Metro Jacksonville

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/04/18/khalid-sheikh-mohammed-was-waterboarded-183-times-in-one-month/

QuoteI've put this detail in a series of posts, but it really deserves a full post. According to the May 30, 2005 Bradbury memo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 and Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002.

On page 37 of the OLC memo, in a passage discussing the differences between SERE techniques and the torture used with detainees, the memo explains:

    The CIA used the waterboard "at least 83 times during August 2002" in the interrogation of Zubaydah. IG Report at 90, and 183 times during March 2003 in the interrogation of KSM, see id. at 91.

Note, the information comes from the CIA IG report which, in the case of Abu Zubaydah, is based on having viewed the torture tapes as well as other materials. So this is presumably a number that was once backed up by video evidence.

The same OLC memo passage explains how the CIA might manage to waterboard these men so many times in one month each (though even with these chilling numbers, the CIA's math doesn't add up).

    ...where authorized, it may be used for two "sessions" per day of up to two hours. During a session, water may be applied up to six times for ten seconds or longer (but never more than 40 seconds). In a 24-hour period, a detainee may be subjected to up to twelve minutes of water appliaction. See id. at 42.  Additionally, the waterboard may be used on as many as five days during a 30-day approval period.

So: two two-hour sessions a day, with six applications of the waterboard each = 12 applications in a day. Though to get up to the permitted 12 minutes of waterboarding in a day (with each use of the waterboard limited to 40 seconds), you'd need 18 applications in a day.  Assuming you use the larger 18 applications in one 24-hour period, and do 18 applications on five days within a month, you've waterboarded 90 times--still just half of what they did to KSM.

The CIA wants you to believe waterboarding is effective. Yet somehow, it took them 183 applications of the waterboard in a one month period to get what they claimed was cooperation out of KSM.

That doesn't sound very effective to me.

Sign the petition telling Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate torture here.

Update: Here's one reason to demand a special prosecutor to investigate these actions. In addition to revealing the sheer number of times KSM and Abu Zubaydah were waterboarded, the memos reveal that the interrogators who waterboarded these men went far beyond even the expansive  guidelines for torture described in the Bybee Memo, notably by dumping water onto their nose and mouth, rather than dribbing it on.

    The IG Report noted that in some cases the waterboard was used with far greater frequency than initially indicated, see IG Report at 5, 44, 46, 103-04, and also that it was used in a different manner. See id. at 37 ("[T]he waterboard technique  ... was different from the technique described in the DoJ opinion and used in the SERE training. The difference was the manner in which the detainee's breathing was obstructed. At the SERE school and in the DoJ opinion, the subject's airflow is disrupted by the firm application of a damp cloth over the air passages; the interrogator applies a small amount of water to the cloth in a controlled manner. By contrast, the Agency Interrogator ...  applied large volumes of water to a cloth that covered the detainee's mouth and nose. One of the psychologists/interrogators acknowledged that the Agency's use of the technique is different from that used in SERE training because it is "for real--and is more poignant and convincing.") [my emphasis]

There's been a lot of discussion about whether those who did what the OLC memos authorized should be prosecuted. But in the case of those who waterboarded KSM and Abu Zubaydah, that's irrelevant, because they did things the OLC memos didn't authorize.

Pres. Obambam did the right thing when he doused the vigor of the attack dogs in destroying the lives and careers of CIA personnel who were protecting American lives.  I think the only "agonizing" he did, mentioned in the article below, was how to partially appease his rabid base for that decision.  His next decision was a wonderful gift and victory to our jihadist friends.

QuoteInexcusable Lapse
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, April 17, 2009 4:20 PM PT

War On Terror: Imagine a president of the United States, within his first hundred days, revealing secrets that help terrorists kill. The secret memos on enhanced interrogation, now made public, do exactly that.

We are told by President Obama's senior adviser David Axelrod that the president agonized for four weeks over the "weighty decision" to make public memoranda detailing the specifics of the CIA's tough interrogation of high-value terrorist detainees such as 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad.

For most other presidents, it would have taken maybe four minutes, required little soul-searching and resulted in the opposite choice.

What on earth could the president have been thinking in revealing the nuts and bolts of how we extract information from al-Qaida operatives to prevent the success of their terrorist operations?

What could have possessed him to make public the steps our interrogators go through, the limits of pain and discomfort they (but not the prisoners) know they will not exceed, and the analytical classification and specific purpose of each of the various techniques?

These top secrets will arm Islamist jihadists with knowledge that will be invaluable to them. Future terrorist detainees will now know, for instance, that their interrogations are under continual video surveillance to make sure no lasting medical or psychological consequences result from the techniques used. Will they now teach themselves to fake such ill effects?

Terrorists will know that when they are placed in a tiny container in "cramped confinement" it will last only "up to two hours," as a declassified memo from the Justice Department to the CIA noted. They will know that "stress positions" are used "only to induce temporary muscle fatigue" not "severe physical pain."

They will now know that when subjected to "water dousing" they need not have the slightest fear of hypothermia, because every precaution is taken to keep the temperature of both the room and the water itself far above freezing.

They will know sleep deprivation inflicted by the interrogators seldom exceeds 96 hours, and they'll know the specifics and purposes behind the relatively mild technique of "dietary manipulation."

What the president has given to our enemies is a treasure chest of defensive weapons. Within the caves of the mountainous Pakistan/Afghanistan border, Islamofascist plotters must wonder how self-destructively corrupt their American adversaries have to be to allow such materials to land in their hands.

The piece of information that may be of most value to terrorists is the government's assessment that waterboarding was "the most traumatic of the enhanced interrogation techniques" and implicitly the most effective.

Terrorist groups around the world will now know that waterboarding was "authorized for, at most, one 30-day period, during which the technique can actually be applied on no more than five days" with "no more than two sessions in any 24-hour period."

Each session lasted no more than two hours, consisting of, at most, six applications of water for 10 seconds each time, for a total of no longer than 12 minutes per each 24-hour period. Presumably the issue is academic since the Obama administration has officially prohibited waterboarding.

There is no more valuable tool for subjects of interrogation than to know what they will be subjected to. How in good conscience could our president have given this gift to those trying to destroy us?

Where was that logic when we prosecuted everyone at Nuremburg? They were all just following orders too...

Don't recall any jihadi boy's being sent to gas chambers or lined up and shot in the back of the head. 

Still not sure what the big deal is... no one was hurt... no one was harmed... discomforted?  Yes.  Scared? I hope so.  Intimidated?  OK. Stressed? OMG.  Dietary manipulation?  Don't we all?

All this from a generation that is "tortured" sitting in a traffic jam, or feels abused by a waitress.  These four or five guys were dangerous MFers who may or may not have had information.  These stateless mercenaries are not signatories to any Geneva conventions and most assuredly do not treat their captives with such dignities.

I do not want this sort of treatment to become standard practice and I am OK with The president publicly declaring that it will stop.(it already had)  The fact that he agonized for four weeks over the decision tells me it was not as clear cut decision as some would have you believe.  I hope for his sake he is never put into a position where he may have to secretly recind his decision in a time of national crisis.

Quote from: jaxnative on April 20, 2009, 03:51:31 PM
Don't recall any jihadi boy's being sent to gas chambers or lined up and shot in the back of the head. 

You must not watch the news much. We've killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis of all ages, by a variety of unpleasant methods.

And that's just what we know about. I'm sure plenty more is 'classified'...

Yes, of course we have.  I think some have gotten it up into the millions.  F---king, genocidal Americans!!!

QuoteWe've killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis of all ages, by a variety of unpleasant methods.

Your military is very well trained... and they are very good at what they do.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090420/pl_politico/21472

QuoteCheney also said he found the administration’s release of memos about CIA interrogation techniques “a little bit disturbing” since the government has not also release documents he claims would show “the success of the effort.”

Cheney said he has “formally asked” for the declassification of documents he says would “lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country.”

Here are excerpts released by Fox News Channel’s “Hannity”:


On his thoughts regarding the CIA memos that were recently declassified and his request to the CIA to declassify additional memos that confirm the success of the Bush administration’s interrogation tactics: “One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn't put out the memos that showed the success of the effort. And there are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified.”

“I formally asked that they be declassified now. I haven't announced this up until now, I haven't talked about it, but I know specifically of reports that I read, that I saw that lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country.”

“And I've now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos so we can lay them out there and the American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was, as well as to see this debate over the legal opinions.

Quote from: BridgeTroll on April 20, 2009, 06:55:29 PM
Your military is very well trained... and they are very good at what they do.

No doubt. But it's our politicians that could use some improvement...

Quote from: BridgeTroll on April 20, 2009, 04:53:32 PM
I hope for his sake he is never put into a position where he may have to secretly recind his decision in a time of national crisis.

I've thought about this before too.  I think this will most likely happen, and the decision he makes will be huge.

Obama has said the opposite... but I suppose someone in congress will try for some notoriety.

No doubt... :o

It's a good thing that you will never be in a position to make that call. As a former soldier, I would say that if it was my job to interrogate terrorists, I would do what I needed to do legally to extract information that could save us from further attacks.  That doesn't make me or any of them (the interrogators) monsters, Stephen.  It makes them soldiers - sworn to defend this country.  

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=325121124043870

Enhanced Protection
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Monday, April 20, 2009 4:20 PM PT

National Security: The establishment media are obsessed with the newly revealed details of our enhanced terrorist interrogation techniques. Their most important detail is the many American lives they saved.

There's nothing like a big number in a top-of-the-fold headline to sell newspapers â€" and seal misconceptions. The supposedly big news of the weekend regarding disclosure of declassified memos specifying the methods used by the CIA to question captured terrorists was that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his fellow al-Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah were waterboarded a combined 266 times.

That number certainly is big if you think about what most media and leading Democrats have been telling us about use of the water board. They claim it constitutes torture, that no one can resist such a pseudo-medieval practice for more than a few seconds â€" yet at the same time it doesn't really work.

But the number itself refutes those accusations. If KSM was forced to undergo such a drowning sensation 183 times in the course of one month about a year after the 2001 attacks, and Zubaydah 83 times in the course of a month the summer before KSM's sessions, it suggests the interrogators were getting places.

The released paper makes that clear. The May 30, 2005, memo from the Justice Department to the CIA, for instance, noted that "no technique is used on a detainee unless use of that technique at that time appears necessary to obtaining the intelligence."

Khalid and Zubaydah were two of only three detainees on whom waterboarding, "the most traumatic of the enhanced interrogation techniques," was used. Yet the number of sessions employed makes it clear that as harsh as the method is, it clearly can be resisted, especially if a terrorist has been conditioned to do so. Otherwise, so many repeated sessions would be unnecessary.

As the guidelines of the CIA's Office of Medical Services stated, "The general goal of these techniques is a psychological impact, and not some physical effect." The OMS described the "specific goal" as being to "dislocate" the terrorist's "expectations regarding the treatment he believes he will receive."

Unfortunately, by making the details public and thus available for al-Qaida and other terrorist groups to study, that "dislocation of expectations" becomes impossible for future terrorist detainees.

This is an incalculable blow to U.S. national security.

As former CIA Director Michael Hayden and former Attorney General Michael Mukasey pointed out last week, half of the U.S. government's knowledge of al-Qaida's structure and activities is the fruit of enhanced interrogation.

That information let the U.S. and other governments foil numerous 9/11-style operations, saving hundreds if not thousands of innocent lives.

We understand that people have legitimate concerns about the U.S. being involved in torture. But enhanced interrogation â€" a reasonable (but now rescinded) response to the deadliest of threats to our homeland â€" should be seen for what it is: a tough, but effective, way to save lives.

And those devoted U.S. government personnel who took part, who saved so many, deserve medals.

I still have not seen any indication of torture.  Waterboarding does not really fill the bill.  Descriptions of it being an attempt to nearly drown the person is faulty.  It is designed to give the person the perception that he may drown.  I realize this IS torture to someone who would be against a mild scolding... or horrified by a slow internet connection.  Harsh? yes... torture? I dont think so.

Most of the newspapers are rotating between "harsh interrogation" and "torture".

Why are they not releasing the results of these interrogations?

Apparently we were torturing POWs during Vietnam... :o

Stephen,

The CIA has oversight on a lot of these matters, but military interrogators are the handlers.  I personally know a couple people that served as interrogators in Iraq.  They sleep pretty well at night.

Monsters cut off heads to display on TV because they hate.  

Soldiers in general have a certain percentage that suffer psychological issues due to war.  It happens, I agree with you.  But that doesn't mean we should not defend ourselves in the best way possible.  

QuoteBridge Troll.  We have several times discussed the various methods of torture. Why do you pretend that the only thing that has ever happened is waterboarding?

Must you always resort to the strawman???????  I have never said anything of the sort!!  Of course you are well aware of what I say... you simply try to change what I say into something you can misrepresent.

Waterboarding is most talked about as an interrogation method because it sounds so much more harsh than "stress positions" and sleep deprivation.

Let me ask this... If one Allied soldiers life was saved or an attack upon civilians detered would you then forgive the method used to obtain the pertinant information??

http://incoldblogger.blogspot.com/2007/07/killitary-are-americas-armed-forces.html

The list of lawyers, doctors, presidents, CEOs, etc... who have spent time in the military is even more astounding...

The guy who wrote this tripe is an ass...

QuoteThe list of serial killers and mass murderers who have spent time in the military is astounding.

Quoteno.

As I thought...

QuoteSince we haven't been invaded, we aren't fighting for our land or property.

Oh we are Stephen... Ask bin laden and his disciples... 9/11 made pearl harbor look like a barfight.  Thousands dead... the Pentagon hit... the Capitol building was the the only target they missed.

We are still fighting and so are they...  They will slit your throat from ear to ear Stephen... even as you defend their right to a fair trial... and they will laugh at your weakness while they do it.

We ARE fighting...

QuoteAre you downplaying the psychological and emotional damage that warfare does to people who would ordinarily have full and happy lives?

I am not... and since you seem to have forgotten... I am a Vet.

Quote from: stephendare on April 21, 2009, 12:21:52 PM
no.

hopefully we fight for our ideals man. 

Since we havent been invaded, we arent fighting for our land or property.

Stephen, since you answered the basic question with a resounding "No", then this conversation is a moot point.  Again, I'll restate that I'm glad you will never be in a position to make that call.  But I respect your opinion.

But you have no idea how many threats exist and have been thwarted.  Obviously 9/11 is not a definition of an "invasion" to you.  Perhaps another attack will wake you up?

QuoteSo, Iraq blew up the World Trade Towers?

Iraq??  WTF are you talking about?  No one (except yourself) has mentioned iraq in this entire thread...

