
An Illustrated First-Person Guide to the CIA’s Torture Program - eplanit
https://www.enmnews.com/2019/12/04/an-illustrated-first-person-guide-to-the-c-i-a-s-torture-program/
======
selectodude
This is literally cut and paste plagiarized from the New York Times article.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/cia-
torture-d...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/cia-torture-
drawings.html)

~~~
bwan
Thank you for mentioning this. I was wondering about the credibility of this
website after regretfully reading the comments section. Turns out they just
scrape other websites and place a "source" link at the bottom of the article.

From their about us page:

"ENMNEWS.COM is a company that collects the most important news from around
the world and stores them in one place to be easily and quickly available to
our readers. All articles that are not ours have a source and was
automatically downloaded."

~~~
razakel
The site hasn't even existed for a year and appears to be based in Montenegro.

~~~
1337biz
There was an amazing documentary on the fake news industry in Montenegro on
YouTube. I think it was by AlJazzera. If you have time, give it a look - well
worth watching!

~~~
razakel
You're thinking of Macedonia:

[https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/12/1612271020...](https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2016/12/161227102010693.html)

[https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190528-i-was-a-
macedoni...](https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190528-i-was-a-macedonian-
fake-news-writer)

[https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-
news/](https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/)

~~~
1337biz
You are 100% right. Sorr for the confusion

------
corey_moncure
This audio segment from The Intercept is highly relevant and illustrative of
how this all came to be.

My favorite sound bites are "In one e-mail with the subject 'Torture Update'",
and "We will not be briefing the president on this".

At one point, the CIA and Senate had mutually filed criminal prosecution
referrals against one another over the cover up.

[https://theintercept.com/2019/12/04/george-bush-barack-
obama...](https://theintercept.com/2019/12/04/george-bush-barack-obama-and-
the-cia-torture-cover-up/)

~~~
tehjoker
Somehow that was even more disturbing than the president orchestrating it. It
indicates that the CIA is a rogue* agency that is insulated enough from the
political system that it can basically do what it wants, and what it wants is
rooted in base aggression devoid of even evidence based approaches (their own
data showed torture didn't work).

If the president doesn't know, doesn't authorize programs that are this
controversial, it means they are a decoration and the political system is a
sham.

* rogue meaning autonomous from political control, not necessarily that it is doing anything to contradict the imperatives of the empire.

~~~
AndrewBissell
At this point the CIA is really best viewed as an organized crime syndicate
with the blessing of the government and ruling class. The other thing to help
understand the situation is that due to Epstein-style kompromat it possesses
on that ruling class, the CIA sits _above_ the POTUS in the US power
structure.

~~~
tehjoker
It is alleged that the CIA was involved with Epstein. At the very least, the
guy that got him his job teaching at Dalton, Donald Barr, [0] was ex-OSS, and
the father of William Barr, ex-CIA [1] and the current Attorney General.

[0] [https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/the-epstein-barr-
proble...](https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/the-epstein-barr-problem-of-
new-york-citys-dalton-school/)

[1] [https://www.foxnews.com/politics/who-is-william-
barr-5-thing...](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/who-is-william-
barr-5-things-to-know-about-the-attorney-general)

------
Hitton
Now imagine hypothetical scenario. Some innocent victim of the torture program
or victim's relative decides to take revenge on USA by committing a mass
murder or a terrorist attack. Wouldn't it be kinda justified? With an
exception of kids, how many Americans are really blameless for these actions?
They elected the leaders who allowed it (both Republicans - Bush and Democrats
- Obama), they don't hold people who committed it accountable, they didn't try
to make amends to victims or reimburse them. Many people go to BLM protest,
but this torture was much worse than that and Americans just ... don't care.

~~~
metabagel
Obama banned the use of torture.

~~~
boomboomsubban
Yet continued drone strikes, killing who knows how many innocent people. Not a
huge improvement.

------
Mirioron
How is it possible that people weren't held accountable for this? And how come
the US government _still_ hasn't tried to remedy the situation? Are those
people going to be held in captivity with no charges until their death?

~~~
koheripbal
Because in the wake of 9-11, you would have been very pressed to find any US
adult who didnt support torturing terrorists in custody to prevent more
attacks. The Patriot Act passed almost unanimously.

You have to remember the _emotional_ impact of 9-11 to properly judge the
people in charge at that time.

~~~
marcus_holmes
My country* was repeatedly bombed by terrorists, explicitly supported by
Americans (but probably not the actual USA government). I always get
incredulous at the hypocrisy when Americans talk about how 9/11 made them feel
angry.

I'm not saying my country didn't do things to deserve this. Or that we were
innocent victims of unprovoked foreign aggression. But then, can the USA say
the same? Was 9/11 really unprovoked?

