Close X
Thursday, November 14, 2024
ADVT 
International

America reacts with horror to CIA torture report

Darpan News Desk IANS, 10 Dec, 2014 11:02 AM
     A shocked America reacted with horror to a scathing Senate report detailing CIA's brutal interrogation techniques used in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks that in the end yielded little actionable intelligence.
     
    The spy agency's techniques detailed in a Democrat majority Senate intelligence committee report are "contrary to who we are", President Barack Obama said in an interview to a news channel
     
    "We've got better ways of doing things" than resorting to the "brutal" tactics chronicled in the report, he told Telemundo/MSNBC when asked whether he agreed with then President George W. Bush's view that CIA interrogators should be considered "patriots".
     
    Based on more than six million internal agency documents, the report details tactics like sleep deprivation, isolation in total darkness, rectal feeding and at least two mock executions.
     
    The waterboarding of Shaikh Mohammed, the Pakistani mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, is described as a "series of near drownings".
     
    Amid a partisan divide, Republicans defended the CIA, which called the programme as "effective", and criticised the report's release, saying it puts US personnel at risk.
     
    But Senator John McCain, 2008 Republican presidential candidate, commended its release, saying "the truth is sometimes a hard pill to swallow", but the American people are "entitled" to it.
     
    Dianne Feinstein, Democratic chairperson of the Senate panel that authored the report said the CIA's actions were "a stain on our values and our history".
     
    The Washington Post agreed saying in an editorial, "The horrors in America's 'dungeon' should never have happened."
     
    The release "might rouse anti-American sentiment in thenear terma", it said but in the long term, the US "will benefit by demonstrating a commitment to transparency and self-criticism -- and, most of all, by pledging never to repeat its post-9/11 mistakes".
     
    The New York Times said the "report on the CIA's torture and lies" raised "again, with renewed power, the question of why no one has ever been held accountable for these seeming crimes".
     
    Foreign Policy group's CEO David Rothkopf called it "a vital step toward bringing to an end the Age of Fear" saying the issue it "raises is not just what we did to these people, but what we became by doing it".
     
    However, Council on Foreign Relations' Max Boot disagreed saying it "will only aid our enemies who will have more fodder for their propaganda mills".
     
    The report "merely rakes up history and for no good purpose beyond predictable congressional grandstanding", he said.

    MORE International ARTICLES

    7 dead as epic storm buries western New York state

    7 dead as epic storm buries western New York state
    At least seven people died as a deadly epic storm dumped nearly six feet of snow on western New York state leaving people stuck in their homes and stranded on the roads....

    7 dead as epic storm buries western New York state

    India did not offer car to PM Sharif: Pakistani official

    India did not offer car to PM Sharif: Pakistani official
     India has not offered any bulletproof car to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for the upcoming South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) summit...

    India did not offer car to PM Sharif: Pakistani official

    One arrested after murders of Miss Honduras, sister

    One arrested after murders of Miss Honduras, sister
    ne person was arrested after the murders of Miss Honduras World 2014 Maria Jose Alvarado and her sister Sofia Trinidad, crimes that has shocked....

    One arrested after murders of Miss Honduras, sister

    US has 450,000 illegal immigrants from India

    US has 450,000 illegal immigrants from India
    As President Barack Obama mulls executive action to give relief from deportation to some of the 11.2 million illegal immigrants in the US, a new report said about ....

    US has 450,000 illegal immigrants from India

    Obama Set For Executive Action On Immigration

    Obama Set For Executive Action On Immigration
    A defiant President Barack Obama is all set to take executive action to protect up to five million of about 11.2 million illegal immigrants, including....

    Obama Set For Executive Action On Immigration

    USA Has 450,000 Illegal Immigrants From India

    USA Has 450,000 Illegal Immigrants From India
    As President Barack Obama mulls executive action to give relief from deportation to some of the 11.2 million illegal immigrants in the US, a new report said about 450,000 of them are from India.

    USA Has 450,000 Illegal Immigrants From India