Red Cross Torture Report

[Lemur]

An interesting video I think is worth posting.

Side-note: It seems that the Vice President is once again factually incorrect.

Did Dick Cheney really “formally” ask the CIA to release reams of intelligence allegedly showing that the torture program worked, as Cheney claimed last night on Fox News?

An intelligence source familiar with the situation says the answer is No.

“The agency has received no request from the former Vice President to release this information,” the source told me a few moments ago. [...]

According to the source, there are several ways this could happen: Cheney could lodge a Freedom of Information Request (which is hard to imagine a former Veep doing); he could contact CIA officials; or he could submit the request via the White House. Cheney said he’d made the request to the CIA.

The source, however, tells me that the CIA didn’t get any such request from Cheney. So barring the unlikely possibility that Cheney submitted his request to the Obama White House, it seems fair to assume for now that the only target of this request was the Fox News television audience.

Update: A Cheney spokesperson is refusing to say what he meant when he claimed to have made a “formal” request for this info.

Update: Okay, this whole thing has been at least partially clarified:

That whole question of whether Dick Cheney asked the CIA to declassify and release intelligence supposedly proving that the torture worked? Turns out Cheney made the request through the National Archives, a spokesperson for the archives confirms.

That means that we may, in fact, see the documents that Cheney claims will demonstrate that the Bush torture program collected a whole bunch of useful intelligence, though it may take awhile.

National Archives spokesperson Susan Cooper confirms that Cheney did submit a request for unspecified documents on March 31st. Cooper said that the National Archives had asked the relevant agency — she wouldn’t say which one, but there’s little reason to doubt that it’s the CIA — for the relevant documents this morning.

Cooper confirmed that the docs Cheney asked for were in fact classified. Keep in mind we have no way of knowing what Cheney actually asked for or whether they really say what Cheney claims. It’s now up to the CIA to make the determination whether to declassify the docs Cheney wants. So this could get very, very interesting in various ways.

-edit-

An insider makes an important point:

The focus on water-boarding misses the main point of the program.

Which is that it was a program. Unlike the image of using intense physical coercion as a quick, desperate expedient, the program developed "interrogation plans" to disorient, abuse, dehumanize, and torment individuals over time.

The plan employed the combined, cumulative use of many techniques of medically-monitored physical coercion. Before getting to water-boarding, the captive had already been stripped naked, shackled to ceiling chains keeping him standing so he cannot fall asleep for extended periods, hosed periodically with cold water, slapped around, jammed into boxes, etc. etc. Sleep deprivation is most important.

[Furunculus]

Which is that it was a program. Unlike the image of using intense physical coercion as a quick, desperate expedient, the program developed "interrogation plans" to disorient, abuse, dehumanize, and torment individuals over time.

The plan employed the combined, cumulative use of many techniques of medically-monitored physical coercion. Before getting to water-boarding, the captive had already been stripped naked, shackled to ceiling chains keeping him standing so he cannot fall asleep for extended periods, hosed periodically with cold water, slapped around, jammed into boxes, etc. etc. Sleep deprivation is most important.

good, someone put some thought into it, into how to conduct interrogation without it resorting to barbarism.