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The saving grace is that we have a country that was able to admit that it did this. For me, that's hope that we're still in a position to learn from our wrongs,

The saving grace is that we have a country that was able to admit that it did this. For me, that's hope that we're still in a position to learn from our wrongs, and that the checks-and-balances are still somewhat in-tact.

Spearchucker 12y ago
There is no "saving grace". Saying sorry afterwards doesn't do anything for those wronged. Admission doesn't take away pain, humiliation and fear.
- codyb 12y ago
  As you can see in the examples of China and Japan [0], a national apology can help ease tensions between peoples and countries and not apologizing can exacerbate already strained relations. Admitting wrong doing and offering solutions to prevent this from ever happening again are the first steps towards rebuilding what is undoubtedly going to be a much damaged world wide reputation. Even releasing this report was a step forward. [0] - http://www.tealeafnation.com/2012/12/has-japan-ever-apologized-to-china-for-its-wartime-aggression/ http://www.tealeafnation.com/2012/12/has-japan-ever-apologiz...
  - pluma 12y ago
    Necessary, but not sufficient.
tdees40 12y ago
Who has said sorry? Cheney? Bush? Rice? The people who put this system into place continue to defend it and have suffered no consequences.
- at-fates-hands 12y ago
  Before you get on your Liberal high horse, you might want to check yourself. Extraordinary Rendition began under Clinton: https://www.aclu.org/national-security/fact-sheet-extraordinary-rendition https://www.aclu.org/national-security/fact-sheet-extraordin... Beginning in the early 1990s and continuing to this day, the Central Intelligence Agency, together with other U.S. government agencies, has utilized an intelligence-gathering program involving the transfer of foreign nationals suspected of involvement in terrorism The current policy traces its roots to the administration of former President Bill Clinton. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, however, what had been a limited program expanded dramatically, Let me be perfectly clear when I say this. It shouldn't matter which party started this, ITS WRONG.
  - tormeh 12y ago
    Yeah, but right wing media says it's right.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > Yeah, but right wing media says it's right. Well, in the past they've said that. Mostly now, they seem to be more avoiding commenting on the substance at all, and just saying that its wrong to publish the report.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > Before you get on your Liberal high horse, you might want to check yourself. Extraordinary Rendition began under Clinton This is not about extraordinary rendition -- which certainly is an extremely disturbing practice, and by all accounts seems to have included instances where prisoners were tortured by other countries with the knowledge and at least tacit consent of the US in violation of US obligations under international law. This is about systematic torture directly executed by an agency of the United States government, under false pretenses, and while making damaging deceptions about the program to other entities within the US government. There is certainly an extent to which it fits in with a common pattern with extraordinary rendition, but its not the same thing.
    - at-fates-hands 12y ago
      >> There is certainly an extent to which it fits in with a common pattern with extraordinary rendition, but its not the same thing. You must have missed this part of my post: Let me be perfectly clear when I say this. It shouldn't matter which party started this, ITS WRONG. Sure glad all the downvoters actually read my ENTIRE post before they started getting trigger happy with their downvotes.
      - alexqgb 12y ago
        How do you know they didn't read the whole post? In other words, how do you know that you're not being downvoted for refusing to acknowledge the world of difference between black ops as practiced before and after 9/11 (or more precicely, before and after Vice President Dick Cheney said "it's time to take off the gloves")? That's what we're talking about here: the actual meaning of "gloves off". And no, this was categorically NOT something that started on Clinton's watch. It's started on Bush's watch, specifically at the direction of Cheney and his legal counsel David Addington, using legal justifications drafted by John Yoo. Bush, not Clinton, got it? And just so you're clear, this is not a defense of Democrats. After all, nobody has done more to forestall this report than the Democrat Barack Obama. In many ways, he's the worst offender here as it was his administration that elected to protect the people involved instead of punishing them, which serves to normalize something that absolutely should not be normalized. After all, the deepest institutional damage is done not by those who abuse their authority, but by those who allow the abusers to get away with it (see the systematic sexual abuse of children and the problems the Catholic Church caused itself by concealing it for another case in point). I should add that the Obama Administration's conduct would be slightly less galling if it weren't part of a pattern, but the fact that James Clapper suffered no consequence for lying to Congress about the NSA's constitutional violations means that this is bigger than the CIA. If you get to the root of it, it's really about the goddamn nightmare of a lawless and amoral security state given big budgets and free reign stemming from the insane over-reaction to 9/11 that has since been enshrined in the Patriot Act. That's the real heart of darkness here. Well, that and the cowering bedwetting chickenshits who don't support the whole "land of the free home of the brave" thing, and would rather hand the country to people like Cheney, Addington, Yoo, etc. and not think twice about the damage they're doing. And those people? The fear driven chickenshits? Overwhelmingly Republican. It's the FOX News demographic, essentially. (FOX News, not coincidentally, has been a big supporter of torture. Like Cheney, they consider it evidence of "toughness", not idiocy.)
