3 ms·

If the question is "who benefits", there's an easy answer for that. The senate just published a 500 page report detailing the lies that were told by the CIA in

If the question is "who benefits", there's an easy answer for that. The senate just published a 500 page report detailing the lies that were told by the CIA in order to promote torture. The actual report was 4500 pages. It certainly also helps the democrats look good on national defense, but I don't think that's really a root cause of the lie, just a happy accident.

joshuapants 11y ago
So the beneficiary is the CIA and the benefit itself is that they still get to torture people? That doesn't seem like a very big benefit. edit: I should make it clear that I think Hersh's story is interesting and I really wish other journalists would focus more on the story than on trying to assassinate his character. I just don't know if permission to torture is a high enough prize to justify a cover up, especially since they could easily just torture people anyway and scrub the evidence if they're willing to resort to subterfuge.
- sroerick 11y ago
  Tell that to the CIA. Diane Fienstein accused them of committing crimes in order to suppress the torture report.[0] A little lying about how Osama was killed seems pretty innocuous next to that, doesn't it? Military operations are routinely "framed" in a light that makes for the most positive PR spin. See the Jessica Lynch story for a good example of this. [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/opinion/the-cia-torture-cover-up.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/opinion/the-cia-torture-co...
  - joshuapants 11y ago
    > Military operations are routinely "framed" in a light that makes for the most positive PR spin. That definitely makes more sense to me than trying to keep torture in the toolbox. Looks much better as an all-American raid than a canned hunt where the Pakistanis already had him. Even with the Feinstein thing, it seems more like any cover up was more about public perception than anything else.

joshuapants 11y ago

So the beneficiary is the CIA and the benefit itself is that they still get to torture people? That doesn't seem like a very big benefit. edit: I should make it clear that I think Hersh's story is interesting and I really wish other journalists would focus more on the story than on trying to assassinate his character. I just don't know if permission to torture is a high enough prize to justify a cover up, especially since they could easily just torture people anyway and scrub the evidence if they're willing to resort to subterfuge.

sroerick 11y ago
Tell that to the CIA. Diane Fienstein accused them of committing crimes in order to suppress the torture report.[0] A little lying about how Osama was killed seems pretty innocuous next to that, doesn't it? Military operations are routinely "framed" in a light that makes for the most positive PR spin. See the Jessica Lynch story for a good example of this. [0] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/opinion/the-cia-torture-cover-up.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/12/opinion/the-cia-torture-co...
- joshuapants 11y ago
  > Military operations are routinely "framed" in a light that makes for the most positive PR spin. That definitely makes more sense to me than trying to keep torture in the toolbox. Looks much better as an all-American raid than a canned hunt where the Pakistanis already had him. Even with the Feinstein thing, it seems more like any cover up was more about public perception than anything else.