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Loading... The Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Torture: Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Programby Senate (U.S.) Select Committee on Intelligence
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Now available to the public for the first time, the Senate's landmark torture report delivers a damning indictment on CIA interrogation practices. Finally declassified and released after five years in the making, the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA's torture program, which describes in excruciating detail what Obama has called "harsh methods . . . inconsistent with our values as a nation," is now available to the American public--citizens who have a right to know the truth. Considered one of the most important government documents ever to be published, the torture report compiles the Senate committee's findings of the CIA's program to detain and interrogate terrorist threats in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, from 2001 to 2006 during the Bush administration. Among other controversial conclusions, the report has found that the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques" were not effective in acquiring intelligence to avert terrorist threats. The study also shows that the CIA misled the public, Congress, the Department of Justice, and even the White House on the effectiveness and the scope and severity of their interrogation techniques. The exhaustive and disturbing account also provides grisly accounts on horrific practices that occurred in CIA black sites: prisoners experienced sleep deprivation in stressful positions for up to 180 hours; being stripped and shackled, hooded and dragged down a long corridor while being punched; waterboarding; and "rectal feeding." Based on six million CIA documents and requiring $40 million to complete, the entire 6,000-page report still remains classified. Only 525 pages of summary have been published, with 7 percent of its content redacted, and it is now at the disposal of American readers who have the opportunity to learn what occurred during this dark chapter in modern American history. The Senate report delivers a scathing, shocking, and controversial judgment, and gives us much to think about in terms of our longstanding position on freedom, democracy, dignity, and human rights. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)345.7306Social sciences Law Criminal Law North America United StatesLC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.75)
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Wikipedia in English
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With that said, the information in the book is still important to review. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, and the uncertainty of the times, those in charge took the approach that they needed to determine if other attacks were being planned. Sometimes, and too often if you read this book, lines were crossed in trying to obtain intelligence from captives. Those in charge maintain that the "enhanced interrogation techniques" did not constitute "torture", and that the methods used produced important intelligence which prevented other attacks. This book shows the flaws in that argument.
Personally, I think Ali Soufan's book, "The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against Al-Qaeda" is a much more readable book detailing the failings of torture, but both books come to the same conclusion, i.e., we got no actionable intelligence by means of torture, and that the conventional interrogation methods are not just more humane, but also more effective.
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