bradleyjg 12y ago
We haven't apologized, we haven't made restitution, and we sure as heck haven't prosecuted the guilty (as required by the convention against torture). I'm struggling to see any saving grace.
- rdtsc 12y ago
  Good point, and we might even be in worse position if action is not taken. If there is lack of outrage, it will send a message up the chain that "this is not that bad, nobody really minded this much, let's use harsher techniques next time".
  - waterlesscloud 12y ago
    So here's an ethical question- If the report leads to no action, where is the good in releasing it? Real risk for real people has been created. It's not theoretical. Actual innocent people have been placed in danger. If there's no good coming from the report, was it worth placing those people in danger?
    - user24 12y ago
      Yes because it produced the opportunity to do good. At the time of publication it couldn't be known whether good would be done or not. You can't make moral judgements from a viewpoint that assumes knowledge of the future.
      - tripzilch 12y ago
        I don't disagree with your point, but: > You can't make moral judgements from a viewpoint that assumes knowledge of the future. Actually, you can. It's one of the main categories of normative ethics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_ethics#Normative_ethical_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_ethics#Normative_eth... "Consequentialism (Teleology) argues that the morality of an action is contingent on the action's outcome or result", this particular category includes one of the most famous theories of ethics, utilitarianism. Your problem with it is valid, however. As far as I've understood from my study of the subject matter, no ethical theory is perfect, not even utilitarianism. Check out the wiki page for the other categories. Personally I like virtue ethics, keeps me on my toes and critical. I wouldn't recommend it though, I'd prefer if the rest of the world was utilitarian :-P cough
dragonwriter 12y ago
> The saving grace is that we have a country that was able to admit that it did this. "The country" doesn't admit that "the country" did this. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence "admits" that the Central Intelligence Agency did this, while at the same time insulating everyone else -- even in the Executive Branch -- from involvement, based on "the CIA was lying to everyone, including the White House, who totally didn't mean for this to happen." > For me, that's hope that we're still in a position to learn from our wrongs, and that the checks-and-balances are still somewhat in-tact. Checks and balances aren't admitting after the fact that actions which meet the definition of torture and war crimes in both US domestic law and international law which the US has treaty-based obligations to uphold occurred (while, except for the "personal opinion" of the chair in the introduction, not actually admitting the legal conclusions demanded by those facts), checks-and-balances is actually imposing some accountability on the perpetrators of those crimes. AFAICT, there are no "checks-and-balances" in evidence yet.
- Spearchucker 12y ago
  "The country" doesn't admit that "the country" did this." And there's the problem. Imagine, if you will, that your son is taken against his will by say, Iran, because your son has ties to someone who threw a grenade that killed an Iranian. Your son is tortured in much the same way the report states. Do you care which committee didn't do a thing, or who voted for a thing, or lobbied another? You blame the country. The voting public, the non-voting public, their philosophies, culture, politicians, their military. They collectively represent the individuals who did that despicable stuff to your son. And it's what perpetuates the hate, the wars, the fear.
  - spuiszis 12y ago
    > Imagine, if you will, that your son is taken against his will by say, Iran, because your son has ties to someone who threw a grenade that killed an Iranian. Your son is tortured in much the same way the report states. It's much worse than that, we'll just flat out kill you with a drone strike, even if you're an American citizen[1][2]. [1]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/23/obama-anwar-al-awlaki-son_n_3141688.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/23/obama-anwar-al-awla... [2]UPDATE - found the better article: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/how-team-obama-justifies-the-killing-of-a-16-year-old-american/264028/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/how-team...
Someone1234 12y ago
Until the next 9/11 or Pearl Habour and then everyone just looks the other way for the next ten years. Japanese internment is still rarely talked about and in some states rarely taught in schools(!).
- mikeash 12y ago
  At least you'll find few people willing to defend Japanese internment in public, and public opinion is such that it's unlikely anything similar would happen again. Compare to this memo, where you have roughly half of the politically involved population of the country criticizing its release as if the memo itself is somehow reprehensible, and not saying one word about the activities it describes.
  - fleitz 12y ago
    In 40 years you'll find the same thing, that whatever is happening 'now' was deplorable, and that whatever is happening 40 years from now is 'freedom'.
    - mikeash 12y ago
      I don't doubt it.
- lotharbot 12y ago