Quote from: stephendare on April 21, 2009, 12:35:01 PM
So, Iraq blew up the World Trade Towers?

Here we go - this is lame and old.  

They are values we should strive for.  Resorting to methods that are not normally our nature is fairly common.  Normally our ideals and values preclude the taking of life... yet executions and abortions are performed with regularity.  Normally our ideals and values preclude us from hurting people yet we do so to protect innocents from harm.

Harsh interrogation methods are NOT part of our ideals and values... yet in this particular case... the president and others deemed it necessary to protect you.  Is it that difficult to forgive this?

Then enjoy the proceedings with glee...  I hope you are happy with the outcomes...

We shall see...

Happily... we will never know how many lives were saved...

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=46949

QuoteCIA Confirms: Waterboarding 9/11 Mastermind Led to Info that Aborted 9/11-Style Attack on Los Angeles
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
By Terence P. Jeffrey, Editor-in-Chief


Khalid Sheik Mohammad, a top al Qaeda leader who divulged information -- after being waterboarded -- that allowed the U.S. government to stop a planned terrorist attack on Los Angeles. (CNSNews.com) - The Central Intelligence Agency told CNSNews.com today that it stands by the assertion made in a May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that the use of “enhanced techniques” of interrogation on al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) -- including the use of waterboarding -- caused KSM to reveal information that allowed the U.S. government to thwart a planned attack on Los Angeles.

Before he was waterboarded, when KSM was asked about planned attacks on the United States, he ominously told his CIA interrogators, “Soon, you will know.”

According to the previously classified May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that was released by President Barack Obama last week, the thwarted attack -- which KSM called the “Second Wave”-- planned “ ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles.”

KSM was the mastermind of the first “hijacked-airliner” attacks on the United States, which struck the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Northern Virginia on Sept. 11, 2001.

After KSM was captured by the United States, he was not initially cooperative with CIA interrogators.  Nor was another top al Qaeda leader named Zubaydah.  KSM, Zubaydah, and a third terrorist named Nashiri were the only three persons ever subjected to waterboarding by the CIA. (Additional terrorist detainees were subjected to other “enhanced techniques” that included slapping, sleep deprivation, dietary limitations, and temporary confinement to small spaces -- but not to water-boarding.)

This was because the CIA imposed very tight restrictions on the use of waterboarding. “The ‘waterboard,’ which is the most intense of the CIA interrogation techniques, is subject to additional limits,” explained the May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo. “It may be used on a High Value Detainee only if the CIA has ‘credible intelligence that a terrorist attack is imminent’; ‘substantial and credible indicators that the subject has actionable intelligence that can prevent, disrupt or deny this attack’; and ‘

• ther interrogation methods have failed to elicit this information within the perceived time limit for preventing the attack.’”
  
  The quotations in this part of the Justice memo were taken from an Aug. 2, 2004 letter that CIA Acting General Counsel John A. Rizzo sent to the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.
  
  Before they were subjected to “enhanced techniques” of interrogation that included waterboarding, KSM and Zubaydah were not only uncooperative but also appeared contemptuous of the will of the American people to defend themselves.
  
  “In particular, the CIA believes that it would have been unable to obtain critical information from numerous detainees, including KSM and Abu Zubaydah, without these enhanced techniques,” says the Justice Department memo. “Both KSM and Zubaydah had ‘expressed their belief that the general US population was ‘weak,’ lacked resilience, and would be unable to ‘do what was necessary’ to prevent the terrorists from succeeding in their goals.’  Indeed, before the CIA used enhanced techniques in its interrogation of KSM, KSM resisted giving any answers to questions about future attacks, simply noting, ‘Soon you will know.’”
  
  After he was subjected to the “waterboard” technique, KSM became cooperative, providing intelligence that led to the capture of key al Qaeda allies and, eventually, the closing down of an East Asian terrorist cell that had been tasked with carrying out the 9/11-style attack on Los Angeles.
  
  The May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that details what happened in this regard was written by then-Principal Deputy Attorney General Steven G. Bradbury to John A. Rizzo, the senior deputy general counsel for the CIA.
  
  “You have informed us that the interrogation of KSMâ€"once enhanced techniques were employedâ€"led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the ‘Second Wave,’ ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles,” says the memo.
  
  “You have informed us that information obtained from KSM also led to the capture of Riduan bin Isomuddin, better known as Hambali, and the discover of the Guraba Cell, a 17-member Jemaah Islamiyah cell tasked with executing the ‘Second Wave,’” reads the memo. “More specifically, we understand that KSM admitted that he had [redaction] large sum of money to an al Qaeda associate [redaction] … Khan subsequently identified the associate (Zubair), who was then captured. Zubair, in turn, provided information that led to the arrest of Hambali. The information acquired from these captures allowed CIA interrogators to pose more specific questions to KSM, which led the CIA to Hambali’s brother, al Hadi. Using information obtained from multiple sources, al-Hadi was captured, and he subsequently identified the Garuba cell. With the aid of this additional information, interrogations of Hambali confirmed much of what was learned from KSM.”
  
  A CIA spokesman confirmed to CNSNews.com today that the CIA stands by the factual assertions made here.
  
  In the memo itself, the Justice Department’s Bradbury told the CIA’s Rossi: “Your office has informed us that the CIA believes that ‘the intelligence acquired from these interrogations has been a key reason why al Qa’ida has failed to launch a spectacular attack in the West since 11 September 2001.”
  

What bogus information?  The detainees are getting better medical care and health care products than you are Stephen.  THAT is preposterous.

Colonel Jacobs is a great man and his views are very valid... but they do not have much bearing on this.  You implied that there was bogus information given to the CIA... All I am saying is...

Really??  What was it?

Never have justified torture... YOU are the one using the term.  You are the one who forgets we are at war with a ruthless foe who will use suicide to kill thousands of innocents.  You stick to your morals... I will stick to mine.  If a mastermind of 9/11 needs some water poured in his nose, or is deprived of sleep to stop an attack on L.A. similar to 9/11... I can live with that.

You seem quite able to sacrifice them for your ideals.

Your ideals don't mean much if you are dead.

I was speaking in terms of a leveled American city. 

QuoteDude.  What is worth dying for, if not our ideals and civilization.

Sacrifice them and you are no better than your worst nightmare.

I addressed this a few posts ago.  I am sacrificing nothing.

Here is some more in info... It shows that there were discussions and disagreements about aggressive tactics.  This article puts into context those discussions...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/09/10/MNGB8L2UAV1.DTL&hw=interrogations&sn=006&sc=341

QuoteDisputes dogged CIA over interrogation of bin Laden aide
Some say tactics did more harm than good
David Johnston, New York Times

Sunday, September 10, 2006

(09-10) 04:00 PDT Washington -- Abu Zubaydah, the first Osama bin Laden henchman captured by the United States after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, was bloodied and feverish when a CIA security team delivered him to a secret safe house in Thailand for interrogation in the early spring of 2002. Bullet fragments had ripped through his abdomen and groin during a firefight in Pakistan several days earlier when he had been captured.

The events that unfolded at the safe house over the next few weeks proved to be fateful for the Bush administration. Within days, Zubaydah was being subjected to coercive interrogation techniques -- he was stripped, held in an icy room and jarred by earsplittingly loud music -- the genesis of practices later adopted by some within the military, and widely used by the CIA in handling prominent terrorism suspects at a series of secret overseas prisons.

President Bush pointedly cited the capture and interrogation of Zubaydah in his speech Wednesday announcing the transfer of Zubaydah and 13 others to the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And he used it to call for ratification of the tough techniques employed in the questioning.

But rather than the smooth progression depicted by Bush, interviews with nearly a dozen current and former law enforcement and intelligence officials briefed on the process show, the interrogation of Zubaydah was fraught with sharp disputes, debates about the legality and utility of harsh interrogation methods, and a rupture between the FBI and the CIA that has yet to heal.

Some of those interviewed offered sharply contrasting accounts, but all said that the disagreements were intense. More than four years later, these disputes are foreshadowing the debate that Bush's new proposals are meeting in Congress, as lawmakers wrangle over what rules should apply as terrorism suspects are captured, questioned and, possibly, tried before military tribunals.

A reconstruction of Zubaydah's initial days of detention and interrogation, based on accounts by former and current law enforcement and intelligence officials, provides the first detailed account of his treatment and the disputes and uncertainties that surrounded it. The basic chronology of how the capture and interrogation unfolded was described consistently by sources from a number of government agencies, all of whom asked not to be identified.

Last week, Bush said he had not approved and never would approve the use of torture. The CIA declined to discuss the specifics of the case on the record. At FBI headquarters, officials refused to publicly discuss the interrogation of Zubaydah, citing what they said were "operational sensitivities."

Some of the officials who were interviewed were briefed on the events as they occurred. Others were provided with accounts of the interrogation later on.

Before his capture, Zubaydah was regarded as a top bin Laden logistics chief who funneled recruits to training bases in Afghanistan and served as a communications link between al Qaeda's leadership and extremists in other countries.

As interrogators dug into his activities, however, they scaled back their assessment somewhat, viewing him more as the terror network's personnel director and hotelier who ran a string of guest houses in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Zubaydah's whereabouts in Pakistan had been determined in part through intercepted Internet communications, but for days after his capture his identity was in doubt. He had surgically altered his appearance and was using an alias. But when agents used a nickname for Zubaydah, he acknowledged his true identity, which was confirmed through analysis of his voice, facial structure and DNA tests.

By all accounts, Zubaydah's condition was rapidly deteriorating when he arrived in Thailand. Soon after his capture, Zubaydah nearly died of his infected wounds. At one point, he was covertly rushed to a hospital.

According to accounts from five former and current government officials who were briefed on the case, FBI agents -- accompanied by intelligence officers -- initially questioned him using standard interview techniques. They bathed Zubaydah, changed his bandages, gave him water, urged improved medical care and spoke with him in Arabic and English, languages in which he is fluent.

To convince him they knew details of his activities, the agents brought a box of blank audiotapes which they said contained recordings of his phone conversations, but were actually empty. As the FBI worked with CIA officers who were present, Zubaydah soon began to provide intelligence insights into al Qaeda.

For the CIA, Zubaydah was a test case for an evolving new role, conceived after Sept. 11, in which the agency was to act as jailer and interrogator for terrorism suspects.

According to accounts by three former intelligence officials, the CIA understood that the legal foundation for its role had been spelled out in a sweeping classified directive signed by Bush on Sept. 17, 2001, six days after the attacks. The directive, known as a memorandum of notification, authorized the CIA for the first time to capture, detain and interrogate terrorism suspects, providing the foundation for what became its secret prison system.

That 2001 directive did not spell out specific guidelines for interrogations, however, and senior CIA officials began in late 2001 and early 2002 to draw up a list of aggressive interrogation procedures that might be used against terrorism suspects. They consulted agency psychiatrists and foreign governments to identify effective techniques beyond standard interview practices.

After Zubaydah's capture, a CIA interrogation team was dispatched from the agency's Counterterrorism Center to take the lead in his questioning, former law enforcement and intelligence officials said. The group included an agency consultant schooled in the harsher interrogation procedures to which American special forces are subjected in their training. Three former intelligence officials said the techniques had been drawn up on the basis of legal guidance from the Justice Department, but were not yet supported by a formal legal opinion.

In Thailand, the new CIA team concluded that under standard questioning Zubaydah was revealing only a small fraction of what he knew, and decided that more aggressive techniques were warranted.

At times, Zubaydah, still weak from his wounds, was stripped and placed in a cell without a bunk or blankets. He stood or lay on the bare floor, sometimes with air conditioning adjusted so that, one official said, Zubaydah seemed to turn blue. At other times, the interrogators piped in deafening blasts of music by groups like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Sometimes, the interrogator would use simpler techniques, entering his cell to ask him to confess.

"You know what I want," the interrogator would say to him, according to one official's account, departing without waiting for an answer.

FBI agents on the scene angrily protested the more aggressive approach, arguing that persuasion rather than coercion had succeeded. But leaders of the CIA interrogation team were convinced that tougher tactics were warranted and said the methods had been legally approved and authorized by senior lawyers at the White House.

In his early interviews, Zubaydah had revealed what turned out to be important information, identifying Khalid Shaikh Mohammed -- from a photo on a Palm Pilot -- as the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks. Zubaydah also identified Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who has been charged with terrorism-related crimes.

But Zubaydah dismissed Padilla as a maladroit extremist whose hope of constructing a dirty bomb, using conventional explosives to disperse radioactive materials, was far-fetched. He told his questioners that Padilla was ignorant on the subject of nuclear physics and believed he could separate plutonium from nuclear material by rapidly swinging over his head a bucket filled with fissionable material.

Crucial aspects of what happened during Zubaydah's interrogation are sharply disputed. Some former and current government officials briefed on the case, who were more closely allied with law enforcement, said Zubaydah cooperated with FBI interviewers until the CIA interrogation team arrived. They said Zubaydah's resistance began after the agency interrogators began using more stringent tactics.

Other officials, more closely tied to intelligence agencies, dismissed that account, saying the CIA had supervised all interviews with Zubaydah, including those in which FBI agents asked questions. These officials said that he proved a wily adversary. "He was lying, and things were going nowhere," one official briefed on the matter said of the early interviews. "It was clear that he had information about an imminent attack, and time was of the essence."

Several officials said the belief that Zubaydah might have possessed critical information about a coming terrorist operation figured significantly in the decision to employ tougher tactics, even though it later became apparent he had no such knowledge.

"As the president has made clear, the fact of the matter is that Abu Zubaydah was defiant and evasive until the approved procedures were used," one government official said. "He soon began to provide information on key al Qaeda operators to help us find and capture those responsible for the 9/11 attacks."

Please read the above article...

I have absolutley no idea what you are rambling about.  Tikrit?  Iraqis at gitmo??

Quote from: stephendare on April 21, 2009, 03:40:36 PM
Then, I would dare you....no i triple dog dare you, to go explain to a group of iraqi widows in tikrit about why its ok that their husbands dont walk so good anymore.

They probably used to play soccer for Uday and Qusay.

Quote from: stephendare on April 21, 2009, 03:44:41 PM
you are defending torture.

No, we are just refusing to allow you to define torture for us.

Quote
Tikrit.  Its a city in Iraq.
There are Iraqis at gitmo.
We are presently at war in Iraq.
The torturing of prisoners took place in iraq.
you are defending torture.

QuoteTikrit.  Its a city in Iraq.

I know what and where it is.  I also know where chicago is... neither is pertinent to this convo.

QuoteThere are Iraqis at gitmo.

