“The waterboarding technique was physically harmful, inducing convulsions and vomiting. Abu Zubaydah, for example, became "completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth.' Sleep deprivation involved keeping detainees awake for up to 180 hours, usually standing or in stress positions, at times with their hands shackled above their heads. At least five detainees experienced disturbing hallucinations during prolonged sleep deprivation and, in at least two of those cases, the CIA nonetheless continued the sleep deprivation.”

No, this isn’t a passage from a dystopian novel about a degraded totalitarian society: in fact, it’s much worse. It’s from page 3 of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the use of torture by the CIA following the attacks on September of 2001. Titled “Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program”, it vividly details the  brutal interrogation tactics used by the CIA on 119 suspected terrorists. Paddling through the report is both mortifying and taxing: the report is some 500 pages long, a fraction of what the Senate intended to release. Within the report contains blatant human rights violations the United States have historically condemned countries like Afghanistan, China, Iran and Germany for. Ironically, these countries have relayed their own criticism against us amidst the report, and rightfully so.

While many would agree these acts were heinous and terribly immoral, there are of course the devils advocates: right-wing blowhards like conservative talk show giant Rush Limbaugh, fair-and-balanced op-ed network Fox News, and none other than former Vice President Dick Cheney are among those who have come out against the report. The Right’s narrative is that the torture is a necessary remedy for squeezing vital information out of terrorists. They also go on to claim that the report is “an ideologically motivated and distorted recounting of historical events.”, and that the report is, as Cheney puts it, “full of crap”. Even constitutionally illiterate Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia joins the bandwagon and comes to claim that, despite the condemnation of cruel and unusual punishment in the Eighth Amendment, torture isn’t on the prohibition list in the Constitution. Some Republicans have even gone on to say that the methods detailed in the report shouldn’t even be classified as torture. While it’s important to look at the feedback from the report on all sides, there’s a few major problems with these criticisms: a) the methods were more brutal than critics realize, b) the use of enhanced torture was inconclusive and against CIA precedence, and c) torture fundamentally violates American values. Republicans are getting the torture reports all wrong, and it’s time to clear some of the fog before it begins to thicken.
 

Firstly: it seems to me as if the people trivializing the use of enhanced interrogation are the same people who neglected to read a word of the report. Rush Limbaugh has already spent some decent amount of time on his show to issue some good-ole emotional appeal for 9/11 families in spite of the report: “You know what torture is to me?  Torture is trying to go to sleep every night with pictures in your head that your wife, your husband, your son, your daughter jumped from a top floor at the World Trade Center to his or her death rather than burn alive. That's torture.” I can’t help but wonder how Mr. Limbaugh would feel about the conditions of the word “torture” after being fed his food through his own rectum. Page 100 of the report notes that agents fed humus through an unreported tactic called “rectal feeding”, even causing some physical damage to a few of the detainees respected areas. Page 19 discusses Abu Hudhaifa, who was “subjected to ice water baths and 66 hours of standing sleep deprivation before being released because the CIA discovered he was likely not the person believed to be the…” (p16)
 

Not “tortury” enough? The report also details a set of adopted military interrogation techniques named SWIGERT to use on detainees. These techniques include: “(1) the attention grasp, (2) walling, (3) facial hold, (4) facial slap, (5) cramped confinement, (6) wall standing, (7) stress positions, (8) sleep deprivation, (9) waterboard, (10) use of diapers, (11) use of insects, and (12) mock burial.” (p32) To put the cherry on top: the CIA also allowed for detainees to die of hypothermia, threatened detainees children and families for “leverage”,(p4), and even threatened to sexually assault the mother of a detainee. It seems to me that the CIA’s techniques are the epitome Merriam-Websters definition of torture: “the act of causing severe physical pain as a form of punishment or as a way to force someone to do or say something.”

Secondly: the torture was inconclusive and violated CIA precedence. It’s especially vital to note that the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation barely managed to produce any valuable intelligence.
 

