US embassies around the world are bracing for violence as the Obama administration is set to release a 500-page report on interrogation techniques used by the CIA to get intelligence from terrorists following the attacks on 9/11.
If I were an American traveling in a Muslim country today, I would find a very deep hole to hide in and ride out the storm of protests and attacks that is sure to follow this report’s release. That’s because the people who dance in the streets when an American gets his head lopped off by their co-religionists are going to throw a tantrum over depriving a terrorist of sleep.
To be sure, this report is no Pentagon Papers, which were stolen and then published by the New York Times. The report is based on a much larger 6,000 page classified study. The similarity between the two is that the authors never expected their work to see the light of day.
Despite the threat board blinking red all over the world, the report is going to be released anyway. And Republicans are up in arms about it.
Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Jim Risch, R-Idaho, spoke out in a statement Monday after lawmakers and Obama administration officials warned that releasing the report could lead to a backlash against Americans around the world.
Rubio and Risch called the choice to release the report a “partisan effort” by Democrats on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, saying the report is not “serious or constructive.”
“We are concerned that this release could endanger the lives of Americans overseas, jeopardize U.S. relations with foreign partners, potentially incite violence, create political problems for our allies, and be used as a recruitment tool for our enemies,” the senators said. “Simply put, this release is reckless and irresponsible.”
The lawmakers spoke out as alleged new details of the report, which is expected to be released Tuesday, began to emerge. The 480-page report, a summary of a still-classified 6,000 page study, amounts to the first public accounting of the CIA’s alleged use of torture on suspected Al Qaeda detainees held in secret facilities in Europe and Asia in the years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Reuters reported Monday night that the report contains graphic details about the techniques, including sexual threats made to detainees.
According to Reuters, the report describes how at least one detainee was threatened in a sexual manner with a broomstick. In another example, Reuters reported, a detained Al Qaeda operative was threatened with a buzzing power drill.
U.S. officials who have read the report say it includes disturbing new details about the CIA’s use of such techniques as sleep deprivation, confinement in small spaces, humiliation and the simulated drowning process known as waterboarding.
A former CIA officer told Fox News Monday that the agency’s techniques led to helpful intelligence. The former officer noted that once accused Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s will was broken, he generated more than 2,000 intelligence reports.
In addition, three former CIA officers from the program told Fox News that they believe the Senate report seeks to minimize intelligence that led the U.S. to Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti– Usama bin Laden’s trusted courier.
Another former officer told Fox News that the CIA was encouraged by lawmakers “to do whatever it takes” to prevent another attack on the scale of Sept. 2001. The former officer said that Hill leadership was briefed more than three dozen times before the program was shuttered.
So some of the very same Democrats who will bemoan what’s in this report sat in a committee room and listened to some of the details of the interrogations without saying a word.
Is threatening sodomy with a broomstick and threatening to use a power drill on a terrorist the same as actually using the broomstick and power drill? The fact that our enemies wouldn’t hesitate to use either torture technique — and with great glee — is apparently lost in translation.
I’m sure there’s a good reason to risk American lives and the damage to our international standing by releasing this report. I just can’t think of one at the moment. Has there been a domestic outcry from all sides to get this report out? Haven’t heard it. Is there an international crisis that will improve with the publication of this report? Can’t think of one.
Will it make President Obama a hero to the rabid dog left? Well…there’s that, of course.
This sort of self-flagellation is good for us, we are instructed. It is absolutely imperative that the American people be told of what their government does in secret to terrorists, we are lectured.
But why the excruciating detail? I suppose the nature of torture makes it necessary to fill in some blanks, but why the PR campaign in advance of publication?
If laws were broken — domestic or international — the perpetrators should be tried in an American court and sent to jail if found guilty. But why the public secret spilling? We keep hearing that we can try terrorists in civil court because our legal system can adopt to the secret nature of much of the evidence against them. We can’t do the same for American citizens charged with torturing prisoners?
There is no good or compelling reason to release this report now, if at all. I question the motives of those on the left who seek to air our dirty laundry and who piously proclaim they’re only seeking the truth. If it is truth you seek, read the Bible, or the Koran, or the Hindu Bhagavad Gita. The human, transient truth regarding actions the United States took after the horrific attacks of 9/11 is far more complicated and deserves more consideration than those who want this report released because it will lay America low in the world and justify their hatred of their own country.
If one American dies because of this report’s release, their blood will be on the hands of the Obama administration and their supporters who would sacrifice innocent lives in service to their political agenda.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member