How many people did we torture anyway?
by digby
In case you missed this last week with all the exciting developments in the ongoing search for Amelia Earhardt, here's an update on the Torture Report from McClatchy:
A still-secret Senate Intelligence Committee report calls into question the legal foundation of the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists, a finding that challenges the key defense on which the agency and the Bush administration relied in arguing that the methods didn’t constitute torture.
The report also found that the spy agency failed to keep an accurate account of the number of individuals it held, and that it issued erroneous claims about how many it detained and subjected to the controversial interrogation methods. The CIA has said that about 30 detainees underwent the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques.
The CIA’s claim “is BS,” said a former U.S. official familiar with evidence underpinning the report, who asked not to be identified because the matter is still classified. “They are trying to minimize the damage. They are trying to say it was a very targeted program, but that’s not the case.”
The findings are among the report’s 20 main conclusions. Taken together, they paint a picture of an intelligence agency that seemed intent on evading or misleading nearly all of its oversight mechanisms throughout the program, which was launched under the Bush administration after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and ran until 2006.
Here's the good news. We can totally believe the secret intelligence agencies now when they assure us that they aren't doing anything illegal, unconstitutional or immoral.
So let's just settle down about all that spying on everyone. They told us they weren't using the information for any purposes beyond keeping us safe from the terrorists. We can trust them. Absolutely.
.