Scott Horton on CIA evasion of SASC hearings on Mitchell-Jessen torture
In the midst of a long post on the lies and evasions of Gen. Hayden, Scott Horton provides insight into how the CIA is trying to evade the Senate Armed Service Committee hearings on the transformation of SERE techniques into US torture by CIA “contractors” Mitchell and Jessen:
Right now the intelligence community is engaged in one of recent history’s more outrageous games of three-card monte with an inquiry launched by the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, into contracts with two private individuals to develop a regime of highly coercive interrogation techniques. Full battle array has been brought out and extraordinary measures taken to shield these two individuals, who may well be guilty of serious crimes. An attempt is being made to avoid inquiry by claiming that the contracts are beyond the jurisdiction of the Committee. A series of consciously misleading representations have been made to the Committee; an effort has been undertaken to disguise and deny the source of these dealings in the Department of Defense and involving Dr. Stephen Cambone. This inquiry goes right to the core of the current concerns about his agency’s evasion of law and Congressional oversight. And Hayden is not cooperating with oversight; he’s fighting it with the tools that he is authorized to use with foreign governments—but not the U.S. Congress.
Horton also give a vivid description of the harm to the nation caused by the Bush administration-CIA torture regime:
The real question in the end of the day is simple: are the strategies that Hayden is pursing making the country more or less safe? I have a very clear sense of that question and of the answer. The introduction of torture and torture techniques by this administration has been akin to a group of juvenile delinquents lighting a fire in a living room. The drapes and rug have caught on fire and there is every reason to believe the whole house will burn down if it’s not put out by an outside intervention. We expected that Hayden would be a fire marshal on the scene, putting out the fire and removing the matches from the hands of the offending juveniles. Instead, it turns out that Hayden is just another delinquent.
Our nation’s reputation has been trashed around the world. We are now despised and distrusted by populations which only a few years ago were close allies. We have provided the necessary fuel to resurrect and spread Islamic radicalism around the world. Are we safer as a result of these practices? No, our country is far less safe. The Taliban is resurgent in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden remains free to tape his appeals and recruit. And our sense is that Al Qaeda is at least as strong as it was on 9/11. Those are the measures of a widespread failure–it’s a failure of leadership, of vision, of ideas.
1 comment September 9th, 2007