Key takeaway from torture report: Dick Cheney is a dirty, stinking liar

DIRTY DICK

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, in 2011, peddling one of his favorite claims in defense of torture:

"One of the most controversial techniques is waterboarding ... And the one who was subjected the most often to that was Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, and it produced phenomenal results for us." [...]

Cheney said that waterboarding Khaled Sheikh Mohammed "helped produce the intelligence that allowed us to get Osama bin Laden."

And today, from the initial release on the torture report:

The committee reviewed 20 of the most frequent and prominent examples of purported "successes" that the CIA has attributed to the use of its enhanced interrogation techniques. Each of those examples was found to be wrong.  READ MORE

17 Disgraceful Facts Buried In The Senate’s 600 Page Torture Report

CREDIT: AP

by Igor Volsky Posted on December 9, 2014 at 2:11 pm

The Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s extensive use of torture reveals that the agency regularly misled the White House and Congress about the information it had obtained from detainees and used techniques that are far more brutal than it — or former Bush administration officials — had previously acknowledged.

For instance, President George W. Bush insisted that “[t]his government does not torture people” and claimed that the intelligence it produced was instrumental to preventing terrorism on American soil and capturing high-value targets, including Osama bin Laden. But the Committee’s five year investigation — and examination of more than six million CIA documents — reveals all of those assertions to be false

For its part, the CIA acknowledged that it “did not always live up to the high standards that we set for ourselves” and “made mistakes” in how it ran the program, particularly “early on” when the CIA “was unprepared and lacked the core competencies required.” However, it insisted that “there are too many flaws for [this report] to stand as the official record of the program” and strongly disputed “that the agency’s assessments were willfully misrepresented in a calculated effort to manipulate.”

Republicans are similarly shielding the agency from criticism, claiming that the report is “ideologically motivated and distorted recounting of historical events.” “The fact that the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation program developed significant intelligence that helped us identify and capture important al-Qa’ida terrorists, disrupt their ongoing plotting, and take down Usama Bin Ladin is incontrovertible,” Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement.  READ MORE

CIA torture report: What happened to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Ramzi Binalshibh

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged Sept. 11 mastermind,
was waterboarded at least 183 times and underwent rectal
rehydration by CIA interrogators, according to the Senate
Intelligence Committee report.

In most cases, the report from the Senate Intelligence Committee found, the harsh methods — which critics have deemed torture — yielded no solid intelligence. The tactics were also found to frequently cause significant psychological and emotional harm to those on the receiving end.

BY Joel Siegel , Adam Edelman

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Tuesday, December 9, 2014, 5:06 PM

 

The comprehensive ‘torture’ report released Tuesday by Senate investigators reveals a litany of disturbing interrogation methods the CIA used against suspected terrorists, including waterboardings, rectal feedings and physical violence.

In most cases, the report from the Senate Intelligence Committee found, the harsh methods — which critics have deemed torture — yielded no solid intelligence.

The 10 most shocking revelations of the CIA's torture report

EDITORIAL: CIA torture critics must remember why the agency did what it did after 9/11

On the contrary, the tactics frequently caused significant psychological and emotional harm to those on the receiving end.

The following are the experiences, according to the report, of three such detainees.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -READ MORE
 

CIA 'torture' report cites 'rectal rehydration,' other unapproved tactics that would have made Colin Powell 'blow his stack'

The report released by the Senate Intelligence
Committee on Tuesday is the first public accounting
of the CIA’s use of what critics call torture on al-Qaeda
detainees held at 'black sites' in Europe and Asia after
the Sept. 11 attacks.

The report from the Senate Intelligence Committee is the first public accounting of the CIA’s use of what critics call torture on Al Qaeda detainees. The summary discloses for the first time that 119 prisoners were held in CIA custody and that 26 or more were held because of mistaken identities or bad intelligence.

BY James Warren , Dan Friedman

DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU

Published: Tuesday, December 9, 2014, 8:24 AM

WASHINGTON — The CIA abused dozens of terror suspects in the years after 9/11, misled policymakers about what it was doing and then falsely claimed the harsh interrogations made America safer, a scathing Senate report charged Tuesday.

Beginning in 2002, the interrogations played out at secret, shadowy detention facilities in Asia and Eastern Europe, including an Afghanistan site called the “dungeon.”

The tough tactics included stripping suspects, depriving them of sleep for days at a time, waterboarding them, and confining them in boxes. Some were placed in ice baths, or force-fed rectally. Captives were slapped, slammed against walls, and bombarded with threats that they would be killed or family members would be harmed.

The 10 most shocking revelations of the CIA's torture report
EDITORIAL: Remember why
One technique seemed like it came from a James Bond movie — a blindfolded suspect was threatened with a power drill. READ MORE

 

FBI interview with Dorian Johnson, witness in Michael Brown shooting, not in grand jury documents

orian Johnson was with Michael Brown when he
was shot Aug. 9 in Ferguson, Mo., and was
interviewed by the FBI and county police.

A review of the thousands of pages of documents released by St. Louis County prosecutors turned up no transcript or recording of a two-hour FBI and county police interview with Johnson, who was with the 18-year-old when he was shot. the associated press

Tuesday, December 9, 2014, 1:39 AM

A law enforcement interview with a key witness to the fatal shooting of Michael Brown doesn’t appear to be included among thousands of pages of documents released after a grand jury decided not to indict a Ferguson, Mo., police officer in the case.

