Sassenach wrote:Does it really matter if the committee was dominated by Democrats or if they didn't conduct interviews with serving CIA agents ? Really ? Aren't we talking about a matter of fundamental values here ? One of the most important ways in which we know that our values are superior to those of the enemy that our security forces are fighting is that we don't practice or condone barbarity. John McCain gets that, and he's the foremost hawk in Congress.

For me the motives of the Senators who commissioned this report are largely irrelevant. I didn't need to see a study into the matter to be sure in my own mind that torture is wrong and I want my government to have no part in it.

The executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's grindingly exhaustive torture report released Tuesday indelibly captures CIA officials turning their back on human decency, and it all starts with a "novel" legal defense floated in November 2001 by CIA lawyers -- and arguably prompted by their White House masters, lurking offstage -- that the "CIA could argue that the torture was necessary to prevent imminent, significant, physical harm to persons, where there is no other available means to prevent the harm."

Specifically, they pointed out: "states may be very unwilling to call the U.S. to task for torture when it resulted in saving thousands of lives.

bbauska wrote:Was this Senate report containing any Republican input, or was it biased?

bbauska wrote:Was this Senate report containing any Republican input, or was it biased?

The RDI program, including the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, was fully briefed to the chairmen and ranking members of the Senate and House intelligence committees. The Senate committee’s new report does not present any evidence that would support the notion that the CIA program was carried out for years without the concurrence of the House or Senate intelligence committees, or that any of the members were shocked to learn of the program after the fact.

Facts matter, including the fact that the Senate committee’s Democratic majority failed to interview the three CIA directors and three deputy directors, or any other CIA employee for that matter, who had briefed them about the program and carried it out.

Such a glaring investigative lapse cannot be fairly explained by the Democratic majority’s defense that it could make such crucial findings solely on the “paper record,” without interviewing the critical players. Nor does the committee’s other explanation for avoiding interviews make sense: The Democratic senators say they didn’t want to interfere with the Justice Department’s criminal inquiry into the RDI program, but that investigation ended in 2012 and found no basis for prosecutions. And no wonder: These public servants at the CIA had dutifully carried out mandates from the president and Congress.

CIA leaders and briefers who regularly updated this program to the Senate Intelligence Committee leadership took what investigators call “copious, contemporaneous notes.” Without a doubt, the Senate Intelligence Committee and congressional staffers at these multiple briefings also took a lot of their own notes. Will the committee now declassify and release all such notes so that Americans will know exactly what the senators were told and the practices they approved?

Did the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program develop sufficient leads to connect the dots to Osama bin Laden ’s redoubt in Abbottabad, Pakistan, or serve to fulfill the executive and congressional mandate to prevent another 9/11? That is a fair operational and analytical question for the report by the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Democratic majority to raise and argue. Likewise, it can and should be debated whether America should ever again use such methods to prevent terrorist attacks. What is decidedly unfair is to belatedly attack the brave and dedicated men and women and their leaders at the CIA who had the nation’s highest political and legal authorizations for this program.

I like what Hayden said. He said, in effect, that not one person who knew of the program, Republican or Democrat, said, "Please be careful not to go too far." We just had 9/11. We thought more attacks were coming. Should we not try to extract that info? If a few people were waterboarded, how does that compare with 3,000 Americans murdered? You all can wring your hands all you want

rickyp wrote:Fate

I like what Hayden said. He said, in effect, that not one person who knew of the program, Republican or Democrat, said, "Please be careful not to go too far." We just had 9/11. We thought more attacks were coming. Should we not try to extract that info? If a few people were waterboarded, how does that compare with 3,000 Americans murdered? You all can wring your hands all you want

This presumes that the information given to people then was complete, and forthcoming. The report says that the CIA lied about much of it...

The second "rationalization" is exactly the reasoning that Yu used... We justify any kind of behavior because we were afraid... Such wonderful leadership.

After Pearl Harbour,(over 2,000 dead) the US was unsettled too. Especially having declared war on Germany and the rest of the Axis. (A few years late but there you go...) The US didn't then decide it needed to abandon morality and embrace the use of torture...

Maybe largely because people didn't give in to fear?

Maybe also because it was accepted that torture was ineffective in actually getting good intelligence>
After all, how many witches that confessed were actually witches?

danivon wrote:

bbauska wrote:Was this Senate report containing any Republican input, or was it biased?

It is a product of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In addition to two Democrat and two Republican ex officio members (from the Senate leaderships, and who do not really participate), there are 15 members. 7 Democrat, 7 Republican, 1 Independent (Angus King). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_St ... telligence

The initial 'final' version of report was approved in 2012 by a vote of 9-6. One Republican voted in favour (Susan Collins). In March this year, the committee voted 11-3 to the revisions made ready for publication (and what has been made public is the executive summary and key findings - the rest remains classified.

This means that at least 3 Republican members of the committee voted in favour of the version of the report that was made public this week https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_In ... nd_release

The six members who disagreed iwith the final version (all Republicans) released their minority report on the same day as the majority report.

We would have to read that in full to know which parts they disagreed with (and by extension, which parts they do not disagree with) to know the extent of Republican input.

So, yes, there was Republican input. So by your dichotomous phrasing, does that mean it's not biased?

Of course, it was in reality written by staffers and researchers, not the politicians on the committee. But acting under advisement from that committee, and supporting all members in doing so.

Sassenach wrote:Brad, if I could ask you to temporarily set aside all of the tedious partisan stuff for a moment. Could you tell me in a more general sense what is your view on the acceptability of American agents practicing torture and other inhumane procedures in order to try and extract intelligence ?

It strikes me that there are only really 4 different possible responses to that question. These would be:

1) Torture is never acceptable and I would never condone it being carried out in my name.

2) Torture is unnacceptable but there may be some extreme situations which might call for it when all else fails. It should only ever be a last resort however.

3) I don't like the idea of torture but if it can be useful in saving lives then it's probably acceptable.

4) Screw it, these guys are terrorists and they have it coming.

I'd probably put myself in category 2, in that I don't think torture is acceptable but I can conceive of some hypotheticals where it might be the least worst option so it would be foolish to rule it out 100%. This doesn't mean that I support the idea that we should should reserve the right to use it in extremis though, more that if one of those situations came about and somebody resorted to torture in order to save a lot of lives (and it worked) then it would probably be wise to show a little tolerance in the circumstances. The CIA appear to have been operating somewhere between positions 3 and 4, which is something I could never support for the ethical reasons I just spelled out. Where do you sit ?