Editorial Of The Day

From the editorial board of the New York Times:

Any credible investigation should include former Vice President Dick Cheney; Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff, David Addington; the former C.I.A. director George Tenet; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the Office of Legal Counsel lawyers who drafted what became known as the torture memos. There are many more names that could be considered, including Jose Rodriguez Jr., the C.I.A. official who ordered the destruction of the videotapes; the psychologists who devised the torture regimen; and the C.I.A. employees who carried out that regimen. [snip]

Starting a criminal investigation is not about payback; it is about ensuring that this never happens again and regaining the moral credibility to rebuke torture by other governments. Because of the Senate’s report, we now know the distance officials in the executive branch went to rationalize, and conceal, the crimes they wanted to commit. The question is whether the nation will stand by and allow the perpetrators of torture to have perpetual immunity for their actions.

Hit the link and read the full piece.

Karl Rove Defends Torture

Bryan Fischer: Terrorism Suspects Have No Right Not To Be Tortured

In other words, Fischer endorses "rectal feeding."

Editorial Of The Day

From the New York Times:

The litany of brutality, lawlessness and lack of accountability serves as a reminder of what a horrible decision President Obama made at the outset of his administration to close the books on this chapter in our history, even as he repudiated the use of torture. The C.I.A. officials who destroyed videotapes of waterboarding were left unpunished, and all attempts at bringing these acts into a courtroom were blocked by claims of national secrets.

It is hard to believe that anything will be done now. Republicans, who will soon control the Senate and have the majority on the intelligence panel, denounced the report, acting as though it is the reporting of the torture and not the torture itself that is bad for the country. Maybe George Tenet, who ran the C.I.A. during this ignoble period, could make a tiny amends by returning the Presidential Medal of Freedom that President Bush gave him upon his retirement.

Hit the link and read the full piece.

Tweet Of The Day

FBI Warns Of Torture Report Backlash

Sen. John McCain Denounces Torture

Tweet Of The Day

Senate Releases "Grisly" Torture Report

Via the New York Times:

A scathing report released by the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday found that the Central Intelligence Agency routinely misled the White House and Congress about the information it obtained from the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects, and that its methods were more brutal than the C.I.A. acknowledged either to Bush administration officials or to the public. The long-delayed report, which took five years to produce and is based on more than six million internal agency documents, is a sweeping indictment of the C.I.A.'s operation and oversight of a program carried out by agency officials and contractors in secret prisons around the world in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

It also provides a macabre accounting of some of the grisliest techniques that the C.I.A. used to torture and imprison terrorism suspects. Detainees were deprived of sleep for as long as a week, and were sometimes told that they would be killed while in American custody. With the approval of the C.I.A.'s medical staff, some C.I.A. prisoners were subjected to medically unnecessary “rectal feeding” or “rectal hydration” — a technique that the C.I.A.'s chief of interrogations described as a way to exert “total control over the detainee.” C.I.A. medical staff members described the waterboarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, as a “series of near drowning.

The CIA has denounced the report, saying "there are too many flaws for it to stand as the official record of the program."

The CIA Joins Twitter

White House Mistakenly Reveals Identity Of Top CIA Official In Afghanistan

Teabagistan has having a field day.

CIA Declassifies Area 51

Another blow to the conspiracy theorists.

A newly declassified CIA history from 20 years ago spills the story about Nevada's Area 51 and its secret mission — which was not to study UFOs, but to test the U-2 and other spy planes. The CIA's story about the legendary test site is contained in "The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance: the U-2 and Oxcart Programs." The document was approved for release in June, with just a few remaining redactions, in response to a Freedom of Information request filed by George Washington University's National Security Archive back in 2005. The Groom Lake facility was also used for development of the U-2 spy plane's successors, including the Lockheed A-12 Oxcart and the D-21 Tagboard. Later on, Area 51 served as a test site for the F-117 stealth fighter. To this day, the area surrounding the facility has been closely guarded, and the airspace is off-limits to civilian air traffic. Such high levels of secrecy, combined with the occasional sightings of strange aircraft, have fueled UFO tales for decades.

Oh, well. There's always chemtrails.

Code Pink Forces Suspension Of Senate Confirmation Hearing For CIA Director

Another First: CIA Recruits Gay Spies

In what they say is a first-ever event, today the CIA is holding a recruitment event in association with the Miami-Dade Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. Steve Rothaus has the story at the Miami Herald:

“This is the first one ever,” said Michael Barber, the CIA’s LGBT Community Outreach and Liaison program manager. “This is the first of what I hope will be similarly networking events with LGBT chambers across the nation.”  Barber — “a straight ally” — along with gay CIA employees Engineering Development Chief Bill French and Technical Information Officer Tracey Ballard, will speak to prospective employees about the benefits of joining the agency. “I look at my job as informing and educating about the CIA’s mission. And in the LGBT community, debunking those myths,” Barber said, referring to the widely held assumption that gay people are unwelcome. In 1989, a federal appeals court found evidence that the CIA routinely denied security clearances to gay people. “There was a history of discrimination against LGBT persons in the federal government,” Ballard said. “The process was extremely difficult for LGBT people to get security clearance prior to 1995."

The CIA already has an LGBT employees group with over 200 members.

Perkins Slams Petraeus

"Think about it. The man running our nation's top clandestine organization couldn't keep his own affair secret. And he's one of the best people we have in public service? If General Petraeus will compromise here, what's to say he won't or didn't compromise elsewhere? This idea that character doesn't matter runs completely counter to God's instructions for choosing leaders. Apart from what Scripture says, consider where a lack of moral standards in government has led. The breaches of integrity in Europe are almost epidemic--and look where those countries are: in complete economic, political, and spiritual turmoil. That didn't happen because the 'best people' were in charge. It happened because the truly good people didn't hold them accountable." - Hate group leader Tony Perkins, still pissed because Gen.  Patraeus backed the repeal of DADT.

Headline Of The Day

Details.

CIA Director Resigns Over Affair

CIA director and four-star former Army General David Petraeus resigned today, citing an extramarital affair. From his resignation letter:

Yesterday afternoon, I went to the White House and asked the President to be allowed, for personal reasons, to resign from my position as D/CIA. After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair. Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours. This afternoon, the President graciously accepted my resignation. As I depart Langley, I want you to know that it has been the greatest of privileges to have served with you, the officers of our Nation's Silent Service, a work force that is truly exceptional in every regard. Indeed, you did extraordinary work on a host of critical missions during my time as director, and I am deeply grateful to you for that.

RELATED: During the debate over the repeal of DADT, Petraeus said he doubted that rank-and-file "even care about DADT" or whether their fellow soldiers are gay or not.

ACLU's Memo To Bachmann

Crazy Eyes: ACLU Runs The CIA

From one of my favorite YouTube commenters.

WTF? OMG, LOL

The CIA has launched a new task force to investigate WikiLeaks.

The group will scour the released documents to survey damage caused by the disclosures. One of the most embarrassing revelations was that the US state department had drawn up a list of information it would like on key UN figures – it later emerged the CIA had asked for the information. "Officially, the panel is called the WikiLeaks Task Force. But at CIA headquarters, it's mainly known by its all-too-apt acronym: WTF," the Washington Post reported. WTF is more commonly associated with the Facebook and Twitter profiles of teenagers than secret agency committees. Given that its expanded version is usually an expression of extreme disbelief, perhaps the term is apt for the CIA's investigation.