Are there?  If so they were captured in Afghanistan.

QuoteWe are presently at war in Iraq.

And it is Tuesday... again Thank you.

QuoteThe torturing of prisoners took place in iraq.

Really?  By who?  I was talking about the three al qaida prisoners.

Quoteyou are defending torture.

No... I am not.

Absolute silliness.  The torture McCain endured IS torture!  Very good Stephen!  Look up what he endured and the compare the water and loud noises these thugs got to tolerate.  All that AND great medical care... It is freeking laughable that you could even compare the two.  I understand why somebody would consider having to listen to RED HOT CHILI PEPPERS as torture... but it is not.  Why I bet John might even enjoy a few tracks... :D

BT said it well - this is absolute silliness. 

Freedonia?

Looks like my high school coach - and the methods he used if you missed a catch.

This is an old argument with Stephen and to continue it is an exercise in futility.  I will agree to disagree with him and simply point out once again that morality in war is a difficult subject, and our views are shaped largely by our individual experiences.  In this particular case, I believe that the intent is not really moral outrage but a political agenda.  If the acts described on this board (the actions of our government agents, not the childish crap of Abu Ghraib; everyone here should be able to tell the difference) are immoral to you, then the idea of war itself should be just as immoral since the idea is to kill and destroy.  If there is no possible justification of "aggressive interogation" of the enemy fighters then how can killing the enemy be moral?  My opinion is that we should kill those that directly and immediatly threaten us with death if no other alternative is possible or as sure in guaranteeing the lives of my fellow threatened compatriots.  With that statement, it should be a given that I would support any act short of killing that would also remove that direct and immediate threat to those same lives.  

This is not a blanket approval of torture on my part.  It should be recognized that these types of instances are few and far between.  I believe that the officials that made the decision to use the techniques that many are calling "torture" in the years following the attacks of 9/11 were justified.  This was a difficult time and we were facing an new kind of enemy that hides behind innocents in multiple states, claiming religious righteousness.  These decisions are difficult and I am sure that anyone who has been in the position of taking life understands the personal thoughts that follow such incidents.  

I believe that the idea of judging the morality of previous administrations in a courtroom, whether foreign or US, is a dangerous road that can work both ways.  Morality is a broad subject, encompassing more than just the subject of this thread.  I fear that such prosecutions would result in even more devisivness than already exists in American politics.  Granted, there are acts which are indefensible and should be crimanally prosecuted.  The obvious instances such as Nazi Germany and Pol Pot's Cambodia come to mind.  I agree with BT that the acts that are the focus of this thread do not rise to this level, and as I have stated, I believe they were justifiable.  Of course, this is only my opinion, I am not a lawyer, or a politician.  But I have been in harms way in defense of this country and in defense of citizens and I understand and firmly believe that evil must be met and defeated, using force when necessary. 

My sleep is disturbed more by the evil actions that I have seen some are capable of and my belief that my fellow Americans and citizens are in peril than by my actions in defense of those same Americans and citizens.

Thank you Notnow... well said.  Stephen I am well aware that the photo was taken in Iraq.  It was also illegal abuse of POWs by guards who knew better.  I am not going to go through the exercise of pointing out the difference.  I am quite sure you do not see one.

Remember Daniel Pearl?  I can post ghastly pictures of that obscenity also... How about a video?  Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed to his execution... er... murder in cold blood...

In fact Stephen he said...

Quote"I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan. For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head,"

That pretty much sums up my positions as well.

And comparing John McCain to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed isn't moral equivalency??  Don't tell me about research either... I have done it... and experienced it.

As a naval Aircrewman I was required to attend S.E.R.E.  It is my understanding that the instructors of that very school were the ones who helped perform the interrogations.

I have been waterboarded... I have been "walled"... I have been placed in a small box and had it slowly filled with smoke... I have been forced to stand in "stress positions" for hours...

Do some research yourself...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survival,_Evasion,_Resistance_and_Escape

A short synopsis of the course I attended...

QuoteLevel C is held at Naval Air Station Brunswick, Maine at the Navy Remote Training Site, Rangeley, and at Naval Air Station North Island, California at the Navy Remote Training Site, Warner Springs. This installation provides 'Code of Conduct' that is necessary for MAGTF Recon and Navy SEALs. As the "eyes" and "ears" of the commander, they carry knowledge of sensitive battlefield information.

The training encompasses those basic skills necessary for worldwide survival, facilitating search and rescue efforts, evading capture by hostile forces, resistance to interrogation, exploitation and indoctrination, and escape from detention by enemy forces. It is based on and reinforces the values expressed in the Code of Conduct while maintaining an appropriate balance of sound educational methodology and realistic/stressful training scenarios.

Additional survival training in Level C Code of Conduct may include the five-day Peacetime Detention and Hostage Survival (PDAHS) course. This training provides the skills to survive captivity by a hostile government or terrorist cell during peacetime.

Here Stephen... take some time and check this out... look at the pics... I was Pig number 21... I remember it well.

http://www.training.sfahq.com/survival_training.htm

QuoteBut to sit here and listen to this nonsense is just pathetic.

I agree Stephen... I agree.

BT did you have coffee on Sunday morning in an overrated coffee house?  According to Stephen, that's real torture. And the coffee house owners, who were in business when George Bush was President, should be imprisoned.

Thank you for your service.  While I did not go through the S.E.R.E. training, I am aware of the training programs that all of our branches conduct.  You understand the realities.

As much as I hate to enter this useless back and forth, as my experience with Stephen is that he will always twist a debate, try to dictate all definitions, and simply refuse to admit it when he is proven wrong.  It is somewhat amusing to be lectured on "morality" and scolded to do my research on this subject by a man who (IMHO) lacks credentials in either area.  And to be defined as a "coward" by the same man is insulting, but as an American fighting man and a Police Officer, I am used to the abuse by those that feel free to criticize those that actually risk their a$$es.  But, that said, I will offer this:

1.  I did not compare war and torture, I compared the morality of war and torture.  Specifically, if you are against forcefully gaining information in order to save the lives of your compatriots, how can you not be against killing those that seek to kill your compatriots?

2.  Your comparison of surrender and courts for those that break our laws has absolutely nothing to do with what I posted earlier.  I said that in rare instances, in the case of immediate threat to the lives of my allies, if I am willing to kill that person who will carry out that action then I should be willing to use force to prevent the same action.  This has nothing to do with "inflicting pain on a powerless captive".  Once again, Stephen is attempting to redefine the arguement.  

3.  Stephen's "research" consist of scouring liberal websites and posting the writings of many who hate America, Bush, or both.  Stephen has no experience in warfare or the military and his bias on this subject affects his judgement IMHO.

4.  Stephen has no idea what intelligence was obtained in the sessions being discussed, he has no experience in this field, and his statement that the information gained is not reliable is based on what he wants to believe and the writings that he chooses to read.

5.  Stephen has every right to his opinion, and it counts just as much as mine does.  But his use of the term "boy" and "boys" in reference to myself and those that fought alongside me is insulting and as I understand it, against the rules of this board.

6.  I must remind Stephen that my warmongering has not always been from an armchair, and I would also remind him that I have carried a gun for over thirty years now, and while I am not all that brave or a hero, I have certainly had the priviledge of serving with some who were.  As BT is an example, many who post here have "walked the walk".

7.  I am very uncomfortable with the thought that Stephen is thinking about the size of my dick. :)

Quote from: NotNow on April 21, 2009, 09:07:09 PM
As much as I hate to enter this useless back and forth, as my experience with Stephen is that he will always twist a debate, try to dictate all definitions, and simply refuse to admit it when he is proven wrong.  It is somewhat amusing to be lectured on "morality" and scolded to do my research on this subject by a man who (IMHO) lacks credentials in either area.  And to be defined as a "coward" by the same man is insulting, but as an American fighting man and a Police Officer, I am used to the abuse by those that feel free to criticize those that actually risk their a$$es.  But, that said, I will offer this:

1.  I did not compare war and torture, I compared the morality of war and torture.  Specifically, if you are against forcefully gaining information in order to save the lives of your compatriots, how can you not be against killing those that seek to kill your compatriots?

2.  Your comparison of surrender and courts for those that break our laws has absolutely nothing to do with what I posted earlier.  I said that in rare instances, in the case of immediate threat to the lives of my allies, if I am willing to kill that person who will carry out that action then I should be willing to use force to prevent the same action.  This has nothing to do with "inflicting pain on a powerless captive".  Once again, Stephen is attempting to redefine the arguement.  

3.  Stephen's "research" consist of scouring liberal websites and posting the writings of many who hate America, Bush, or both.  Stephen has no experience in warfare or the military and his bias on this subject affects his judgement IMHO.

4.  Stephen has no idea what intelligence was obtained in the sessions being discussed, he has no experience in this field, and his statement that the information gained is not reliable is based on what he wants to believe and the writings that he chooses to read.

5.  Stephen has every right to his opinion, and it counts just as much as mine does.  But his use of the term "boy" and "boys" in reference to myself and those that fought alongside me is insulting and as I understand it, against the rules of this board.

6.  I must remind Stephen that my warmongering has not always been from an armchair, and I would also remind him that I have carried a gun for over thirty years now, and while I am not all that brave or a hero, I have certainly had the priviledge of serving with some who were.  As BT is an example, many who post here have "walked the walk".

7.  I am very uncomfortable with the thought that Stephen is thinking about the size of my dick. :)

Come on, my personal best insult was quite imaginative.  I was a Right wing, anti-intellectual, rush limbaugh listing wing nut.  You have to really try to beat that!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30335592/

QuoteNYT: Harsh techniques worked, intel chief says
Private memo says interrogation methods helped nation in terrorism fight
By Peter Baker
The New York Times
updated 10:21 p.m. ET, Tues., April 21, 2009

WASHINGTON - President Obama’s national intelligence director told colleagues in a private memo last week that the harsh interrogation techniques banned by the White House did produce significant information that helped the nation in its struggle with terrorists.

“High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country,” Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the intelligence director, wrote in a memo to his staff last Thursday.

Admiral Blair sent his memo on the same day the administration publicly released secret Bush administration legal memos authorizing the use of interrogation methods that the Obama White House has deemed to be illegal torture. Among other things, the Bush administration memos revealed that two captured Qaeda operatives were subjected to a form of near-drowning known as waterboarding a total of 266 times.

Some parts of memo deleted
Admiral Blair’s assessment that the interrogation methods did produce important information was deleted from a condensed version of his memo released to the media last Thursday. Also deleted was a line in which he empathized with his predecessors who originally approved some of the harsh tactics after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past,” he wrote, “but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given.”

A spokeswoman for Admiral Blair said the lines were cut in the normal editing process of shortening an internal memo into a media statement emphasizing his concern that the public understand the context of the decisions made in the past and the fact that they followed legal orders.

"The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means,” Admiral Blair said in a written statement issued last night. “The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."


Admiral Blair’s private memo was provided by a critic of Mr. Obama’s policy. His assessment could bolster Bush administration veterans who argue that the interrogations were an important tool in the battle against al Qaeda.

Techniques 'made us safer'
Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency under Mr. Bush, said on Fox News Sunday last weekend that “the use of these techniques against these terrorists made us safer. It really did work.” Former Vice President Dick Cheney, in a separate interview with Fox, endorsed that conclusion and said he has asked the C.I.A. to declassify memos detailing the gains from the harsh interrogations.

Several news accounts, including one in the New York Times last week, have quoted former intelligence officials saying the harsh interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, a Qaeda operative who was waterboarded 83 times, did not produce information that foiled terror plots. The Bush administration has long argued that harsh questioning of Qaeda operatives like Zubaydah helped prevent a planned attack on Los Angeles and cited passages in the memos released last week to bolster that conclusion.

The White House would not address the question of whether the tactics have been effective on Tuesday but fired back at Mr. Cheney. “We’ve had an at least two-year policy disagreement with the vice president of the United States,” Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary. “That policy disagreement is whether or not you can uphold the values in which this country was founded at the same time that you protect the citizens that live in that country.”

Mr. Obama’s team has cast doubt on the effectiveness of the harsh interrogations, but in a visit to the C.I.A. this week, the president did not directly question that. Instead, he said, that any sacrifice from banning those tactics was worth it to uphold the nation’s belief in rule of law.

“I’m sure that sometimes it seems as if that means we’re operating with one hand tied behind our back or that those who would argue for a higher standard are naïve,” he said. “I understand that. You know, I watch the cable shows once in a while.”

But he added: “What makes the United States special, and what makes you special, is precisely the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and our ideals even when it’s hard, not just when it’s easy.”

'Torture is not moral'
The assessment by Admiral Blair represents a shift for him since he took office. When he was nominated for the position and appeared before the Senate intelligence committee on Jan. 22, he said: “I believe strongly that torture is not moral, legal or effective.” But he declined to assess whether the interrogation program under Mr. Bush had worked.

“Do you believe the C.I.A.’s interrogation detention program has been effective?” Senator Christopher Bond, a Missouri Republican, asked him.

“I’ll have to look into that more closely before I can give you a good answer on that one,” Admiral Blair answered.

This article, "Banned Techniques Yielded 'High Value Information'," first appeared in The New York Times.


Copyright © 2009 The New York Times
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30335592/

Wow, MSNBC - I'm impressed.

Once again Stephen... is loud music really torture?  How about standing?  Slapping?  Cold water?... "Why yes BT it is"... Great we just tortured a mosh pit...

What we are saying is... Leave it alone.  It was an extraordinary time... and an extraordinary threat.  This is all about you "boys" "Getting" Bush and Cheney... You can see the gleam in the eye of the accusers.  Go ahead... open the can of worms where the next administration prosecutes those from the former...

Looks to me like Obama gets it... to bad the rest of the you dont.

re: "on the side of torture," Don't forget pretty much everyone on earth who lived before the 19th century. . .

Ah... a typical Stephen argument tactic.  BT is pro rape and pro torture...

Thanks Stephen... I love your personal touch to these types of discussions.  Two sides cannot disagree honorably.  You must attempt to demonize and marginalize.

Again... thank you for the discourse.

Naw.  Consensual sex doesn't get nearly as many replies on 4chan.

Neither is true... You most definately DID accuse me of a pro rape position.  Your accusation is despicable.

Quote from: stephendare on April 22, 2009, 10:15:19 AM
So basically, the arguments you boys are employing boil down to:
BridgeTroll:  "It might be useful, and i went through torture sample sessions when I was in the military."

Notnow.  "Im a cop, dammit and Dare is a woosy liberal who doesnt understand all this 'man' stuff."

Sigma:  "Yeah!  what they said!".....'Oh!  and overpriced coffeehouse!"

