THE CIA's Man in the Senate....

I guess I should have really called this "one of the CIA's men in the Senate."
I don't even know where to start with Senator Richard Burr.... so maybe I will just start in a random place-- calling him a lapdog for the CIA is grossly underestimating his role but I will roll with that title for now-- seems Burr has been in a snit since Senate staffers unearthed a copy of a CIA report called the Panetta Review- which confirmed such things as the fact that the CIA exaggerated the "effectiveness" of torture. When the Senate staffers realized what they had (admissions from the CIA itself questioning the effectiveness of torture) they decided to take a physical copy- or at least a portion of the physical copy- and bring it to the senate offices. Its a long story but it seems this explains why the CIA broke into Senate computers back in 2013-- they wanted to see how much of the report the Senate had--- and what else the senate had. That brings me back to Burr....Seems Burr has been particularly irked about the leaking of information from the CIA's report and being the lapdog that he is he is now holding up the nomination of a lawyer for the department of defense who first discovered the report. Anyway, read this article as its a fascinating look at one of the enablers of the CIA's torture program.

"All the Presidents Psychologists...."

There was a lot of discussion about the role that the APA (American Psychological Association) played in the torture of detainees at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and other "black sites" a few years back. It is back in the news again with a new report by a watchdog group tied to Physicians for Human Rights. This new report ties in newly unclassified information. You can read the report here.

And you can read more about the report here, here, here, and here.

And following the release of that report'
"The head of a body that advises U.S. terrorism interrogators on ethics on Thursday called for a special prosecutor to probe how the abuse of captured militants during the Bush administration's "war on terror" was allowed to happen." Read the rest here.