Instead of praising the FBI for not engaging in torture, we should be railing on it for being silent accomplices to torture, for not whistle-blowing to Congress or the media.
In other words, the FBI was more worried about its credibility (and yes, it was and is right on the lack of effectiveness of torture) than about morals and ethics.
Among the more bizarre fallout:
Like their Tibetan neighbors, the Uyghurs of western China are victims of government oppression, including mass executions. Throughout the 1990s, U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia urged Uyghurs to revolt against Chinese occupation. After 9/11, however, the U.S. agreed to help China capture and torture Uyghur independence activists — as a quid pro quo for not using its U.N. veto to stop the American invasion of Afghanistan.
“Uyghur detainees were kept awake for long periods, deprived of food and forced to endure cold for hours on end, just prior to questioning by Chinese interrogators,” said ABC. “When Uyghur detainees refused to talk to Chinese interrogators in 2002, U.S. military personnel put them in solitary confinement as punishment.”
It’s a tale bizarre enough to make Rush Limbaugh blush: intelligence agents from communist China invited to an American military base, where they’re allowed to torture political dissidents in American custody, with American soldiers as their sidekicks. In light of China’s crackdown on Tibet during the run-up to the Olympics, it’s a tasty news tidbit. But it didn’t run in The Times — as far as I can tell, it only ran in one newspaper, the Christian Science Monitor.
Yes, it’s stuff like that the FBI walked away from, but didn’t report.
Unfortunately, Ted Rall is too left-liberal for many “mainstream liberal” bloggers’ taste. But he is “spot on” here.
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