  From what I understand (from talking to now very old Japanese-American men who were in the camps as young adults) it was unpleasant and caused significant hardship, but not even remotely similar to what's in this report. It's important to teach about what happened in those camps and to understand why they were wrong. Drawing inappropriate comparisons between those camps and the absolute atrocities in this report isn't helpful.
  - Someone1234 12y ago
    > Drawing inappropriate comparisons between those camps and the absolute atrocities in this report isn't helpful. Nobody did. I said that Americans looked the other way. Nothing more, nothing less. You're clearly reading more into what I said than what I actually said verbatim.
DanBC 12y ago
It took a long time for the torture to be officially recognised -- we've had a lot of denial until now. And even now there will be people who say that this was too much, but a little bit of torture is necessary. Just look at what people were saying a out water boarding - "it's not really torture". How many detainees are still held without trial?
- coldtea 12y ago
  >Just look at what people were saying a out water boarding - "it's not really torture". Let's put it this way: unless you're not horrified to have such a procedure happen to you, your wife, child, etc, it IS torture.
- thret 12y ago
  We'd be less likely to use interrogation methods that went too far if the officer in charge was subjected to the same methods concurrently. Then the officer would be in the correct position to judge what was reasonable and what was not. Like Jubal was talking about on Firefly. Jubal Early: You oughta be shot. Or stabbed, lose a leg. To be a surgeon, you know? Know what kind of pain you're dealing with. They make psychiatrists get psychoanalyzed before they can get certified, but they don't make a surgeon get cut on. That seem right to you?
Nelson69 12y ago
It's a step... It's worth something but it's not like there wasn't a ton of resistance to it. The question on my mind, were their CIA operatives that refused to comply with orders? Take the various police brutality cases, what's lost in the echochamber about it all is that these guys volunteer to be police, nobody is forced to, some of them want to carry guns, that really changes the situation a bit when an unarmed person ends up dead. The CIA has the same problem here, I know there are people in the CIA that "want to kick some terrorist ass." I'd feel better if there were some outspoken CIA operatives who were coming out saying that they refused to take part. If not, it's not just an ugly stain but the whole organization is broken, they have no respect for law..
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
  There were CIA officers that disagreed, protested, and withdrew from the situations. It's mentioned in the report.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    And if things like this become public without anyone being held accountable -- signalling public approval for the abuses -- that will happen less the next time.
- rasz_pl 12y ago
  Remember Abu Ghraib? there was only ONE guy not ok with what was happening. It usually takes only one man https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsFEV35tWsg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsFEV35tWsg in case of US concentration camps there also was one man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kiriakou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kiriakou he is still in prison, because ratting on your fellow men is against the law There usually are no 'good cops' either, because doing something in the face of evil marks you as a traitor
  - tptacek 12y ago
    The Kiriakou case is not that straightforward. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8726344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8726344
jdimov 12y ago
Hey, ISIS admits to beheading people. How is your country any better?
coldtea 12y ago
>The saving grace is that we have a country that was able to admit that it did this. It's mostly able to admit it because nothing will change, that is: such exposes are inconsequential. If those kind of reports could change things, they wouldn't happen at all. This would end with a few questions, some pats in the back, and business as usual.
im2w1l 12y ago
That's like a perfect example of selection bias. The programs you haven't heard about... well you haven't even heard about them.
tripzilch 12y ago
> The saving grace is that we have a country that was able to admit that it did this. Pft. You're not getting off that easy. The "saving grace" for Germany was going to international trial for the crimes committed, something the US actively refuses to do, AND hanging their heads in collective national shame for the atrocities they allowed happen in their name, scared shitless what a country is capable of when not kept in check by its people, fearing and strongly dismissing anything remotely reeking like nazism, even up to the point of partially giving up their own freedom of speech, ever since. I don't see the US doing anything similar any time soon. "It's our FREEDOMS! We must have our FREEDOMS!" Sorry I'm just really angry and sad.
- mcv 12y ago
  This. Admitting you did wrong is not enough; you're not really sorry if you don't make sure it can never happen again, if you don't try to make whatever repairs can be made, if you don't make sure the culprits end up in prison. I hope the US is truly sorry about this, but they will have to show how sorry they are. Words are not enough. Germany, has gone out of its way to punish the guilty, and to change their national culture, and imprint their new culture with the taboos necessary to ensure those atrocities can never happen again. No country in the history of the world has ever been so sorry as Germany, and their reaction to the shameful things they did deserves admiration and respect. If the US wants to deserve similar admiration and respect, they have to show it. They have to prove it, by putting all these people behind bars at the very least.

