Not New News

Some specifics are new, thanks to the newly public portion (small) of a report (voluminous). But among those details that are new, the most lurid and sexually sadistic ones merely confirm what was clear all along.

That's to say, what would be clear, if we bothered remembering... We've already seen such evidence as the pictures from Abu Ghraib, which showed sexual humiliation of prisoners was all in a days' work for guards.

The same goes for "rendition" routines, as described years ago by Jane Mayer.

The current report—and CIA response—are in a familiar mode. And newly released details of "'rectal rehydration' or rectal feeding without medical necessity"—complete with "lunch tray" menu—those details are unsurprising after Mayer's 2007 reporting. Her work revealed procedures of "takeouts": the snatching of targets for transport to "black site" prisons—

... A former member of a C.I.A. transport team has described the "takeout" of prisoners as a carefully choreographed twenty-minute routine, during which a suspect was hog-tied, stripped naked, photographed, hooded, sedated with anal suppositories, placed in diapers, and transported by plane to a secret location.

A person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry, referring to cavity searches and the frequent use of suppositories during the takeout of detainees, likened the treatment to "sodomy." He said, "It was used to absolutely strip the detainee of any dignity. It breaks down someone's sense of impenetrability. The interrogation became a process not just of getting information but of utterly subordinating the detainee through humiliation." The former C.I.A. officer confirmed that the agency frequently photographed the prisoners naked, "because it's demoralizing." The person involved in the Council of Europe inquiry said that photos were also part of the C.I.A.'s quality-control process. They were passed back to case officers for review.

Back in 2007, Mayer's reporting exposed how post-Korean War torture resistance training of military personnel ("SERE") was reverse-engineered after 9-11—

The SERE program was designed strictly for defense against torture regimes, but the C.I.A.'s new team used its expertise to help interrogators inflict abuse. "They were very arrogant, and pro-torture," a European official knowledgeable about the program said. "They sought to render the detainees vulnerable—to break down all of their senses. It takes a psychologist trained in this to understand these rupturing experiences."

Just for the record, here's Charles Pierce on CIA torture report release day, in three parts: "What It Says"; "What It Means"; "What Will Happen Now."

Action on "What Will Happen" was immediate and decisive. Throughout the Liberal Media, the pundits' verdict was duly endorsed: A Partisan Report.