Senate Intelligence Committee / CommonDreams.org Photo
The images that emerged from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq sparked a movement against torture that has worked doggedly for many years now. Among those moved to action have been people of faith, religious people, who see torture as a moral issue. As one of those people who has written op-eds, letters to members of Congress and the administration in the White House, attended rallies/protests, and met with Congressional staffers, I wondered whether a group of committed religious people could have a real impact. Today, with the announcement by the Senate Intelligence Committee that they had voted to declassify their summary of what is being called a “CIA Torture Report,” the answer is finally “maybe.”
Infamous Prisoner on Leash Photo - Courtesy of WikiPedia and Creative Commons
Most people around the world and in the United States were outraged by the horrible conditions leaked through photos of torture and other depravity at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The powers that be would have had us believe that what took place there didn’t represent U.S. policy towards prisoners, but was instead caused by a bunch of rogue low-level servicemembers who had not been properly trained or supervised.
Whether the treatment at Abu Ghraib represented U.S. policy or not, the world now knows that “enhanced interrogation techniques” employed by the United States and its agents included what most experts would conclusively label as torture. Sadly, while admitting that our country did, in fact, commit acts that were beyond the pale, some still claim that the ends justified the means, that we gained important and actionable intelligence that prevented terrorist actions and resulted in the capture of known terrorists, including Osama Bin Laden. If statements on and off the record from people familiar with the report are accurate, claims that “enhanced interrogation” resulted in making us any safer are at best overstated and at worst flat-out false.
The legislative and judicial branches of our government are supposed to provide checks and balances on the executive branch but during the Bush/Cheney era, little was done concerning the issue of torture. When President Obama was elected some hoped that he might shed light on what his predecessor had done, but instead President Obama said that he wanted to look forward, not backward.
The National Religious Campaign Against Torture has been working for years on this issue and my congregation, First Presbyterian Church of Palo Alto, and a nonprofit on which I serve as a steering committee member, Multifaith Voices for Peace and Justice, have made this issue a top priority. Banners can be found on churches, synagogues, and mosques around the country that say “Torture is A Moral Issue.” Tens of thousands of Americans have been working on this for years and one of our goals was to have the legislative branch do its job and investigate what actually happened.
The Senate Intelligence Committee began an investigation in 2009 which they concluded in 2012 with a 6,200 page report. That report was next sent to the White House and the CIA for review. Since then we have been working on encouraging the committee to release a declassified summary of the report. Today, the Senate Intelligence Committee had a bipartisan vote to do just that.
Senator Feinstein released the following statement through her web site:
The Senate Intelligence Committee this afternoon voted to declassify the 480-page executive summary as well as 20 findings and conclusions of the majority’s five-year study of the CIA Detention and Interrogation Program, which involved more than 100 detainees.
The purpose of this review was to uncover the facts behind this secret program, and the results were shocking. The report exposes brutality that stands in stark contrast to our values as a nation. It chronicles a stain on our history that must never again be allowed to happen.
This is not what Americans do.
The report also points to major problems with CIA’s management of this program and its interactions with the White House, other parts of the executive branch and Congress. This is also deeply troubling and shows why oversight of intelligence agencies in a democratic nation is so important.
The release of this summary and conclusions in the near future shows that this nation admits its errors, as painful as they may be, and seeks to learn from them. It is now abundantly clear that, in an effort to prevent further terrorist attacks after 9/11 and bring those responsible to justice, the CIA made serious mistakes that haunt us to this day. We are acknowledging those mistakes, and we have a continuing responsibility to make sure nothing like this ever occurs again.”
Now our mission continues. We need to pressure the White House to quickly approve the release of the declassified version of the committee’s summary of the report. Click here to contact President Obama. Beyond shedding light on the past, we need to take steps as Senator Feinstein said in today’s statement, to make sure that such things never happen again. The ball would be back in her court, to craft legislation and get it through Congress. So the ball would be back in our court, to get Congress to do its job.
Quick Note: While I was in the midst of writing this post a sweet man and his young son came into our shop to invite us to be part of a Half Moon Bay peace parade at the end of May. He’s a Catholic Worker who, along with his wife, has been working for social justice and peace for a lifetime, with his personal preference being to use radical hospitality and kindness to get things done. Kinda neat timing, don’t you think?
Can letters, emails, faxes, protests, prayer vigils, peace parades and other actions taken by people of faith, along with folks who don’t need a particular faith, help bring about a more peaceful, hospitable, and just world? Yeah, they can. Let’s get back to work.
Abu Ghraib is not the only incident that happened in Iraq as horrible and unforgiveable evidence that happened. From the start, the invasion of a sovereign country cannot be justified with the flimsy evidences that the US presented at the United Nation. Just as an ordinary person living in this country, I did not support the US in its war drum. All I could do was pray, demonstrate against any war and at times cry for the many lives that would be destroyed. If one investigates thoroughly, there were many lives that were unjustly destroyed. Some of the killings and mayhem was instigated by individual soldiers. I just read one of the soldiers who committed suicide in the US prison. This guy who is called Green liked to rape a fourteen years old Iraqi girl, and with his buddies went to her house, gang raped the girl, killed her father, mother, brother and at the end of raped killed the girl and tried to blame insurgents for their crime. This and other crimes like this is the reason I hate war. But the masterminds Bush and Cheney never accepted any responsibility and they were never made to accept the consequences. There were times in life that I thought in government decisions, misunderstanding, strong emotions and hatred may have played in creating wars. Now, my beliefs are different. If the US see it is to its advantage economically and politically, it would create some kind of propaganda to justify going to war. But if a change in a situation is not economically or politically advantageous the US will pretend to be blind. I observed this reality just in the situation of Syria and Crimea verses Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia. I have no doubt, with present line of policy, there will be more countries that would share the fate of Iraq.
I thought I posted this comment here before I posted it to my Facebook Wall, but somehow it didn’t show.
An important report on the moral & legal justification of torture.
Now there is a great need to submit a request to President Obama at http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact to make the recent Senate Intelligence Committee Executive Summary Report on Torture as well as 20 findings and conclusions of the majority’s five-year study of the CIA Detention and Interrogation Program available to all citizens of our world and make it clear that torture is not a legitimate or moral Governmental option.
Dear Mr. Weisner,
I applaud you and the involvement of your church in issues of torture. However I would love to see faith communities get far more involved in the torture that goes on right here in California: That of indefinite solitary confinement in the security housing units (SHU) for decades. Human beings are warehoused, kept idle and without rehabilitation (despite the “R” in CDCR), human contact, access to the outdoors/nature, in a suppressive, repressive, punishing system that has little penological value and serves only the financial self-interest of the state Corrections department.
If good people on the outside are truly concerned about human rights and social justice, let’s focus on families and loved ones right here in our state. I live in the East Bay and am not only a human rights activist with California Families Against Solitary Confinement (CFASC) but also have a loved one inside. These men are not “the worst of the worst” as portrayed; people of faith would be amazed at the love, compassion, goodness, self-motivation, and generosity that these men inside generate despite being held in inhumane conditions for years and decades.
It is a violation of constitutional and human rights, and international human rights. If you would like more information or if I may be of service, please do not hesitate to call on me or anyone in CFASC. our website is http://www.abolishsolitary.com
Thank you for your time.