Strange: New Republican Chair Of Senate Intelligence Committee Wants Torture Report Returned

In a bizarre attempt to rewrite history, the new chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, wrote to President Obama with an odd request: He wants the Dianne Feinstein Senate Intelligence Committee torture report back.

“Mr. Burr sent a letter last week to the White House saying that his Democratic predecessor, Senator Dianne Feinstein, should never have transmitted the entire 6,700-page report to numerous departments and agencies within the executive branch — and requested that all copies of the report be ‘returned immediately,’ according to people who have seen the letter.

“The Intelligence Committee publicly released only the report’s executive summary. But Congress has since changed hands, and the committee is now controlled by Republican lawmakers like Mr. Burr who have long opposed the committee’s detention investigation, which they said was a partisan effort to discredit the C.I.A. and the Bush administration.

It is a bizarre episode in which the right-wing senator is attempting to rewrite history by asking for the torture reports back to supposedly “bury” them.

New York Times:

“Mr. Burr’s unusual letter to Mr. Obama might have been written with an eye toward future Freedom of Information Act lawsuits.

“Congress is not subject to such requests, and any success he has in getting the Obama administration to return all copies of the Senate report to the Intelligence Committee could hinder attempts to someday have the report declassified and released publicly.

The Times stated, “A spokeswoman for Mr. Burr did not return a request seeking comment on the letter. A White House spokesman declined to comment on how the Obama administration planned to respond.”

According to the New York Times, the director of the Federation of American Scientists project on government secrecy, Steven Aftergood, said he could recall no analogous case of the Senate’s trying to get the executive branch to return a document.

Washington Post Seems To Endorse Torture

On January 5th, the Washington Post published an article titled “Democrats Lose The Torture Debate,” which was written by Marc A. Thiessen.

Thiessen writes, “As we begin 2015, we can take solace that the ‘torture’ debate is finally behind us. But before we close the book on six sordid years of Democratic demagoguery and investigations, let the record show that the opponents of the CIA interrogation program were completely and utterly defeated.

“Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, launched a six-year, 6,000-page, $40 million investigation into the CIA interrogation program, with the goal of convincing Americans that a) the program did not work and that b) enhanced interrogations were wrong and should never again be permitted.

Thiessen then claims: “She failed on all counts.”

The Post then justifies it’s stance on torture with its own internal poll.

He states that the poll shows that “The vast majority agree with the CIA that these techniques were necessary and justified. A majority think that Feinstein should never have released her report. And — most importantly — 76 percent said they would do it again to protect the country.”

Thiessen explains that Americans were asked, “Looking ahead, do you feel that torture of suspected terrorists can often be justified, sometimes justified, rarely justified or never justified?”

He then claims that the word “torture” is a “loaded word” and therefore claims that such techniques as waterboarding, “rectal feeding,” and “rectal rehydration” do not constitute torture. Thiessen would likely prefer the CIA-sanctioned term “EIT,” or “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.”

According to the WaPo poll, 17 percent replied they would support using the techniques “often,” 40 percent “sometimes” and 19 percent “rarely.” Only 20 percent said the techniques should “never” be justified.

Jimmy Dore: Torture Commentary

Commentary on Enhanced Interrogation Techniques by Jimmy Dore.

(humor)

TYT video.

New York Times Calls For Dick Cheney Torture Investigation

According to Yahoo News, in response to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s blistering report on the CIA’s brutal handling of prisoners after 9/11, the New York Times is calling for a criminal investigation of former Vice President Dick Cheney and other members of the Bush administration for conspiring to commit torture and other crimes prohibited by federal and international laws.

“Americans have known about many of these acts for years,” the Times editorial board stated on Monday.

“But the 524-page executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report erases any lingering doubt about their depravity and illegality.”

In an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Cheney refused to call some of the CIA’s actions with prisoners – including involuntary rectal feeding – torture.

In its editorial, the Times said the “sadistic” techniques outlined in the committee’s report “are, simply, crimes. They are prohibited by federal law, which defines torture as the intentional infliction of ‘severe physical or mental pain or suffering.’

“They are also banned by the Convention Against Torture, the international treaty that the United States ratified in 1994 and that requires prosecution of any acts of torture.”

“It is no wonder that today’s blinkered apologists are desperate to call these acts anything but torture, which they clearly were,” the Times continued. “As the report reveals, these claims fail for a simple reason: C.I.A. officials admitted at the time that what they intended to do was illegal.”

The paper criticized the president for failing “to bring to justice anyone responsible for the torture of terrorism suspects.”

The Times: “No amount of legal pretzel logic can justify the behavior detailed in the report. Indeed, it is impossible to read it and conclude that no one can be held accountable. At the very least, Mr. Obama needs to authorize a full and independent criminal investigation.”

