I just did a keyword search in the just released 'Torture Report' -- searching for the word "effective".
And the results only confirm, what most of us already knew -- including the CIA itself -- that Torture is 'ineffective' at "producing intelligence."
Does that mean they did it for 'fun' or 'revenge' then?
Foreword by Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Dianne Feinstein
Findings and Conclusions
Executive Summary
Approved December 13, 2012
Updated for Release April 3, 2014
Declassification Revisions December 3, 2014
[...]
Page 3 of 6 -- UNCLASSIFIED
This Committee Study documents the abuses and countless mistakes made between late 2001 and early 2009. [...]
[...] As the Study describes, prior to the attacks of September 2001, the CIA itself determined from its own experience with coercive interrogations, that such techniques "do not produce intelligence," "will probably result in false answers," and had historically proven to be ineffective. Yet these conclusions were ignored. We cannot again allow history to be forgotten and grievous past mistakes to be repeated.
"Those who don't learn from the past, are doomed to repeat it."
Kind of makes you wonder what the CIA has learned, from yet another tragic chapter of American History ...
One thing the CIA should of learned, was that Torture "results in faulty intelligence."
Of course though, they ALREADY knew that.
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Committee Study of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program
Findings and Conclusions {same link as before.}
Approved December 13, 2012
Updated for Release April 3, 2014
Declassification Revisions December 3, 2014
Page 2 of 19 -- UNCLASSIFIED
The Committee makes the following findings and conclusions:
#1: The CIA's use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees.
[...]
While being subjected to the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques and afterwards, multiple CIA detainees fabricated information, resulting in faulty intelligence. Detainees provided fabricated information on critical intelligence issues, including the terrorist threats which the CIA identified as its highest priorities.
[...]
Another thing the CIA deftly learned, was
how to 'work the press' -- in order to cover their sorry asses.
Page 8 of 19 -- UNCLASSIFIED
#10: The CIA coordinated the release of classified information to the media, including inaccurate information concerning the effectiveness of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques.
The CIA's Office of Public Affairs and senior CIA officials coordinated to share classified information on the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program to select members of the media to counter public criticism, shape public opinion, and avoid potential congressional action to restrict the CIA's detention and interrogation authorities and budget. These disclosures occurred when the program was a classified covert action program, and before the CIA had briefed the full Committee membership on the program.
The deputy director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center wrote to a colleague in 2005, shortly before being interviewed by a media outlet, that "we either get out and sell, or we get hammered, which has implications beyond the media. [C]ongress reads it, cuts our authorities, messes up our budget... we either put out our story or we get eaten. [T]here is no middle ground."[24] The same CIA officer explained to a colleague that "when the [Washington Post]/[New York Tiimes quotes 'senior intelligence official,' it's us... authorized and directed by opa [CIA's Office of Public Affairs]."[25]
Much of the information the CIA provided to the media on the operation of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program and the effectiveness of its enhanced interrogation techniques was inaccurate and was similar to the inaccurate information provided by the CIA to the Congress, the Department of Justice, and the White House.
[...]
Isn't "inaccurate" ... just another word for "
Wrong"
???
From the sounds of this next account, it kind of sounds like they did it for the 'revenge' ...
CIA struggled to keep rationalizing brutal interrogations, report shows
by David S. Cloud, latimes.com -- December 9, 2014
[...]
The shifting explanation for Zubaydah's treatment, laid out in the 499-page summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee report made public Tuesday, provides an example of how the secret interrogation program from its inception became a self-justifying enterprise that slipped free of the constraints that top officials had promised would guide it.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism attacks, under intense demands to produce usable intelligence, the agency resorted to deception, manipulation and intellectual contortions to rationalize and continue using interrogation techniques that even some of its own officials worried amounted to illegal torture, the report documents.
In Zubaydah's case, the sessions often left him crying, whimpering and compliant enough that a raised eyebrow and the snap of an interrogator's finger were sufficient to get him to "lie flat" to be waterboarded. In one instance, he "became completely unresponsive," bubbles rising from his water-filled mouth, until he was revived with medical treatment.
Inside the CIA headquarters, officials repeatedly pushed interrogators at secret detention facilities in Poland, Thailand, Afghanistan, Romania and elsewhere to intensify the harsh treatment, even after officers at the sites had concluded there was little more information to be gained from a prisoner.
[...]
"When we become that which we abhor, we have effectively done our 'enemy's work' for them ..."
When we have abandoned the ideals for which, we use to stand. All for a bunch of shiny PR stories. (And as it turns our, for a more motivated and spiteful enemy, with a new acromnym [ISIS].)
Stories for the sake of proclaiming ... "We're doing something!"
Whether or not it is Right; Whether or not it works; at least it's "something."
Something that used to be beneath us, as an enlightened democracy. Something that has proven itself, time and time again, to be "Ineffective."
Ineffective at selling the world, on the might of our "ideals." (Ideals, that used to sell themselves ...)