What the CIA did

Ambers:

There are many revelations and details buried in the banal, technical language of lawyers:

Among the revelations:

** Through 2005, the CIA used "enhanced interrogation techniques" on 28 of 94 so-called "high value detainees."

** Waterboarding was theoretically allowed only in cases where the information solicited from the prisoner could thwart an imminent terrorist attack; the Justice Department permitted only "six applications of water lasting more than ten seconds" for every two-hour period during which a detainee was strapped to the board. Only 12 minutes of water torture was allowed per 24-hour period. Also: the CIA put potential waterboardees on a fluid diet before the torture in order to prevent them from choking to death on food that might be stuck in the GI tract.

** The OLC concluded that the CIA's careful application of the program didn't "shock the conscience" of a reasonable person and thus would not trigger a statute that would leave interrogators vulnerable to prosecution

** The name of at least one High Value Detainee who was subject to "enhanced techniques" has been redacted. Later (.pdf), however, the same memo mentions a "Gul" who was subjected to enhanced techniques. This appears to be an inadvertent omission.

** Through 2005, the CIA said that only 3 detainees were subject to 96-hour sleep deprivation

** See page 7 of this document (.pdf) for an example of a "typical" interrogation: abdominal slaps, facial holds, "walling," wall-standing.

** The 2002 memo (.pdf) contended it was legal to place an insect in a cramped confined space with a prisoner, provided that the insect was not poisonous. The CIA wanted to use this technique on Abu Zubaydah, who was afraid of poisonous insects. Nowhere is Zubaydah's degraded mental state mentioned.

** It sanctioned techniques which caused less pain than then type of pain one would experience with a major injury

** It allowed a previously disclosed technique called "walling," involving the slamming of a detainee's head back against a fake wall.

** It presumed that the CIA interrogators did not want to cause Zubaydah "severe" mental or physical pain;

** The CIA justified its techniques by referring to the SERE program, which teachers soldiers how to avoid capture and interrogation.

** A May 10, 2005 memo calls torture "abhorrent"

Without any doubt, these techniques are torture. Not the most barbaric form imaginable, but still torture.

I'll let lawyers sort out whether any of this was illegal and whether any of the lawyers involved should be at least disbarred, etc. I only know that I think the answer should be yes, and if we need to pass better laws to make this crystal clear for the future then we should do so.

My feelings now are mixed. The details are nauseating, and I'm ashamed a president I supported was responsible for authorizing these techniques. But I'm also relieved and not a little proud that we've got it in the open.

I'm reminded of a quote by Churchill: "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except all those other forms that have been tried."

Democracy is dysfunctional with insufficient transparency and accountability.  Today the system worked a little better than usual.

To give you a taste of how mad some on the Right remain, here's UNRR:

Not only should there be no prosecution of those who were doing the difficult and dirty job of trying to extract intelligence from terrorists, but the administration should have refused to release the documents on grounds of national security. What's the point of classifying documents in the first place if they are just going to be made public a few years later? The idiotic efforts to expose secret CIA operations, combined with shortsighted attempts to impose crippling legal restrictions will invariably damage intelligence-gathering. Actually, they probably already have. Almost everyone agrees that intelligence is the first line of defense against terrorism. Terrorists are difficult or impossible to deter. They have to be apprehended, eliminated, or disrupted before they strike. Many of the operations designed to serve these functions require secrecy in order to be effective. Efforts aimed at breaking down the secrecy of the CIA and revealing operational details strike at the heart of our anti-terrorist defenses. We need the executive branch to stand firm against such attacks, even if they come from other branches of the government.

It seems he was thinking 4-8 years ahead and hoping the next president would re-authorize torture. Because Obama has made clear that it would not be done under his administration, so there's absolutely no downside to national security in making these memos public during his tenure. Only were a president to re-authorize torture could there possibly be a downside to these techniques being known.

I remain convinced that countenancing torture incites anti-American sentiment, which simultaneously makes the country less safe and harms relations to a degree that far outweighs any security benefit that could possibly be gained by torture. UNRR, of course, disagrees.