in his statement, "provided the Agency a written legal opinion based on an Agency assurance that although some techniques would be used more than once, repetition would "not be substantial." My view was that, whatever methodology was used to count applications of the waterboard, the very large number of applications to which some detainees were subjected led to the inescapable conclusion that the Agency was abusing this technique."

[Solly Mack]

1. NO amount of waterboarding is acceptable or legal

because waterboarding IS torture and torture is illegal...regardless of what war criminals posing as DOJ lawyers have to say on the subject

[Echo In Light]

2. But...but...isn't it a matter of "policy" debate?

[Solly Mack]

3. Doesn't that very notion just piss you off?

To pretend that torture is just a matter of a policy difference? All that is saying is that torture will and can be the policy of some Presidents and not of others...and golly, we just can't prosecute people for mere policy can we?


Policy directs how we negotiate with foreign countries, for example

BUT

Torture is a crime

and there is a HUGE difference

[wroberts189]

4. Just like Tasers ..don't hit em once... hit em 12 times. The slippery slope of sadism. nt