Daily Archives: December 11, 2014

Washington, Dec 11:

The US is facing a tough time to defend its human rights record which is being questioned by many countries, including some of its allies, following the release of a damaging report on CIAs detention and interrogation programmes.

Top US government officials including President Obama have acknowledged having made mistakes with lawmakers conceding that some of the interrogation techniques amount to torture.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani yesterday said the CIA interrogation techniques were a violation of international laws while countries like China and Iran have slammed the US for its human rights violation.

Putting a brave front, both the White House and the State Department asserted that it stood by its human rights record and would continue to strongly take up the human rights issues of countries across the globe.

If the US moral authority had been substantially diminished, we would not have had so much success in building a coalition of more than 60 countries, including many Muslim majority countries in the Middle East joining us in the fight against ISIL. So, weve made substantial progress, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said when asked if the US had lost its moral authority.

The president did take these steps in early 2009 to put in place a task force that later in 2009 announced significant reforms to the way that US personnel interrogate and detain individuals that happen to be in the custody of the United States government, he said.

He said the President was very clear in outlawing unequivocal techniques substantially rebuilt US credibility and moral authority around the globe.

We have evidence that this effect is having an impact on our ability to protect American national security interests around the globe, Earnest said.

Noting that the US moral authority is one of the most powerful tools in the countrys arsenal for protecting and advancing American interests around the globe, Earnest said the President believes that there is more that were going to continue to do.

Continued here:
US allies question its human rights record post-CIA report

Americans have long known that, in the aftermath of Sept. 11, the CIA subjected suspected terrorists to inhuman and degrading treatment that amounted to nothing less than torture. A Senate Intelligence Committee report released Tuesday documented that outrageous conduct in stomach-turning detail but also described new offenses to human dignity that border on the pornographic.

The report actually, a 499-page executive summary of a much longer (and still classified) study concludes that not only did the spy agency's program of "enhanced interrogation techniques" fail to turn up any vital, life-saving intelligence, but its extent and effectiveness were repeatedly misrepresented to the White House and Congress, under whose authority it was pursued.

In the inimitable words of former Vice President Dick Cheney, this country traveled to the "dark side" in the months and years after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But we didn't know how dark until the release of this report. It's scandalous that Republicans in Congress and many in the national-security bureaucracy tried to bottle up even a portion of the Intelligence Committee's conclusions. In the end, opponents of disclosure resorted to arguing that publication of the report would provoke attacks on America an argument that could be used to justify suppressing the information forever.

It is old news that, armed with dubious legal advice from the Bush Justice Department, the CIA had subjected three detainees to the brutal simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding. But the Intelligence Committee found evidence including a "well-worn waterboard" at a dungeon-like interrogation center in Afghanistan that suggests more widespread use of a procedure long condemned as a form of torture.

The committee's summary describes other offenses against human dignity. Detainees were prevented from sleeping for 180 hours as they stood or were placed in painful stress positions, sometimes with their hands shackled above their heads. At least five detainees received painful rectal rehydration or rectal feedings for no medical purpose. The brutality was sometimes psychological: Several detainees were told they would never be allowed to leave the agency's custody alive; others were told that family members would be killed or sexually abused. One detainee apparently died of hypothermia after being chained, naked, to a concrete floor. At least 26 detainees were "wrongfully held," including an "intellectually challenged" man who, the report said, was detained solely as leverage to persuade a relative to provide information.

Such mistreatment would be a violation of the Geneva Convention even if it yielded vital intelligence about terrorist plots past, present and future. But the committee concluded that "the CIA's justification for the use of its enhanced interrogation techniques rested on inaccurate claims of their effectiveness." For example, the CIA maintained that Abu Zubaydah, who was repeatedly waterboarded, identified Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks after being subjected to "enhanced" techniques. But the committee says that "this information was corroborative of information already in CIA databases."

The committee concludes that the CIA also misled the Department of Justice on which it relied for legal authority about the conditions of detainees' confinement and the debilitating physical effects of the "enhanced interrogation techniques."

All in all, the document released Tuesday amounts to an indictment of the CIA and its political enablers that is no less shocking because many of the events it describes happened during the administration of President George W. Bush and would no longer be permitted. No doubt some of the committee's findings about particular circumstances are open to debate. But defenders of the agency will have a hard time refuting its central conclusions, which are based on analysis of millions of pages of internal cables, emails and other communications, along with interviews conducted by the CIA's inspector general.

The CIA detention and interrogation program was immoral, illegal, out of control and (the committee persuasively argues) unnecessary. President Obama's admission this summer that "we tortured some folks" doesn't begin to convey the appalling violations of human rights and international law cataloged by the Intelligence Committee. The officials who carried out these acts shamed themselves and their country.

In reacting to the release of the report, Secretary of State John F. Kerry said that it "marks a coda to a chapter in our history" and noted that Obama "turned the page on these policies when he took office." But there will be other presidents and other crises that might tempt them to look the other way while human rights are violated in the name of national security. For them, and for us, this report is wrenching but required reading.

See the article here:
Torture report: Our post-9/11 shame, in stomach-turning detail