From the flag fading across the title bar, you find yourself wondering where the other cliches of satirical hyper-patriotism are; Whither the bald eagle crying the single tear? Where the references to 'murka's freedoms and its love there of? Not to be found here, alas. Though it does refer to the memoirs by the former CIA wonks who were directly responsible for getting CIA really publicly into the torture game, and who presumably are entirely happy having their names placed immediately next to what is clearly marked as NOFORN documents on the world wide web, where FORN'ers like myself are able to access them.

But to summarise the general line of argument these wonks (and by extension the pro-torture camp inside the CIA they represent) are making, you have to just follow the, by now, tried and true four fold path of torture denialism which goes:

1. We didn't do anything wrong.
2. If we did something wrong, we checked if it was okay first and were told it wasn't wrong
3. If we did something we knew and were told was wrong, but it was okay because it was useful.
4. If we did something we knew and were told was wrong and it wasn't useful, well you have to understand the historical context, 9/11, imminent attacks with nuclear weapons, ticking time bombs, etc...

They reach #4 on the site's main page fairly quickly;

Absent from the report is any discussion of the context the United States faced after 9/11. This was a time we had solid evidence that al Qaida was planning a second wave of attacks against the U.S.; we had certain knowledge that bin Laden had met with Pakistani nuclear scientists and wanted nuclear weapons; we had reports that nuclear weapons were being smuggled into New York City; and we had hard evidence that al Qaida was trying to manufacture anthrax. It felt like a "ticking time bomb" every single day.

You will, like I, be entirely familiar with that time nuclear weapons were smuggled into New York City, such was the deep trustworthiness of the CIA's intelligence and their ability to assess that intelligence for its actual threat potential at that time.

Of course this incompetence on their part is then reiterated again and again[LINK IS PDF] as their key defense; They sucked at actual HUMINT work, so they panicked when it suddenly became really important and then used torture as the equivalent of cramming for a test to make up for their complete lack of information about Al Qaeda.

So for instance they make the claim that after the Vietnam war the CIA had lost most of their capabilities to perform human interrogation programs due to how they let their vietnam era interrogators leave and then began out-sourcing interrogations to countries with terrible human rights records, which in all cases led to human rights abuses.

Indeed, they acknowledge that when they finally caught a major potential HUMINT source in the form of Abu Zubaydah, who is credited as the "mastermind" of the 9/11 attacks. They first of all sent him to be interrogated by intelligence forces in [REDACTED but probably Pakistan] before the lack of progress and the inability of the CIA to properly micro-manage the torture sessions prompted the CIA to create the infamous "Black Sites" in the middle east where CIA interrogators could interrogate detainees in-country.

And of course the vital information[LINK IS PDF] they got from torture? How the people they'd detained had been, prior to detaining them, planning on organising attacks, and basically a flow chart of the internal management of AQ based off of guesses made by low ranking underlings in the organisation who'd seen Osama Bin Laden in the distance a few times.

Really saving lives out there guys, great success.

Once again reality proves itself to be a giant cliché held together with irony. Bonus points for it also being one of those things where the election advisor is just trying to agressively elbow nudge the government into holding an EU referendum (AKA any story involving the tories talking about UKIP ever).

For those across the seas who have so many better things to care about than the english and welsh #batmanreference elections... I mean the local police commissioner elections; Basically what you need to know are that UKIP are a single issue party that wants "out of Europe" (while never explaining what that means exactly) and the brand new position of "Local Police Commissioner", that Nick Clegg invented to ensure that england sees one election done by AV*, involves an elected person being in charge of local police finances or something.

Now you may think that there is literally no reason why UKIP would stand candidates in that election and you would be right, but they did anyway because Nigel Farage has too much money and his family really wants him to retry the plane stunt he did during the last general election.

You may also think that in an election where national voter turnout couldn't even break 20%, a party that got almost as many votes nationally as Ms. Spoiled Ballot (former-MP for Staines) wouldn't be considered a threat by the party in government, even if in this particular case where the party in government have lost every byelection since the last general one to the only remaining rival and they couldn't even get a majority in the general election in the first place.

It's almost as though Mr. Fabricant is making shit up in a sad parody of political maneuvering, but how could anyone not trust someone with what appears to be Micheal Hesseltine's face and Boris Johnson's hair? (aside from "very easily", obviously...)

* Ironically the last election I've participated in that used the first past the post system was the AV referendum, and I've voted in 4 elections since with 3 of them using the AV systems and the fourth using I think was the transferrable vote system... literally clichés held togehter with irony...