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Torture: Looking Forward By Cleaning Up The Past
Firedoglake — ... , and it's clear that these people were wantonly transgressing the law.  It's our obligation as citizens to take it from here, and to create the climate for doing what needs to be done.  The media doesn't want to use the word "torture" -- but it's instantly obvious to anyone who reads these memos that it was torture by any rational standard. ...

Memos Show Past CIA Directors’ Involvement with Torture, Obstruction
Firedoglake — ... And in any case, we know that the one time when even the CIA agrees Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded "needlessly," it was done on the order of CIA headquarters under Tenet's leadership. Also as I noted, the May 10, 2005 "Techniques" memo reveals that Abu Zubaydah's interrogator far exceeding OLC guidlines on how to administer waterboarding. ...

The Memos
BAGnewsNotes — ... As the presence of these records lead to calls for further disclosures and even prosecutions, I hope these memos will retain their physical uniqueness. Above, for example, is the notorious footnote on the May 10, 2005 Bybee memo, for example. It's that section, as exposed by Marcy Wheeler this past weekend, that reveals that the CIA far exceeded even its own already legally-questionable standards-of-practice for applying waterboarding, and other techniques. ...

Torture Takeaway: It's Not Effective
TalkLeft — ... which Marcy analyzes here to show the CIA exceeded the authorization contained in the memo when conducting waterboarding. More of Marcy's excellent analysis on the torture memos is ...

Waterboarding “Guidelines” and CIA Prosecutions
The Moderate Voice — ... Here’s one reason to demand a special prosecutor to investigate these actions. In addition to revealing the sheer number of times KSM and Abu Zubaydah were waterboarded, the memos reveal that the interrogators who waterboarded these men went far beyond even the expansive  guidelines for torture described in the Bybee Memo, notably by dumping water onto their nose and mouth, rather than dribbing it on. ...

BREAKING: Torture — Yes, They Used the Word “Torture” — Described in July 2002 Memo
Firedoglake — ... The urgent efforts of all the people involved in setting up our torture regime to blame each other seems like to keep us in new document dumps for the next several weeks. But I don't know about you--I'm getting overwhelmed. Though, imagine how Haynes, Rizzo, Bybee, Mitchell, and Jessen feel. It's almost ... "poignant." ...

Torture: The Five Criminal Referrals WaPo Dosen’t Report
Firedoglake — ... the details about how the CIA's torture program exceeded guidelines that I noted three weeks ago, from the recognition that the CIA was using much more water in its waterboarding than OLC authorized to the description of that action as "poignant"? It's high time someone [else] started reporting the evidence that the torture program was not legal, even according to the Bybee Memo, as news. ...

Rockefeller to Politico: Read the Damn SSCI Narrative Already!
Firedoglake — ... ... suggest that Jello Jay first learned the full extent of what we were doing with waterboarding in 2004, when he received the IG report that revealed (among other things) that the CIA wasn't doing what the OLC memos said it was doing. ...

Torture: Leon Panetta Kisses His Credibility Goodbye
Firedoglake — ... Yet the entire world knows--and the CIA has itself acknowledged--that the materials in question do, in fact, show evidence of unlawful conduct, and when you sort of kind of pretend that no one else knows what they all know--that the materials show evidence of unlawful conduct... ...

Shorter Panetta: Covering Up Our Sins Is Better Than Coming Clean
Newshoggers.com — ... Yet the entire world knows--and the CIA has itself acknowledged--that the materials in question do, in fact, show evidence of unlawful conduct, and when you sort of kind of pretend that no one else knows what they all know--that the materials show evidence of unlawful conduct... ...

The Scope of the SSCI Investigation and Where It Leads
Firedoglake — ... As I noted, both Whitehouse and I have pointed out that Panetta's declaration by itself makes clear that the torture exceeded the authorizations it had gotten from OLC--but we already knew that from the CIA itself. And as Whitehouse ...

NYT on Bush Torture Regime: False Banality is Not Evil
Firedoglake — ... That's true, first of all, for the same reason that the abundance of details in the CIA torture documents have always been deceptive. We've know since April that all the details that John Yoo put into the original Bybee memo did nothing to to ensure that those details would be followed. The details Shane and Mazzetti boast of are all requirements put into place as it became clear that that the torture program was out of control. Yet given the absence of another IG review of the torture program--or better yet, an independent assessment from an outsider--there's no reason to ...