SchwartzReport: 20 Key Findings on CIA Torture — Should President Fire DNI, USDI, and D/CIA?

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Terrorism, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, Officers Call
Stephan A. Schwartz
Stephan A. Schwartz

20 key findings about CIA interrogations

Almost 13 years after the CIA established secret prisons to hold and interrogate detainees, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report on the CIA’s programs listing 20 key findings. Click a statement below for a summary of the findings:

1 “not an effective means of acquiring intelligence” 2 “rested on inaccurate claims of their effectiveness”  3 “brutal and far worse than the CIA represented”  4 “conditions of confinement for CIA detainees were harsher”  5 “repeatedly provided inaccurate information”  6 “actively avoided or impeded congressional oversight”  7 “impeded effective White House oversight”  8 “complicated, and in some cases impeded, the national security missions”  9 “impeded oversight by the CIA’s Office of Inspector General”  10 “coordinated the release of classified information to the media”  11 “unprepared as it began operating”  12 “deeply flawed throughout the program's duration”  13 “overwhelmingly outsourced operations”  14 “coercive interrogation techniques that had not been approved”  15 “did not conduct a comprehensive or accurate accounting of the number of individuals it detained”  16 “failed to adequately evaluate the effectiveness”  17 “rarely reprimanded or held personnel accountable”  18 “ignored numerous internal critiques, criticisms, and objections”  19 “inherently unsustainable”  20 “damaged the United States' standing in the world”

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Mel Goodman: CIA Directors’ High Crimes

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Terrorism, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War
Melvin A. Goodman
Melvin A. Goodman

The CIA’s Operation Deception

A Spurious Challenge to the Senate Torture Report

CounterPunch, 10 December 2014

CIA director John Brennan, having failed to block the release of the Senate intelligence committee’s report on torture and abuse, is now abetting the efforts of former CIA directors and deputy directors to rebut the report’s conclusions that the interrogation techniques amounted to sadism and that senior CIA officials lied to the White House, the Congress, and the Department of Justice about the effectiveness of the enhanced interrogation program.  Former CIA directors George Tenet and Michael Hayden and deputy directors John McLaughlin and Steve Kappes, who were guilty of past deceit on sensitive issues, have threatened to make documents available to undermine the findings of the Senate committee.  The senior operations officer who ran the CIA’s torture and abuse program, Jose Rodriquez, has been permitted to write a book and a long essay in the Washington Post that argue the interrogation techniques were legal and effective.  Their charges are completely spurious and their credibility is non-existent. Read more.

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Steven Aftergood: CIA Torture Report – Oversight, But No Remedies Yet — With Strong PBI Comment

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Terrorism, 11 Society, Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, Officers Call
Steven Aftergood
Steven Aftergood

CIA Torture Report: Oversight, But No Remedies Yet

The release of the executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA’s post-9/11 interrogation program is, among other things, an epic act of record preservation. Numerous CIA records that might not have been disclosed for decades, or ever, were rescued from oblivion by the Senate report and are now indelibly cited and quoted, even if many of them are not yet released in full. That’s not a small thing, since the history of the CIA interrogation program was not a story that the Agency was motivated or equipped to tell. Read more.

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Berto Jongman: War on Syria – War on China — What Obama’s Child Diplomats and Child Analysts Don’t Understand…

02 China, 02 Diplomacy, 03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, Government, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War
Berto Jongman
Berto Jongman

By removing Assad, Obama may be declaring war on China

EXTRACT

President Obama continues to operate with large blind spots when it comes to Chinese interests, risking strategic misjudgment according to Professor Zhen Wang of the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at Seton Hall University. Wang argues this is not surprising given the Obama administration’s China policy suffers from a rather incompetent China team, “including senior positions in the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon, [that] are currently being held by ‘young people’ who don’t have long-term experience in dealing with China policy…many of whom are not even China experts.”

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Eagle: Max Boot on Ten Lessons for Counterinsurgency

03 Economy, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military
300 Million Talons...
300 Million Talons…

More Small Wars: Counterinsurgency Is Here to Stay

Max Boot

Foreign Affairs, November/December 2014

Since Washington doesn’t have the luxury of simply avoiding insurgencies, then, the best strategy would be to fight them better. Drawn from more than a decade of war, here are ten lessons for how to do so, which U.S. policymakers, soldiers, diplomats, and spies should keep in mind as they try to deal with the chaotic conflicts to come.

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ANSWERS to Spanish Dancer on CIA and SOF Replacing Conventional Forces

Answers, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military
Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

My Masters is focused on Strategic Studies and International Security and my thesis is about the relevance of the black-ops (paramilitary) to the detriment of the conventional military operations in America´s foreign policy. Basically I argue (due to literature that I´ve been revising for more than a year) that it is a fact that since the 1980s the importance of the special forces when it comes to convey important missions has been increased drastically and paramilitary operations are used more and more. I came to the conclusion that operations are carried out nowadays (specially in Syria, Iraq and overall around the Machrek) by the Special Forces units of the USSOCOM  but with the support of the CIA (where CIA agents also engage in armed actions).

Dancer,

It is not possible to understand the American way of war or spying without understanding that money is the central factor in deciding what we do and what we buy and what we spend — including lives. Here are three key points:

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