• Home
• /
• Letters

Troublesome report

The world community was provided an insight into the ugly side of the CIA’s interrogation methods that were hitherto kept under wraps, at least officially.

Although the CIA’s abusive and inhuman interrogation methods were a public knowledge prior to recent shocking revelations, what has surprisingly graduated into reality — to the consternation of torture cheerleaders — is the definitive documentary shape that the CIA’s mistreatment of prisoners has acquired. This has obviously rattled America’s freewheeling and nihilistic intelligence fraternity, which on occasion more than once gave the impression that its conduct on the ground was unquestionable.

The damning Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s brutal interrogation techniques has not only battered the reputation of America’s intelligence community, with recriminations swirling around in Washington from critics and supporters alike, it has also raised some serious questions about the complicity of some foreign intelligence agencies, which were — overtly or covertly — either party to, or privy to, the CIA’s coerced confessions from suspected terrorists.

The report, so aptly dubbed “CIA’s torture report”, is surprisingly released at a time when the Obama administration is preoccupied with unexpected military campaigns against the ISIS et al. The scathing report has seemingly materialized at a very inopportune time for America’s political and military establishment.

While President Obama has taken a somewhat ambivalent and evasive stand on the report; he has, nevertheless, tried to be on the side of the CIA, describing intelligence officials as “patriots”.

Surprisingly, however, Senator John McCain, a Republican presidential hopeful in 2008, contrary to Obama’s position, appears to be more forthright and candid, when he says, “I dispute wholeheartedly that it was right for them (CIA) to use these methods”.

As America continues to wrestle with the aftermath of the Senate’s report, some among Republicans — past and present — have unabashedly demonstrated the ostrich syndrome, with prevarications, denials and bellicosity characterizing the stand taken by some critics.

Former US Vice-president, Dick Cheney, the architect of America’s recent wars, appears to be at his vicious best, when he characterizes the Senate’s report as “crap”.

Displaying colossal hubris and smug demeanor that was so characteristic of his style of functioning, the former Vice-president says he doesn’t have qualms to “do it again, in a minute”.