Apologist for the CIA were out in full force since our last episode. We’ve clipped their labored justifications & break them down point by point. Plus the critical president Obama is silently setting for future administrations.
It’s been a bad week for Russia & our local correspondent discusses the tragic events in Sydney Australia, then we wrap the show with a little good news.
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— Show Notes —
CIA Torture Report
‘Rectal Hydration’: Inside the CIA’s Interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
Along with the waterboarding, Mohammed was subjected to days of standing sleep deprivation, slapping and “stress positions,” the report says. And it says that several times he underwent an emergency medical procedure known as “rectal rehydration,” or proctolysis
The report matter-of-factly notes that such** treatment was “medically unnecessary” for Mohammed**, whom it describes as having been doused with, submerged in or force-fed water hundreds of times. After one session, the medical officer present reported that Mohammed’s gastric contents were “so diluted by water” that Mohammed was in danger of water intoxication. The medical officer later wrote that “in the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”
**”It’s almost never done,” **he wrote to the NewsHour in an email. “There are so many easier and more effective ways to hydrate or feed a patient.”
Thomas Burke, an emergency doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital who teaches at Harvard Medical School echoed that in an interview with the Washington Post.
“For all practical purposes, it’s never used,” Burke said. “No one in the United States is hydrating anybody through their rectum. Nobody is feeding anybody through their rectum. … That’s not a normal practice.”
Contrary to some claims, this is not a medical procedure, nor was it ever approved by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel as an authorized interrogation technique. On December 10, 2014, the New York-based Physicians for Human Rights stated that “Contrary to the CIA’s assertions, there is no clinical indication to use rectal rehydration and feeding over oral or intravenous administration of fluids and nutrients.”
Dick Cheney’s Tortured Appearance On ‘Meet The Press’ Should Be His Public Swan Song
Torture is “an American citizen on his cellphone making a last call to his four young daughters shortly before he burns to death in the upper levels of the Trade Center in New York on 9/11.”
Cheney would be right were he to pose this as an example rather than the defining metric when seeking to determine an act of torture. The horrendous, unthinkable experience referred to by Cheney is, unquestionably, one example of inflicting torture—and a pretty good example of horrific torture at that—but hardly the sole method that Cheney insisted on pretending to be the case.
Yet, each time Cheney was asked for a more realistic and more encompassing definition of torture that would rationally go beyond any one particular example, he continuously returned to the experiences of our lost countrymen on 9-11. This seemed, in the mind of Dick Cheney, to be the only standard to be applied when determining if our interrogation methods may have exceeded the legal bounds imposed by the Geneva Convention for the treatment of detainees.
At a point, it became more than clear that Cheney had pre-planned this “non-answer” for his appearance, thinking it to be very clever.
By pretending that only a horrible infliction of agony similar to what was heaped on the victims of 9-11 would rise to a level that could be termed torture, the Vice-President was simply sending a coded message to his supporters to remind them that, given what the bad guys did to us, there was nothing too horrible that we could do to them—Geneva Convention be damned.
U.S. Sen. Rockefeller helps release CIA report; torture practice
On Dec. 8, the outgoing senator spoke on the floor after the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released the Executive Summary of its Study on the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program. The redacted summary was released after the Intelligence Committee voted in April 2014 to declassify the summary and after negotiations among the Committee, the White House, and the CIA.
News
Sony Just Canceled The Pre mire Of ‘The Interview’
Sony Pictures has decided to cancel the Dec. 25 release of “The Interview” after major theaters said they wouldn’t screen the movie.
“We have decided not to move forward with the planned December 25 theatrical release of ‘The Interview,'” the company said in a statement.
Sony dropped its plan to release the film after the four largest theater chains in the United States — Regal Entertainment, AMC Theaters, Cinemark and Carmike Cinemas — and several smaller chains said they would not show the film. The cancellations virtually killed “The Interview” as a theatrical enterprise, at least in the near term, one of the first known instances of a threat from another nation pre-empting the release of a movie.
The duo has withdrawn from previously scheduled press appearances, including Rogen’s Thursday appearance on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” and an interview with both of them on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” on Wednesday, leading up to “The Interview’s” Christmas Day release. They were also booked for an appearance on Buzzfeed Brews in New York on Tuesday.
U.S. Links North Korea to Sony Hacking
American intelligence officials have concluded that the North Korean government was “centrally involved” in the recent attacks on Sony Pictures’s computers, a determination reached just as Sony on Wednesday canceled its release of the comedy, which is based on a plot to assassinate Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader.
Senior administration officials, who would not speak on the record about the intelligence findings, said the White House was still debating whether to publicly accuse North Korea of what amounts to a cyberterrorism campaign.
