US ‘Better Off’ Negotiating Syrian Peace Talks With Russia: Major General December 13, 2014 | Sputnik International “The US administration should use every opportunity to negotiate a Syrian peace deal with Russia, retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton has told Sputnik. ‘Any opportunity that you can sit down and talk, and negotiate with your friends or opponents, the better off we are,’ Eaton said Friday when asked whether the Obama administration should take up the recent Russian offer to relaunch talks to settle the conflict in Syria. ‘Any opportunity you can to sit down with Russian negotiators should be taken [because] the outcome can always be a negotiated result,’ Eaton stressed, saying ‘it is better to jaw-jaw, than to war-war’, referring to a quote by former British prime minister Winston Churchill. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said on Wednesday that if Syrian officials wanted to meet in Moscow, he would discuss the issue… Read More ›

The release of the executive summary of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s (SSCI) 6,700-page report on the CIA’s use of torture during the Bush Administration has generated a new flurry of controversy. Yesterday, CIA Director John Brennan gave a rare press conference to address the report. The release has stirred up Bush Administration officials and other conservatives who have come to the defense of the program and claimed that the report is partisan or not thorough enough. These critics fail to engage with the facts of the report, which demonstrate conclusively that torture was ineffective and damaging to U.S. national security. Policymakers now must act to prevent this dangerous lapse in American values from ever occurring again. The CIA torture program damaged U.S. national… Read More ›

Photo Credit: Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 12/11/14 During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee markup session focused on an Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) against the Islamic State, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) cited a recent study by the National Security Network in offering an amendment that would limit the use of force to Iraq and Syria: “Many have made the argument that we’ve added too many limitations, there should be no limitations, they’ve argued historically that we haven’t done this. Well, the National Security Network looked back at all of the uses of authorization of force since the beginning of the republic, and they found that 60% of those actually did have a geographic limitation on them.” The full paper written by NSN Executive… Read More ›

Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton: Torture Endangers National Security December 11, 2014 | Newsmax “[W]e are not involved in situational ethics … and what we expect our soldiers to do is to obey the law and obey their training,” said Eaton. “We have our values and we will treat prisoners with the appropriate safeguards that we teach our every young soldier going through basic training,” he said, citing the Army’s field manual on intelligence and interrogation of detainees. To see the full interview, click here. Read More ›

Senate Report Debunks CIA Defense of Torture Program Yesterday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) released the 528-page executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the use of torture by the CIA under the Bush Administration. The damning report, based on millions of pages of CIA documents reviewed by the committee, demonstrates conclusively that the enhanced interrogation program was ineffective and ill-conceived from the start. It roundly debunks claims by the CIA that the program led to critical intelligence and notes that the CIA misrepresented the program to Congress. Instead, the use of torture has left Americans less safe.  Releasing the report “is really about American values and morals,” Sen. Feinstein said yesterday. “It’s about the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, our rule of law.… Read More ›

December 10, 2014 | SiriusXM Morning Briefing  For the original site, click here.  Read More ›

Reaction to the CIA Interrogation Report December 10, 2014 | C-SPAN John Bradshaw reacted to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report detailing the CIA’s detention and interrogation program. Among other topics he discussed what stood out most to him about the report, the timing of the report’s release, and evidence and legal justification for and against calling the program “torture.”     To watch the full interview with C-SPAN host Greta Wodele Brawner, click here.    Read More ›

Gen. Eaton: US ‘lost moral high ground’ December 10, 2014 | MSNBC       To watch the full interview, click here.     Read More ›

The Polarized Reaction to the Torture Report December 9, 2014 | Background Briefing with Ian Masters We begin with the release of post-9/11 torture and rendition report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence which has been held up for years and is heavily redacted. John Bradshaw, the Executive Director of the National Security Network joins us to discuss the partisan political divide in response to the report as Republicans, with the exception of Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain, defend torture and those that perpetrated it, while Democrats and the White House defend the report and the need to make it public. We will also examine why the author of the legal justification for the Bush Administration’s use of torture, John Yoo, was not… Read More ›

JTF Guantanamo photo by U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Michael R. Holzworth, 6/9/10   In response to today’s release of the declassified Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) report on CIA use of torture during the Bush Administration, NSN Executive Director John Bradshaw and NSN Senior Advisor Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton (Ret.) have each issued statements. NSN Executive Director John Bradshaw issued the following statement: Defenders of the enhanced interrogation program are trying to re-write history and portray it as a well-thought out, carefully legally-vetted plan carried out by CIA experts. In fact, the CIA had no expertise in this kind of interrogation and turned to rogue psychologists to slap together an approach based on the SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) training provided to U.S.… Read More ›