{"id":172681,"date":"2015-08-13T16:11:32","date_gmt":"2015-08-13T16:11:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=172681"},"modified":"2015-08-13T16:11:32","modified_gmt":"2015-08-13T16:11:32","slug":"lets-talk-torture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/lets-talk-torture\/","title":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s Talk About Torture"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The CIA\u2019s torture-era leadership won\u2019t repent. Even after the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released its report saying in no uncertain terms that the CIA had tortured its prisoners, that torture was official U.S. government policy, and that torture never elicited any actionable intelligence that saved American lives, Bush-era CIA Directors George Tenet, Porter Goss, Michael Hayden, and several of their underlings announced plans to release a <a href=\"https:\/\/firstlook.org\/theintercept\/2015\/08\/05\/new-campaign-rebut-torture-allegations-undermined-former-official-admits-obvious\/\">book justifying torture<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>They intend to repeat a lie over and over again in this book: that torture worked. They hope that the American people are either so gullible or so stupid that they\u2019ll believe it. It\u2019s up to the rest of us to ensure that our government swears off committing this crime against humanity.<\/p>\n<p>I know that these former intelligence leaders are lying because I worked with them at the CIA. When I blew the whistle on the CIA\u2019s torture program in 2007, they came down on me like a ton of bricks.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not necessarily news that these former CIA heavyweights believe in torture, even if they refuse to call it what it is. Many television news outlets still run clips of George Tenet\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/news\/george-tenet-in-2007-we-dont-torture-people\/\">2007 appearance<\/a> on CBS\u2019s \u201c60 Minutes\u201d in which he repeats \u201cWe do not torture! We do not torture!\u201d as though he were unhinged and living in a dream world. Perhaps what Tenet needs to do is to read the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hrweb.org\/legal\/cat.html\">United Nations Convention on Torture<\/a>, to which the United States\u00a0is a signatory.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"pullquote\">It\u2019s plain and simple: The CIA tortured its prisoners. They can call it anything they want. It\u2019s still torture.<\/span>This global accord says that torture is \u201cany act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining\u2026information or a confession, punishing him for an act\u2026or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or when such pain or suffering is inflicted by\u2026a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.commondreams.org\/views\/2015\/08\/13\/lets-talk-about-torture\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The CIA\u2019s torture-era leadership won\u2019t repent. Even after the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released its report saying in no uncertain terms that the CIA had tortured its prisoners, that torture was official U.S. government policy, and that torture never elicited any actionable intelligence that saved American lives, Bush-era CIA Directors George Tenet, Porter Goss, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-172681","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}