Kerry speaks of lifting Russia sanctions if Putin makes the right decisions
Russia has made constructive moves in recent days towards reducing tensions in Ukraine, US Secretary of State John Kerry said yesterday (16 December), and he raised the possibility that Washington could lift sanctions if Moscow keeps taking positive steps.
Speaking in London, Kerry said the United States and Europe could lift sanctions within days or weeks if President Vladimir Putin keeps taking steps to ease tensions and lives up to commitments under ceasefire accords to end the Ukraine conflict.
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“These sanctions could be lifted in a matter of weeks or days, depending on the choices that President Putin takes,” Kerry told reporters.
“Their sole purpose here is to restore the international norm with respect to behavior between nations,” to ensure respect for borders, sovereignty and rights, he said.
Russia imposes steep interest rate hike as ruble plummets
The fear was sparked by the plummeting ruble, which has dropped 17 percent against the dollar in two days despite a dead-of-night decision Tuesday by the Russian central bank to impose a steep interest-rate hike to stem the currency losses.
GOP rep attempted late bid to kill spy bill | TheHill
One of the biggest thorns in the side of the country’s intelligence agencies attempted to mount an eleventh hour bid to kill the spy agencies’ funding bill on Wednesday.
Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) wrote on Facebook that the intelligence authorization bill that easily passed through the House contained “one of the most egregious sections of law I’ve encountered during my time as a representative.”
“It grants the executive branch virtually unlimited access to the communications of every American,” explained Amash, who has a record of skepticism toward the National Security Agency and other agencies. Last year, he nearly succeeded in an attempt to end the NSA’s controversial phone records program.
That type of collection is currently allowed under an executive order that dates back to former President Reagan, but the new stamp of approval from Congress was troubling, Amash said. Limits on the government’s ability to retain information in the provision did not satisfy the Michigan Republican.
Despite Amash’s late attempt,** the bill easily passed, 325-100**.
The bill passed the Senate earlier this week and is now on its way to President Obama.
Bush, Cheney, Hayden, Rodriguez & Yoo on Sunday talk shows. It's not where they should be appearing. #TortureReport pic.twitter.com/mG7Ze4XbwJ
— Col. Morris Davis (@ColMorrisDavis) December 14, 2014
Russia has invited North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to attend a May ceremony marking the end of World War Two, in what would be Kim’s first foreign visit since taking the helm of the reclusive state in 2011, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun daily said on Wednesday.
An American force has fought its actual first battle against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria “ISIS” organization during a counter-attack that was carried out by tribal forces
and other force of the Iraqi army near Ein al-Asad base, west of Anbar, in an attempt to remove them from the base of which includes about 100 US adviser in it.
A field commander of the Iraqi Army in Anbar province, said that “the US force equipped with light and medium weapons, supported by fighter force model” F-18 “, was able to inflict casualties against fighters of ISIS organization, and forced them to retreat from the al-Dolab area, which lies 10 kilometers from Ain al-Assad base .
US troops have entered with its Iraqi partner, according to Colonel , Salam Nazim in line against ISIS elements and clashed with them for more than two hours, to succeed in removing them from al-Dolab area, and causing losses in their ranks, at a time American fighter jets directed several strikes focused on ISIS gatherings that silenced their heavy sources of fire. “He points out that the clashes took place between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. on Sunday night.
Canisters packed with poisonous varieties of scorpion are being blasted into towns and villages, which explode on impact – scattering the scorpions and causing panic among the innocent local population.
High Note
Tacoma to close medical marijuana collectives
All medical marijuana collectives in Tacoma could soon have to shut down.
City leaders addressed plans last week to send out letters to cease operations as early as January, as they are not licensed under Initiative 502. Both business owners and patients are now expressing concerns.
Medical marijuana wins but marijuana legalization loses in congressional spending deal
The spending bill passed by Congress on December 14 includes a provision that prevents the Department of Justice, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, from interfering with states’ medical marijuana laws.
The provision applies to 32 states and Washington, DC, which allow the use of marijuana or a marijuana-based compound, such as the non-psychoactive CBD, for medical purposes.
Teen marijuana use falls as more states legalize – The Washington Post
Teen alcohol and drug use — including marijuana use — was down across the board in 2014.
That’s the big take-home from the 2014 Monitoring the Future study by the University of Michigan and the National Institutes on Drug Abuse, which was released Tuesday morning. The MTF is an annual survey of 40,000 8th-graders, 10th-graders and 12th-graders. It’s notable both for its size and for the fact that it was conducted this past spring, in the midst of a nationwide conversation about drug reform in the run-up to the midterm elections
