Your task is to extract the thesis of an opinionated news article by selecting some of its text segments. The thesis is a summarization of what the author wants to persuade the reader of. Your answer should consist of segments of the given text. Note that you are not allowed to combine different sentences.

Punishment, not apology after CIA torture report. What a dark day for the United States . Five years and nine months after Senators Dianne Feinstein and Kit Bond, the chair and vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, announced a review of the CIA's detention and interrogation programme in the so-called "war on terror", the 500-page executive summary of that report has been made publicly available . Its conclusions are shocking . As Feinstein explained in an interview with the Los Angeles Times at the weekend,"We have to get this report out. Anybody who reads this is going to never let this happen again." Let us hope so - and let us also hope that senior officials in the Bush administration, as well as senior CIA personnel, will eventually be held accountable for their actions . The CIA's torture programme, initiated almost immediately after the 9/11 attacks, remained a closely guarded secret for many years . An early revelation was a June 2004 leak of a memo which purported to redefine torture so that it could be used by the CIA . The memo was written by John Yoo, a lawyer in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) , who was close to Dick Cheney . The CIA's "black sites" in Europe were not publicly exposed until November 2005 . The Bush administration still refused to openly acknowledge the programme until September 2006 , when then President George W Bush announced that, with the arrival of 14 "high-value detainees" at Guantanamo from various "black sites", the programme he had denied the existence of until that time had now closed down . That statement, we subsequently learned, was not entirely true , as a few other prisoners arrived at Guantanamo from CIA custody in 2007 and 2008 , but the torture report provides conclusive proof . "By March 2006," the report states,"the programme was operating in only one country. The CIA last used its enhanced interrogation techniques on November 8, 2007. The CIA did not hold any detainees after April 2008." After the arrival of the "high-value detainees" at Guantanamo, numerous attempts were made to pierce the veil of secrecy that surrounded the programme . In 2007, Swiss Senator Dick Marty published an influential report for the Council of Europe about secret prisons and rendition in Europe . In February 2008, CIA Director Michael Hayden admitted that three "high-value detainees" had been subjected to waterboarding . In December 2008, the Senate Armed Services Committee published a powerful report about how the policies for dealing with prisoners in the "war on terror" had developed - including detailed analysis of how the US military's SERE programme (intended to train US personnel to resist torture if captured by a hostile enemy) had been reverse-engineered for the "war on terror" . In April 2009, harrowing interviews with the 14 "high-value detainees", conducted by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, were leaked , and in August 2009 an internal CIA report from 2004 into the agency's detention and interrogation policies after 9/11 was released containing details of how one prisoner, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri (one of the three men waterboarded, along with Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Muhammad), was physically abused and threatened with a gun and power drill while hooded at a "black site" in Thailand . In 2010 I wrote a detailed analysis of the secret detention programme for a UN study , in which I sought to ascertain the identities of the 94 "ghost prisoners" in CIA custody - including 28 subjected to "enhanced interrogation"  - who were referred to in a memo from 2005 by OLC lawyer Steven G Bradbury that was released by the Obama administration in April 2009 . Another major report, by the Constitution Project, was published in 2013 . And yet , although some of the gruesome facts about the torture programme were known , the Senate Intelligence Committee's report provides far more . In its "Findings and Conclusions", for example, the report states :. There are many more examples . The report states :. In addition , "sleep deprivation involved keeping detainees awake for up to 180 hours" , and although some "experienced disturbing hallucinations", in at least two cases the CIA continued its abuse . These examples - and many more in the summary - demonstrate clearly the committee's conclusion that the interrogations "were brutal and far worse than the CIA represented to policymakers and others" . Perhaps more importantly, however, the committee also concludes that torture was "not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees", that the CIA made "inaccurate claims" about the "effectiveness" of the programme in an attempt to justify it and that it led to friction with other agencies that endangered national security, as well as providing false statements that led to costly and worthless wild goose chases . The report also concludes that non-approved techniques were used widely , and that "[a]t least 17 detainees were subjected to CIA enhanced interrogation techniques without authorisation from CIA headquarters", and that "multiple detainees were subjected to techniques that were applied in ways that diverged from the specific authorisation, or were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques by interrogators who had not been authorised to use them" . The committee was also critical of the central role played by two contract psychologists from the SERE programme , even though neither of them "had any experience as an interrogator, nor did either have specialised knowledge of al-Qaeda, a background in counterterrorism, or any relevant cultural or linguistic expertise" . The committee also concluded that Steven Bradbury's numbers were wrong, and that the CIA "detained at least 119 individuals, of whom at least 39 were subjected to the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques" . Moreover ,  of these 119 "at least 26 were wrongfully held and did not meet the detention standard" in the still-secret Bush administration memorandum establishing the programme in September 2001 . In the days and weeks to come, there will be concerted efforts by the CIA and by former Bush administration officials to defend their actions , but the report makes clear that any kind of defence is untenable . Crimes were committed, authorised at the highest level of the US government , and , although Obama came into office in 2009 expressing "a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards" , that is not acceptable . The Senate Intelligence Committee's torture report - all 6,700 pages of it, costing $40m and involving an analysis of more than six million pages of classified documents - must be the trigger not just for an airing of apologies, but for those who instigated and authorised the torture programme to be held accountable - up to and including President George W Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney .
