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The CIA Lost Its Soul and Took Ours With It

220px-John_Brennan_CIA_official_portrait

Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Weekend Contributor

This past week’s news reports of the Senate report on the CIA Torture program were both distressing and enlightening.   I was dismayed to not only read what the full extent of the CIA’s Torture program was, but also when I read pundits and former CIA officials claim that rectal rehydration was merely a medical procedure! I was further discouraged when commenters on this blog made claims that waterboarding and other torture tactics were either necessary or what the devils deserved.

Very few pundits or commenters seem to care if the so-called Enhanced Interrogation techniques were legal or ethical when the CIA resorted to them shortly after 9/11.  This “debate” over the actions taken in our name by the CIA has gone from a report based on the CIA’s own words to denials that the techniques were torture, to claims that great intelligence value was gained using the torture and claims that it was a biased report written by Democrats.

When we were attacked on September 11, 2001, most of the world was supporting the United States in its hours of grief and anger.  What happened after the attacks quickly turned the tide of world opinion against us and created new enemies.  When the CIA delved into its historical “playbook” to devise black sites and brutal interrogation techniques, the result, in my opinion, was a loss of our ethical and legal bearings that are still out of whack today.

When our greatest generation fought enemies stronger and just as brutal as what we face today, our forces were held to a higher standard than the enemy we were fighting.  The idea that America does not torture or mistreat its prisoners or enemies is not a new one.  It dates back at least to when General George Washington decided that British regulars and paid mercenaries fighting for the British were not to be mistreated in our detention facilities.

He made that decision knowing what too many of our soldiers had experienced under the hands of the British forces.  We were supposed to be better than our enemies.

When the CIA delved into the black sites and torture techniques, another US agency, the FBI balked and questioned the tactics being practiced by the CIA.  The FBI was gaining valuable information from al Qaeda operative, Abu Zubaydah, after his capture in March of 2002, but that all changed when he was put into isolation for 47 days.

“The Senate report describes the F.B.I. questioning — both in the hospital and later at the black site — as successful. Intelligence reports indicate he provided valuable information, but denied knowing anything about plots against America. But agency officials believed he was holding out. In response, Mr. Mitchell offered a menu of interrogation options.

While C.I.A. and Justice Department lawyers debated the legality of the tactics, the report reveals, Mr. Zubaydah was left alone in a cell in Thailand for 47 days. The Senate report asserts that isolation, not resistance, was the reason he stopped talking in June. Mr. Soufan said he was livid when he read that. “What kind of ticking-bomb scenario is this if you can leave him in isolation for 47 days?” he said.

For three weeks in August 2002, Mr. Zubaydah was questioned using the harshest measures available, including waterboarding. But the Senate report says he never revealed information about a plot against the United States. The C.I.A. concluded he had no such information.” New York Times

The CIA has used harsh interrogation and torture during past wars and conflicts and eventually the agency was brought under control.  Waterboarding is torture, no matter what name it is given.  Isolation, rectal rehydration, sleep deprivation, to name a few, are torture.  We have prosecuted past enemies for waterboarding and even some of our soldiers who crossed the legal and moral line.

Why is it now only a crime if our enemies do it to us?  Will we regain the soul of America again and finally get past partisan grievances to retake the moral standing of our nation?

We talk often on this blog about the rule of law.  Whether it is a President who is grabbing more power for the Executive Branch or citizens of color who seemingly are undervalued by our Justice system.  An argument can be made that ever since money starting taking control of our government, we have lost our rule of law because the wealthy and powerful seem to be immune to prosecution. Does the CIA stand above the rule of law?

Will the CIA be brought under control?  Will government officials who authorized the torture and those that carried it out and those that refused to prosecute it be brought to justice?  I submit that if we do not get control over the CIA our collective souls will continue to suffer in our eyes and in the eyes of the world.  As Ali H. Soufan, the former FBI interrogator mentioned earlier says, our actions have consequences.