Well since the point is about morality, ethics and the rule of Law, im not sure that the opposition has been very convincing so far.

On the side of God and Decency, I look around and see an Attorney General, august senators and most of the worlds ethical and faithbased community all getting ready to send the people who authorized this crap right into prosecution.

On the side of 'torture might be ok",  All I see is Dick Cheney, Adolf Hitler, a few Viet Cong, the Chinese, and muslim extremists......oh...  and you guys.

hmmm.

Once again Stephen, you make my point by attempting to frame the arguments of your debating opposition in derogatory terms in a weak effort to spin what was said.  Our arguments are stated in our posts.  If it is possible for you, try to answer with your own arguments of fact, not name calling or "dick measuring", then do it.  There is no excuse for these childish tactics and it weakens your credibility even more.  That is how true debate works. 

Are you really cloaking yourself in the robes of "God and decency"?  Faith based community?  Really?  This is the same God and faith based community that you speak so disparagingly of in previous posts?  I guess that as long as you get to decide which morals we are talking about, you are happy in invoking morals, huh?  There are AG's, Senators, ethical and faith based community on our side of this debate as well. 

The whole of the argument to you, Stephen, is that our experiences make us who we are.  BT, Sigma, and I are simply pointing out the differences in yours and our experiences that result in a different viewpoint.  I have repeatedly acknowledged your right to your own opinion in the face of your personal insults towards me (boy, dick stuff, "I'm a cop, dammit).  Your claim to absolute truth in this matter leaves much to be desired IMHO.  I don't want to enter into swapping insults.  I also don't want you to mischaracterize my arguments or who I am.  We have been through this before many times.  Make your arguments and stick to what you know. 

Your guy won the election.  The US Government will not use the techniques that are being discussed.  History will tell how this works out for us, the American people. 

(http://)

I will no longer debate this with someone who accuses me of endorsing rape.  Enjoy your witch hunt.

This thread has been about morality, and personal experience is what develops our personal values and morality.  There is no question as to whether the incidents that are being discussed were "legal".  They were.  This is the United States of America, not the United States of the World.  The supreme law here is the Constitution.  Once again, I am not an attorney, but I don't believe that it is possible to prosecute those that participated in these interrogations successfully.  I believe that the idea of prosecuting those that rendered these decisions is a political vendetta.  

Below is an example of you redefining the arguments of others:

"So basically, the arguments you boys are employing boil down to:
BridgeTroll:  "It might be useful, and i went through torture sample sessions when I was in the military."

Notnow.  "Im a cop, dammit and Dare is a woosy liberal who doesnt understand all this 'man' stuff."

Sigma:  "Yeah!  what they said!".....'Oh!  and overpriced coffeehouse!"  "

This is the kind of thing that "delegitimizes" you.  I am not trying to insult you, I am simply pointing out your use of insults, redefinition, and snarky insinuations.  I think that I have stated my arguments quite clearly, and that your attempts to belittle opposing arguments and "muddy the water" does not and can not change that.  

See my private post.  I am through. 

Quote '24' is fictional. So is the idea that torture works

Suspects subjected to extreme pain will say anything to end their agony. So how can we trust the ‘secrets' they reveal?

It is Day 6, between 10.00 and 11.00 in the hectic schedule of the television series 24, and a normal day at work for Jack Bauer of the Counter Terrorism Unit. “People in this country are dying, and I need some information. Now are you are going to give it to me, or do I have to start hurting you?” Inevitably, he does. A few lurid torture scenes later and the terrorist confesses, the civilised world is saved for another hour or so, and Jack, played by Kiefer Sutherland, is hurtling towards his next violent confrontation with the forces of evil.

This is the central plot of 24, in many respects the only plot of 24, a brilliantly constructed, wildly popular, strikingly timely series based on a single premise that also happens to be untrue. 24 is fiction, and so is the notion that torture produces results.

As the torture debate rages in the US, the only defenders of extreme interrogation methods are those who have been involved in authorising them, and they rely exclusively on the Bauer defence: pain and fear are effective tools for extracting information, and therefore necessary.

Full Article:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/ben_macintyre/article6150151.ece

While we waste time and resources trying to see who "scared" these two high ranking terrorists into devulging the information that stopped the attack in LA as well as many other attacks, the Taliban is pushing towards overthrowing the elected Pakistan government.  In case everyone here has forgotten, current estimates put the Pakistan nuclear arsenal at approx 150 deliverable weapons.

Does anyone want to POLITELY ask the Taliban if they have plans to try and take advantage of our disoulution for the tough fight?

This was what they gleaned from KSM “Both KSM and Zubaydah had ‘expressed their belief that the general U.S. population was ‘weak,’ lacked resilience and would be unable to ‘do what was necessary’ to prevent the terrorists from succeeding in their goals,’”

Reading this thread makes me stop and wonder if they are right.

I don't think the US is ever going to let the Taliban take over a nuclear weapons delivery system.

Now THAT would be a legitimate reason for overseas military action. UNLIKE Iraq, which had no WMD's and didn't do anything to anybody, except the Kurds in 1983. Even though "W" just swore they had all sorts of WMD's...

I am so over hearing about W.  Good riddance, let's move on.  We have a history of going into wars the same way we went into that one.  THink JFK and Vietnam.

You make a heck of an assumption that we wouldn't let that happen.  Pakistan has never taken over an embassy or fought a proxy war against us.  Iran has and they are about to develop the bomb if not already.  SHaking hands and  taking a book from Chavez doesn't really lead me to believe that we are going to take a tough stance with foreign policy.  The last guy did that and the country threw him and every other neocon out.  Will this admin risk that?

Wow, the scenario's are numerous for this situation.  The two major players up front will be the Pakistani military and the Indian government.  If the Taliban are perceived to be making a serious stab at overthrowing the government I believe we will see the military step in and commit to the savage warfare it will take to break the fighting capability of this group.  If this does not occur the Indian government will not stand by as a radical extremist group takes control of the Pakistani nuclear stockpile.
My gut feeling is that the Pakistani military will step in if pushed.  Unlike the Afghan military after the Soviet occupation, the Pakistani military is organized and a powerful regional force.  The present government has already made too many concessions to a force that will take each as another step toward victory.  I don't believe the military will stand for any more.
As far as the present US leadership is concerned, let's hope a regional solution is found!!

Quote from: Ron Mexico on April 27, 2009, 12:31:39 PM
I am so over hearing about W.  Good riddance, let's move on.  We have a history of going into wars the same way we went into that one.  THink JFK and Vietnam.

You make a heck of an assumption that we wouldn't let that happen.  Pakistan has never taken over an embassy or fought a proxy war against us.  Iran has and they are about to develop the bomb if not already.  SHaking hands and  taking a book from Chavez doesn't really lead me to believe that we are going to take a tough stance with foreign policy.  The last guy did that and the country threw him and every other neocon out.  Will this admin risk that?

Mark my words, if the Taliban was about to acquire nuclear weapons by taking over a nation, something would be done.

And I doubt this country would have to do it alone, either. If Pakistan was the takeover target, India would most assuredly hop on board. Probably Russia too.

Why would you assume that?  India might but it would most probably simply to eliminate the kashmir issue.  Russia, I seriously doubt they would do anything of the kind.  Not to mention if they  have the ability to project there force that far and maintain it successfully.  The free stans from the old soviet empire would be very nervous.  Europe forget about it, won't happen, thier military other than britan is a works program.  Though France does love to intervene in african countries while riding on us c-130's

Quote from: ChriswUfGator on April 27, 2009, 04:05:34 PM

Quote from: Ron Mexico on April 27, 2009, 12:31:39 PM
I am so over hearing about W.  Good riddance, let's move on.  We have a history of going into wars the same way we went into that one.  THink JFK and Vietnam.

You make a heck of an assumption that we wouldn't let that happen.  Pakistan has never taken over an embassy or fought a proxy war against us.  Iran has and they are about to develop the bomb if not already.  SHaking hands and  taking a book from Chavez doesn't really lead me to believe that we are going to take a tough stance with foreign policy.  The last guy did that and the country threw him and every other neocon out.  Will this admin risk that?

Mark my words, if the Taliban was about to acquire nuclear weapons by taking over a nation, something would be done.

And I doubt this country would have to do it alone, either. If Pakistan was the takeover target, India would most assuredly hop on board. Probably Russia too.

well there was that whole invasion of Kuwait thing ::)  Also the small point of Iran/Iraq war.  True the gassing of the Kurds wasn't that big of a deal, I didn't know anyone affected.  Plus the giant gun to be built to shoot at Israel.  Or the whole nuclear reactor issue that got bombed

Quote from: ChriswUfGator on April 27, 2009, 10:39:57 AM
I don't think the US is ever going to let the Taliban take over a nuclear weapons delivery system.

Now THAT would be a legitimate reason for overseas military action. UNLIKE Iraq, which had no WMD's and didn't do anything to anybody, except the Kurds in 1983. Even though "W" just swore they had all sorts of WMD's...

Quote from: civil42806 on April 27, 2009, 11:30:53 PM
well there was that whole invasion of Kuwait thing ::)  Also the small point of Iran/Iraq war.  True the gassing of the Kurds wasn't that big of a deal, I didn't know anyone affected.  Plus the giant gun to be built to shoot at Israel.  Or the whole nuclear reactor issue that got bombed

Quote from: ChriswUfGator on April 27, 2009, 10:39:57 AM
I don't think the US is ever going to let the Taliban take over a nuclear weapons delivery system.

Now THAT would be a legitimate reason for overseas military action. UNLIKE Iraq, which had no WMD's and didn't do anything to anybody, except the Kurds in 1983. Even though "W" just swore they had all sorts of WMD's...

We not only authorized Saddam's participation in the Iran/Iraq war, but we actually funded it and gave him weapons and support, hoping it would bring about the fall of the fundamentalist regime in Tehran. That's not exactly the best example.

But as to invading Kuwait, that happened back in 1990, and was contained way back when. I'm not sure what bearing that has on the decision to invade Iraq a decade and a half later? What had Iraq done? Nothing.

Quote from: civil42806 on April 27, 2009, 11:27:20 PM
Why would you assume that?  India might but it would most probably simply to eliminate the kashmir issue.  Russia, I seriously doubt they would do anything of the kind.  Not to mention if they  have the ability to project there force that far and maintain it successfully.  The free stans from the old soviet empire would be very nervous.  Europe forget about it, won't happen, thier military other than britan is a works program.  Though France does love to intervene in african countries while riding on us c-130's

Quote from: ChriswUfGator on April 27, 2009, 04:05:34 PM

Quote from: Ron Mexico on April 27, 2009, 12:31:39 PM
I am so over hearing about W.  Good riddance, let's move on.  We have a history of going into wars the same way we went into that one.  THink JFK and Vietnam.

You make a heck of an assumption that we wouldn't let that happen.  Pakistan has never taken over an embassy or fought a proxy war against us.  Iran has and they are about to develop the bomb if not already.  SHaking hands and  taking a book from Chavez doesn't really lead me to believe that we are going to take a tough stance with foreign policy.  The last guy did that and the country threw him and every other neocon out.  Will this admin risk that?

Mark my words, if the Taliban was about to acquire nuclear weapons by taking over a nation, something would be done.

And I doubt this country would have to do it alone, either. If Pakistan was the takeover target, India would most assuredly hop on board. Probably Russia too.

India's armed forces, while certainly nothing close to the US/Russia/UK, is still nothing to laugh at. They have a large modern navy, a huge army, an air force of modern fighters they bought almost entirely from us, and they're also nuclear capable (though you certainly hope they won't use it). You're not talking about a bunch of ethiopians in rowboats there...

The US will intervene to prevent Taliban control, and India will intervene for a variety of bitter reasons going back to the dissolution of the British empire, including Kashmir.

Left Obsessing Over Torture To Get At Bush
By MICHAEL BARONE | Posted Monday, April 27, 2009

It's tough trying to please people who crave vengeance almost as much as Madame Defarge, the unsparing French revolutionary in Dickens' "Tale of Two Cities."

That's what Barack Obama found out last week â€" and will find out next week and for weeks to come unless he settles once and for all that he will follow the practice of all his predecessors and not prosecute decision makers in the previous administration.

The Madame Defarges of the Democratic left want to see the guillotine flash down and heads roll. Specifically, they want to see the prosecution or impeachment of officials who approved enhanced interrogation techniques â€" torture, in their view.

The president, it appears, is of two minds. On April 16, he released memorandums from the Bush administration Office of Legal Counsel approving the interrogation methods and said that CIA interrogators relying on them would not be prosecuted. Also released was the partial text of a letter from Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair characterizing those memos as "graphic and disturbing."

Obama was criticized for revealing intelligence information useful to our enemies. "Nobody should pretend," wrote Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who approved of Obama's decision, "that the disclosures weren't costly to CIA morale and effectiveness."

On April 20, Obama journeyed to CIA headquarters and defended his decisions. But the Madame Defarges had their knitting needles out, hauling in petitions with 250,000 signatures and demanding blood.

On April 21, Obama caved, saying that Bush administration officials who approved the methods could be prosecuted if the attorney general wanted to press the cases. He didn't give the Madame Defarges all they wanted, resisting Speaker Nancy Pelosi's call for a 9/11-type commission.

It is an article of faith among the Madame Defarges that the interrogation techniques they consider torture didn't produce useful information. All along, Obama tried to pay homage to this dogma.

The text of Blair's letter released to the public carefully omitted his admission that "high value information came from interrogations in which the methods were used." Just normal editing, said his spokesman. Yeah, sure.

Presumed Guilty

Nor has Obama shown any sign of agreeing to Dick Cheney's demand that the full results of the interrogations be released. That might embarrass the Madame Defarges.

Whence cometh the fury of these people? I think it arises less from revulsion at interrogation techniques â€" who thinks that captured al-Qaida leaders should be treated politely and will then tell the full truth? â€" than it does from a desire to see George W. Bush and Bush administration officials publicly humiliated and repudiated.

Just as Madame Defarge relished watching the condemned walk from the tumbrel to the guillotine, our contemporary Defarges want to see the people they hate condemned and destroyed.

It doesn't seem to matter to our Madame Defarges that it's not clear that Bush officials violated any criminal law. One of the core principles of our law is that criminal statutes must be construed strictly against the government. If the government wants to deprive someone of his liberty for doing something, it should be very specific about what that something is. This distinguishes our system from authoritarian and totalitarian regimes that demand, like Alice's Red Queen, "verdict first, trial later."