*England, bombed by the IRA for over 20 years, who raise(d) the vast majority of their funds from "patriotic" ex-pat Irish Americans.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
>My country* was repeatedly bombed by terrorists, explicitly supported by
Americans (but probably not the actual USA government). I always get
incredulous at the hypocrisy when Americans talk about how 9/11 made them feel
angry.

Really?!

You guys treated the Irish like crap for generations. It should come as no
surprise that there was no shortage of ex-pats willing to send a buck to help
them wage war on you.

>I'm not saying my country didn't do things to deserve this. Or that we were
innocent victims of unprovoked foreign aggression. But then, can the USA say
the same? Was 9/11 really unprovoked?

You can certainly make the argument that 9/11 is a response to our prior
actions in the region but whether that is true or not will not make the people
who feel attacked feel any less attacked. This is a complex issue about which
reams upon reams have been written and I doubt anything we say here will do it
justice.

~~~
Mirioron
I think both of your responses here apply to both situations. Your comment
about how people who felt attacked won't feel any less attacked applies to the
British as well when it comes to the IRA. Your comment about how the British
treated the Irish poorly applies to the US in the Middle East as well. Maybe
not quite to the same degree, but still.

------
annoyingnoob
The United States should be better than this, makes me sad to be American.

~~~
Koshkin
You may not believe this, but humans are like that (and have been throughout
the entire history). Makes me sad to be a human, but things are probably
better than how they were, say, 300 years ago.

~~~
refurb
This is really true. It may be depressing for some people, but humans doing
the wrong thing sometimes is never going to go away.

~~~
cylon13
We may never be able to get rid of individual psychos that torture people, but
it would be nice if we could get rid of large-scale state-sanctioned torture
that everyone knows about.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
Doubtful, at least anytime soon. The diffusion of responsibility that large
organizations bring enables the organization to act however unethically it
wants in pursuit of its goals without anyone feeling responsible for it.
Clandestine "we have to stop this instance when it becomes known" torture is
still better than "everyone winks and nods and the program goes on" torture
though.

------
mellosouls
A reminder of Christopher Hitchens' account of waterboarding:

[https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/08/hitchens200808](https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/08/hitchens200808)

~~~
gdubs
Thanks; I hadn’t read that since it came out. Hitchens’ voice is missed. This
article cuts through the noise to the heart of the torture conversation.

------
currymj
this seems to be just a copy-and-pasted article from the New York Times.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/cia-
torture-d...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/cia-torture-
drawings.html)

------
enriquto
The USA is still sadly lacking a "gulag archipelago" book, that will expose to
polite society the scale of these practices.

------
Biganon
This website is barely usable on mobile. Slow, full of ads, and the entire
page becomes dark as if a modal had been opened, yet it's nowhere to be found
and closed. Won't read.

~~~
slowenough
I got the same when I opened it using my browser. So I opened it in my "remote
browser" (this is not a plug, just a help):
[https://free.cloudbrowser.xyz](https://free.cloudbrowser.xyz) and it was much
more usable.

~~~
m-p-3
Interesting. Is there a self-hosted version someone could deploy for private
use?

~~~
slowenough
Yes, friend: [https://github.com/dosycorp/robot-
head](https://github.com/dosycorp/robot-head)

If you wanna play audio (yer username, c'mon), see:
[https://boogeh.com](https://boogeh.com) (audio works but is like 20 seconds
lag as we encode it)

There's docker image linked there as well.

Hit me up if you have any issues: cris@dosyago.com or @browsergap on twitter.
X

------
cf141q5325
If you are interested in the topic, i can highly recommend "A Question of
Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror" from
Alfred McCoy for an analysis how torture changed and how it works today.

------
Diederich
This source document was linked in the above article, and I found it pretty
interesting. "Interrogation of al Qaeda Operative"

It describes in some detail the apparently authorized techniques and levels of
torture. There's also a section about how the Navy already has some history
with using waterboarding.

[https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/legacy/2010/...](https://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/olc/legacy/2010/08/05/memo-
bybee2002.pdf)

------
catacombs
Five hours, 140 points later, and the link hasn't been updated to the CORRECT
story: [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/cia-
torture-d...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/04/us/politics/cia-torture-
drawings.html)

------
baybal2
In defence of "whataboutism" argument

The best phrase I heard about that is:

 _" A sum of two half-wrongs don't make one right"_

Not as single country that went on torturing people can be a moral high mark.

Even if we have hard time finding countries who have not tainted themselves
with torture over the last 2 decades, we should never accept torture as a
norm.

Even if all major powers of the world were tainted by it, it just means that
they _all_ miss that high standard now.

Will not name countries here, but think yourself.

