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Larry Siems: Do we mean what we say when we say that there are fundamental human rights?
Do we really mean that? You can't detain people without a trial. You can't hold people in
secret. Why can't you do these things? Simply because all those things do is they all lead
to torture. We began to use torture for the same reasons that every single torturing government
has always used torture, which is to coerce confessions from people.
Glenn Greenwald: The torture regime was a worldwide systematic and pervasive regime.
It was not confined to a handful of high value detainees. It was not about waterboarding.
It was a whole range, a whole litany, of techniques. We know which specific individuals attended
White House meetings with *** Cheney and George Bush and Condoleezza Rice and Colin
Powell and John Ashcroft where these techniques were ordered.
Larry Siems: They're the ones that we have to hold accountable. In fact, they're our
elected officials. We can hold them accountable and we must hold them accountable. The first
thing we need to do is just know the story. Glenn Greenwald: One of the most significant
problems that we have is that media institutions are failing. The collapse has left this massive
hole where investigative journalism used to flourish.
Larry Siems: The Torture Report is really an exploration of all of the documentary evidence
about the Bush Administration's torture policy. The ACLU has excavated through Freedom of
Information Act litigation about 130,000 pages of formerly secret documents. It's an enormous
trove of evidence of the torture programs of who was tortured, of who was responsible
for designing and orchestrating the policies, but it's almost too much to sift through without
some kind of a map. Really the Torture Report is meant to build a narrative, a readable
narrative, out of the documents. Glenn Greenwald: To have a document that does
that in an easily accessible in a narrative focused way I think is absolutely vital.
Larry Siems: There is room for the public to comment at the end of every section that's
posted. Glenn Greenwald: The collaborative nature
of the document means that it will be probably the most reliable document.
Larry Siems: We've heard conflicting accounts of what we did, conflicting opinions about
whether or not it was torture, certainly contradictory statements about whether it worked or not,
but the fact is the documents now are there that help us answer these questions. I think
for all of us as Americans it's important for us to know what happened.
Glenn Greenwald: All of the safeguards and checks and institutions that are designed
to insure accountability for high level criminality have failed. The ultimate and last check is
with the people. There needs to be a real outcry so that political leaders and political
leads know that there is a substantial part of the public angry about the lack of accountability
and demanding that there be real accountability.