CIA Torture
The summary of the U.S. Senate's huge investigation on post-9/11 CIA torture is as devastating as was expected since the first leaks back in April. Fundamentally, it states that the intelligence agency's methods were as widespread as they were brutal, that they were ineffective in obtaining substantial information in the fight against Islamic terrorism, and that the almighty organization lied to the White House and Congress about the extent of its actions. The CIA tortured terrorism suspects with impunity between 2001 and 2009 inside secret prisons around the world, sheltered by the panic resulting from 9/11 and the Bush Doctrine.
Washington's nervousness has delayed the report's publication. The White House and the Senate have been struggling to decide which details of the document, completed almost two years ago, should be divulged and which shouldn't. In this tug of war, the CIA has tried to eliminate evidence and has hacked the Senate's computer systems. John Kerry has insisted to the committee presided over by Senator Feinstein on the convenience of thinking twice before giving it the final green light. The CIA is now preparing a counter-report to clean up its image.
Obama declared the agency's secret Detention and Interrogation Program illegal when he reached the White House, but none of the agents has been brought to justice. One thing is clear now: It is imperative for the CIA to be subjected to unrelenting control from outside the government. The U.S. cannot present itself as a beacon of freedom, while one of its key organizations globally is methodically left free to avoid infamy.
The potential advantages obtained by the superpower from the CIA's free-for-all against suspected terrorists do not outweigh in any case the country's international discrediting and the damage to its reputation. President Obama will never have a better excuse to close Guantanamo, one of his first campaign promises that, six years later, awaits fulfillment.
Washington's nervousness has delayed the report's publication. The White House and the Senate have been struggling to decide which details of the document, completed almost two years ago, should be divulged and which shouldn't. In this tug of war, the CIA has tried to eliminate evidence and has hacked the Senate's computer systems. John Kerry has insisted to the committee presided over by Senator Feinstein on the convenience of thinking twice before giving it the final green light. The CIA is now preparing a counter-report to clean up its image.
Obama declared the agency's secret Detention and Interrogation Program illegal when he reached the White House, but none of the agents has been brought to justice. One thing is clear now: It is imperative for the CIA to be subjected to unrelenting control from outside the government. The U.S. cannot present itself as a beacon of freedom, while one of its key organizations globally is methodically left free to avoid infamy.
The potential advantages obtained by the superpower from the CIA's free-for-all against suspected terrorists do not outweigh in any case the country's international discrediting and the damage to its reputation. President Obama will never have a better excuse to close Guantanamo, one of his first campaign promises that, six years later, awaits fulfillment.
As a citizen of the United States , I agree with the above text that President Obama ” will never have a better excuse to close Guantanamo. The CIA is now a morally clueless, inhuman machine. All this obscene torture of helpless prisoners in order to protect citizens like ME from the nefarious plans of wicked terrorists-living in some desert hole in Iraq or some mountainous wasteland in Afghanistan ? I decline the favor !
Let me quote the famous French writer Albert Camus here : ” I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice “. Camus-a winner of the Nobel Prize for literature- was protesting the use of torture by the French Military during a revolutionary crisis in Algeria.
There are no public intellectuals in America like the humane and moderate socialist Albert Camus. In the past few decades a whole new breed of right-wing maniac intellectuals operate here : they are everywhere, writing mean-spirited drivel for newspapers, preaching crackpot Ayn Rand’s ” Virtue of Selfishness ” on talk radio, bloviating for the ruling class on TV against every progressive and humane idea. And getting rich worshipping the Money God.
But as the young revolutionary Leon Trotsky wrote about those creepy Russian officials serving the Czar : ” We knew someday we would get the better of that lunatic asylum ” ( MY LIFE )
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