The Sins Of The United States & CIA (Rendition Program & Torture Memos)

After the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks, President Bush's White House Legal Counsel, facilitated and "legalized" the use of torture to extract information from "high valued detainees" (HVD) who were captured in Afghanistan and then relocated to CIA "black sites" where torture methods would be far away from prying eyes of the legal apparatuses. White House lawyers such as John Yoo and Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee, head of the Office of Legal Counsel of the United States Department of Justice, signed in approval the full authorized use of torture, or otherwise known as, enhanced interrogation techniques.

The "torture memos" are discussed in the language of the torture statute (18 U.S.C. §§ 2340–2340A) in detail in order to derive its definition of torture, states that "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" treatment is not torture according to that statute; and examines "possible defenses that would negate any claim that certain interrogation methods violate the statute". The CIA torture methods were not "unique" and in 1996 under a FOIA request, the Baltimore Sun, would uncover that the CIA had penned torture manuals which were prepared by the U.S. military and used between 1987 and 1991 for intelligence training courses at the U.S. Army School of the Americas. In this video i talk a bit about the outlines of the "torture memos" and the CIA "black sites" which employed the use of torture.