Who’s Afraid of the Torture Report?

[JEB]

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/11/11/whos-afraid-torture-report

by
Ashley Gorski, Noa Yachot

Multiple government agencies are doing their best to ignore a 6,900-page elephant in the room: a mammoth report, authored by the Senate Intelligence Committee, detailing the horrors of the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program.

A New York Times’ article published today reveals an absurd and scandalous state of affairs in the executive branch. Last December, the Senate released a summary of the torture report to the public and sent the full report to several government agencies, with the explicit instructions that it be used “to help make sure that this experience” — of torture, secret detention, and CIA deception — “is never repeated.”

Despite the Senate’s clear intent at the time, the Justice Department has prohibited government agencies from even opening the full torture report. Yes, the agency responsible for federal law enforcement is forbidding officials across the Obama administration from reading the most detailed account in existence of the CIA’s past torture program as well as the agency’s related evasions and misrepresentations to Congress, the White House, the courts, the media, and the American public .

<snip>

All of this raises the question: Why is the executive branch fighting so hard to keep the full torture report from the American public? Perhaps because officials know that the report is damning — and its release will spur renewed calls for CIA accountability.

But ignoring the torture report won’t make it go away. Truth has a way of coming out eventually.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Short read covering some very important stuff. Transparent my ass.

[darkangel218]

1. Because they know we wouldn't like it.

[madokie]

2. I'm not sure its 'US' they're worried about

more like the rest of the world.

Is how I see it anyway

[darkangel218]

5. Good point.

[hifiguy]

3. The reasons this will never see the light of day

are blindingly obvious. The Deep State always protects itself and makes sure the Potemkin political operatives do their bit.

Transparency, my ass.

[JEB]

4. Shouldn't this be a BFD?

Can we continue to pretend to be a democracy?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. Becaise it would be really bad PR for an allegedly civilized society and government. K&R

And, there might be demands that the perpetrators and their bosses be held accountable.

[newfie11]

7. And we used to be the good guys

Or so I was lead to believe.

[Scuba]

8. Hey, it's OK to torture people if you need information ....

Even when you know that any information you gain through torture is suspect.


http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2008/feb/01/barack-obama/clinton-changed-on-torture/

In October 2006, Clinton spoke about exceptions to a no-torture policy when speaking to the New York Daily News. Clinton mentioned a "ticking time bomb" scenario in which a captured terrorist has knowledge of an imminent terror attack and interrogators want to use torture.

"In the event we were ever confronted with having to interrogate a detainee with knowledge of an imminent threat to millions of Americans, then the decision to depart from standard international practices must be made by the president, and the president must be held accountable," she said. "That very, very narrow exception within very, very limited circumstances is better than blasting a big hole in our entire law."

[Octafish]

9. To ensure torture is never repeated, why not prosecute those responsible?

We know their names and addresses.



"Why don't we send Officer Friendly out to serve them a warrant, Unka Dick?"

[spanone]

10. K&R...

[Hortensis]

11. Here's the NY Times article:

"Classified Report on the C.I.A.’s Secret Prisons Is Caught in Limbo"

...

"In a letter to Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch last week, Ms. Feinstein, a California Democrat, said the Justice Department was preventing the government from “learning from the mistakes of the past to ensure that they are not repeated.”

Although Ms. Feinstein is eager to see the document circulated, the Senate is now under Republican control. Her successor as head of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, has demanded that the Obama administration return every copy of the report. Mr. Burr has declared the report to be nothing more than “a footnote in history.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/10/us/politics/classified-report-on-the-cias-secret-prisons-is-caught-in-limbo.html

Here is a Washington Post publishing of the 525-page summary of the report released to the public. There's probably a government link somewhere.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/national/cia-interrogation-report/document/

[Javaman]

12. it will never see the light of day.

and if it does, it will be so redacted that it might as well be a blank document.

[JEB]

13. I suspect that if the public knew

what was done there would be no choice but to prosecute. So rather than not committing crimes we work behind the backs of We the People to prevent prosecution. Somehow, no conviction equals no rime. Many know better.