The executive summary of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence torture report.
16 absolutely outrageous abuses detailed in the CIA torture report, as outlined by Dylan Matthews.
I was naïve, years ago, in my outrage at the torture committed by the CIA. Yes, the US had enabled torturers (see: School of the Americas) and supported regimes which tortured (see: US domestic surveillance and foreign policy), but somehow, the notion that torture was committed by US government agents seemed over the line in a way that merely enabling and supporting had not.
I don’t know, maybe US-applied torture was over the line in a way US-enabled/supported torture was not, and busting righteously through it busted something fundamental in our foreign policy.
But given, say, the Sand Creek and Marias massacres amongst the general policy of “land clearing” and Indian removal—policies directed by US politicians and agents—wasn’t it a bit precious to decry this late unpleasantness?
Naïveté, I wrote above. No: ignorance. I’d studied (and protested) 20th-century US foreign policy and ignored its 19th century version, the one directly largely against the indigenous people whose former lands now make up the mid- and western United States.
Ta-Nehisi Coates recently wrote that paeans to nonviolence are risible in their ignorance: Taken together, property damage and looting have been the most effective tools of social progress for white people in America. Yes.
A country born in theft and violence—unexceptional in the birth of nation-states—and I somehow managed not to know what, precisely, that birth meant.
I’m rambling, avoiding saying directly what I mean to say: there will be no accountability for torture. Some argue for pardoning those involved as a way to arrive at truth, that by letting go the threat of criminal charges we (the people) can finally learn what crimes were committed, and officially, presidentially, recognize that crimes were committed.
It is doubtful we will get even that.
Still, we have the torture report, and (some) crimes documented which were only previously suspected. Good, knowledge is good.
But then what? Knowledge of torture committed is not sufficient inoculation against torture being committed.
Coming clean will not make us clean.
AbsurdBeats 
in my naive/studentactivist days i really believed that if we could show most americans what the cia/schooloftheamericas/etc were up to they would be mortified (or at least shamed into saying no mas) but now i see that most don’t really care and many want more of this sort of thing.