Philip Carter summarizes the Senate torture report: affirms use of Stalin's regimen

Phillip "Intel Dump" Carter, now writing for the Washington Post summarizes the Senate report on torture techniques used at Guantanamo Bay...

The Genesis of Torture - Intel Dump - Phillip Carter on national security and the military.

Yesterday, the Senate Armed Services Committee released a 63-page set of documents that illuminates how the Pentagon developed, selected and approved its list of coercive interrogation techniques for Guantanamo Bay.

As Joby Warrick reports in today's Post, the documents clarify the role that the CIA (and senior government officials such as DoD General Counsel William "Jim" Haynes) played. "If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong," CIA lawyer Jonathan Friedman proclaimed in a working group meeting that led to the development of this DoD memo on approved interrogation techniques...

It's the best short summary I've seen. A few take-away points:

1. After 3 years of acquiescence, the uniformed military finally began to rebel.
2. The report only deals with Guantanamo, we don't know what techniques were used elsewhere. The US outsourced torture extensively, we bear full responsibility for what was done in foreign prisons on our behalf.
3. This will be a significant part of future war crimes trials.
4. The sources I read have felt that the regiment we use was based on Korean and Soviet torture designed to produce on-demand confessions. The Senate report confirms this.