@pwnallthethings
Folks who haven't read the SSCI and other torture reports probably aren't aware just how fucking dark they are.
For example, here's a CIA psychologist threatening a detainee with a power drill
[can't attach the documents but each tweet has an embedded photo and they can all be found here:
twitter.com/pwnallthethings/status/993459344862740481 ]
Here's someone from CTC quitting in protest because the program is "a train wreck waiting to happen"
Here's a CIA cable report saying they have serious reservations because they keep being asked to torture a detainee but they think he's been truthful and have no reason to believe he's withholding any further information
Not everyone survived. Gul Rahman died in custody of hypothermia. When he died he was naked from the waist down on a cold concrete floor, and shackled so as to prevent him from getting warm.
From the OIG report, they used an (unloaded) gun pointed directly at a sleep deprived detainee's head as a "prop"
Oh, the detainee who died of hypothermia by being made to sleep half-naked on a cold concrete floor while shackled so he couldn't get warm? He was being given cold showers too. But IG couldn't work out if that was on purpose or not.
This isn't some show of 24. This is real life. Real things done to real people. And the stated objective was to induce the prisoner into a state of actual "fear and despair".
This is what it was like. Argue it was necessary if you want, but know what it means to argue that, and own what it means to say a detainee should be put in a box, assaulted, threatened with a drill, and have water poured on his face to suffocate him until he vomits and spasms.
Even if you have no sympathy for the detainees, the fall-out, directly and indirectly, domestic and international from this program is honestly mind-blowing. You have to have a truly distorted view of the value of any intelligence they might have got to think it was worth it.
As an example of some of the indirect fallout from it - MI5 threw out MI6 officers from TH because MI6 declined to formally break off relationships with CIA over it. The costs of the fallout to natsec were staggering. Never pretend otherwise.
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/may/31/revealed-britain-rendition-policy-rift-between-spy-agencies-mi6-mi5