“No US government officials have been held accountable for creating, authorizing, or implementing the CIA’s secret detention and torture programs [following the September 11, 2001, attacks]. All but a heavily redacted summary of the landmark 2014 US Senate Intelligence Committee report on the covert CIA program (the ‘Torture Report’) remains classified. The portions that have been released make clear that the torture was as useless in producing actionable intelligence as it was brutal. …
Although such US detention-related counterterrorism violations have dramatically decreased, Washington has replaced capture with kill, conducting air strikes – often with armed drones that have killed thousands of civilians, including outside recognized battlefields. Its counterterrorism campaign has spread to 85 countries with scant transparency or oversight.”
– Letta Tayler and Elisa Epstein, “Legacy of the ‘Dark Side’- The Costs of Unlawful US Detentions and Interrogations Post-9/11,” hrw.org, January 9, 2022