Senate Report on CIA Interrogations

Senate Report on CIA Interrogations:

This report which was 5 years in the making examined 6.3 million CIA documents and produced a 6000 page document which examined the CIA's methods of interrogating prisoners after the 9/11 attack.  The report found that the CIA misled the White House and the public about its torture of detainees and acted more brutally and pervasively than it acknowledged.   It concluded that the intelligence agency failed to disrupt a single plot.   

The interrogations took place in countries including Afghanistan, Poland, and Romania.   The report revealed that detainees were subjected to repeated waterboarding, slapping, stress positions and sleep deprivation.  Saudi al-Queada suspect Abu Zubayda was kept in a coffin sized box for hours on end.  Suspects were threatened with severe harm psychologically and physically.   Meanwhile the investigators found that 3 CIA directors and their deputies lied to Congress, the White House and the American people.  A review of 20 cases found that  no usable intelligence was produced. 

Civil rights advocates are calling for accountability.  There are calls for prosecution of American officials.  John  Brennan, CIA director, calls the Senate report "flawed" in that investigators failed to interview key personnel about their decisions.   The CIA has also issued its own report.   In it they try to justify their tactics by giving examples of what they called thwarted terrorist plots and suspects captures, but these representations were inaccurate and contradicted the CIA's own records. 

In any event President Obama cancelled the program 2 days after taking office.  Obama said the methods used were inconsistent with U.S. values.   Despite the calls for accountability there seems little prospect of criminal prosecutions of those who implemented the program.  A law official said the U.S. Justice Department has no plans to conduct any investigation of the CIA actions.   President Obama signaled he is more interested in focusing on the future, than reopening a dark and contentious period of the recent past. 

I must agree with the President.  Let's concentrate on the future.   I see no benefit in hanging people out to dry who acted in what they thought was the correct way to protect our country. To be sure there was intense pressure following the 9/11 attack to prevent further attacks.   There are those who will say that the U.S. had prior knowledge that al-Queada would use commercial airliners as weapons of terror.  There are others who will say U.S. authorities had never thought of that possibility.   Just as there are those who will say officials had foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack at the beginning of WW II.  In the end whom do you believe ?   Only one side is correct, but the truth usually lies somewhere in the middle.  Did we need to resort to the interrogations in the first place?

I think it is clear that the tactics used by the CIA in the interrogation of terror suspects are inconsistent with U.S. values and should not have been used whether they were effective or not.  

What do you think?