GLobalizing Torture CIA Secret Detention And Extraordinary Rendition

I was looking over things for my blog today and ran across a trove of Foreign Policy papers. I find the US involvement in torture and rendition to be one of the darkest aspects of US History. I personally feel that several officials need to be held accountable. I realize this topic will bring up a range of Emotions. I cannot believe that a bigger deal has not been made about this. I suppose it is hard to look back at things that can be shameful or even downright illegal. I never thought my Govt would be involved in the things mentioned in this article. It raises a number of interesting questions both morally and legally. Very long paper but think it is well written and informative.


Usually movie violence does not bother me much but the Waterboarding scene in Zero Dark Thirty really bothered me for some reason. Hard to imagine Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was water boarded over 120 times.

“ We also have to work, through, sort of the dark side, if you will. We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful. That’s the world these folks operate in, and so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.” u.s. ViCe PResideNT diCK CheNey, sePTeMbeR 16, 20011 Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) commenced a secret detention program under which suspected terrorists were held in CIA prisons, also known as “black sites,” outside the United States, where they were subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques” that involved torture and other abuse. At about the same time, the CIA gained expansive authority to engage in “extraordinary rendition,” defined here as the transfer— without legal process—of a detainee to the custody of a foreign government for purposes of detention and interrogation.2 Both the secret detention program and the extraordinary rendition program were highly classified, conducted outside the United States, and designed to place detainee interrogations beyond the reach of the law. Torture was a hallmark of both. The two programs entailed the abduction and disappearance of detainees and their extra-legal transfer on secret flights to undisclosed locations around the world, followed by their incommunicado detention, interrogation, torture, and abuse. The administration of President George W. Bush embraced the “dark side,” a new paradigm for countering terrorism with little regard for the constraints of domestic and international law. Today, more than a decade after September 11, there is no doubt that high- ranking Bush administration officials bear responsibility for authorizing human rights violations associated with secret detention and extraordinary rendition, and the impunity that they have enjoyed to date remains a matter of significant concern. But responsibility for these violations does not end with the United States. Secret detention and extraordinary rendition operations, designed to be conducted outside the United States under cover of secrecy, could not have been implemented without the active participation of foreign governments. These governments too must be held accountable. However, to date, the full scale and scope of foreign government participation—as well as the number of victims—remains unknown, largely because of the extreme secrecy maintained by the United States and its partner governments

www.opensocietyfoundations.org...

Hopefully we can learn from our mistakes and not be doomed to repeat them.

Originally posted by GArnold

“... and so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.”

Hopefully we can learn from our mistakes and not be doomed to repeat them.

Yet they are being repeated, and with greater frequency. Maybe it just seems worse in that we have brought many of our tactics home now for our civilian police agencies to use on our own people. We began to allow the use of the previously unthinkable tactics to be practiced abroad, and so our routine procedures in dealing with foreign civilian populations while invading their homes seemed tame in comparison. We weren't waterboarding or otherwise torturing them in their homes, just a little friendly "shock and awe" is all, just roughing them up a little. No big thing.

Ten years later those soldiers are now working in our domestic police forces. People in their homes have no rights, no expectation of privacy when there is police work to be done. No one is above suspicion, no one is above the long arm of the law. So the rest of us just get roughed-up a little, so what? Do we just let crime happen and people go unpunished? So when innocent people get their home invaded by the police and they get shoved around a little while police are carrying out their investigations it just makes us concentrate harder on how to be good and law-abiding citizens and why we have to make sure everyone else s too.

Some times it goes a bit far, OK. People die all the time. We don't mean to kill them it just happens sometimes, guilty or not. Go along with it and we'll get along. It's the 21st century, that's just the way life is now. Welcome all.

reply to post by Erongaricuaro


Good points. The fact that torture becomes normalized is sickening. I find it hard to imagine that no one has been held accountable for the deplorable actions of the US. Between the Patriot act...the start of domestic spying from the NSA...lying with impunity to start a war which has killed hundreds of thousands of citizens plus thousands of US service members... The cost of the war ( into the trillions of dollars-••as much as 300 million a day just to operate) and the torture/rendition program....Neglecting the Economy until it virtually imploded...The fact it appears even to casual investigation that he stole two elections by disenfranchising people or straight up rigging electronic voting machines. I make the argument he is easily the worst President in my lifetime and did more damage to the worldwide perception of Americans than you can possibly imagine. The start of the death from above drone program. Bush has a lot to proud of. I think the overall impression of the US suffered more during his administration than any other time in our countries history. The paper does point out that we had help with the torture/rendition by a lot of global partners.

This quote is mind numbing. I do not care if you are republican or democratic there is no way anyone can justify many of the actions of George H.W. Bush.

“ We also have to work, through, sort of the dark side, if you will. We’ve got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful. That’s the world these folks operate in, and so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.” u.s. ViCe PResideNT diCK CheNey, sePTeMbeR 16, 20011

Sad.. Why is there such detachment to this issue?



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