Borrowed From Stalin

It also doesn't occur to the Madame Defarges of our times that revolutions like hers tend to devour their own. Robespierre followed Marie Antoinette to the guillotine not so many months later. Today we see Pelosi trying to explain how she was present at confidential briefings where the enhanced interrogation methods were described and did nothing to stop them from being applied.

If there is going to be a "truth commission" â€" a title that is redolent of Stalinist purges â€" shouldn't she be one of the first to testify? As for Obama, asked in a September 2007 if we should "beat out of" an al-Qaida higher-up details of an impending attack, he said "there are going to be all sorts of hypotheticals, an emergency situation, and I will make that judgment at that time." So "torture" just might be OK under the right circumstances.

In the meantime, Obama's appeasement of the Madame Defarges carries a political price. Pollster Scott Rasmussen reports that 58% of Americans believe his release of the CIA memos endangers national security. Show trials of Bush officials could raise that number. Appeasing the Madame Defarges may cost more than it is worth.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=325726083820640

Stephen,

I'm not going to get into this with you here again - we will never agree..

This is ALL political - to take a standard hazing rutual used at the Citadel and call it torture is absurd.  This will all be political quicksand for this administration. 

I will not discuss this with you any more.  But I will, just as you have, post interesting articles related to the subject (but from reputable sources).

Have a good day.

I think that we walk a fine line when it comes to what we are willing to do to protect ourselves.  While our enemy is prepared to fight to the death, we are more concerned with punishing those who did everything they could to protect us.

The question that the President and many of you on this thread need to ask yourself is this:  Are you willing to allow your fellow citizens to die so that you don't have to feel bad about how to get the information to protect them?  If you were able to stop Sept 11th from happening, but in order to do it, you would have to pour water over KSM's mouth, slap him around and not let him sleep for 3 days, would you have done it? 

If you answer is no, then would you then be able to stand in a room filled with those who would die that day and tell them that they had to be sacrificed for that?

War is not to be compared with the normal laws of society.  We suspend the idea of murder in order to accomplish the objectives.  We order people to kill and to be killed.  Trying to treat this like a police problem is what brought Sept 11th to us in the first place.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/28/despite-reports-khalid-sheikh-mohammed-waterboarded-times/

Turns out this whole frantic issue is pretty much moot.

Quote
Despite Reports, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Was Not Waterboarded 183 Times

Tuesday, April 28, 2009
The number of times Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded was the focus of major media attention  -- and highly misleading.
By Joseph Abrams


The New York Times reported last week that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, was waterboarded 183 times in one month by CIA interrogators. The "183 times" was widely circulated by news outlets throughout the world.

It was shocking. And it was highly misleading. The number is a vast inflation, according to information from a U.S. official and the testimony of the terrorists themselves.

A U.S. official with knowledge of the interrogation program told FOX News that the much-cited figure represents the number of times water was poured onto Mohammed's face -- not the number of times the CIA applied the simulated-drowning technique on the terror suspect.  According to a 2007 Red Cross report, he was subjected a total of "five sessions of ill-treatment." 

"The water was poured 183 times -- there were 183 pours," the official explained, adding that "each pour was a matter of seconds."

The Times and dozens of other outlets wrote that the CIA also waterboarded senior Al Qaeda member Abu Zubaydah 83 times, but Zubayda himself, a close associate of Usama bin Laden, told the Red Cross he was waterboarded no more than 10 times.

The confusion stems from language in the Justice Department legal memos that President Obama released on April 16. They contain the numbers, but they fail to explain exactly what they represent.

The memos, spanning from 2002-2005, were a legal review by the Bush administration that approved the use of waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques." Obama banned the procedure on his second day in office, saying that waterboarding is torture.

Click here to see Memo 1 | Memo 2 | Memo 3 | Memo 4

The memos describe the controversial process: a detainee is strapped to a gurney with his head lowered and a cloth placed on his face. Interrogators pour water onto the cloth, which cuts off air flow to the mouth and nostrils, tripping his gag reflex, causing panic and giving him the sensation that he is drowning.

At that point the cloth would be removed, the gurney rotated upright and the detainee would be allowed to breathe. The technique could be repeated a few times during a waterboarding session; Zubaydah said it was generally used once or twice, but he said he was waterboarded three times during one session.

The Justice Department memos described the maximum allowed use of the waterboard on any detainee, based on tactical training given to U.S. troops to resist interrogations:

-- Five days of use in one month, with no more than two "sessions" in a day;
-- Up to six applications (something like a dunk) lasting more than 10 seconds but less than 40 seconds per session;
-- 12 minutes of total "water application" in a 24-hour period

Bloggers who read the memos last week noted that the CIA's math "doesn't add up" -- meaning that the 12 long pours allowed in a day couldn't add up to the 12 minutes mentioned in the memo, and they could barely even guess how the detainees could have been waterboarded an astounding 286 times in one month.

The memos did not note that the sessions would be made up of a number of short pours -- the ones the U.S. official said lasted "a matter of seconds" -- and that created the huge numbers quoted by the New York Times: 183 on Mohamed, 83 on Zubaydah.

Pours, not waterboards.

A close look at a Red Cross report on the interrogations makes the numbers even clearer.

As the Red Cross noted: "The suffocation procedure was applied [to Abu Zubaydah] during five sessions of ill-treatment ... in 2002. During each session, apart from one, the suffocation technique was applied once or twice; on one occasion it was applied three times."

The total number of applications: between eight and 10 -- not the 83 mentioned in the Times.

Mohammed similarly told the Red Cross that "I was also subjected to 'water-boarding' on five occasions, all of which occurred during the first month." Those were his five "sessions"; the precise number of applications is not known but is a fraction of the 183 figure.

All of those individual pours were scrupulously counted by the CIA, according to the memos, to abide by the procedures set up for the waterboardings.

"t is important that every application of the waterboard be thoroughly documented: how long each application (and the entire procedure) lasted, how much water was used in the process," read a memo from May 10, 2005.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the only other detainee known to be waterboarded, was not discussed in the memos.

The Times wrote that until the release of the memos, "the precise number" of 286 total waterboardings was not known.

And the precise number of waterboarding sessions is still not known. What is known is that Mohammed was not waterboarded 183 times.

FOX News correspondent Catherine Herridge contributed to this report.

Is that article from The Onion?

Freshmen at the Citadel have endured far more than that! :D

Hazing is also explicitly forbidden.

The point is not moot, Stephen.  The point is to ask yourself will you be willing to take action on it the next time.  Will we be willing to say to ourselves, "we know this guy has the information on an imminent attack, but we can't extract it forcefully, and we have exhausted every other tactic, we just have to wait for the attack." 

So when a similar intel assessment comes to BO, what are you and he willing to do to save lives?  If you aren't willing to do those things that were done to KSM, that is fine.  We are a nation of laws and if the law says we cannot waterboard, strike people or make them uncomfortable then that is the field in which we play.

But we can't have it both ways.  We go into Afghanistan, capture these terrorists and ask them questions.  Now that they know we won't do anything to them, how do you think they will train their operatives? what information do you think they will give up? 

So when something like the Madrid bombings or the London bombings take place in NYC, Chicago or LA, what do you suggest we do then?

Hire a professional interrogator.

Torture as an interrogation technique is widely accepted as ineffective for gaining accurate information.

It does work on TV though.

Here is where we diverge yet again.

Torture is for torture sake - punishment, revenge, hatred.

Interrogation is a process with a goal to get vital information that will save lives.  It comes in the good cop and bad cop form.  We have professional interrogators on staff.

In Stephen's Fox news video of Shepard Smith - this was his point.  He stated he was against torture but he would not define it. 

And "BS" to your statement.  Interrogation techniques are very effective for gaining accurate information. 

Quote from: Sigma on April 29, 2009, 02:23:40 PM
And "BS" to your statement.  Interrogation techniques are very effective for gaining accurate information. 

That was not my statement.

 :D :D

QuoteBush had the information he needed to stop 911 from happening without torture.

Damn, we already had some guys we could have "tortured" and stopped 9/11?  Hell, it sounds like we should have "tortured" Bush and Clinton since they both had such intricate information and just sat back and clapped while we were attacked.  I can't wait for some more stunning revelations!!!

Clinton also had Bin Laden in the "cross hairs" but did not take the shot.  Stephen, do you really want to go down this road.  How many times did Clinton make huge mis-steps for political reasons? 

Information gained through "nice" interrogation techniques provided such effective information that we bombed an aspirin factory.  Way to go team!

Now stop lulling me back into this conversation! ;D

Quote from: stephendare on April 29, 2009, 03:45:18 PM
This isnt about Clinton or the Dems.  This is about Torture.  And Clinton had the information without ever having to use it.

In fact he forwarded it on to the incoming president, who promptly took a loooong vacation in Crawford.

Stephen, that may one of the more ridiculous statements I've seen you make.

Quote

The Real Torturers
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, April 29, 2009 4:20 PM PT

National Security: The media are reporting that two al-Qaida leaders were waterboarded a shocking 266 times on George Bush's watch. The narrative is in place and won't easily be dislodged, even if it's misleading.

When the Obama White House disclosed memos from the previous administration's discussions about terrorist interrogations, critics jumped at the chance to accuse, yet again, the Bush administration of torturing detainees.

Media reports that CIA agents had waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah 266 times stirred an already angry nest of political opponents who want to prosecute Bush officials for their tactics in the war on terrorism.

As has been said, a lie will make it halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on. Deceptive reporting operates at the same speed.

The truth, which is just now reaching for its boots, is that Mohammed and Zubaydah were not waterboarded a total of 266 times (183 alleged waterboardings in one month for Mohammed, the 9/11 architect, 83 for Zubaydah, an Osama bin Laden insider). They were waterboarded fewer than 15 times in all, according to the Red Cross, which has spoken to the men.

The larger numbers the media ran with to shock the public were not individual waterboarding sessions, but the number of times water was poured on them, with each pour lasting only seconds.

Credit Joseph Abrams of Fox News for finding a "U.S. official with knowledge of the interrogation process" who would explain the numbers.

The interrogators who performed the waterboarding process to pry lifesaving information out of Mohammed, Zubaydah and one other detainee were not mindless thugs under command of a malevolent regime in Washington, but CIA officers working under strict guidelines.

Limited to no more than five sessions a month, they would have had to waterboard Mohammed for more than three years to reach the alleged 183 sessions. While not impossible, it's unlikely.

Fox's clarification won't alter the media narrative that has been â€" and will be â€" endlessly repeated by those who can't get beyond their hatred for Bush and Dick Cheney. The sensational numbers are out there and have become part of the spin. Bush haters will continue to claim any treatment of detainees by the last administration that was less than indulgent is torture.

What's really been tortured is their sense of priority. They crave the approval of left-wing elitists here and in Europe more than they value their country's security.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=325900026023183

OK, so we have established that torture definitely was used.

No, just interrogations - and not really harsh interrogations as previously reported. 

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/05/01/torture_no_except_96283.html

May 1, 2009
Pelosi: Utterly Contemptible
By Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent's life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy. Even John McCain, the most admirable and estimable torture opponent, says openly that in such circumstances, "You do what you have to do." And then take the responsibility.

Some people, however, believe you never torture. Ever. They are akin to conscientious objectors who will never fight in any war under any circumstances, and for whom we correctly show respect by exempting from war duty. But we would never make one of them Centcom commander. Private principles are fine, but you don't entrust such a person with the military decisions upon which hinges the safety of the nation. It is similarly imprudent to have a person who would abjure torture in all circumstances making national security decisions upon which depends the protection of 300 million countrymen.

The second exception to the no-torture rule is the extraction of information from a high-value enemy in possession of high-value information likely to save lives. This case lacks the black-and-white clarity of the ticking time bomb scenario. We know less about the length of the fuse or the nature of the next attack. But we do know the danger is great. We know we must act but have no idea where or how -- and we can't know that until we have information. Catch-22.

Under those circumstances, you do what you have to do. And that includes waterboarding.

Did it work? The current evidence is fairly compelling. George Tenet said that the "enhanced interrogation" program alone yielded more information than everything gotten from "the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency put together."

Michael Hayden, CIA director after waterboarding had been discontinued, writes (with former Attorney General Michael Mukasey) that "as late as 2006 ... fully half of the government's knowledge about the structure and activities of al-Qaeda came from those interrogations." Even Dennis Blair, Obama's director of national intelligence, concurs that these interrogations yielded "high value information." So much for the lazy, mindless assertion that torture never works.

Asserts Blair's predecessor, Mike McConnell, "We have people walking around in this country that are alive today because this process happened." Of course, the morality of torture hinges on whether at the time the information was important enough, the danger great enough and our blindness about the enemy's plans severe enough to justify an exception to the moral injunction against torture.

Judging by Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress who were informed at the time, the answer seems to be yes. In December 2007, after a Washington Post report that she had knowledge of these procedures and did not object, she admitted that she'd been "briefed on interrogation techniques the administration was considering using in the future."

Today Pelosi protests "we were not -- I repeat -- were not told that waterboarding or any other of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used." She imagines that this distinction between past and present, Clintonian in its parsing, is exonerating.

On the contrary. It is self-indicting. If you are told about torture that has already occurred, you might justify silence on the grounds that what's done is done and you are simply being used in a post-facto exercise to cover the CIA's rear end. The time to protest torture, if you really are as outraged as you now pretend to be, is when the CIA tells you what it is planning to do "in the future."

But Pelosi did nothing. No protest. No move to cut off funding. No letter to the president or the CIA chief or anyone else saying "Don't do it."

On the contrary, notes Porter Goss, then chairman of the House intelligence committee: The members briefed on these techniques did not just refrain from objecting, "on a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda."

More support, mind you. Which makes the current spectacle of self-righteous condemnation not just cowardly but hollow. It is one thing to have disagreed at the time and said so. It is utterly contemptible, however, to have been silent then and to rise now "on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009" (the words are Blair's) to excoriate those who kept us safe these harrowing last eight years.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/05/the_tortured_rhetoric_of_the_r.html

May 03, 2009
The Tortured Rhetoric of the Reactionary Left
By Ben Voth
The reactionary left has descended upon waterboarding as its new case study in why conservatives are diabolical and without conscience.  The sad reality is that conservatives are reacting in the rather conventional manner of going on the defensive.  Conservatives need to fight back more vigorously against this community now willing to name even Harry Truman as a war criminal alongside President Bush, Condoleeza Rice, Vice President Cheney, and so many more good citizens.

The reactionaries of the Left are celebrating their own unique sense of jingoism that has come to dominate their political community since Vietnam.  In this distinct and pathological view of the world, there is only one reality -- America's imperialism.  The global human community has ceased to exist for this reactionary community.  'America does not f***ing torture,' in the over heated words of Shepard Smith. 