Spearchucker 12y ago

There is no "saving grace". Saying sorry afterwards doesn't do anything for those wronged. Admission doesn't take away pain, humiliation and fear.

codyb 12y ago
As you can see in the examples of China and Japan [0], a national apology can help ease tensions between peoples and countries and not apologizing can exacerbate already strained relations. Admitting wrong doing and offering solutions to prevent this from ever happening again are the first steps towards rebuilding what is undoubtedly going to be a much damaged world wide reputation. Even releasing this report was a step forward. [0] - http://www.tealeafnation.com/2012/12/has-japan-ever-apologized-to-china-for-its-wartime-aggression/ http://www.tealeafnation.com/2012/12/has-japan-ever-apologiz...
- pluma 12y ago
  Necessary, but not sufficient.

tdees40 12y ago

Who has said sorry? Cheney? Bush? Rice? The people who put this system into place continue to defend it and have suffered no consequences.

at-fates-hands 12y ago
Before you get on your Liberal high horse, you might want to check yourself. Extraordinary Rendition began under Clinton: https://www.aclu.org/national-security/fact-sheet-extraordinary-rendition https://www.aclu.org/national-security/fact-sheet-extraordin... Beginning in the early 1990s and continuing to this day, the Central Intelligence Agency, together with other U.S. government agencies, has utilized an intelligence-gathering program involving the transfer of foreign nationals suspected of involvement in terrorism The current policy traces its roots to the administration of former President Bill Clinton. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, however, what had been a limited program expanded dramatically, Let me be perfectly clear when I say this. It shouldn't matter which party started this, ITS WRONG.
- tormeh 12y ago
  Yeah, but right wing media says it's right.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > Yeah, but right wing media says it's right. Well, in the past they've said that. Mostly now, they seem to be more avoiding commenting on the substance at all, and just saying that its wrong to publish the report.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > Before you get on your Liberal high horse, you might want to check yourself. Extraordinary Rendition began under Clinton This is not about extraordinary rendition -- which certainly is an extremely disturbing practice, and by all accounts seems to have included instances where prisoners were tortured by other countries with the knowledge and at least tacit consent of the US in violation of US obligations under international law. This is about systematic torture directly executed by an agency of the United States government, under false pretenses, and while making damaging deceptions about the program to other entities within the US government. There is certainly an extent to which it fits in with a common pattern with extraordinary rendition, but its not the same thing.
  - at-fates-hands 12y ago
    >> There is certainly an extent to which it fits in with a common pattern with extraordinary rendition, but its not the same thing. You must have missed this part of my post: Let me be perfectly clear when I say this. It shouldn't matter which party started this, ITS WRONG. Sure glad all the downvoters actually read my ENTIRE post before they started getting trigger happy with their downvotes.
    - alexqgb 12y ago
