The report is damning in the extreme to the Bush administration and to the CIA leadership. It offers proof that the CIA engaged in physical and psychological torture, some of which was authorized — unlawfully, yet authorized — most of which was not. The report also demonstrates that CIA officials repeatedly lied to the White House and to Senate regulators about what they were doing, and they lied about the effectiveness of their torture.
If the allegations in the report are true, we have war criminals, perjurers, computer hackers and thugs on the government payroll. We also have dupes. The most politically successful argument the torture lobby has made is that we are all safer because of these dirty deeds. This Senate report refutes that argument by demonstrating that no serious actionable intelligence came from the torture.
All torture is criminal under all circumstances — under treaties to which the U.S. is a party, under the Constitution that governs the government wherever it goes, and under federal law. Torture degrades the victim and the perpetrator. It undermines the moral authority of a country whose government condones it. It destroys the rule of law. It exposes our own folks to the awful retaliatory beheadings we have all seen. It is slow, inefficient, morbid and ineffective. It is a recruiting tool for those who have come to cause us harm. All human beings possess basic inalienable rights derived from the natural law and protected by the Constitution the CIA has sworn to uphold. Torture violates all of those rights.