For the torture reactionaries, the question can only be if America tortures.  The global concept of torture has completely been subordinated to a view that no one tortures in the world except as a genuine and comprehensible response to American imperialism.  It is an America in need of God's damning to paraphrase one of its unrepentant spiritual leaders. 

A more productive and comprehensive study of the question of torture would include:  Is it torture to slowly behead someone with a knife as Musab Al Zarqawi did with American ANSWER leader's son Nicholas Berg?  Berg's father Michael robotically answered this question by telling the world that George W. Bush killed his son-- completely consistent with ANSWER's reactionary brainwashing.   Is it torture for Saddam Hussein and his sons to watch victims in Iraqi prisons witness the raping of spouses or have an electric drill run into someone's ankle bone?  Is it torture to discharge an AK-47 into a woman's skull in front of crowds at a Kabul soccer stadium? 

The prolonged silence and ambivalence of the reactionary left toward such atrocities has created a rhetorical vacuum.  The reason the term "neo-conservative" was invented by the reactionary left was to close the door on an ugly divorce within their community between human rights and global politics.  The Left largely no longer believes in individual human rights for people outside the United States -- with the possible exception of individuals inside the Gaza strip.  The reason Pat Buchannan can sit alongside Keith Olberman on an MSNBC television set is that the paleo-con and the reactionary leftist share an ambivalence for the rights of individuals oppressed by non-American and non-Israeli points of power.  For both political stances, the retraction of American power will lead to a world of useful silence wherein we will simply not know or concern ourselves with inhumanity as it may be practiced in the world.  It is after all 'their culture.'  The mind numbing multiculturalism is the intellectual sedative that has put the struggle for individual human rights to slumber on the Left. 

Noticeably missing from the discussion of whether water boarding crosses the line from interrogation to torture is analysis of how the decision was made.  The Bush administration conducted a legal debate within their ranks and the broader public sphere.  That is the most important principal revealed by the CIA memos and the most important contrast principal of Obama's politics in choosing to release only one side of that debate. 

The reactionary community that fuels the Obama administration does not believe in free and fair debate.  They believe that strategic exclusions of information constitute appropriate means for building political power.  On the other hand, within the Bush administration, the CIA, the American media, and the public, there was a constant debate about whether water boarding was appropriate. 

There were no debates in Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, or dozens of other countries where torture actually does take place.  In sharp contrast, the torture enjoyed by families such as the Hussein family of Iraq, was a matter of pure impulsive indulgence and spectacle.  There was little or no notion of protecting a public sphere in Iraq.  The heads of Iraqi victims were regularly posted outside the homes of victim's families after these spectacles were complete.  The adamant refusal of the Olbermans, Stewarts, Riches and other reactionaries to entertain a serious conversation on global torture is one which is veiled in their jingoistic display of the flag.  This is America!  We don't torture!

The sad state of affairs was amplified in the recent 100 day press conference.  At this event, President Obama appealed to the idea that the British refused to torture during World War II.  The appeal to a foreign government as more moral than America fits easily within Obama's worldview.  Obama and his team must have missed this gem from the British press published in 2006 by the Guardian:

"Sherman Carroll, of the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, said British authorities should also apologise and pay compensation to survivors. "The suggestion that Britain did not use torture during world war two and in the immediate aftermath, because it was regarded as 'ineffective', is a mythology that has been successfully propagated for decades," he said. "The fact that it took place should be acknowledged.

. . . Others interrogated at the same prison, at Bad Nenndorf, near Hanover, included Nazis, prominent German industrialists of the Hitler era, and former members of the SS.  At least two men suspected of being communists were starved to death, at least one was beaten to death, others suffered serious illness or injuries, and many lost toes to frostbite.

The appalling treatment of the 372 men and 44 women who were interrogated at Bad Nenndorf between 1945 and 1947 are detailed in a report by a Scotland Yard detective, Inspector Tom Hayward."

Obama's misstatement is symptomatic of the community from which he draws his arguments -- reactionary and shallow.  The British actually used brutal tactics against Nazis and other rivals in World War II -- including thumbscrews and shinscrews -- and continue to use techniques that most US officials would blanche at in fighting terrorists such as the IRA during the 1980s.  Obama's slick answer is typical wishful thinking from the reactionary left which only allows itself to consider American and Israeli roles in torturing the innocent.  It is intrinsic to the close mindedness that has descended on the Left regarding human rights as a global struggle.

The circularity of the reactionary Left's worldview is one that not only condones torture but encourages it.   It is a circularity that helped America look away from the torture of the Khmer Rouge after Vietnam.  It helped Clinton look away from Africa after Mogadishu when Hutus took up machetes against their brothers and sisters in Rwanda.  It is a view that helps genocide expert and Obama administration aide, Samantha Power see a "monster" in Hillary Clinton when she threatened Obama's path to power, but now she sees an acceptable sovereign seated in Khartoum.  The Obama administration would do well to look at the recent example of Democratic congressional members arrested at the Sudanese embassy and less to the shrill jingoism of Code Pink, ANSWER, and Michael Moore.  The insular jingoistic view of torture held by the reactionary left is killing us all.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/04/barry_honey_can_we_talk_about_3.html

April 28, 2009
Barry Honey, Can We Talk about Torture?
By Kyle-Anne Shiver
My dear Mr. President, I've just finished reading the formerly top-secret, classified CIA memos detailing interrogation techniques used in the aftermath of 9/11.  And frankly, Barry honey, I'm shocked.

Positively shocked that any President of the U.S.A. would make such documents public knowledge.

As a mother, who has invested blood, sweat, tears and every last vestige of my natural hair color into raising my children, I am appalled at the apparent casualness with which you are handling your #1 duty, protecting the lives of American citizens. 

At this very minute, I'm considering forming a new organization, Mothers Against Wimpy Defense. 

Before I start organizing millions of mothers with strollers and grade-schoolers in tow to march on the White House, perhaps I could attempt a bit of verbal negotiation. 

Not only have you given terrorists enough comedy at America's expense to fuel Al Jazeera for the entire time span of your presidency, you've told their plotters and leaders exactly how to train for the wimpy Americans and their host of morally-confused psychologists, who equate the real torture of gouging of human eyes with a forceful, closed-handed slap across the face and the real torture of removing every finger and toe with the temporary, psychological perception of the sensation of drowning.

Now the silliest thing in all of this -- for a mother who has fought hand-to-hand combat with a teenaged son twice her size -- is that these same arbiters of what could be justified to save the lives of countless innocent Americans, would most likely condemn the parental disciplinary methods used in this Country with terrific success for the past 2-1/3 centuries. 

How many among prior generations of Americans got through childhood without a single trip to the woodshed with an angry, had-it-up-to-here father?  How many American children (except Bill Maher and Rachel Maddow) escaped childhood without a single mouth-washing with bitter soap?  How many of our little ones thought messing with Mom was a good idea?

In other words, Barry Honey, now that I've read the stringent limits under which our CIA folks were forced to operate in the aftermath of 9/11, I'm actually quite stunned that there was such a degree of restraint.  The memos actually serve to demonstrate America's exemplary high standards in the realm of dealings with our attackers, not the reverse, as has been put forward by Democrats for the past 8 years. 

Unlike our Islamic terrorist enemies, we were not amputating fingers or extracting fingernails.  We were not gouging eyes from their sockets.  We were not applying high-amp electrical shocks to the genitalia of enemy combatants in our custody.  In fact, we were so darned civilized that the only shock in any of this is the degree of rancor with which our CIA protectors are now apparently regarded by a namby-pamby press and the Democrats in Congress seeking show trials and witch burnings.

Which brings us to the matter, Barry Honey, of your politicizing the role of Commander in Chief.  It is one thing -- and an altogether expected thing -- to politicize the presidency in domestic policy matters.  It is certainly also expectable that during an election campaign, candidates will agree or disagree with important foreign policy decisions of the current president.  But in making these classified-for-USA-protection documents public, you, dear Sir, have stepped over the line into banana-republic domain.

In this, you are behaving like a man, having just stormed the palace gates with armed guerillas, having imprisoned the former occupant and ransacked the place, puts on full public display whatever he can find that may justify his coup.  Bringing these documents to light to the full accompaniment of Party clamors for blood, is quite akin to the banana-republic dictator beaming in the wake of his successful coup and declaring that all evil deeds will now be punished.

All I can say is that your actions in politicizing the role of Commander in Chief, not only disgrace you, Barry Honey, they disgrace this Nation and sadly may have consequences for generations to come.  Every enemy we have now knows that you disdain America more than you disdain them and that you have no qualms about sacrificing our defense personnel on the altar of politics.

Could you possibly be more inept?

With every move you make as Commander in Chief,  you give more than ample proof to my old voters' axiom:  Never, ever put a man in charge of your military defense who has not at the very, very least, successfully done battle with his own teenagers.

Parents, who have made it to the successful end of preparing children for upstanding adult lives understand that in the face of one's children, as in the face of one's enemies, the adults stick together.  Bickering over tactics is absolutely, positively, every single time conducted behind closed doors and out of earshot.  This is the only way to run a healthy family in the best interests of children, and it is the only way to run a healthy foreign policy in the best interests of this Nation and our defense.

God help you when your girls are teens.

Until then, God help America.

I remain, Barry Honey, your faithful dissenting constituent.  Daily, however, my faith in you shrinks as my dissent grows more fitful.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/04/legal_torture_the_upturned_mor.html

April 29, 2009
Legal Torture: The Upturned Moral Universe of Progressives
By Miguel A. Guanipa
The topic of torture is in the headlines again, resuscitated by the Democrats, an assembly most grievously afflicted with the bane of idleness.

The reasons, of course, are manifold, leading among which is the fact that the Obama experiment is desperately in need of a compelling distraction from the dreadful economic results it has thus far yielded. There are also the latent vestiges of unresolved animus toward the previous administration from a boisterous fringe that refuses to be pacified. But one reason for having a renewed interest in this issue which liberal democrats can never be accused of is that they suddenly find themselves aggrieved with the unbearable burden of a heavy conscience. In fact there is not one lone liberal Democrat in Congress who cares one iota that prisoners of war have been or are being tortured. This may sound like a rather bold statement, but it is firmly grounded on historical fact.

To illustrate my point, imagine for a moment that you have been assigned a couple of prisoners whom you have been given complete freedom to torture. Neither prisoner is aware of the fate that awaits them. You enter the room of the first prisoner and begin by tearing off one of his limbs. The prisoner -- who is not privy to the reasons why you have committed such a dastardly act against his person -- writhes in agony. You then proceed to systematically sever other vital organs. The prisoner tries to flee in desperation, but you have blocked the only exit through which he may entertain any hopes of escaping his torturer. What the prisoner doesn't know is that prior to the moment you entered the scene you had already planned for him to die before being eventually removed from this chamber.

After the job is finished, you enter the next room in which your next hapless victim waits. He is also unaware that you are about to inflict intolerable pain upon him. But this time you decide to employ a more effective method. You bind this prisoner, and then dip him in a tank full of a corrosive solution that will gradually eat at his flesh, obstruct his breathing, and bring about a slow but certain demise. Within minutes of being submerged in this tank the prisoner expires. You could argue that his death was somewhat more merciful than that of the first prisoner.

Now imagine that you had been asked to torture these men, not because they were withholding actionable intelligence that could potentially save the lives of thousands of innocents threatened with imminent peril. It was not because they were active members of an itinerant terrorist organization responsible for wreaking havoc around the world. In fact, both these men were innocent human beings, physically incapable of defending themselves, who had been placed in these rooms through no choice of their own. To make matters worse, their painful deaths were commissioned by and discharged at the full behest of their closest family member.

What I have just described is a federally sanctioned procedure that is performed on a daily basis in one of the most vibrant democracies on earth, and which has been in place for almost forty years. It is part of the required curriculum for those who have demonstrated an interest in pursuing a medical career and it is methodically executed by highly trained professionals who are paid handsomely for their services. It is also executed strictly upon human beings who have committed no crime, and championed by liberals worldwide under the banner of reproductive freedom.

Millions of taxpayers are legally forced to finance this method of torture in their own country, and under the Obama administration, they now have to subsidize the lethal torture of thousands of other innocent human beings in foreign countries. And if that isn't enough reason for outrage, trained professionals who are conscientiously opposed to this gruesome practice will soon have to put aside their moral objections and provide this service lest they risk being sued by their less than satisfied patrons.

By now most of you know that I am speaking of abortion; a legal procedure which claims the lives of thousands of unborn babies each year and one that liberals in this country proudly endorse. In fact, opposition to this kind of torture is actually viewed by most liberals as a type of moral deficiency.

That is why I can unequivocally state that no liberal Democrat sitting in Congress truly cares that prisoners of war are being subjected to any amount of harsh treatment at the hands of U.S. military officials. Or else how could they justify their umbrage and still remain the willing accomplices in the virtual genocide of innocents taking place in their own backyard?

Forget their ostentatious claims that we are putting ourselves on a par with the very people we regard as barbarians. Dismiss their lofty rhetoric about betraying the fundamental ideals for which we stand as a free country. Ignore their admonitions on how torture not only robs us of the moral authority to accuse others of wrong doing, but compromises the core principles of human decency which undergird the very fabric of our society. Coming from the Democrats, these declarations are vastly disingenuous, the rhetoric rings hollow and such principles have long since been trampled upon from the time that we as a society affirmed in unison with them, that killing innocent human beings in the womb should be proclaimed the perpetual law of the land.

Just remember next time a liberal challenges you to discuss his moral objections against your implicit or explicit assent to torture, to simply look him straight in the eye and blithely respond that you have always been personally opposed to torture, but remain steadfast in your conviction that -- lest we jeopardize our freedoms -- torture should remain legal, safe, but rare.

http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=327018735406381

Debate Over What Constitutes 'Torture' Reflects A Dangerous Lack Of SeriousnessBy THOMAS SOWELL | Posted Tuesday, May 12, 2009 4:20 PM PT

One of the many signs of the degeneration of our times is how many serious, even life-and-death, issues are approached as talking points in a game of verbal fencing. Nothing illustrates this more than the fatuous, and even childish, controversy about "torturing" captured terrorists.

People's actions often make far more sense than their words. Most of the people who are talking lofty talk about how we mustn't descend to the level of our enemies would themselves behave very differently if presented with a comparable situation, instead of being presented with an opportunity to be morally one up with rhetoric.

What if it was your mother or your child who was tied up somewhere beside a ticking time bomb, and you had captured a terrorist who knew where that was? Face it: What you would do to that terrorist to make him talk would make waterboarding look like a picnic.

