Recently released summary of a 6000-page long report compiled by the Democratic Party members of the US Senate Intelligence Committee says CIA carried out brutal interrogations of Al Qaeda suspects under its Rendition, Detention and Interrogation programme during George W Bush's presidency. Some of the suspects were subjected to repeated water boarding (which causes near drowning), sleep deprivation, stress positions, freezing temperatures, and slapping- all tactics causing severe physical and psychological harm. At times, the techniques "brought even agency employees to moments of anguish." Announcing the report, Senate Intelligence committee chairperson Diane Weinstein called the practices by its correct name, 'torture'- something the US and its Western allies thus far had refrained from. Much about CIA's use of these torture techniques is already known; but this is the first time Washington has acknowledged doing things that were wrong.
According to the report, the CIA's management of the programme was "far more brutal than the agency represented to policy makers and the American public." As regards the then policy makers little would have changed even if they knew everything. It is worthwhile to recall that after water boarding became a subject of public controversy, Dick Cheney, vice president under Bush, dismissed this most horrific torture technique as a "mere dunk in the water." Even now, in utter disregard for international law, the Senate Republican leaders are justifying prisoner torture, insisting that the methods had helped in the capture of important suspects leading to the killing of Bin Laden. The report, however, found that resort to coercive force achieved nothing. The CIA records thoroughly reviewed by the report's authors describe in great details how the information the agency identified as "the most critical or the most valuable" on bin Laden courier, al-Kuwaiti, that helped track down bin laden himself "was not related to the use of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques." Actionable information came from one detainee's address book and another's laptop. As a matter of fact, prisoners under torture are often times known to say things their torturers want to hear. Unsurprisingly, CIA's dehumanising torture tactics failed to elicit useful information.
This report's findings show how important it is for governments to keep a check on the activities of their intelligence agencies. For ultimately, they have to deal with the fallout of bad decisions. As President Obama noted "these techniques did significant damage to America's standing in the world and made it harder to pursue our interest with allies and partners." From the perspective of the people in this part of the world, CIA's prisoner torture has exposed the West's hypocritical espousal of human rights. The brutal methods, said to have been stopped in 2007, have handed violent extremists an excuse to rationalise their causes and recruit foot soldiers. That said, Washington's willingness, as Feinstein put it, "to face the ugly truth" should help mitigate some of the damage done by illegal and immoral use of coercive interrogation methods.
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