I like the idea that an executive summary can be 524 pages long since I famously go on too long about most things.  Perhaps it was not possible to distill the six thousand page Committee Study of the Central  Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program. It’s terrible that this Report has so much to say about our country’s torture – 119 people “detained,” a quarter of whom were wrongfully held.

The centerpiece of the Report is waterboarding.  Much of the outrage, however, concerns the fact that people whom we entrusted with our national security lied to us, took the law into their own hands and otherwise abused the trust we gave them.  It seems the CIA, at a time when the country seemed willing to give up all its freedoms and break every rule to fight terrorism, became dysfunctional, disorganized, incompetent, greedy and deceptive – at least that’s the New York Times’ synopsis of the Report.

Waterboarding is drowning without the killing part – the waterboarded detainees were physically and psychologically scarred for life, but they were never drowned.  If any had actually been drowned, there would be much more outrage.  The one who died, Mr. Gul Rahman, died of hypothermia – he died shackled, nude, alone on a concrete floor, the officer responsible considered one of the agency’s best.  In hypothermia, you pass out, some say even experience euphoria in the final moments before you die.  When you drown, suffering is horrible and the last moments are violent and desperate.  But no one was drowned.

When I think of innocents drowning, I think of Hurricane Sandy – 117 died, which is close to the number of CIA detainees – a third of the deaths were from drowning.  Hurricane Katrina was much worse – 1,300 died, almost half from drowning.

But wait a minute; they died because Congress, when it comes to climate change, is dysfunctional, disorganized, incompetent, greedy and deceptive.  Why no kerfuffle?

The Senate Report, on the other hand, has created quite the kerfuffle.  Those who wilfully ignored the fact that torture does not work (as, ironically, determined by the CIA in its own 1989 report), ignored our commitment to never torturing prisoners.  It’s our domestic and international policy.  It’s international law.  Yet, officials we trusted knowingly stood by and let torture happen, or feigned ignorance and let it happen, or let their ideology dictate their action and let it happen – those who betrayed our trust should be brought to justice!

Heads will roll!

Well, of course, not literally.  That would be cruel and inhuman, which is forbidden by our Constitution.

It’s a bit uncertain whose heads will metaphorically roll.  Who will be brought up on criminal charges?  Some think President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice should be charged.  Maybe George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Mike Haydon, former directors of the CIA and John Brennan, current director?  John Yoo, John Rizzo, Jay Bybee, Alberto Gonzales, Cofer Black, and maybe Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell, psychologists who helped with the methodology.  That’s well over a dozen.

But I keep thinking of those who drowned in Katrina and Sandy.  Held hostage by poverty, discrimination, and a government who knowingly and wilfully ignored what climate change science has been telling them for 20 years.  If seventy percent of the public and 97% of scientists agree that climate change is real and our officials were entrusted to represent us, then they abused our trust – just like those named in the Report. The arguments of climate deniers are contrived, chaotic, ever-changing, and many deniers are supported by money from industry or the Koch brothers, which reflects influence by ideologues, politics, or just plain greed.

Senator Imhofe sanctioning the waterboarding America and Vice President Cheney sanctioning the waterboarding of CIA detainees.

The World Health Organization estimates that 150,000 people are currently dying every year from climate change – although the causes are quite varied – only some of them are death due to drowning from extreme weather, like hurricanes and floods.

It seems that climate deniers in Congress and their backers reflect dysfunction, disorganization, incompetence, greed and deception.  But wait a minute, this is exactly what everyone is upset about concerning the CA waterboarding detainees.

So doesn’t this make climate change deniers, like Senators Imhoff, Cruz, Enzi, Johnson, McConnell, Vitter, Coryn, and the majority of the Republican Party (only 8 are not climate change deniers), the same as those who condone waterboarding?   Too many to list.  Desmogblog.com list over 260 prominent climate change deniers – a lot bigger list than those condoning CIA waterboarding

It seems like climate change deniers are waterboarding America – only in this case, people actually drown.