There were no “real surprises” in the 525-page report into CIA torture released this week by the Senate intelligence committee, says Geoff Dyer in the FT. “Approval came from the top, the techniques were ineffective and there was much lying and deception.”
But at least, thanks to the “courage and steely persistence” of Dianne Feinstein and her Senate committee, America now knows the truth, says Jenni Russell in The Times. “We in Britain do not.” We know that as America’s ally, we were involved, but we don’t know the extent of our complicity.
This is leading to mounting cross-party pressure on David Cameron to approve a judge-led investigation into Britain’s role, says Andrew Grice in The Independent on Sunday.
However, we should be “wary” of any state-directed inquiry, says Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the same paper. Whatever happened to the Chilcot inquiry? “The establishment pulls together because all agree that extreme confidentiality maketh the nation invincible.”
So much for leaders proclaiming “without a blush” that Great Britain is an exemplary democracy.
Stop using the report as a politically motivated “stick with which to beat both the CIA and the British government”, says Melanie Phillips in The Times. Let’s be realistic. The CIA may have crossed the line, but “sometimes it is a moral imperative to use limited ill-treatment if the purpose is to save innocent lives”.
Our enemies know the difference, and they are laughing at our response to this report, undermining our defences as it does.
Wrong, says Matthew Scott on huffingtonpost.co.uk. All the CIA has achieved is to ensure “cruelty and injustice will now more than ever be seen by our enemies as essential ‘Western values’, which will almost certainly lead to the recruitment of more people to aggressively anti-Western causes”.
The report is “a first step in reversing this effect”, but the “prosecution and conviction of those responsible” is now needed.