      How do you know they didn't read the whole post? In other words, how do you know that you're not being downvoted for refusing to acknowledge the world of difference between black ops as practiced before and after 9/11 (or more precicely, before and after Vice President Dick Cheney said "it's time to take off the gloves")? That's what we're talking about here: the actual meaning of "gloves off". And no, this was categorically NOT something that started on Clinton's watch. It's started on Bush's watch, specifically at the direction of Cheney and his legal counsel David Addington, using legal justifications drafted by John Yoo. Bush, not Clinton, got it? And just so you're clear, this is not a defense of Democrats. After all, nobody has done more to forestall this report than the Democrat Barack Obama. In many ways, he's the worst offender here as it was his administration that elected to protect the people involved instead of punishing them, which serves to normalize something that absolutely should not be normalized. After all, the deepest institutional damage is done not by those who abuse their authority, but by those who allow the abusers to get away with it (see the systematic sexual abuse of children and the problems the Catholic Church caused itself by concealing it for another case in point). I should add that the Obama Administration's conduct would be slightly less galling if it weren't part of a pattern, but the fact that James Clapper suffered no consequence for lying to Congress about the NSA's constitutional violations means that this is bigger than the CIA. If you get to the root of it, it's really about the goddamn nightmare of a lawless and amoral security state given big budgets and free reign stemming from the insane over-reaction to 9/11 that has since been enshrined in the Patriot Act. That's the real heart of darkness here. Well, that and the cowering bedwetting chickenshits who don't support the whole "land of the free home of the brave" thing, and would rather hand the country to people like Cheney, Addington, Yoo, etc. and not think twice about the damage they're doing. And those people? The fear driven chickenshits? Overwhelmingly Republican. It's the FOX News demographic, essentially. (FOX News, not coincidentally, has been a big supporter of torture. Like Cheney, they consider it evidence of "toughness", not idiocy.)

bradleyjg 12y ago

We haven't apologized, we haven't made restitution, and we sure as heck haven't prosecuted the guilty (as required by the convention against torture). I'm struggling to see any saving grace.

rdtsc 12y ago
Good point, and we might even be in worse position if action is not taken. If there is lack of outrage, it will send a message up the chain that "this is not that bad, nobody really minded this much, let's use harsher techniques next time".
- waterlesscloud 12y ago
  So here's an ethical question- If the report leads to no action, where is the good in releasing it? Real risk for real people has been created. It's not theoretical. Actual innocent people have been placed in danger. If there's no good coming from the report, was it worth placing those people in danger?
  - user24 12y ago
    Yes because it produced the opportunity to do good. At the time of publication it couldn't be known whether good would be done or not. You can't make moral judgements from a viewpoint that assumes knowledge of the future.
    - tripzilch 12y ago
      I don't disagree with your point, but: > You can't make moral judgements from a viewpoint that assumes knowledge of the future. Actually, you can. It's one of the main categories of normative ethics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_ethics#Normative_ethical_theories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normative_ethics#Normative_eth... "Consequentialism (Teleology) argues that the morality of an action is contingent on the action's outcome or result", this particular category includes one of the most famous theories of ethics, utilitarianism. Your problem with it is valid, however. As far as I've understood from my study of the subject matter, no ethical theory is perfect, not even utilitarianism. Check out the wiki page for the other categories. Personally I like virtue ethics, keeps me on my toes and critical. I wouldn't recommend it though, I'd prefer if the rest of the world was utilitarian :-P cough

