Why Won’t Senator Feinstein Call Torture Torture?

[Sam1]

By: Barry Eisler Wednesday March 12, 2014 7:18 am at Firedog Lake



Senator Diane Feinstein

There’s been a lot of great commentary already about the brouhaha between the Senate and the CIA regarding Senator Dianne Feinstein’s allegations that the CIA has, in essence, spied on the activities of the Senate’s intelligence oversight committee. I just want to add a few thoughts.

First, it’s fair to wonder why the Senate is calling its own inquiry a report on the CIA’s “detention and interrogation program.” Feinstein herself acknowledges her staff members have been “wading through the horrible details of a CIA program that never, never, never should have existed.” A horrible program that should never existed? Does that sound like detention and interrogation… or like torture and imprisonment

http://my.firedoglake.com/barryeisler/2014/03/11/why-wont-senator-feinstein-call-torture-torture/

[grasswire]

1. a warning from the comments section

"Yet, might we not be well past semantic evasion, beyond what has been called a ‘turf-spat’, in essence, beyond even the “notion” of explaining away criminal behavior as mere … “policy difference”?

Are we, all of us, we citizens of the US, not at the long-brewing, indeed long-boiling, “point” of being unable to pretend that a full-blown Constitutional crisis is not coming to full-flower?

What we see (beyond what we are “permitted” to see) is not new, it is more of the same … this “divide” has been long in the building, since the use of atomic weaponry … “9-11″ (“and everything changed …”) merely “permitted” its blatant acceleration, this “security state” of US power, absolute, above all else …

Are we perplexed that the power and greed should be brought to “the Homeland”?

Is it possible that, far less important than what the political class does, in its apparent “divide”, between the Executive and Legislative “branches” (the Judicial branch may counted upon to surrender to the Executive, one imagines, recalling, as well, that the DoJ is an “arm” of the Executive, as are the CIA and the NSA … at least, so we are told …), is what “the people” understand about what IS occurring, what IS being “done”, as well as what WAS and HAS been done … in their name, in the name of the people, in our names, in your name and my name?

Even now, how many citizens, how many people, living in the USA, perceive the implications of this moment, or even apprehend the moment itself?

If the rest of us are not merely along for the ride, then what the many unde'rstand, what they share AS understanding, and what role they may find they are called to rise to … or fall to, has to be understood as very important … to any future or society we might have. Or have left.

Recommended.

DW

[Jefferson23]

2. Where is John Yoo from the OLC? David Addington, Dick Cheney, the Shrub, Rumsfeld..am

I expected to believe there is no paper trail to these bastards beyond what was previously
known? They gave cover to the physicians too..the whole enterprise was something out
of the dark ages.

[bemildred]

3. Torture is illegal? nt

[jsr]

4. Recommend

[Solly Mack]

5. K&R