The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) carried out brutal torture sessions on suspected al Qaeda prisoners in the years following the 9/11 attacks on the US.  The methods employed were illegal under US and international law, and certainly barbaric and evil by any measure.

The US Senate Intelligence Committee released the 5000-page summary of a 6,000-page report – the larger document was not made public, and parts of the “brief” were redacted, despite hopes of full disclosure.  But that which was revealed shows an out-of-control torture state that even disgusted some of its own agents – at least the ones that weren’t continually lying to their superiors or to civilian leadership.

The CIA sure seemed to like do butt stuff.  Agents threatened to sodomize prisoners with plunger handles.  Some prisoners were subjected to “rectal hydration”, others to something called “rectal feeding” which sounds like it came out of a Hieronymus Bosch triptych.  Apparently, it involves pureeing food and sending up the wrong way.  There were no medical reasons to perform these heinous acts.  One was given a rectal exam with such excessive force that he was later diagnosed with anal fissures, chronic hemorrhoids and “symptomatic rectal prolapse”.  Some of the CIA’s torturers were known sex offenders.

Afghani prisoner Gul Rahman died after being chained naked to a concrete floor for a length of time.  No one was held responsible.  The CIA liked to keep prisoners cold and wet, and deprived them of sleep for literally hundreds of hours, even past the point when the prisoners started hallucinating.  Of course, there were crude beatings, lack of toilet facilities, chainings to walls, and the usual stuff going back to the Spanish Inquisition.

“The release of this 500-page summary cannot remove that stain, but it can and does say to our people and the world that America is big enough to admit when it’s wrong and confident enough to learn from its mistakes,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein, outgoing chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee.  “Under any common meaning of the term, CIA detainees were torture.”

A very important point in the report is that despite all of this, the US gained not one advantage in the so-called “war on terror”.  It’s confirmed that torture did not lead to any intelligence that led to the killing of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden by US Commandos.  The program wasn’t working, and the CIA knew it wasn’t working – as revealed by what could be the most telling sentence of the entire report:

“CIA officers regularly called into question whether the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques were effective, assessing that the use of the techniques failed to elicit detainee cooperation or produce accurate intelligence.”

Even if it did work (it didn’t), it’s still wrong. 

The report also revealed ineptitude within the program.  The CIA tortured its own informants in the rush to gather up prisoners to torture.  Two men who contacted the CIA to provide information to get the bad guys were rewarded by being chained and beaten by American thugs.  Some were tortured without being given the chance to cooperate; others were tortured after they had already given the CIA information. 

At least 26 of the 119 known prisoners were wrongfully detained – they weren’t terrorists and the CIA knew it.  One was described as an “intellectually challenged” man who was held “solely as leverage to get a family member to provide information”.

Back when he ran for President, Barack Obama campaigned against torture.  After he came into office, he ordered an end to the practice.  But despite renewed debate over who should be held responsible for these crimes, the US Justice Department says it will not re-open a criminal investigation of the CIA’s documented illegal abuse of detainees in the “war on terror”.