The report says that according to CIA records, 7 out of the 39 known CIA agents subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques produced “no intelligence while in CIA custody”. (p9) Additionally, most of the intelligence that was actually deemed useful was obtained either before the enhanced interrogation or without the techniques at all. The use of torture by the CIA produced massively insignificant results (which explains the fact that the CIA didn’t brief President Bush about the results until 2006.) In fact, almost a quarter of the detainees shouldn’t have even been there in the first place. 26 out of the 119 (22%) CIA detainees identified in the study did not meet the standard for MON detainment (p 16).
 

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the CIA’s attempt at extracting information about 9/11 by force ultimately failed. The CIA has known this for  years: in 1989, the CIA informed the Committee that “inhumane physical or psychological techniques are counterproductive because they do not produce intelligence and will probably result in false answers.” Testimony of the CIA deputy director of operations in 1988 denounced coercive interrogation techniques, stating “physical abuse or other degrading treatment was rejected not only because it is wrong, but because it has historically proven to be ineffective.” By 2001, the CIA had also included anti-torture protocol in their Operations Handbook that stated the CIA does not engage in “human rights violations”, which it defined as: “Torture, cruel, inhuman, degrading treatment or punishment, or prolonged detention without charges or trial.” (p 18) How much more evidence of the counterproductivity of torture do you need? The same agency that conducted the torture has historically condemned it! The fact that using torture as an interrogation technique was against CIA protocol and that it was ineffective entirely refutes the Right’s “but we needed to get information from the terrorists!” narrative, because it displays that there’s no correlation between counterterrorism and torturing people who are suspected to be terrorists.
 

Thirdly and finally: Above all, it doesn’t matter if torture works, has worked, or will ever work; it doesn’t matter the degree of torture detailed in the report, and it certainly doesn’t matter if the CIA thinks it’s okay or not. The United States has set a precedent for democratic principles. We’ve got historical documents directly administering human rights such as liberty, freedom, and fair trials under the law. As as a leading nation, we’ve joined coalitions like the United Nations in chastising human rights abuses all over the world from Iran’s own militaristic interrogation practices to Uganda’s anti-gay government; regardless of political intention, we’ve stood up to big players like Russia and China for corrupting citizens right to information and democratic abilities. For decades, the United States has championed itself as the role model for fair and equal treatment under our justice system and government. We are leaders in the international community.

Even if you don’t think that we provide equal treatment to everyone, or that there are severe inequalities and hypocrisy we enable (hence the CIA report about how we tortured the accused the sometimes innocent), that doesn’t excuse the precedent for fairness we’ve set nor the equality we still try to attain. Andrea Tantaros at Fox News even came to eloquently summarize the report  by saying “The United States of America is awesome, we are awesome.” Yes, Andrea. We are “awesome”. And an awesome country doesn’t torture accused terrorists who have not had an actual trial for their supposed crimes. Senator John McCain, a victim of torture himself during his time in the military, said “This question isn’t about our enemies; it’s about us. It’s about who we were, who we are and who we aspire to be. It’s about how we represent ourselves to the world.” For the rest of McCain’s fellow Republican colleagues to condone the use of torture is unwise and ignores the high ground our country must be obligated to take; we have a moral obligation to correct institutional ills, and look forward from outdated practices and techniques that violate our principal foundation, not to mention other people’s human rights.
 

As one might expect, the tragedies that took place 13 years ago struck fear into the hearts of not only the American people, but the American government as well: following the attacks, President Bush and Congress hastily assembled the interrogation program for the CIA to use on suspected terrorists with little to no guidelines under which to go about the process. Understandably, they wanted answers, and they wanted them fast. However, this does not excuse what we did: we held over a hundred people on US soil, many of whom had no business being held in the first place, and ineffectively interrogated them. We violated some people, even killed a couple. These suspected criminals had never seen a day in court, and had no business being punished for something they hadn’t been proven guilty of in the first place. As a nation, we have to move forward from these practices. That being said, it is extremely irresponsible for several members of the Republican Party to condone the poorly thought out actions our government took after 9/11: it reflects negatively on us, in a time where we need to be united and stronger than ever.