The Associated Press reviewed more than 5,700 pages of documents released by St. Louis County prosecutors, but found no transcript or recording of a two-hour FBI and county police interview with Brown’s friend Dorian Johnson, who was with the 18-year-old when he was shot. The discrepancy was first reported by KSDK-TV.

The documents include seven video clips of Johnson’s media interviews, as well as a transcript of his testimony to the grand jury that investigated the shooting.

The transcript notes that jurors listened to a recording of an Aug. 13 interview of Johnson by the federal and county investigators, but documents released to the public don’t appear to include a separate transcript of that August interview. READ MORE

Retired Baltimore cop among 61 arrested in Florida human trafficking sting

Polk County Sheriff’s Office Mete Girit identified himself as a former Baltimore police officer. He was arrested after allegedly offering to have sex with an undercover detective for $200.

Sheriff Grady Judd, of Polk County, announced the arrests that stem from a four-day undercover investigation Monday. He said the goal of the investigation is to identify victims of human trafficking and provide them with counseling.

A retired Baltimore police officer, now working as an escort, is one of 61 people arrested in a prostitution sting by a Florida sheriff's office.

Grady Judd, sheriff of Polk County, announced the arrests of 61 people at a Monday afternoon press conference.

The suspects, between the ages of 18-68 years of age, include one married couple, a 6 1/2 months pregnant woman, and 29-year-old retired cop, Mete Girit, who allegedly sought $200 for sex. READ MORE

Senate Report Reveals That the CIA Torture Program Was Just As Bad As Feared

Photo: IKONOS/Space Imaging Middle East/Reuters/Corbis

The newlyreleased 500-plus-page executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee's torture report delivers a scathing critique of the CIA's post-9/11 interrogation programs, revealing previously unknown abuses, deceptions of the media, and attempts to avoid Congressional oversight.


Among the horrifying abuses detailed in the Senate report: Waterboarding, a torture mechanism that brings the subject to the verge of drowning, was far more popular than the CIA had let on; "rectal feedings" and "rectal hydrations" were used to strip detainees of any measures of autonomy; and a particularly damning segment of the report notes that the CIA did not punish an agent who killed a detainee in the course of interrogations. The summary is based on millions of documents surveyed over five years, and is just a fraction of the length of the full, still-classified, 6,000-page report.
READ MORE

Thanks, GOP! Michigan Is Now A Theocracy And They're Coming For Your State Next

A new religious tyranny act has been fast tracked in Michigan, and is not waiting for the Senate to pass it.

Christian special pleading has hit my home state, and soon, it'll be coming to yours, too, in the wake of the November Republican sweep.

My state was the birth place of the Republican party, back when they were the good guys - back when they were the party of anti-slavery, when they had a progressive wing that included presidents like Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. Michigan has always been seen as a blue state, but the truth is much different: we're mostly Detroit, Ann Arbor, Bay City, and to a lesser extent, Flint, surrounded by the very worst of Mississippi. READ MORE

Nazi party wrap disguised as Hanukkah wrapping paper at California store, woman says

Cheryl Shapiro demands Walgreens remove offensive wrapping paper after she claims swastikas adorn gift wrap sold for Hanukkah.

Cheryl Shapiro demands Walgreens remove offensive wrapping paper after she claims swastikas adorn gift wrap sold for Hanukkah.

She did Nazi that coming.

A California woman was outraged when she found what appear to be swastikas adorning Hanukkah gift wrap at a local Walgreens.

Cheryl Shapiro called her rabbi and then the manager at the Northridge, Calif., store, NBC Los Angeles reported.

"I really put my foot down because I was appalled by this," said Shapiro, who was with her grandson Saturday when she noticed the offensive logo apparently woven into a pattern on gold and blue wrapping paper. READ MORE

In 179 fatalities involving on-duty NYPD cops in 15 years

EXCLUSIVE: In 179 fatalities involving on-duty NYPD cops in 15 years, only 3 cases led to indictments — and just 1 conviction

A Daily News analysis of NYPD-involved deaths starts with the 1999 slaying of unarmed Amadou Diallo in a hail of bullets in the Bronx and ends with last month’s shooting death of Akai Gurley in a Brooklyn stairwell. Where race was known, 86% were black or Hispanic.

A Staten Island grand jury’s decision not to indict white NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo for the chokehold death of Eric Garner — a black father of six — stunned large swaths of the city and added fuel to a nationwide surge of protests over police killings.

But history shows the odds were always in Pantaleo’s favor.

A Daily News investigation found that at least 179 people were killed by on-duty NYPD officers over the past 15 years. Just three of the deaths have led to an indictment in state court. In another case, a judge threw out the indictment on technical grounds and it was not reinstated.

Only one officer who killed someone while on duty has been convicted, but he was not sentenced to jail time.

The analysis of the police-involved deaths begins with the 1999 slaying of unarmed Amadou Diallo in a hail of bullets and ends with last month’s shooting death of Akai Gurley, who police say was hit by a ricocheting bullet fired by a rookie cop in a darkened housing project stairwell in Brooklyn. Gurley was also unarmed.

The News found that since 1999: READ MORE