finally had time to read up on the CIA report released in a summary version, with lots of redacted bits. this post has a summary of the 5 most damning findings:
if you want a more detailed version, then there’s this, but a warning that the description of activities is pretty harrowing. this article has a detailed timeline around the conduct of the investigation and release of the report, with lots of links. the guardian covers the complicity of european countries. politico has details of the main people involved, and here is an interview with one of them in which he takes no responsibility for anything.
i’m struggling to find anything meaningful to say about this. it’s awful stuff with little chance of those responsible being held to account. then there are the people who are still justifying these practices, on no basis that makes any sense to me. there’s the misdirection: oh look, something bad happened over there as well, so this doesn’t matter as much.
trying to find something positive about this, and it’s really hard. because there’s so much ugliness in the world right now, so much violence and brutality, this is just another thing to add to an already toxic mess. the positive is that the report is out, at least some of the atrocities are documented, even less are made public. there is outrage, there are calls for justice. but will there be any significant change?
it also feels horribly ironic that we have given our own intelligence agency greater powers at a time when we see what the misuse of those powers and the lack of proper oversight can lead to. no, i don’t expect our services will be using torture at black sites overseas. but i also don’t think it’s fair that these agencies of the state should have these extra powers over us.
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