US Congress rejects CIA Torture” by Kerry “Shakaboona” Marshall.
The US Congress, led by Democrat Senator Dianne Feinstein, recently slammed the CIA in a released Senate report over a CIA torture program that lasted from 2001 to 2008. The CIA torture program became in wide use at the agency through former President George W. Bush’s authorization after the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, and subsequent wars on Afghanistan and Iraq.
Disappearances of people, secret prisons, rendition of people to foreign states for extreme torture and torture of detained suspects in U.S. military prisons became the order of the day. CIA torture consisted of waterboarding, anal invasions, beatings, sleep deprivation and extreme forms of sensory and perceptual deprivation. The CIA torture program became known to congress from its beginning, and public as early as 2004.
Yet, no CIA torture report was ever released by congress until now. Well, that’s ten years overdue. So the question is: why now? Is it to distract the attention away from the mass protest in a hundred and seventy US cities over the police murder of unarmed Black males and military occupation of Ferguson, Missouri? Was it a preemptive political attack by the Democrats to smear the Republican Party in the run up to the 2016presidential elections to make way for Hillary Clinton? Was it to distract the people’s attention away from the Islamic State ethno-religious cleansing of non-Sunni Arabs in the Middle East? Or, was it all of the above?
But, there are more questions that should be asked. For instance, why does the United States Justice Department seek to criminally prosecute Edward Snowden for whistle blowing on CIA torture of detainees and more, yet refuses to criminally prosecute the CIA officials who managed and conducted the CIA torture program? Furthermore, isn’t it sheer hypocrisy for the U.S. Congress to release a congressional report denouncing CIA torture of prisoners at U.S. military prisons, while refusing to release a congressional court denouncing the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ abuse and torture programs occurring through solitary confinement? Torture has become an integral part to military, federal and state prison systems. It satisfies the oppressors’ sadistic nature, and has become as American as apple pie.
I am Kerry “Shakaboona” Marshall, co founder and editor of The Movement Human Rights Magazine, Prison Radio correspondent and child lifer prisoner confined at SCI Rockview #ABE7826, Bellefonte, PA 16823. Thank you for listening.
These commentaries are recorded by Noel Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
