CIA torture report

Bummer.

PJ, I don't know if this commission or the Benghazi commission were bi-partisan. I do know that PJ will dodge this issue, but I'll ask anyway. Why didn't this commission interview anyone at the CIA, including those carrying out the torture and those evaluating the intelligence gained? Why didn't the Benghazi Commission interview those still living who claim to have been told to stand down?

I'll ask PJ another question, but I'm certain PJ will dodge the issue. PJ, will you please produce (a cut and paste would be fine) any post where Boilerman suggests that Obama should be impeached due to Benghazi events.

I have no problem with an accurate public report reviewing how we tortured the enemy, and how be benefited from it. I'll ask PJ another question, but I'm certain that he will dodge the issue. Will PJ please cut and paste any post where Boilerman argued that such reports should be kept confidential. I believe that the enemy hates us already, and that this report will have little affect on violence towards Americans.

Regarding transparency, I do believe that Obama should not be transparent to the enemy, outlining Middle Eastern attacks prior to happening. I'm not certain why Obama allows the enemy to prepare and minimize damages.

Does Diane Feinstein remember people having to jump to their deaths and the countless number of firemen and policemen who either lost their lives that day or had health related issues that led to death? Remember, we still didn't know if more was forthcoming.

If any of this causes an American to lose his or her life and is attributable to this report, then people have blood on their hands.

Obviously it isn't a good idea to expose our interrogation methods. But our torture methods should be exposed, along with the people who did it, ordered it, and enabled it.

And I'm not playing another Boilerman Bengazhi game where he uses questions to try and state a fact.
Facts dont end with a "?".

The report has over a thousand pages of CIA communications and emails so the very idea that the CIA was "ignored" as Boilerman claims is as bogus as his assertions of coverups in Bengazhi. And the report was censored in large part by the CIA for information they deemed sensitive to confidential material.

I'm sure she does....and the investigation reveals torturing people from the MIddle East didn't lead to the capture of 911's architects. it did lead to a bullshit war in Iraq based on the false premise Sadam Hussein was behind 911.

Our government does have blood on its hands. It comes from any soldier sent to Iraq on the BS premise he was avenging 911....and on any soldier that was killed by a terrorist recruit spawned from the war crimes committed in Abuh Grahib or Guantanimo.

Some people on this board have some pretty screwed up priorities. Better to let hundreds to thousands die instead of trying to extract life saving information from a criminal/terrorist whose only mission in life is to kill innocent people.

I am always willing to use the word that best describe the truth. We tortured the the enemy. Calling it "enhanced interrogation" is analogous to the sign that I saw at the butcher shop Saturday. "All of our products are raised and harvested in Indiana." "Harvested"? What a bunch of BS. I would prefer that we tell the truth, and call it "butchering".

I'm glad that we gained good intelligence as we tortured the enemy. It's unfortunately that we were forced to take such actions in an effort to minimize American risk.

"Some people on this board have some pretty screwed up priorities"

The same people can't comprehend that radical islam's sole goal is one world, one religion. Anybody who disagrees with that will be killed.

Below I've "pasted" Nebraska Democrat Bob Kerrey's Op-Ed regarding the torture report. He knows the truth and is willing to speak the truth. He points out that it was a fully Democrat report. He points out that the report was strictly partisan. He is appalled that the Democrats offered no recommendations.


Sen. Bob Kerrey: Partisan torture report fails America

Bob Kerrey 12:43 p.m. EST December 10, 2014

I regret having to write a piece that is critical of the Democratic members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Most of them are former colleagues and friends. I hope they will remain friends after reading this.

For eight years I served on this committee. I know how difficult and important the work of providing tough and fair oversight of our nation's $50 billion top-secret intelligence network.

I will wait until I have fully read and considered Tuesday's report to enter the debate over whether the CIA handled interrogation of detainees in an appropriate manner. Thanks to the 2005 and 2006 efforts of Senator John McCain I do not have to wait to be certain our interrogation policies and procedures are aligned with our core values.

I also do not have to wait to know we are fighting a war that is different than any in our country's past. The enemy does not have an easy to identify and analyze military. In the war against global jihadism, human intelligence and interrogation have become more important, and I worry that the partisan nature of this report could make this kind of collection more difficult.

I do not need to read the report to know that the Democratic staff alone wrote it. The Republicans checked out early when they determined that their counterparts started out with the premise that the CIA was guilty and then worked to prove it.

When Congress created the intelligence committees in the 1970's, the purpose was for people's representatives to stand above the fray and render balanced judgments about this most sensitive aspect of national security. This committee departed from that high road and slipped into the same partisan mode that marks most of what happens on Capitol Hill these days.

I have participated in two extensive investigations into intelligence failures, once when Aldrich Ames was discovered to be spying for Russia after he had done substantial damage to our human intelligence collection capability and another following the 9/11 attacks. In both cases we were very critical of the practices of the intelligence agencies. In both cases we avoided partisan pressure to blame the opposing party. In both cases Congress made statutory changes and the agencies changed their policies. It didn't make things perfect, but it did make them better.

In both of these efforts the committee staff examined documents and interviewed all of the individuals involved. The Senate's Intelligence Committee staff chose to interview no one. Their rationale - that some officers were under investigation and could not be made available – is not persuasive. Most officers were never under investigation and for those who were, the process ended by 2012.

Fairness should dictate that the examination of documents alone do not eliminate the need for interviews conducted by the investigators. Isolated emails, memos and transcripts can look much different when there is no context or perspective provided by those who sent, received or recorded them.

It is important for all of us to remember how unprepared we were for the attacks of September 11, 2001 and how unprepared we were to do the things necessary to keep the country from being attacked again. There was no operating manual to guide the choices and decisions made by the men and women in charge of protecting us. I will continue to read the report to learn of the mistakes we apparently made. I do not need to read the report in full to know this: We have not been attacked since and for that I am very grateful.

The worse consequence of a partisan report can be seen in this disturbing fact: It contains no recommendations. This is perhaps the most significant missed opportunity, because no one would claim the program was perfect or without its problems. But equally, no one with real experience would claim it was the completely ineffective and superfluous effort this report alleges.

Our intelligence personnel – who are once again on the front lines fighting the Islamic State – need recommended guidance from their board of governors: The U.S. Congress. Remarkably this report contains none. I hope – for the sake of our security and our values – Congress will follow the leadership of Senator McCain and give them this guidance.

Bob Kerrey, former governor of Nebraska and U.S. senator, is now the managing director of Allen and Company. Text