First of all the facts:

• They “waterboarded” the prisoners until they passed out.
• They subjected them to sleep deprivation.
  

  waterboarding

• They chained them standing to a wall for days on end.
• They forced food and water up their rectums.
• They dragged them and beat them around the prisons.

These are some of the methods that the US Senate committee – headed by Senator Feinstein – has “revealed” were carried out by the CIA. And yet, the report is a whitewash. 

According to the report, all this was done under the watch of former President George Bush and former Secretary of State Colin Powell without their knowledge. That is nonsense. Stories of such torture were circulating publicly at that time. Bush and Powell knew perfectly well what was happening.

Gul Rahman.
This prisoner froze to death while chained to a cold wall for days.

The report focuses its criticism on the claim that these torture methods “were not successful” – whether they got valuable information that prevented “American deaths.” (Deaths of others don’t matter, you see.) Defenders of these torture methods claim that they did. But consider this: The capitalists criticize Marxism with the (false) criticism that we believe that “the ends justifies the means.” But it is exactly this approach that they accept! They are the ones who believe that the ends justify the means. (We believe that the means help determine the ends.)

Where are they now?

And there is one more little detail that the report leaves out: What happened to these torturers? Where are they now? How many went on to become cops or prison guards in the United States?

If foreign policy is the extension of domestic policy, then tactics used in foreign policy wil

Solitary confinement –
A form of psychological torture.

l ultimately be used domestically. And that is exactly the case. What is solitary confinement? What is forced feeding? And what is the wave of p0lice brutality and murder, especially (but not only) against black and Latino people? What is it but the domestic application of these torture methods used by the US military and the CIA?

Doing the same at home.

Feinstein’s hypocrisy

And there is one more little detail: Feinstein is willing to reveal some of the torture methods that took place under the watch of the Republicans. But how about the torture methods carried out every day by the Israeli regime? That is ignored.