dragonwriter 12y ago

> The saving grace is that we have a country that was able to admit that it did this. "The country" doesn't admit that "the country" did this. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence "admits" that the Central Intelligence Agency did this, while at the same time insulating everyone else -- even in the Executive Branch -- from involvement, based on "the CIA was lying to everyone, including the White House, who totally didn't mean for this to happen." > For me, that's hope that we're still in a position to learn from our wrongs, and that the checks-and-balances are still somewhat in-tact. Checks and balances aren't admitting after the fact that actions which meet the definition of torture and war crimes in both US domestic law and international law which the US has treaty-based obligations to uphold occurred (while, except for the "personal opinion" of the chair in the introduction, not actually admitting the legal conclusions demanded by those facts), checks-and-balances is actually imposing some accountability on the perpetrators of those crimes. AFAICT, there are no "checks-and-balances" in evidence yet.

Spearchucker 12y ago
"The country" doesn't admit that "the country" did this." And there's the problem. Imagine, if you will, that your son is taken against his will by say, Iran, because your son has ties to someone who threw a grenade that killed an Iranian. Your son is tortured in much the same way the report states. Do you care which committee didn't do a thing, or who voted for a thing, or lobbied another? You blame the country. The voting public, the non-voting public, their philosophies, culture, politicians, their military. They collectively represent the individuals who did that despicable stuff to your son. And it's what perpetuates the hate, the wars, the fear.
- spuiszis 12y ago
  > Imagine, if you will, that your son is taken against his will by say, Iran, because your son has ties to someone who threw a grenade that killed an Iranian. Your son is tortured in much the same way the report states. It's much worse than that, we'll just flat out kill you with a drone strike, even if you're an American citizen[1][2]. [1]http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/23/obama-anwar-al-awlaki-son_n_3141688.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/23/obama-anwar-al-awla... [2]UPDATE - found the better article: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/how-team-obama-justifies-the-killing-of-a-16-year-old-american/264028/ http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/10/how-team...

Someone1234 12y ago

Until the next 9/11 or Pearl Habour and then everyone just looks the other way for the next ten years. Japanese internment is still rarely talked about and in some states rarely taught in schools(!).

mikeash 12y ago
At least you'll find few people willing to defend Japanese internment in public, and public opinion is such that it's unlikely anything similar would happen again. Compare to this memo, where you have roughly half of the politically involved population of the country criticizing its release as if the memo itself is somehow reprehensible, and not saying one word about the activities it describes.
- fleitz 12y ago
  In 40 years you'll find the same thing, that whatever is happening 'now' was deplorable, and that whatever is happening 40 years from now is 'freedom'.
  - mikeash 12y ago
    I don't doubt it.
lotharbot 12y ago
From what I understand (from talking to now very old Japanese-American men who were in the camps as young adults) it was unpleasant and caused significant hardship, but not even remotely similar to what's in this report. It's important to teach about what happened in those camps and to understand why they were wrong. Drawing inappropriate comparisons between those camps and the absolute atrocities in this report isn't helpful.
- Someone1234 12y ago
  > Drawing inappropriate comparisons between those camps and the absolute atrocities in this report isn't helpful. Nobody did. I said that Americans looked the other way. Nothing more, nothing less. You're clearly reading more into what I said than what I actually said verbatim.

