Inside the CIA's torture chambers

*** SOCIALIST PROGRESSIVES GROUP POST ***

December 11, 2014

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney (Eric Draper)George W. Bush and Dick Cheney (Eric Draper)

"THIS GOVERNMENT does not torture people." Turns out that George W. Bush's indignant pronouncement in 2007 was a bald-faced lie ...

... Likewise, despite his promise as a candidate that "If I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in cover-ups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our constitution is nobody above the law," Barack Obama has refused to take action against the torturers ...

...In response to the Senate torture report, calls for the prosecution of those who engaged in torture are growing internationally. Ben Emmerson, the UN's special rapporteur on counterterrorism and human rights, told the Associated Press that the report shows "there was a clear policy orchestrated at a high level within the Bush administration, which allowed [it] to commit systematic crimes and gross violations of international human rights law...The fact that the policies revealed in this report were authorized at a high level within the U.S. government provides no excuse whatsoever. Indeed, it reinforces the need for criminal accountability."

But such accountability is unlikely. The Obama administration is fundamentally committed to the same project as the Bush administration--pursuing a failed "war on terror" and projecting U.S. power around the globe--so there will be no justice for those whose lives were destroyed by U.S. torturers.

Much more here: http://socialistworker.org/2014/12/11/inside-the-cias-torture-chambers