Red Cross Torture Report

[Lemur]

The Red Cross's confidential torture report has been leaked, and the full version can be read here (PDF warning). This was never intended as a public document, but rather as a statement to the appropriate authorities in the U.S. government, a way of saying, "We know this much. Now you know what we know."

Needless to say, it is damning. You might want to give it a read before you order another Club Gitmo shirt from Rush Limbaugh's online store.

Other news:

A Spanish court may hand down indictments for officials who authorized torture.

One of Bush's State Department lawyers states the obvious.

Last, and certainly not least, is the news that the entire rationale behind state-authorized torture was baloney ("We need to do this to protect teh childrens! Do you want teh childrens to die?"). Washington Post:

When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, they were convinced that they had in their custody an al-Qaeda leader who knew details of operations yet to be unleashed, and they were facing increasing pressure from the White House to get those secrets out of him.

The methods succeeded in breaking him, and the stories he told of al-Qaeda terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads.

In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida -- chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates -- was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.