DanBC 12y ago

It took a long time for the torture to be officially recognised -- we've had a lot of denial until now. And even now there will be people who say that this was too much, but a little bit of torture is necessary. Just look at what people were saying a out water boarding - "it's not really torture". How many detainees are still held without trial?

coldtea 12y ago
>Just look at what people were saying a out water boarding - "it's not really torture". Let's put it this way: unless you're not horrified to have such a procedure happen to you, your wife, child, etc, it IS torture.
thret 12y ago
We'd be less likely to use interrogation methods that went too far if the officer in charge was subjected to the same methods concurrently. Then the officer would be in the correct position to judge what was reasonable and what was not. Like Jubal was talking about on Firefly. Jubal Early: You oughta be shot. Or stabbed, lose a leg. To be a surgeon, you know? Know what kind of pain you're dealing with. They make psychiatrists get psychoanalyzed before they can get certified, but they don't make a surgeon get cut on. That seem right to you?

Nelson69 12y ago

It's a step... It's worth something but it's not like there wasn't a ton of resistance to it. The question on my mind, were their CIA operatives that refused to comply with orders? Take the various police brutality cases, what's lost in the echochamber about it all is that these guys volunteer to be police, nobody is forced to, some of them want to carry guns, that really changes the situation a bit when an unarmed person ends up dead. The CIA has the same problem here, I know there are people in the CIA that "want to kick some terrorist ass." I'd feel better if there were some outspoken CIA operatives who were coming out saying that they refused to take part. If not, it's not just an ugly stain but the whole organization is broken, they have no respect for law..

waterlesscloud 12y ago
There were CIA officers that disagreed, protested, and withdrew from the situations. It's mentioned in the report.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  And if things like this become public without anyone being held accountable -- signalling public approval for the abuses -- that will happen less the next time.
rasz_pl 12y ago
Remember Abu Ghraib? there was only ONE guy not ok with what was happening. It usually takes only one man https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsFEV35tWsg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsFEV35tWsg in case of US concentration camps there also was one man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kiriakou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kiriakou he is still in prison, because ratting on your fellow men is against the law There usually are no 'good cops' either, because doing something in the face of evil marks you as a traitor
- tptacek 12y ago
  The Kiriakou case is not that straightforward. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8726344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8726344

jdimov 12y ago

Hey, ISIS admits to beheading people. How is your country any better?

coldtea 12y ago

>The saving grace is that we have a country that was able to admit that it did this. It's mostly able to admit it because nothing will change, that is: such exposes are inconsequential. If those kind of reports could change things, they wouldn't happen at all. This would end with a few questions, some pats in the back, and business as usual.

im2w1l 12y ago

That's like a perfect example of selection bias. The programs you haven't heard about... well you haven't even heard about them.

tripzilch 12y ago

> The saving grace is that we have a country that was able to admit that it did this. Pft. You're not getting off that easy. The "saving grace" for Germany was going to international trial for the crimes committed, something the US actively refuses to do, AND hanging their heads in collective national shame for the atrocities they allowed happen in their name, scared shitless what a country is capable of when not kept in check by its people, fearing and strongly dismissing anything remotely reeking like nazism, even up to the point of partially giving up their own freedom of speech, ever since. I don't see the US doing anything similar any time soon. "It's our FREEDOMS! We must have our FREEDOMS!" Sorry I'm just really angry and sad.

mcv 12y ago
This. Admitting you did wrong is not enough; you're not really sorry if you don't make sure it can never happen again, if you don't try to make whatever repairs can be made, if you don't make sure the culprits end up in prison. I hope the US is truly sorry about this, but they will have to show how sorry they are. Words are not enough. Germany, has gone out of its way to punish the guilty, and to change their national culture, and imprint their new culture with the taboos necessary to ensure those atrocities can never happen again. No country in the history of the world has ever been so sorry as Germany, and their reaction to the shameful things they did deserves admiration and respect. If the US wants to deserve similar admiration and respect, they have to show it. They have to prove it, by putting all these people behind bars at the very least.