Before we get to this week’s revelations about the overreach of our “security state” or “secret police state” or whatever history eventually labels it, we need to first look at the advance copy of the United Nations Human Rights 4th Report On The United States. ?A good portion of the report specifically deals with torture, drone strikes, and Guantanamo Bay. All of which were either fully or partially under the purview of the CIA and therefore the responsibility of John Brennan the CIA director.
The report covers several areas where we are failing to live up to our founding ideals however the items of the report that specifically refer to the CIA’s criminal behavior are listed below.
- Lack of accountability for past human rights violations.
(T)he Committee notes with concern that all reported investigations into enforced disappearances, torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading?treatment that had been committed in the context of the CIA secret rendition, interrogation and detention programs were closed in 2012- Excerpt from UN Report
- Targeted killings using unmanned aerial vehicles (drones).
(T)he lack of transparency regarding the criteria for drone strikes, including the legal justification for specific attacks, and the lack of accountability for the
loss of life resulting from such attacks-Excerpt
- (Lack of) legislation prohibiting torture.
(T)he Committee is concerned about the lack of comprehensive legislation criminalizing all forms of torture, including mental torture, committed within the
territory of the State party. The Committee is also concerned about the inability of torture victims to claim compensation from the State party and its officials due to the application of?broad doctrines of legal privilege and immunity-Excerpt
- Condition of detainees at Guantanamo Bay
(T)he Committee regrets that no timeline for closure of the facility has been provided. The Committee is also concerned that’detainees held in Guantanamo Bay and in military facilities in Afghanistan are not dealt with within the ordinary criminal justice system after a protracted period of over a decade in some cases.-Excerpt
So the UN report lays out an argument for how the CIA has overreached and not been held accountable.
Which brings us to?this week’s?revelation that it’s even worse than the UN report had knowledge of. ?McClatchy has obtained the conclusions of the still secret Senate report on the CIA and its not good news. ?The committee’s list of findings include:
- Enhanced interrogation techniques did not assist in gaining information or cooperation from detainees. ?The Guardian reported that many of the “real” terrorists we detained at Guantanamo were redirected to a program called Penny Lane where they were bribed to switch sides. The upshot meaning that we were either torturing innocent people or people so low in the organizational structure that they wouldn’t have any information. ? This is an important point. The CIA made the decision to take the people it thought may truly be Al Qaeda and put them in “motel rooms” with access to porn, promises of cash, and safety for their families. So who were we torturing?
- The CIA repeatedly lied to the Justice Department and prevented them from doing a proper legal analysis of their programs. This is a felony.
- The CIA used torture techniques that had not been approved of even by its own “loosened” rules. ?I assume this covers the alleged raping of children in front of their parents or siblings. ?Wikipedia has a good entry on the subject as well. In other words we tortured people just to torture them without even the pretense of a desired outcome. ?The real question is where the videos they made of this actually destroyed or added to the depraved personal collections of the people in charge of this crime?
- The CIA didn’t even know how many people they were holding in secret prisons or how many or which ones they were torturing.
- The CIA impeded White House oversight and lied about what it was doing.
- The CIA lied to Congressional overseers about what it was doing.
- The CIA claims these programs ended in 2006 due to legal and oversight concerns, press disclosures, and reduced cooperation from other nations. But how are we supposed to believe this when all the CIA has done is lie? How are we to believe an organization that doesn’t submit to any oversight, any national or international law, or have any concept or regard for basic human rights or even humanity?
Thankfully our elected officials are taking this seriously. Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) who has asked the President to declassify the report these conclusions are from said,
If someone distributed any part of this classified report, they broke the law and should be prosecuted.
So Senator Feinstein who has been lied to repeatedly by the NSA and CIA, who has had her own staffers “snooped on” by these agencies, whose own now leaked report outlines countless war crimes, human rights abuses, and desecration of American ideals thinks the person who?revealed?this information should be prosecuted? I don’t mean to be ageist but the Senator is eighty years old. Perhaps she was having a “senior moment” or perhaps she is afraid of what these agencies “have” on her and her family’s business dealings. Either way she is an embarrassment to the great state she represents.
But no worries! We have President Obama on our side! He will make sure this report is made public and the people responsible jailed for their crimes! Just kidding. Instead ?Mr. Obama has decided that the CIA should be in charge of when and how the report detailing its crimes against our country are made public.
It has become increasingly clear that the Security State is running the show. That explains why President Obama’s foreign policy is, in many ways, as disastrous as the former President’s. It explains how a “Constitutional law professor” can stand by and do nothing while that document is shredded and with it our National Identity. We are no longer a free country, we are no longer a “beacon on the hill”, and we have become Rome in the last days. Already collapsed and teetering along until that one moment when it will all fall apart. When it does the CIA will deserve much of the credit.
Edited/Published by: SB
