[jobu]

"The committee has been working since 2009 on a comprehensive history of the agency’s antiterror program during the George W. Bush administration"

That makes it sound like the investigation is politically motivated, which I find disappointing. It seems highly likely that some of those practices continued under Obama, and if there's any hint of political leaning in an investigation like this then most people will just ignore it as more partisan bullshit.

[mullingitover]

> That makes it sound like the investigation is politically motivated, which I find disappointing.

No, what's politically motivated was that the chain of command that authorized and enacted torture was never prosecuted. This is not just a simple violation, but a Grave Breach as defined in the Geneva Conventions. In an effort to avoid what would be an inevitable partisan shitstorm, the heinous acts committed by the CIA and authorized explicitly by the White House were whitewashed. This report was the only thing that remained in the arsenal to hold these perpetrators accountable, and the CIA was actively attempting to thwart its work.

[opendais]

> That makes it sound like the investigation is politically motivated, which I find disappointing.

All congressional investigations are political motivated. That said, who cares if it helps the truth comes out?

The mere fact that the CIA was willing to pull BS like this on their overseers: "The CIA, though, spied on what the staffers did on the system. This allowed the CIA to manipulate investigation. When the staffers found some particularly juicy bit of information, the CIA was able to yank it from the system and re-classify it so that the staffers couldn't use it. Before the final report was ready, the CIA was already able to set the political machine in motion to defend itself from the report." http://blog.erratasec.com/2014/07/no-cia-didnt-spy-on-other-...

Personally, I'm glad they did that if only so the general public is aware of the kind of BS the CIA pulls.

[jkestner]

Agreed that it will seem politically motivated, but if it actually sees the light of day, the report will beg questions of how these practices have been stopped by the current administration. Hopefully that leads to bipartisan reform, and not a bunch of shouting and precedent-building.

[at-fates-hands]

Why is it no bad deeds seems to exist before the Bush administration? People have a weird concept of history.

Its completely political. The outsourcing of torture began under the Clinton administration:

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/02/14/outsourcing-tor...

"In 1995, Scheuer said, American agents proposed the rendition program to Egypt, making clear that it had the resources to track, capture, and transport terrorist suspects globally—including access to a small fleet of aircraft. Egypt embraced the idea. “What was clever was that some of the senior people in Al Qaeda were Egyptian,” Scheuer said. “It served American purposes to get these people arrested, and Egyptian purposes to get these people back, where they could be interrogated.” Technically, U.S. law requires the C.I.A. to seek “assurances” from foreign governments that rendered suspects won’t be tortured. Scheuer told me that this was done, but he was “not sure” if any documents confirming the arrangement were signed."