Brutal and Ineffective

The report of the Senate Special Committee on Intelligence leaves no doubt that the torture program that American intelligence services conducted after 9/11 to squeeze information out of radical Islamist suspects was “brutal and ineffective.” Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein reached the point where she declared that these machinations constitute “a stain on our values and our history.”

In a sense, this report sealed a victory for al-Qaida and its comrades: It’s the Islamists that have managed to pull down parts of U.S. society, the armed forces, and especially the security services to their own level of barbarism.

Agony until Death

This is not only due to the torture. Because the worst crime, for which former President George W. Bush stands responsible, is the wanton destruction of Iraqi society, which has cost the lives of well over a 100,000 Iraqis in a most grisly way, and of which the current Islamic State campaign of murder is a direct consequence.

In this situation, the CIA has once again shown that its intelligence officers violate human rights in their work, basically so as to not know the values of a parliamentary democracy: These people have lied both to Congress and the head of state with respect to the methods they have applied, and thus have made it clear that they lack even a spark of respect for any of these popularly elected institutions.

Everyone knows, of course, the justification that the torturers have always advanced for their misdeeds: Your “enhanced interrogation techniques” have directly contributed to thwarting terrorist attacks. But this exact trump card is nothing of the sort to the sadist civil servant: The Senate report makes it clear that even these “successes,” for no small part, are a pack of lies. Each person who deals with the problem of torture knows that the tortured often tell their captors exactly what they want to hear. What results so often is the innocent finding themselves in the clutches of the minions, who in turn denounce other bystanders, only to escape the horror of torture for themselves.

Furthermore, each torturer must be aware that he is a man that may never know the guilt or innocence of the victim, and can totally destroy them psychologically. Many victims of torture are therefore pursued by their torments until their last breath, even if the immediate physical pain has subsided.

Harry Reid, the Republican* senate majority leader, has clearly indicated that “Not only is torture wrong, but it doesn’t work. […] It got us nothing except a bad name.”

Amen, brother.

*Editor’s note: The author made an error here; Harry Reid is a Democratic senator.