The Times’ editorial board is calling for a special prosecutor to investigate Cheney, David Addington, Cheney’s former chief of staff, former CIA Director George Tenet, as well as John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the lawyers “who drafted what became known as the torture memos”; Jose Rodriguez Jr., the CIA official “who ordered the destruction of the videotapes”, the psychologists who devised the torture regimen, and any CIA employees who carried it out.

Bin Laden Expert Accused Of CIA Deception On ‘Torture’ Program

A top al Qaeda expert who remains in a senior position at the CIA was a key architect of the agency’s defense of its detention and “enhanced interrogation” program for suspected terrorists, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report released last week. Supposedly, the person had developed talking points that misrepresented and overstated its effectiveness.

The report singles out the female expert as a key proponent for the program, stating that she repeatedly told her superiors and others — including members of Congress — that the “torture” was working and producing useful intelligence, when it was not.  She wrote the “template on which future justifications for the CIA program and the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques were based,” it said.

According to NBC News, the expert also participated in “enhanced interrogations” of self-professed 9-11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, witnessed the waterboarding of terror suspect Abu Zubaydah and ordered the detention of a suspected terrorist who turned out to be unconnected to al Qaeda, according to the report.

The expert was criticized after 9/11 terrorist attacks for supporting a subordinate’s refusal to share the names of two of the hijackers with the FBI prior to the terror attacks.

Instead of being sanctioned, she was promoted.

The expert was not identified by name in the unclassified 528-page summary of the report, but U.S. officials confirmed that her name was redacted at least three dozen times in an effort to avoid publicly identifying her.

NBC News is withholding her name at the request of the CIA, which cited a climate of fear and retaliation in the wake of the release of the Senate report.

While the two psychologists who developed the “enhanced interrogation techniques,” Dr. James Mitchell and Dr. Bruce Jessen, quickly became well-known in media as a result of the report, scathing criticism of the expert’s role in defending the program went nearly unmentioned.

The expert — one of several female CIA employees on whom “Maya,” the lead character in the movie “Zero Dark Thirty,” was based — has previously been identified in the media as a CIA officer involved in the rendition program.

The Senate report offers the first detailed account of the depth of her involvement.  It quotes from emails, memos and congressional testimony, to document her unique role in what it says were misrepresentations about the effectiveness of the CIA’s program, which President Barack Obama has said included torture. The report does not give any motive for the alleged misrepresentations.

In one instance recounted in the report, CIA Director Michael Hayden brought the expert with him on Feb. 14, 2007, to brief members of the Senate intelligence oversight committee on the interrogation program.  The expert forcefully defended the program in the classified hearing.

Newsmax: CIA Torture Will Have No Lasting Effects Since It Wasn’t ‘Real Torture’

William “Bill” Kristol is an American neoconservative political analyst and commentator. He is the founder and editor of the political magazine The Weekly Standard and a political commentator on various networks, such as Fox News.

In this video, Bill Kristol defends Dick Cheney and claims CIA torture was just an “unpleasant” experience with no lasting effects.

Video:  Right Wing Watch

Is The U.S. Senate Select Committee On Intelligence All Democrats?

Is the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence – which recently released the report on torture – composed of all Democrats?

As can be seen on the Committee website and the chart below, seven of the members are Republicans.  (Eight members are Democrats.)

2013-2014
Democrats		Republicans
	Dianne Feinstein, California Chairman		Saxby Chambliss, Georgia Vice Chairman
	John D. Rockefeller IV, West Virginia		Richard Burr, North Carolina
	Ron Wyden, Oregon		James E. Risch, Idaho
	Barbara A. Mikulski, Maryland		Daniel Coats, Indiana
	Mark Udall, Colorado		Marco Rubio, Florida
	Mark Warner, Virginia		Susan Collins, Maine
	Martin Heinrich, New Mexico		Tom Coburn, Oklahoma
	Angus King, Maine

More:

http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/memberscurrent.html

How Responsible Is Bush For Torture?

Former President George W. Bush knew about and authorized the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation techniques, such as water-boarding and rectal rehydration, according to Karl Rove, a former political adviser, and former Vice President Dick Cheney.

The recently-released Senate Intelligence Committee report asserted that Bush was kept in the dark about the agency’s rough treatment of detainees until 2006. Rove and Cheney disputed that claim.

TYT Network video.

Caller: Torture is Fine if it Saves Lives

It is rare to see the host of a show discuss torture with a live caller.

Thom Hartmann video.

Does Morning Joe Support ‘Rectal Rehydration’ For Prisoners?

Scarborough justifies the CIA’s torture by saying, “If we went back to world war II and we dissected everything that American generals did, I promise you, if you give me $40 million dollars, I could take any general and I could turn them into a war criminal.”

He seems to have no problems with the CIA programs in the Senate’s torture report.

TYT video.