CIA’s Torture and Abuse: America’s Shame! – By Melvin Goodman (Counterpunch) / Feb 23, 2024
The legacy of the CIA’s torture and abuse program continues to obstruct the Guantanamo trials of those responsible for the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000; the 9/11 bombings in 2001; and the nightclub bombing in Indonesia in 2002. The various defendants were subjected to waterboarding in CIA secret prisons; painful shackling; and solitary confinement in darkened dungeon-like conditions for years. The CIA has classified the relevant documentation to avoid embarrassment and not to protect legitimate secrets. Moreover, there was never any accountability for the key individuals involved in these shameful acts.
John Yoo and Jay Bybee: Yoo was assigned to the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice and Bybee was the assistant attorney general. They were most responsible for a series of torture memoranda between 2002 and 2005. These memoranda approved the techniques of “enhanced interrogation” and claimed to determine the legal limits for the torture of detainees. They make for excruciating reading. The CIA ignored the limits from day one.
The torture measures were used in the systematic abuse of detainees at Guantanamo Bay detention camp beginning in 2002 and at the Abu Ghraib facility following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. These actions have been considered war crimes by other former members of the Bush administration.
The DoJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility recommended that Yoo be referred to his state bar association for disciplinary proceedings, but a senior DoJ lawyer concluded that Yoo and Bybee merely exercised “poor judgment,” and that the department lacked a clear standard to conclude misconduct.
CONTINUE > https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/02/23/cias-torture-and-abuse-americas-shame/
