Torture methods didn’t work: U.S. intelligence report

The U.S. Senate intelligence committee has released a report detailing brutal interrogation techniques on terrorist suspects after 9/11. The report’s central conclusion: the torture methods didn’t work.

The 500-page report is a summary of over 6 million documents from the CIA outlining a number of brutal interrogation techniques on Al Qaeda members and other terrorist suspects following September 11, 2001.

This is the first public accounting of torture methods the CIA used including sleep deprivation, confinement in small spaces, sexual threats, simulated drowning known as waterboarding, rectal feeding and making at least one man stand on his broken legs.

In preparation of a worldwide outcry over the Senate’s summary, 2,000 U.S. Marines are on high alert around the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean Sea. They are preparing to deal with potential threats and will provide additional security to U.S. embassies.

This is a very controversial report and the chair of the intelligence committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein says the public had the right to know regardless of the potential threats it poses.

“There are those who will seize upon the report and say ‘see what the Americans did?’ And they will try to use it to justify evil actions, or incite more violence. We can’t prevent that, but, history will judge us by our commitment to a just society, governed by law, and the willingness to face an ugly truth and say ‘never again’.”

The declassified summary of the committee’s work discloses for the first time a complete roster of all 119 prisoners held in CIA custody in Europe and Asia. At least 26 were held because of mistaken identities or bad intelligence.

Then-President George W Bush authorized the CIA’s rendition, detention and interrogation program after the 9/11 attacks. However Bush stopped many aspects of the program before leaving office.

“We’re fortunate enough to have men and women who work hard at the CIA serving on our behalf. These are patriots and whatever the report says, if it diminishes their contribution to our country it is way off base.”

The senate investigation took five years.

White House response