The Senate Intelligence Committee's torture report - all 6,700 pages of it, costing $40m and involving an analysis of more than six million pages of classified documents - must be the trigger not just for an airing of apologies, but for those who instigated and authorised the torture programme to be held accountable - up to and including President George W Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney

Obama hands Cuba's Castros a major victory, but Congress can still stop it. Establishing ties with Cuba has been on President Obama's bucket list for some time . Health care -- done . Amnesty for illegal immigrants  -- done . Cuba -- next . This last one also has the added bonus point that it puts him right with the international left , which lionizes Castro . And the president will go on picking off the next items on the bucket list for the next two years of his term unless Congress decides to stop him . Should they work up the gumption , lawmakers will find they can do many things to stand up for the prerogatives of the legislative branch . Obviously, the release of the 65-year-old American hostage Alan Gross should be welcome . His "crime" was to bring computers to Jews on the island . For the last five years, he has been a victim of Cuba's state terrorism , just as 11 million Cubans have been held hostage by their government for the past five decades . Exchanging three hardened Cuban spies for Gross, however ,  establishes an insulting moral and legal equivalency . The spies actions led to the death of an American in the 1990s , and they were duly convicted . Their release in exchange for Gross creates an incentive for rogue regimes and individual actors to kidnap Americans all over the world . Not only does President Obama's action fail to advance freedom in Cuba , it throws a lifeline to Cuba's dictators , whose current supplier of funds, Venezuela, is on the ropes because of plunging oil prices . It surrenders to the demands for normalization that the Castros have been making for decades . So what can Congress do? Right off the bat, Congress must make it crystal clear to President Obama that he lacks the authority to lift the embargo on Cuba, allow trade to take place between the two nations, let tourists to go to Cuba to bail out the regime or give Cuba have access to capital markets . U.S  law--the Helms-Burton Act of 1996--gives the Congress power to override any action taken by the executive to lift the embargo . In order to lift the embargo, the Cuban government would have to give the Cuban people a number of rights--of association, speech, political activity, etc  -- that President Obama obviously failed to secure in his 45-minute conversation with Cuban dictator Raul Castro Tuesday . Congress can also make clear to the president that there are statutory criteria that must be met before his administration can take Cuba off the State Department list of terrorism sponsors . The president must inform Congress that there has been a change of leadership and policies of the Cuban government and that Castro has given assurances that it will no longer support terrorist acts . Can President Obama do any of that? Senators should also make clear that they will put a hold on any ambassador that Mr  Obama nominates to serve in Cuba unless he can guarantee that the Cuban government is no longer a threat to the United States and has decided to grant freedom to people in Cuba . Sen  Marco Rubio, R-Fla , has already said he plans to do that . Additionally ,  Congress can look into the possibility of using policy riders in the upcoming DHS appropriations debate in February and the Fiscal Year 2016 appropriations process to deny the president funds for setting up relations . Congress must act because President Obama has been completely feckless in his entire approach to Cuba . He received nothing in exchange for many substantial concessions made to the Communist regime . After five years of "negotiations" President Obama ended exactly where Raul Castro's demands began five years ago . As Senator Marco Rubio said, President "Obama is the worst negotiator since Carter." Mr  Obama's statement was filled with Havana's communist talking points, such as affirming that Cubans are poor and unfree because of the embargo, or that Cuba was a U.S  colony . None of that is true , and yet Mr  Obama said it . Congress must act to limit the damage inherent in this Havana Giveaway . Left unchecked , Obama will simply move on to the next misguided item on his bucket list .
