The CIA's willing torturers

The CIA report into prisoner abuse reveals a new, ugly reality: America's torturers weren't simply following orders

Peter Beaumont
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 25 August 2009


"The CIA report into prisoner abuse reveals a new, ugly reality: America's torturers weren't simply following orders.....

What it demonstrates is how a permissive culture of violence always breeds abuses, especially when those committing the abuse have been equipped with a self-legitimising narrative.

There is one thing more. The need to supply a proper name to this. For while the use of all violence in service of the state inevitably requires special pleading, there is something in the cold conversation between men about the limits to the pain and suffering that they can inflict that speaks of nothing but depravity."


A Related Poll in Al-Jazeera (Arabic) Asks:

Do you have confidence that the U.S. administration will investigate the CIA torture?

With over 3,500 responding, 90% said no.