You wouldn't care what the New York Times would say or what "world opinion" in the U.N. would say. You would save your loved one's life and tell those other people what they could do. But if the U.S. behaves that way it is called "arrogance" â€" even by American citizens. Indeed, even by the American president.

There is a big difference between being ponderous and being serious. It is scary when the president of the United States is not being serious about matters of life and death, saying that there are "other ways" of getting information from terrorists.

Maybe this is a step up from the previous talking point that "torture" had not gotten any important information out of terrorists. Only after this had been shown to be a flat-out lie did Barack Obama shift his rhetoric to the lame assertion that unspecified "other ways" could have been used.

For a man whose whole life has been based on style rather than substance, on rhetoric rather than reality, perhaps nothing better could have been expected. But that the media and the public would have become so mesmerized by the Obama cult that they could not see through this to think of their own survival, or that of this nation, is truly a chilling thought.

When we look back at history, it is amazing what foolish and even childish things people said and did on the eve of a catastrophe about to consume them.

In 1938, with Hitler preparing to unleash a war in which tens of millions of men, women and children would be slaughtered, the play that was the biggest hit on the Paris stage was a play about French and German reconciliation, and a French pacifist that year dedicated his book to Adolf Hitler.

When historians of the future look back on our era, what will they think of our time? Our media too squeamish to call murderous and sadistic terrorists anything worse than "militants" or "insurgents"? Our president going abroad to denigrate the country that elected him, pandering to feckless allies and outright enemies, and literally bowing to a foreign tyrant ruling a country from which most of the 9/11 terrorists came?

It is easy to make talking points about how Churchill did not torture German prisoners, even while London was being bombed. There was a very good reason for that: They were ordinary prisoners of war who were covered by the Geneva Convention and who didn't know anything that would keep London from being bombed.

Whatever the verbal fencing over the meaning of the word "torture," there is a fundamental difference between simply inflicting pain on innocent people for the sheer pleasure of it â€" which is what our terrorist enemies do â€" and getting life-saving information out of the terrorists by whatever means are necessary.

The left has long confused physical parallels with moral parallels. But when a criminal shoots at a policeman and the policeman shoots back, physical equivalence is not moral equivalence. And what American intelligence agents have done to captured terrorists is not even physical equivalence.

If we have reached the point where we cannot be bothered to think beyond rhetoric or to make moral distinctions, then we have reached the point where our own survival in an increasingly dangerous world of nuclear proliferation can no longer be taken for granted.

So, from reading these clippings, would it be reasonable to assume that they express your thoughts?

Just asking the question.

Because it might be more effective for you to just express your own opinions, in your own words. That might be more compelling.

If you read back in this post you will see that I did that along with others.  Stephen decided to start the blast of articles and videos - I felt that was pretty easy to do.  Since we will never see this issue the same way, this thread is nothing more than posting articles that are relevant to the issue.

Cheers,

First sentence... :D

QuoteHere's an actual news story:

Nothing about Nancy? :o ::)

But Sigma, a trio of the American thinker tomes with an IBD editorial as the coup de grâce?


Thank you all for culling articles by the foremost minds in their field for our illumination.

QuoteOn ‘Torture,’ Holder Undoes Holder
The attorney general reveals his legal ignorance â€" or, his willful inconsistency.
By Andrew C. McCarthy

There was a little noticed bombshell in Washington’s waterboarding melodrama last week. And it wasn’t Nancy Pelosi’s implosion in a Capitol Hill press room, where she yet again tried to explain her inexplicable failure to protest the CIA’s “torturing” of detainees. No, this one detonated in the hearing room of the House Judiciary Committee. There, Attorney General Eric Holder inadvertently destroyed the warped basis for his claim that waterboarding, as administered by the CIA, amounted to torture.

As originally reported by Connie Hair of Human Events, Holder’s undoing was the result of deft questioning by two committee Republicans: Dan Lungren, California’s former state attorney general, and Louie Gohmert, the former chief judge of a Texas appeals court. The two congressmen highlighted a fatal flaw in Holder’s theory. Moreover, they demonstrated that â€" despite having accused the CIA and the Bush administration of war crimes by cavalierly branding waterboarding as “torture” â€" the attorney general has still not acquainted himself with the legal elements of a torture offense, particularly the required mental state. This is remarkable, given that Holder’s own department explained these elements less than a month ago in a federal appeals court brief.

Rep. Lungren pointed out that if the attorney general truly believes “waterboarding is torture,” he must also think we torture our own Navy SEALs and other special-operations personnel when we waterboard them as part of their training. “No . . . not in the legal sense,” countered Holder. You see, said he, it’s “a fundamentally different thing,” because we’re doing something for training purposes to try to equip them with the tools to, perhaps, resist torture techniques that might be used on them. There is not the intent to do that which is defined as torture â€" which is to inflict serious bodily or mental harm. It’s for training. It’s different.

But it’s not different because “it’s for training.” Look at the torture statute (Sections 2340 and 2340A of the federal penal code) and try to find a “training” exception. There isn’t one. What removes an act from the ambit of torture (besides lack of severe pain) is intent. Lungren pressed this point, and Holder admitted that the training was “not torture in the legal sense because we’re not doing it with the intention of harming these people physically or mentally.” Intent, he acknowledged, was the key question.

Then, Lungren pounced. The CIA interrogators who questioned top al-Qaeda captives like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah intended no more harm to them than Navy instructors intended to their SEAL trainees. In fact, we know that the CIA went to great lengths, under Justice Department guidance, precisely to avoid severe harm. Their purpose, Rep. Lungren observed, was to “solicit information,” not to inflict torture.

Holder was trapped. He responded with some blather about how “when the Communist Chinese did [waterboarding], when the Japanese did it, when they did it in the Spanish Inquisition, we knew then that that was not a training exercise they were engaging in. They were doing it in a way that is violative of . . . all the statutes that recognize what torture is.”

Let’s put aside that it’s unlikely the Spanish Inquisition had a torture statute â€" after all, the United States managed to get along without one until 1994. Let’s even ignore the fact that the regimes Holder cited are not known to have rigorously limited their practitioners to no more than six applications of water (none longer than 40 seconds long) during any interrogation session (none longer than two hours long) on any day (during which there could be no more than two sessions) in any month (during which there could be no more than five days on which waterboarding occurred). Let’s just stick with intent. Holder’s exemplars involve the sadistic, programmatic infliction of severe, lasting, and often lethal pain â€" “water treatment” nowhere near as benign as the CIA’s, frequently coupled with atrocities like beating, rape, burning, and other unspeakable abuses. The practices of those regimes were designed exactly to torture, whether out of vengeance, the desire to intimidate a population, or the coercion of false confessions for show-trials â€" not to collect true, life-saving intelligence for the protection of civilian populations.


When Rep. Gohmert followed up on the issue of intent, it became starkly apparent that our attorney general is either badly ill-informed about the law, or simply willing to misstate it. Gohmert asked: “If our officers, when waterboarding, had no intent to do permanent harm and, in fact, knew absolutely they would do no permanent harm to the person being waterboarded, and their only intent was to get information to save people in this country, then they would not have tortured, under your definition. Isn’t that correct?”

Holder summarily rejected this assessment, lamely attempting to fend it off by saying it would depend “on the intention of the person.” But of course, Gohmert had already stated the intention, very exactingly, in his hypothetical. In a corner again, Holder blundered. Whether Gohmert’s example would constitute torture, he surmised, suddenly depended not so much on the intention of the officers but on whether their act (i.e., waterboarding) would have the “logical . . . result” of “physically or mentally harm[ing] the person.”

Gohmert demurred, asserting: If “someone has to believe that they are doing harm to someone in order to . . . torture, then if . . . you knew without any question there was no harm being done, then there’s no torture.”

Holder replied, No, I wouldn’t say that. . . . You can delude yourself into thinking that “what I’m doing is not causing any physical harm, it’s not causing any mental harm,” and somebody, a neutral trier of fact . . . could look at that and make the determination that, in spite of what you said, that what you have indicated is not consistent with the facts, not consistent with your actions, and therefore you’re liable under the statute for the harm that you caused.

That is completely wrong. What Holder described is the legal concept of a “general intent” crime. Most crimes fall into this category. To find guilt, all the jury (the “neutral trier of fact”) has to determine is (a) that you knew what you were doing (i.e., you intended to shoot the gun or rob the bank â€" you didn’t do it by mistake), and (b) the result was the logical outcome that anyone who performed such an act should have expected.

Torture, however, is not a general-intent crime. It calls for proof of specific intent. As I recently recounted, the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals explained the difference in its Pierre case last year: to establish torture, it must be proved that the accused torturer had “the motive or purpose” to commit torture. Sharpening the distinction, the judges used an example from a prior torture case â€" an example that thoroughly refutes Holder’s attempt to downgrade torture to a general-intent offense: “The mere fact that the Haitian authorities have knowledge that severe pain and suffering may result by placing detainees in these conditions does not support a finding that the Haitian authorities intend to inflict severe pain and suffering. The difference goes to the heart of the distinction between general and specific intent.”

To state the matter plainly, the CIA interrogators did not inflict severe pain and had no intention of doing so. The law of the United States holds that, even where an actor does inflict severe pain, there is still no torture unless it was his objective to do so. It doesn’t matter what the average person might think the “logical” result of the action would be; it matters what specifically was in the mind of the alleged torturer â€" if his motive was not to torture, it is not torture.

One might have expected Holder to know that. The argument was used in a DOJ filing before the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals only three weeks ago. Indeed, the Haitian example cited by the Third Circuit is quoted here, word-for-word, from the brief filed by Holder’s own department.

The bottom line is, Rep. Lungren skillfully steered Attorney General Holder into the truth: As a matter of law, CIA waterboarding â€" like the same waterboarding actions featured in Navy SEALs training â€" cannot be torture because there is no intention to inflict severe mental or physical pain; the exercise is done for a different purpose. When Rep. Gohmert’s questioning made it crystal clear that Holder’s simplistic “waterboarding is torture” pronouncement was wrong, the attorney general â€" rather than admitting error â€" tried to change the legal definition of torture in a manner that contradicted a position the Justice Department had just urged on the federal courts. It seems that, for this attorney general, there is one torture standard for Bush administration officials, and another one for everybody else.

Good to see Holder has ended all that unseemly politicizing of the Justice Department.

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NjZkNGZiODM0YjNmODNkMWFhZDU5Mzk2ZDMwNGRmMDQ=

What? ??? Another lame attempt by you to marginalize any posting from any source that you don't agree with? while you post left-wing blog histeria?  I get that.

Stephen, do you notice how quiet it's been this week.  Since Pelosi and Holder and the rest of this self-aggrandizing administration have been embarrassed while attempting to politicize this whole issue, it quickly seems to be going away. 

As your original title goes - it truly has blown up. And you can't handle it.

And "gotcha semantics" is what your side is all about. ;)

Quote from: Sigma on May 29, 2009, 05:14:29 PM
What? ??? Another lame attempt by you to marginalize any posting from any source that you don't agree with? while you post left-wing blog histeria?  I get that.

Stephen, do you notice how quiet it's been this week.  Since Pelosi and Holder and the rest of this self-aggrandizing administration have been embarrassed while attempting to politicize this whole issue, it quickly seems to be going away. 

As your original title goes - it truly has blown up. And you can't handle it.

And "gotcha semantics" is what your side is all about. ;)

Oh ya, that makes lots of sense man...

Don't support torture on your blog? Then you're a left-wing 'hysteric'. WTF You just did exactly what you're accusing Stephen of doing, except he didn't actually do it, and you did. I gotta hand it to you, as you sure do have that 'special' republican sense of no-logic swagger down pat.

Chris and Stephen, it's your premise that is still wrong and that we will never agree on.  Your premise is that waterboarding is torture.  What I'm saying is that I don't believe waterboarding is torture. I realize that the country is divided on this issue.  The other issue involves the decision of whether waterboarding or any other interrogation technique should be used to extract information that could prevent another attack.  Most of this country agrees that we should.  So we can go back and forth all day on on the proper definition.  It seems that is does not matter,since we will use the methods required when this country has a possible terrorist strike on the horizon.

For the record, I am against torture under the definition that it is a brutal form of revenge or punishment with no other intent other than pain and humiliation. 

And another thing - this issue with Gitmo would not be an issue except for the left politicizing the issue and attempting to de-rail G.W.  Fact is, Obama is running into the same legal problems with closing the detainee facility (not the base) that Bush did. 

Quote from: Sigma on May 30, 2009, 01:39:46 PM
Fact is, Obama is running into the same legal problems with closing the detainee facility (not the base) that Bush did. 

Ya, I saw that the other day, when congress voted him down on closing gitmo because everyone's b!tching about not wanting the new prison camp to be located in their area. I guess O's hands are pretty well tied on this one.

QuoteWhat about drilling their joints with power drills?

I can't seem to find any reliable reports on US personnel using power drills on prisoners.  Would you please provide some links to some irrefutable evidence for this assertion?  Thanks

Giving an MMR shot to a 2 year old is a form of torture, but it's done for the greater good of the child and the civilized world. Following your girlfriend around the Beach all day is also a form of torture, by the end of the day you've turned into a lobster and MIGHT even go to the hospital. But the sacrafice is made for the joy of Pay Back! Having a 6 year old walk up to your best friend and ask for a candy bar, seconds before the bombs under his little shirt explode is mental torture. You non military types may never understand but when I catch up with the SOB that rigged that child I'm going to toss him out of a Huey at 2,000 feet... You have to ask yourself how clean you'd play it. (I don't have to wonder.)

CAMP 731  WARNING THIS IS A SICKENING VIDEO OF JAPANESE WAR CRIMES THAT REWRITE THE DEFINITION OF TORTURE... HONEST FOLKS THIS MIGHT BE THE SICKEST VIDEO YOU'LL EVER SEE. BEWARE!
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2zlrk_camp-731_shortfilms



OCKLAWAHA

Quote from: stephendare on May 30, 2009, 05:17:10 PM
Sigma.

The issue of torture is not limited to waterboarding.

Do you agree that assraping detainees is torture?

What about drilling their joints with power drills?

That is what has happened.

Not just 'waterboarding'.

So, it is your thesis which is flawed from beginning, by pretending that 'waterboarding' is what people object to.

But as it happens, Waterboarding is torture, legally.  And we prosecuted the Japanese for committing torture when they did it.

You still havent answered my question.

When is torture a crime in your world?

Stephen, I DID answer your question.

QuoteFor the record, I am against torture under the definition that it is a brutal form of revenge or punishment with no other intent other than pain and humiliation. 

