“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
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New York Times Editorial Board: The Senate Report on the C.I.A.’s Torture and Lies
The world has long known that the United States government illegally detained and tortured prisoners after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and lied about it to Congress and the world. But the summary of a report released Tuesday of the Senate investigation of these operations, even after being sanitized by the Central Intelligence Agency itself, is a portrait of depravity that is hard to comprehend and even harder to stomach.
The report raises again, with renewed power, the question of why no one has ever been held accountable for these seeming crimes – not the top officials who set them in motion, the lower-level officials who committed the torture, or those who covered it up, including by destroying videotapes of the abuse and by trying to block the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation of their acts. [..]
The litany of brutality, lawlessness and lack of accountability serves as a reminder of what a horrible decision President Obama made at the outset of his administration to close the books on this chapter in our history, even as he repudiated the use of torture. The C.I.A. officials who destroyed videotapes of waterboarding were left unpunished, and all attempts at bringing these acts into a courtroom were blocked by claims of national secrets.
It is hard to believe that anything will be done now. Republicans, who will soon control the Senate and have the majority on the intelligence panel, denounced the report, acting as though it is the reporting of the torture and not the torture itself that is bad for the country. Maybe George Tenet, who ran the C.I.A. during this ignoble period, could make a tiny amends by returning the Presidential Medal of Freedom that President Bush gave him upon his retirement.
Trevor Timm: What happens after the torture report? How the CIA’s victims can still get justice
The cowardly Obama administration wants America’s ‘brutal’ history to become just that. But torture is a war crime. Let’s investigate the architects. Let’s make sure this kind of rampant criminality never happens again
Everyone expected the Senate’s CIA torture report to be shocking. But I’m not sure anyone – except maybe the torturers and the tortured – was really prepared for the depravity and sheer lack of humanity laid out in the 580 pages released on Tuesday morning in Washington. It is, in many ways and in the starkness of all those footnotes, the most disturbing scandal in recent American history.
The amount of different crimes committed by the CIA and documented by Senator Dianne Feinstein’s committee is truly extraordinary. Not only does the report detail the systematic torture of dozens of detainees – which included sexual assault, rape and homicide – but the amount of times the CIA allegedly obstructed justice, committed perjury and made false statements is hard to even count. The breaking of laws almost catches up with the breaking of bones, minds and bodies.
But it’s not enough to feel sick to your stomach, to say this is American history now and there’s nothing we can do about it. Now, the question for everyone who read this essential textbook of CIA wrongdoing, even for those who never will, is: Where do we go from here? Transparency can’t possibly be the only punishment for an agency which has broken the law so systematically.
As I write, New York City is witnessing its fifth day of demonstrations after a Staten Island grand jury’s decision not to indict a police officer in the Eric Garner killing. Those demonstrations followed on the protests across the country over the police shootings of Akai Gurley, a 28-year-old father of two who was slain while walking with his girlfriend in Brooklyn, Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy shot by a rookie Cleveland police officer while playing with a toy gun, and, most famously, the Ferguson, Missouri, police killing of Michael Brown. Conservatives joined liberals in denouncing the grand jury’s outrageous decision in the Garner case. Demonstrations have spread across the country as people of all races have taken up Garner’s plea: “I can’t breathe.” [..]
The deaths of Garner, Brown and others at the hands of police are not the only cause sparking mass protests. The day after the Garner demonstrations started, low-wage workers walked off their jobs in more than 190 cities, demanding a living wage and the right to organize. They, too, chanted, “I can’t breathe.” Workers from fast food-restaurants such as McDonald’s were joined by those from low-wage retail and convenience stores and airline service jobs. In Washington, federal contract workers joined the march, calling on the president to issue procurement regulations that would reward good employers that pay a living wage with benefits and allow workers to organize and bargain collectively.
Kristen Breitweiser: 3 Thoughts on Torture Following the Release of the SSCI Report on Torture 2014
First, there is much talk about the impact that the release of this report will have on our allies, interests, and agents here and overseas. Secretary of State John Kerry, Republicans, and various intelligence officials have all registered their concern: this will inflame, incite, and encourage attacks against Americans and our allies.
Does anyone really think ISIS, al Qaeda, etc. are actually paying such close attention?
If so, then we have a question for Secretary of State Kerry and all the others: Why haven’t you considered the potential impact of a completely different kind of message — the kind of message that would be sent by actually holding accountable all those named in this Torture Report? [..]
If we as a nation do not demand accountability for the truth revealed in this report, then how can we ever make sure that such immoral, illegal, evil acts (or worse) will not be repeated in the future? Accountability sets a strong and undeniable deterrence factor. You commit torture, you go to jail. You go rogue, you go to jail. Simple as that. No gray area. No legalese. No exoneration. No pardon. J A I L.
Thirteen long years later, it’s time we find our moral compass and our conscience again. Because the United States of America–is and should always be a nation of laws.
Lauren Carasik: No guarantee the US won’t torture again
Washington’s reckoning begins, not ends, with release of Senate report
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s release on Tuesday of its much-anticipated torture report, which chronicles the Central Intelligence Agency’s “Rendition, Detention and Interrogation” program in the aftermath of 9/11, has unleashed a cascade of recriminations that threatens to eclipse the committee’s stark findings. The portion of the report that was released – the 480-page executive summary – paints a haunting picture of brutality that shocks the conscience, and demolishes the myth that torture was effective, limited in scope and only perpetrated by a few rogue actors. Instead, the report reveals the brutal, systematic and sanctioned nature of the program. [..]
The report failed to provide an overarching analysis of how U.S. policy became so unmoored from its moral groundings and to erode impunity that has shielded both the U.S. operatives who tortured people and their superiors. Its narrow focus on the CIA’s misdeeds did, however, insulate many of the nation’s political leaders, including some who did not relinquish their roles in the previous administration, whose consciences should be heavy. While the report’s findings constitute clear violations of domestic and international law, the committee did not analyze the program’s legality. Given these failings, the report should signal the beginning, not the end, of Washington’s reckoning.
Even today’s partial release – the full 6,000-page report, which cost taxpayers $40 million and took nearly six years to complete, is still classified – was hamstrung by months of negotiations between the CIA, President Barack Obama’s administration and the committee, headed by Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. Feinstein has been under intense pressure to release the report, especially since the impending Republican control of the Senate and the Intelligence Committee left the report’s future disclosure in doubt.
John Nichols: Why Dick Cheney Is Wrong About the CIA Torture Memos
The Senate Intelligence Committee had to release details on its multi-year investigation into how, under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the Central Intelligence Agency employed tactics that the world understands as torture. A decision to sit on the findings of what the 500-plus-page summary of the report begins by describing as a “brutal” and “flawed” program that was “in violation of U.S. law, treaty obligations, and our values” would have put senators who are elected to serve and advance the public interest at odds with a basic American premise: the idea that a government acting in the name of the American people must regularly seek and obtain their informed consent. [..]
With Cheney taking the lead, the former administration aggressively and repeatedly rejected the principles of transparency and accountability that are essential to maintaining not just national honor but meaningful democracy. And the assault continues, as Cheney, in particular, maintains the pattern of denial and defense that characterized his tenure as the most powerful-and secretive-vice president in American history
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