Tag Archives: torture

A major aspect of the CIA’s detention and interrogation operations has been purposefully hidden from view, primarily due to secrecy guidelines that make it illegal for anyone “read into” the program to reveal even its very existence. Recent declassified documents make clear that there was not one, but two CIA torture programs. These programs used different interrogation techniques, responded to different bureaucracies within the CIA, and had very different levels of oversight. This...

It seems she was not physically tortured in the strict sense of the word but her prolonged harsh and vindictive treatment waiting over five months for her repeatedly delayed trial amounted to ‘torture’. We do not know what interrogation techniques were used. We will be told one day. She was and is a political prisoner and has been treated like a terrorist. Politically aware Russians will remember this case with particular rage. No American imprisoned in Russia on whatever charge has ever...

Newly released declassified documents prove once and for all that CIA Director Gina Haspel oversaw torture in Thailand, which the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee knew all along, as Ray McGovern explains. Consortium NewsSenator Richard Burr: a Longtime Fan of Torture Ray McGovern, former US Army Infantry/Intelligence officer and 30 year CIA veteran analyst, including Presidential briefer from 1981 to 1985See alsoIntel TodayCIA & Torture — Gina Haspel Thailand Cables...

My world view changed forever when, after 20 years in the Foreign Office, I saw colleagues I knew and liked go along with Britain’s complicity in the most terrible tortures, as detailed stunningly in the recent Parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee Report. They also went along with keeping the policy secret, deliberately disregarding all normal record taking procedures, to the extent that the Committee noted: 131. We note that we have not seen the minutes of these meetings...

Gina Haspel is just the type of status-quo choice that Donald Trump promised not to make. She’s not a swamp-drainer. She’s a swamp thing. Trump doesn't have what it takes to confront the US siloviki. LobeLogThe Banality* of Haspel John Feffer* "Banality" is an allusion to Hannah Arendt's The Banality of Evil.

Denial — from the highest levels of government to mainstream media still reluctant or refusing to even say or print the word torture to a public which still embraces torture despite its barbarity and inefficacy — is the order of the day when it comes to facing America’s tortured history. Our nation’s failure to honestly examine its darkest deeds raises the all-too-real prospect of their repetition, a chilling possibility that seems likelier than ever given Trump’s choice of Haspel, someone...

The narrative now is "Assad cannot be allowed to normalize use of chemical weapons."The US has already normalized the use of torture and illegal aggression.FiredoglakeWho’s Who Of American War Criminals And Torture Apologists Endorse Gina Haspel For CIA Director Kevin Gosztola | managing editor of Shadowproof Press and producer and co-host of the weekly podcast, "Unauthorized Disclosure"

The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche expressed the cautionaryadmonition: “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.” Too often, we have ignored that warning. Gina Haspel’s defenders assert that her behavior conformed to procedures that senior CIA officials (and presumably the Bush White House) had approved. The international community rejected the “just following orders” defense that defendants invoked at the Nuremberg trials. Haspel’s defense is no...

The protection of those who commit heinous crimes in the name of the U.S. government (by the government in whose name the crimes are committed) provides a dangerous precedent and could lead to the conclusion by many in the military and CIA that they can “get away with murder.”  The sad history of our country is that murders and executions (remember the extrajudicial drone assassinations ordered by Presidents Bush, Obama and Trump) are acts that continue to be the policy of our country....

More denial that international law and the Nuremberg precedent apply to US officials "just carrying out orders."International law only applies to "them" and not to US. (pun intended)It's clear that the US intelligence services need to be purged of this rot. Intel TodayFormer CIA Robert Baer : “Gina Haspel Used To Work For Me. She’s A Great Choice For CIA Director.” LSee also at Intel TodayFormer French President Nicolas Sarkozy Arrested Over Gaddafi Campaign Financing