“‘We played into the enemy’s hand,” said Ali H. Soufan, a former F.B.I. agent who clashed with the C.I.A. over its interrogation tactics. “Now we have American hostages in orange jumpsuits because we put people in orange jumpsuits.”’ New York Times  It is an overused phrase, but it fits here:

“The whole world is watching.”

Only we can resurrect the soul of America. We are better than torture.  At least we used to be.

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463 thoughts on “The CIA Lost Its Soul and Took Ours With It”

  1. Nick,
    Instead of resorting to a personal smear campaign against the Senate Dems that were on Feinstein’s committee… how about link some facts about what you contend. It worked? It was justified? RAPE works?

  3. If it weren’t for double standards Dems wouldn’t have any standards. If it weren’t for revisionists history, liberals would have none. Here’s the FACTS from 2001-02.

    29 Dem US Senators voted for the Iraq War. All but one Dem Senator[Russ Feingold] voted for the Patriot Act. That includes your hero for the week, Diane Feinstein, a morally bankrupt weasel, hack. She and ALL DEMS on the Intelligence Committee were complicit in these techniques. Dem Jay Rockefeller thought the CIA weren’t being bold enough! This report is a partisan hack job and you lemmings are buying it hook, line and sinker. So, you are either morally bankrupt like Feinstein; rubes, or a hybrid.

  5. This report was made by all democrats with out a witness, the dems knew about the water boarding, It’s the dems trying to change the subject. such B.S. No more torture now Obama just orders a drone attack to kill them that way we can empty gitmo too.

  6. Nick Sp., you threw out a comment that noone seems to care about Pres. Obama’s use of drones to kill supposed terrorists. You couldn’t be more wrong. Perhaps that is what you have read on some other site and never bothered to check human rights websites. I for one believe that, just like torture, the use of drones is an act of cowardice. It also, like torture, ensnares innocent people. The use of drones, like the use of torture, create more enemies. The architects of both the use of drones and the implementation of torture have been armchair men who never found themselves in a theater of brutal war. They just get to order others to do the messy deeds all the while trying to keep their own hands clean.

  8. If you’re going to prosecute people for torturing people then you have to prosecute Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld for the meaningless slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and anyone who is still alive for slaughtering a million and a half innocent Vietnamese civilians. What else is slaughtering civilians to force the military to concede? This torture bs is nothing more than a self righteous diversion from bigger crimes. There is something awfully perverse here.

  9. The Detainee Abuse Photos Obama Didn’t Want You To See
    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/14/the-detainee-abuse-photos-obama-didn-t-want-you-to-see.html

    The president may have entered office promising a new era of transparency—and was even prepared to release at least 21 of the photos in 2009. But Obama pulled back at the last minute at the urging of his top commander in Iraq, who worried the graphic images could generate a backlash against U.S. troops.

    “We’re not dismissive of the fact that some people could react badly to the publishing of the photographs,” said the ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer, the lead lawyer in a decade-long legal dispute with the government over the photos. But this does not mean, he continued, that there should be a “massive heckler’s veto that terrorist organizations can wield over the public’s right to know.”

    “The public has a right to know what happened in these military detention facilities,” Jaffer added, “in the same way it has a right to know about what happened at the CIA black sites.”

    Why do I feel the President and the AG are acting like DA’s with holding evidence so as to NOT incite the Grand Jury to indict?

    1. “Remember when John Yoo called it torture ONLY when it caused organ failure or death?”

      Now wait a minute. Gonzales remedied that when he added that it could also be torture if it only felt as painful as organ failure that would lead to death.

      So it is perfectly possible for the action to be torture even in cases when the torture does not actually lead to immediate death.

      There, what more could any civilized society possibly demand.

  18. Olly,
    I’ll ask the same question I’ve asked Paul and Nick:
    What do you call it when you strap/pin a person down and anally penetrate them?
    In common circles it is called RAPE.

    What do you call it when it is a prisoner?

  19. The truth is we will never have consensus on the use of torture as a means of national security. What’s laughable is to read these liberals are now for the rule of law and that the ends don’t justify the means. Now we’ll see if they’ll take this newfound morality and desire for constitutionalism and include the last 6 years in their critique of government.

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