Establishing ties with Cuba has been on President Obama's bucket list for some time

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd self-destructs. Editor's note: The following column first appeared in the Washington Times . The now-consumed 2014 has been perfectly described by some commentators as the year when facts died . Politicians, mobs in the streets and their willing accomplices in the media swamped us with lies, obfuscations or riots manifest because, as author Thomas Sowell has noted,"What matters today is how well you can concoct a story that fits people's preconceptions and arouses their emotions. Politicians like New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, professional demagogues like Al Sharpton and innumerable irresponsible people in the media have shown that they have great talent in promoting a lynch mob." None of this is unique to 2014, however, nor is the aptitude to stir up a lynch mob the exclusive purview of politicians . It has been both the vocation and avocation of liberal media darlings for a very long time . In 2014, with almost perfect timing and illustrating the farce of the left, a liberal favorite -- New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd -- was exposed by the Sony email hack for just how much hypocrisy and contrivance rules her world . An Internet search of Ms  Dowd brings up a whole host of approving profiles and interviews over the years, with a particular column considered by her sycophants as one of her greatest accomplishments: the "takedown" of former New York Times investigative reporter Judith Miller . Ms  Dowd provided what many thought was the coup de grace against Ms  Miller when she wrote that column about her then-colleague at The New York Times, excoriating Ms  Miller for her coverage of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction WMD) leading up to the Iraq war . Ms  Miller, you see, had done the unthinkable . She reported what her investigation found on the issue , which also happened to be what the Bush administration and scores of other governments had also determined : Saddam was pursuing a WMD program and an untold number of those weapons were developed and undeclared . As her fellow liberal colleagues piled on Ms  Miller , Ms  Dowd's column, dripping in ridicule and moral authority, condemned the reporter for being a "stenographer" for the Bush administration . Ms  Dowd complained Ms  Miller's work"fit too perfectly" with what the White House had been asserting about WMD . In other words ,  Ms  Dowd accused Ms  Miller of being too close to her subject , essentially of colluding with others, of selling out to make someone happy or to further a shared agenda . It was absurd and petty . But what we didn't know at the time was that it was also a perfect case of projection . In emails revealed late last year by the Sony Pictures hack, Ms  Dowd, The New York Times' supposed paragon of journalistic ethics, was discovered to have assured a Sony executive that she would be sure to make her "look great" in a column, and appeared to promise to show the column to the executive's husband, a former Times reporter, beforehand . After the column ran, more emails were exchanged, with Ms  Dowd telling the executive,"I hope you're happy... let's do another." After her subject declared the columnist her "favorite person," Ms  Dowd gushed,"You're mine! You're amazing." Ms  Dowd has since denied that she provided the column in advance . That's possible . So was it a draft that was provided? And by someone other than herself? For those who might suggest this mistake of Ms Dowd's was a one-off, issues of character inform everything we do . Hypocrisy doesn't sneak up on you once . It's part of how you relate to the world . Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times from 2003 to 2011, confirmed to the left-wing blog Media Matters in 2011 that the newspaper's treatment of Ms  Miller was due to politics and to assuage the leftist critics . Mr  Keller confessed,"I let a year go by when a lot of people, particularly people on the left, became disenchanted with the Times because they saw it as having been cheerleaders for the war. I think I could have saved the paper a lot of trouble and some damage by dealing with [Ms  Miller's reporting] much sooner." Facts do tend to be pesky things, as Ms  Dowd and the rest of The New York Times crew found in 2014 . After years of morally superior, self-righteous preening, they had a problem : Judith Miller was proven right about WMD in Iraq . Revealed in a 2010 Wikileaks document dump, The New York Times finally wrote a 10,000 word story on "abandoned chemical weapons" in Iraq as it became evident our troops continued to be injured by them and their existence could no longer be denied . The New York Sun suggested the Times' story be viewed as "journalism's longest correction," and was "designed to try to extricate the Gray Lady from all these charges about how President George W  Bush and his camarilla lied about the danger of Saddam's chemical arsenal . It turns out that Iraq was littered with thousands of shells containing poison gas, like Sarin." In that 2005 column attacking Ms  Miller, Ms  Dowd dramatically warned her readers if Ms  Miller remained a reporter at The New York Times, the newspaper itself would be at risk . Ten years later, now with the Times on the verge of collapse, forced retirements, layoffs and plunging ad revenue, the facts are teaching a lesson in irony and hypocrisy to Ms  Dowd and everyone else at the Times who jettisoned the truth to soothe jealousies and pander to politics .

The now-consumed 2014 has been perfectly described by some commentators as the year when facts died