[icopyright one button toolbar]
Only five years ago, when he was President Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan criticized the CIA’ s “enhanced interrogation techniques” for having “led us to stray from our ideals as a nation.” He added, “Tactics such as waterboarding were not in keeping with our values as Americans,” according to the New York Times.
Today, the same man, but now Director of the same agency he so sharply criticized, “defended the agency’s use of waterboarding and other brutal interrogation tactics… sidestepping questions about whether agency operatives tortured anyone,” according to the Times.
Evading questions on an issue that he condemned five years ago, Brennan now says, “I will leave to others how they might want to label those activities” but he “fervently hopes” that Americans can “put aside this debate and move forward,” while at the same time offering “no assurances that anything prevented the government from authorizing the same techniques in the face of another crisis.”
On the issue of whether useful intelligence could have been elicited otherwise, Brennan said in Rumsfeld-esque fashion that such was “unknowable.”
If public reaction to the torture revelations can be gleaned from Letters to the Editor at the New York Times, one could assume that it is mostly negative.
As a matter of fact, referring to the “unknowable,” one reader writes:
Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld famously said that there are things “we don’t know we don’t know.” That was not the case with the C.I.A. torture program. President Bush knew that he did not know all of the details because he did not want to know. This plausible deniability is just another form of complicity.
The letter writer adds:
The torture of detainees is a dark spot on our soul. The torture report reminds us that the stain is not simply the result of depraved C.I.A. operatives but was authorized explicitly or implicitly at the highest levels of our government.
Stephen M. Heumann, from Berwyn, Pa., makes a good point:
With the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report, one simple question begs for an answer:
If the C.I.A.’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” were legal, prudent and not torture under the Geneva Conventions, and were done with the full knowledge and approval of the president, the Justice Department and relevant congressional committees, why were “secret” installations established outside the United States specifically for this purpose, and why were contractors used?
Law enforcement has many appropriate facilities to question suspects within the United States, and there are experienced and vetted interrogators within our civilian and military establishments.
Paul Rocklin laments the American Psychological Association’s efforts to support C.I.A. and military interrogations:
Not only did the C.I.A. engage psychologists to “develop, operate and assess” its torture program, but the A.P.A. aggressively encouraged its psychologists to participate in interrogations conducted by the C.I.A. and the military while the torture program was at its peak — a policy that you reported was directly influenced by intelligence officials who sought the cover of psychologists’ approval. The A.P.A.’s leadership has a long way to go in restoring the nation’s trust.
Brooks B. Yeager, a former deputy assistant secretary for environment and development in the State Department, thanks Senator Dianne Feinstein and her colleagues for releasing the report on the C.I.A. torture program, for “they have, as painful as it may be, revealed the truth and details about an effort that was behind doors for too long.”
Rich Collins, one of two who dissented with the majority, wrote a very touching and powerful letter that perhaps best illustrates why many Americans believe that we should not condemn what CIA personnel did under very difficult circumstances:
My brother and almost 3,000 other innocents of many nationalities, religions and races were the ones truly and absolutely tortured (not to mention their families). I see no reason for America to apologize to anyone anywhere for waterboarding the mastermind of the 9/11 attack in an attempt to gain information. I know that my brother suffered more as he burned in a searing fire gasping thick, hot air for over an hour before his murder was complete.
It sickens me to watch our government condemn those who were doing their best to protect all of us in a very difficult time. I have no objection to analyzing the C.I.A.’s performance — if it is nonpolitical and done to improve the C.I.A.’s performance. But it is negligent to publicly release the document, which Islamic radicals will surely use for recruitment purposes.
Read all the letters here.
Lead image: www.shutterstock.com
