by David Isenberg Undoubtedly, there are many aspects of the just-released summary of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program that can and should be pondered. But, having written on the national U.S. defense and national security sector’s use of private contractors for over twenty years,
by Paul R. Pillar The nation’s current attempt at catharsis through a gargantuan report prepared by the Democratic staff of a Senate committee exhibits some familiar patterns. Most of them involve treating a government agency as if it were Dorian Gray’s portrait, which can take on all the hideous marks of our own transgressions while we
by Robert E. Hunter Finally, someone in the US government has followed through on President Barack Obama’s judgment that CIA-conducted and “-outsourced” torture—let’s call it by its common name—is “not who we are” as a nation. Finally, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has given us a (still heavily-redacted) account of what the CIA did
by Jim Lobe Tuesday’s release by the Senate Intelligence Committee of its long-awaited report on the torture by the CIA of detainees in the so-called “war on terror” does not go far enough, according to major U.S. human rights groups. While welcoming the report’s release, the subject of months of intensive and sometimes furious negotiations
By Jamshed Malakzai
Jamshed Malakzai writes for Killid, an independent Afghan media group in partnership with IPS. By distributing the testimonies of survivors of war through print and radio, Killid strives for greater public awareness about people’s hopes and claims for justice, reconciliation and peace across Afghanistan.
In April 1987, Afghanistan ratified the UN Convention against Torture. [...]
By Suhaila Weda Khamoosh and Ali Arash
Suhaila Weda Khamoosh and Ali Arash write for Killid, an independent Afghan media group in partnership with IPS. By distributing the testimonies of survivors of war crimes through print and radio, Killid strives for greater public awareness about people’s hopes and claims for justice, reconciliation and peace across Afghanistan. In [...]
On January 11th, 11 years to the day after the Bush administration opened itsnotorious prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow’s deeply flawed movie about the hunt for Osama bin Laden, opens nationwide. The filmmakers and distributors are evidently ignorant of [...]
via Lobe Log
Justice is a fiction in much of the Persian Gulf. Nowhere is this truer than in Bahrain, a place where torture and state terror have become the norm. The country’s political elites talk frequently about freedom and the need for legal and political order. The reality, however, is that Bahrain’s judicial [...]
via Lobe Log
In the wake of President Obama’s decisive election victory, we’ve seen a fair amount of commentary about how it demonstrates the powerlessness, or spinelessness, of the anti-war left. Some of this commentary (like this piece by Jason Brennan) comes from libertarians and anti-interventionists who are genuinely concerned about Obama’s [...]
via Think Progress
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) today released their “Torture Database”website, making over 100,000 pages of government documents on the George W. Bush administration’s interrogation policies, primarily obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests by the ACLU, searchable by the general public.
Alexander Abdo, a Staff Attorney with the [...]
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