Scott Shackford on How Torture Became Just Another Government Bureaucracy

The appendix
that concludes the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 499-page report
on the CIA’s “Detention and Interrogation Program” during the early
years of the Iraq War is a full accounting of the many “incorrect”
statements made by former National Security Agency and CIA Director
Michael Hayden to a Senate Committee during a single hearing in
2007.  For 37 pages the report measures the difference between
the things Hayden said to the Senate with the actual documentation
from the CIA itself.

According to the CIA’s own records, Hayden’s claims are simply
not true. As Scott Shackford notes from examining both the Senate’s
torture report and the CIA’s official response, despite the
eye-opening descriptions of the torture inflicted on CIA detainees,
much of the actual debate is similar to debates we see about other
government scandals—the perpetuation of the tools of bureaucracy,
and the power and control that comes with it. The CIA will no more
willingly surrender any tool or authority it has been given than
any other government agency and it will grasp at all available
arguments to protect its power.

View this article.