A Senate panel rejects Bush's secret interrogations

[babylonsister]

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/23181

A Senate panel rejects Bush's secret interrogations
Submitted by davidswanson on Fri, 2007-06-01 11:39. Congress

As administration lawyers scramble to find a new legal underpinning for "tough" interrogation techniques, the Senate Intelligence Committee slams a once-secret CIA program and its methods.
By Mark Benjamin

The Senate Intelligence Committee has signaled to the White House that an infamously abusive secret CIA program to interrogate high-level al-Qaida types may have to be scrapped, given "the damage the program does to the image of the United States abroad." It is a stinging rejection of a program that President Bush late last year called "one of the most successful intelligence efforts in American history" and comes as administration lawyers are reportedly crafting new, secret rules to govern it.

The rebuke to the White House was delivered in written comments that were passed by the committee last week and released Thursday to accompany the annual bill authorizing intelligence activities. Military intelligence experts and human rights advocates have already slammed the abusive techniques purportedly employed by the CIA -- sleep deprivation, stress positions, slapping, induced hypothermia and simulated drowning, or "waterboarding" -- for producing unreliable intelligence from subjects who will say anything to make the pain stop. Now the senators on the intelligence panel, which has direct oversight over the CIA, seem to agree, according to the testy language passed last week. "The Committee believes," wrote the senators, "that consideration should be given to whether it is the best means to obtain a full and reliable intelligence debriefing of a detainee."

This skeptical view comes months after Bush endorsed the "tough" techniques as particularly effective in a Sept. 6 White House press conference, during which he also revealed the existence of the previously secret CIA program. And the Intelligence Committee said in these new comments that the skepticism might have come much earlier, if only the White House hadn't kept all the panel members except the chair and the ranking minority member in the dark for the past five years. "The administration's decision to withhold the program's existence from the full committee membership for five years was unfortunate in that it unnecessarily hindered congressional oversight of the program."

more...

[Dhalgren]

1. Somebody, somewhere had to stand up and say, "No",

I mean besides us nobodies who have been saying, "No" for years. Let's see what the Dictator does with this. He will probably ignore them, as long as he gets his funding for more torture - that's pure wood to him...

[blueworld]

2. Bi-partisan = butter each other's butt?

If the other members of the Committee didn't have the full information, why have they been so nasty, snide & vicious about defending these techniques against all criticism? This is obviously the start of the CYA for 2008 campaign.

I find it disgusting that they honestly believe that publicly stating that they fight like partisan pigs for their fuhrer without adequate information is preferable to shredding the Geneva Conventions.

Is there an MSM journalist that has the fortitude to challenge them on this? Why is the choice always between evil & idiocy? Exactly how much of this pure crap is the American citizen stupid enough to swallow?:nopity: