Report Details CIA, Military Barbarity

• Gruesome torture practices reveal U.S. government as massive criminal enterprise.

WARNING: This report is not for the fainthearted. Readers who might be easily disturbed by descriptions of savage cruelty are asked to proceed with caution.

By Ronald L. Ray —

Diabolical. That is the only word to describe the grotesque savagery of so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques”—known to normal people as torture—employed by the United States military and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) against alleged “terrorist suspects.” “Torture” is the only word suitable to describe the perverse perpetrators of such vicious cruelty for purposes of “national security,” who have gained ignoble power since the CIA/Mossad false-flag attacks against the U.S. on September 11, 2001. But for all the hoopla surrounding the partial publication of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on CIA detention and interrogation practices, it is only part of the sordid story.

German journalist Dr. Juergen Todenhoefer and his son are fearless investigators of the other side of the “War on Terror,” returning in December 2014 with first-hand reports about the Islamic State (ISIS) and its militia fighters. Todenhoefer published an account in his most recent book, Thou Shalt Not Kill, that sears the mind and heart with the events it recalls, and which has been summarized by the news and commentary website, “AlterNet.”

Bagram, Afghanistan, is home to one of the most notorious torture prisons operated by the U.S., where unspeakable brutality coexists in close proximity to a McDonald’s fast-food restaurant and other expressions of “the American way.” Here, Todenhoefer reports, a Canadian soldier-turned-mercenary, identified as “Jack,” related why he could no longer bear working at Bagram: “It’s not my thing when Afghans get raped by dogs.”

According to Todenhoefer, Afghan prisoners would be tied to a small chair, face down, and then vicious fighting dogs would be sent into the room. If a prisoner revealed nothing useful, each of the dogs would be allowed to sodomize the hapless victim in turn. “After procedures like these, they confessed everything. They would have even said that they killed Kennedy without even knowing who he was,” said Jack.

Commenting on such practices, author Lawrence Wright told National Public Radio: “And it would be hard to tell you how humiliating it would be to any person, but especially in Islamic culture where dogs are such a lowly form of life. . . . [That] imprint will never leave anybody’s mind.”

But rape by attack dogs is not the only horror.

At the end of World War II, the U.S. hanged at least one Japanese general for “waterboarding” Allied prisoners, a practice defined by the Americans as torture. It is a particularly terrifying experience, pouring water over a person’s covered face for extended periods, nearly to the point of drowning. Victims will confess to almost anything—even things they or their acquaintances never committed—just to end the experience.

Yet in the 21st century, the U.S. federal government no longer considers this malicious practice torture. Waterboarding has become the battle flag of the neoconservatives’ surveillance state, with former Vice President Dick Cheney as its greatest cheerleader.

Other prisoners were stripped naked and viciously beaten, blindfolded and repeatedly slammed against cement walls, or tormented with blaring (sometimes satanic) music for days on end. Still others were deprived of sleep for up to a week at a time—leading to psychotic events like hallucinations—or deprived of food for extended periods, subjected to severe sensory deprivation, immersed in ice water and physically restrained in excruciatingly painful positions while naked.

Some of the detainees were subjected to forced “rectal rehydration” or “rectal feeding” (enemas) without medical necessity or supervision. In one case, the CIA even tortured two of its own operatives. But when the two men sought redress in court for the Bush-era events, the Obama administration got the lawsuit thrown out.

And ever since stories began to leak out about CIA and military brutality, which extended even to non-terrorists, “The Company” has destroyed evidence, spied on U.S. senators, and lied and fought vehemently to prevent a full accounting of its criminal misdeeds.

Still the neocons and warmongers make every excuse and defend the indefensible. Republicans on the Senate committee nitpicked over details and whined that exposing the truth might put the U.S. in a bad international light or endanger the perpetrators. Such sycophantic behavior makes them accomplices to war crimes. A rare exception was Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.), who for once had the courage to condemn the CIA activities for what they are: torture.

Cheney, in fact, admitted that the sadistic enterprise was not a “rogue operation,” but rather a program known and authorized at the highest levels. He even declared that the torturers “deserve a lot of praise. . . . As far as I’m concerned, they ought to be decorated, not criticized.”

But the fact of the matter is that the devilishly bestial activities of the CIA and military torture programs are not only grossly immoral but a violation of federal (18 U.S.C. §2340A) and international law. They are entirely reprehensible among
civilized peoples.

It is time to put an end to the CIA. Bush, Obama, Cheney and the entire crew of evildoers, down to the perpetrators in the prisons, must be punished. Far from receiving war medals, they deserve to have something significantly more constrictive hung around their necks.

Ronald L. Ray is a freelance author and an assistant editor of THE BARNES REVIEW. He is a descendant of several patriots of the American War for Independence.