And since the title of your post is about waterboarding, I must say I thought that's what we were discussing.  Ah, but I am debating Stephen "Straw Man" Dare, who one again is bringing rape into the mix (and the reason at least two frequent posters won't even discuss this with you any longer.)

Please Stephen, enlighen us on the use of ass-rapings and joint-drilling in the enhanced interrogation process at Gitmo.  I'd like to know since I have not heard or seen any discussions about it.

Quotehttp://townhall.com/Common/PrintPage.aspx?g=57b05d46-cdc2-4e3b-b6f9-ff595521a87d&t=c

WWJT: Who Would Jesus Torture?
Doug Giles
Saturday, May 30, 2009

A Christian radio show host asked me the other day how I could, as a believer, be cool with waterboarding terrorists for intel crucial to our national securityâ€"or, as I like to call it, the implementation of the Irrigation for Information Act. Irrigation sounds so much more pleasant than torture, oui? Oui.

I told my inquiring host that as a patriotic white male Christian redneck, as far as I can deduce from the holy text, Jesus and the balance of Scripture seem to be okay with dunking Achmed if said butt munch has the 411 regarding the 10/20 of the next mass slaughter of innocent Americans. Call me crazy. I’m well aware, however, that I could be committing an exegetical error given the fact that I’m white and male and all. This is my cross.

Please note: If Christ wasn’t cool with irrigating irate Islamicists for facts, I must admit, I would still have to green light our boys getting data from enemy combatants 007 style. Stick a fire hose up their tailpipe and turn it on full blast. I don’t care. I’m not as holy as most of you super saints or as evolved as some of you progressive atheists purport to be. Security beats spirituality in this scenario, as far as I’m concerned.

Now, as you can imagine, the holier-than-I show host was a tad bit taken aback by my confidence and giddiness over teaching captured terrorists how to snorkel minus the snorkeling gear if it would keep our country safe. He saw that as somehow incongruent with the Clay Aikenization of the sassy Christ a stack of Americans now worship. He then asked me, in kind of a tsk-tsk tone, for a proof text or two from Jesus’ lips and la Biblia that would come even close to him wishing or implementing ill on those who would harm or kill the innocent. This was like taking candy from a baby for me.

How’s this for starters, Slappy? In John 2:12-17 Jesus whipped religious hacks who were turning God’s temple into a Costco for religious crap. According to San Juan’s account, it was the second thing Jesus did after John baptized him in the river Jordan. The first thing he did was turn water into wine. That’s two things lame evangelicals can’t imagine Jesus doing: making wine or using a whip, but I digress.

Yep, Jesus opened up a can of whup ass on charlatans in the temple. He didn’t pray for them or write them an angry email with the caps lock on or call them “man-made religious disasters” that we need to apologize to for forcing them to sell overpriced spiritual curios. Nope, he methodically sat down, got ticked, made a whip and cleared the punks.

Having that snapshot of Christ violently snapping on the 1st century televangelists in the temple, I’m a thinkin’ that if he got that riled up over overpriced Precious Moments figurines, personally whipped the culprits for it and then ransacked their product display tables, more than likely he would be cool with submerging a couple of murderous morons who have information regarding the pending liquidation of thousands of innocent civilians. (And by the way, I’ll take water in the face over a whip to the back any day of the week.)

If you still think he would have problems with waterboarding the wicked who have the poop on potential terror plots, then what do you do with the story of Noah’s Ark? Correct me if I’m wrong, but those chumps got waterboarded to the max, right? Aw, what’s the matter? Does that 411 not fit with the Jesus you made up? Shame.

Not only did Jesus flog greedy religious freaks, he, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit, created this little place called hell for the wickedâ€"which makes Gitmo look like a Chuck E. Cheese. Although, come to think of it, Chuck E. Cheese is quite hellish. Bad analogy. You get my point.

In Matthew 18:6 Jesus said if you harmed a little kid it would be better for you to have a chunk of concrete tied around your neck and tossed into the drink off Miami Beach compared to what the Trinity has prepared for you in eternity (author’s paraphrase). Sounds bad, eh? Worse than waterboarding? I’m thinking . . . yeah.

And then we have the book of Revelation. Yikes. This book is one chapter after another of agony on steroids for those that war against that which is holy, just and good.

So, once again, I’m kinda thinkin’ Hey-Soos wouldn’t blink at how cautiously and methodically our intelligence gents have been in pouring some Zephyr Hills down Habeeb’s nostrils in the hope that such “torture” will make him spill the beans regarding his posse’s plans.

Y’know, maybe I would be more empathetic toward the terrorists who wish to kill us if I were a Hispanic woman from the Bronx, but alas, I ain’t. So, I say, in the name of Jesus, water baptize the bastards for an extra minute or two if that’ll persuade them to unveil their buddy’s macabre machinations.

Granted, it’s always great and right to err on the side of civility, except of course when saving many lives trumps the uncomfortable nature of sticking a garden hose in a terrorist’s snout.

WWJD indeed!

Whatever, Stephen. This is your topic that you started relating to waterboarding and interrogations of terrorists that will do us harm.  I'm sticking to the topic and you are not.  Please stay on track.  If you wish to discuss other things, just start another thread.

By the way:

Poll: Most oppose closing Gitmo

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-06-01-gitmo_N.htm

And I have not commented again in this thread, Stephen Dare!  Leave me out of this, you are either an ignorant tool or a liar.  I'm leaning towards both.

Lying is not, apparently.  I will again drop out of this thread and you can continue to say stupid things if you would like.  If you comment to me, I will answer and will point out the kind of screwy crap you come up with, like drilling knees....geez.  You really have no idea, do you?

No, I was talking about the board.  I couldn't believe that anyone with sense would allow you to get away with some of the things you were doing.  But as I would read the threads and your continuing abuse of the truth, I felt that a reasonable answer HAD to be made.  That was on the Police Pension thread, where you said I was just a worker and had no idea how things "really" worked.  Wow!  You are such a tool.  Kind of like this board, with your wealth of training and experience in military affairs, interrogations, international treaties, and the legal use of force.  You still have an eatery/playhouse open?

Your stance on this issue is well known.  I stand by my statements that the sanctioned efforts of our interrogators saved American lives.  A political witchhunt by the Obama Administration will do nothing to change that.  Your giddiness at this turn of events is somewhat disturbing. 

Sincerely,
The Radical Right Wing

I think that it was you that I called a liar when you repeated false statements even after you were made aware of the truth.  As for the other two, I don't believe I said (or typed) such a thing, but I was probably thinking it. 

And as I pointed out then, and I will now, your "passion" only extends to typing in coffee shops.  You know nothing of these matters or what they mean to the men and women who are actually serving all of us and putting their rear ends on the line.  I don't know you, and I don't want to speak ill of you, but the "intellectual" arrogance of some posts just amazes me. 

You just keep on typing StephenDare!, I have to go to work.

The truth of the matter is the FACTS are NOT in... This is what they are investigating... or witchhunting.  I wish the democrats in charge of this all the best.  I am sure it will be useful to them in the short term.
Your penchent for mis-quotation and out of context transcription shows itself again with this gem...

QuoteAnd more with the 'I have military training, therefore torture didnt happen, and if it did, it was legal!" nonsense.

As no one ever said this nonsense...

Copying and pasting quotes should suffice instead of making them up...

I would like to come out as being absolutely against all forms of torture.

With the exception of when my loved ones and friends might be kept from harm by it.

Would it have been okay to torture a Nazi leader in an attempt to save Jews from the Holocost?

Does dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki qualify as torture? What about internment camps? Did those families have their property confiscated? Is that a form of torture?

The bottom line is: There is no clear, simple answer. The military must do what it must. When such is deemed inappropriate, there should be consequences. Still no clear answer here.

The current "investigations" into alleged "torture" and war crimes reek of nothing more that political grandstanding.

I doubt there will be any meaningful convictions, as that IMO is not the desired result.

Beware the law of unintended consequences.

QuoteThe current "investigations" into alleged "torture" and war crimes reek of nothing more that political grandstanding.

This is the gist of the whole matter.  Once OBamBam felt the tide of majority opinion he backed off and let the matter lay low for a while before handing it over to his henchmen in the justice department and their vindictive, pantywaist supporters in the Congress.  Nothing but a political inquisition that will do more harm than good.

Quote from: jaxnative on August 31, 2009, 10:51:53 AM

QuoteThe current "investigations" into alleged "torture" and war crimes reek of nothing more that political grandstanding.

This is the gist of the whole matter.  Once OBamBam felt the tide of majority opinion he backed off and let the matter lay low for a while before handing it over to his henchmen in the justice department and their vindictive, pantywaist supporters in the Congress.  Nothing but a political inquisition that will do more harm than good.

...and cost millions

Quote from: stephendare on August 31, 2009, 10:58:15 AM
Nah.  locking up the evil doers will be a good thing.

These criminals hobbled our government to prevent themselves from going to jail.   They lied repeatedly from the moment they took office, and the destroyed the lives of millions of people overseas, and thousands of people here in our country.

No.  If the group of people that applauds shooting mexicans for breaking our border laws justifies it on crime and punishment, then they should be held to the same standard.

It will be good to see John Yoo arrested.  Cheney would be better.

Prediction: 1 will fall on the sword.

Do you think it will be Cheney?

Neither do I.

Interesting you would equate the perpetrators of 9/11 with Bush, Cheney, and Yoo...  Anything that happened at Gitmo pales in comparison to what al queda did to 3000+ Americans in 2001... not to mention the numerous tortures and beheadings of innocent civilians since.

Interesting indeed... :(

QuoteInteresting that you think one evil justifies another.

You seem to... you seem to justify the mounting deficits becuase Bush did so... How do you justify the internment of Japanese Americans?  Nuclear bombs on Japan?  The complete destruction of German cities via carpet bomb and incendieries?

Justifiable?  Under normal circumstances absolutely not... under extraordinary circumstances...?????

The hallucination occurs when one compares the al queda to the Bush administration...

Mr. Norquist is entitled to his opinions as are you.  The Obama administration is the one in power and has every right to do as they are.  I do not think it wise... but that is their choice.  It is designed to score political points with a certain faction that finds his other policies... um... less than they expected.  Better to throw the previous administration under the bus.  It will serve as a distraction to keep the rabid Bush haters from calling him out on his own failings.  There are plenty of who will applaud his decision... and even cheer it.  Do not be fooled into thinking there is not a good plenty of folks who will see it for what it is...

I am guessing our mutual friend Ock would find Lincolns suspension of Habeus Corpus equally evil.  Roosevelts internment of Americans for four years was pretty heinous too.  How about his fire bombing of German and Japanese cities?  How about JFKs aborted attempt to invade Cuba? I wonder if Daniel Pearls family cares one iota that Zarqawi was waterboarded?

Seems you forgot to answer my questions...

Either you think Lincolns abuse of power was a crime or you dont.

Either you think Roosevelt committed massive crimes against fellow Americans or you dont.

Either you think Roosevelt committed war crimes or you dont.

Either you think JFK conducted an illegal war against Cuba or you do not.

These questions seem pretty simple also.

Looks to me like you have painted yourself into the same corner as I.  Welcome!

Here let me try...

QuoteEither you think Lincolns abuse of power was a crime or you dont.

Either you think Roosevelt committed massive crimes against fellow Americans or you dont.

Either you think Roosevelt committed war crimes or you dont.

Either you think JFK conducted an illegal war against Cuba or you do not.

These questions seem pretty simple also.

Lincolns suspension was probably criminal... but then again he was only trying to save the Union.  I belive in the law... but I also think their are extraordinary circumstances.

Roosevelts internment of Japanese Americans was indeed criminal.  Of course he along with the rest of society was afraid of the Japanese following the Pearl Harbor attack.  I will forgive him as have many who survived those camps.  Can you forgive him Stephen or should we try him in absentia?

Roosevelts and Churchills decision to firebomb German and Japanese civilians would have garnered them the same war crimes trials as Tojo and the nazis had we lost.  Can you forgive them Stephen or should we remove Roosevelts face from the dime?

JFKs decision to recruit Cuban Americans and train them covertly to invade Cuba was clearly illegal.  Sounds kind of like a poorly trained Blackwater to me.  Can you forgive JFK from attempting to protect Americans from what was viewed at the time as a clear and present danger?  Maybe extinguishing his eternal flame would be just punishment.

History is rife with "abuses of power" by the Executive during times of war and duress.  The Union is whole, the Axis was defeated, the Soviets decided it was not a good idea to threaten America from Cuba.  If Gitmo is the price we pay to extinguish al queda... it seems you are not willing to pay it.

It is not about something else... and I answered your question... you simply must read what is written.

What are you?  The Grand Inquisitor?  The Spanish Inquisition? :D  Am I being interrogated?  What do you think I am saying?  You always seem to be the one asking the questions but are unwilling to answer what others ask.

QuoteNo one is above the law.  And these criminals will hopefully be brought to justice and subject to the same mercy that they inflicted on others.

I assume that applies the current administration currently holding detainees at Gitmo.  Perhaps Mr Obama would care to stand trial for his indiscriminate flinging of missiles into Pakistan killing hundreds of civilians.

Goose... meet Gander.

You need to get some sleep... those halucinations keeping you up?

 :D I will neither confirm nor deny that I may have halucinated once or twice... ;)  I am quite sure I am not now.  I am merely pointing out that it is disingenuous to claim Bush and company must be prosecuted while the current administration is committing the same ones... other adminitrations did whatever was needed to protect this country...

Sorry I didn't jump in earlier, but some of us are actually employed.  Exactly which law are you talking about StephenDare!?  The United States of America has many, many laws which cover a lot of things, and I am not familiar with most of them.  

Politicians almost ALWAYS support the popular opinion.  See the vote to invade Iraq the second time and then the backpedaling subsequent to the shift in public opinion.  This just reenforces my general opinion of politicians.  Your definition of "torture" is different than mine.  This has become a silly argument.  No amout of cut & paste is going to change anyone's opinion.  Being a smarts$$ is just childish. 

Let us suppose that someone dear to stephen were held captive by a group who had previously displayed a willingness... nay; eagerness and determination to kill as many as it could in preplanned acts of mass violence.

Lucky break! We caught one of the kidnappers!

Let us put Stephendare in charge of extracting information concerning the whereabouts of the group holding his loved one who had announced thier intention to publicly execute said beloved.

Would a bit leway in order to obtain such info be granted?

An answer is not necessary.

Blushing handmaiden?  Really?  Now THAT is interesting commentary coming from you!  And where am I to assume that you have located the authority for the USG to get into the health insurance business?  The commerce clause?  There is that "clause" thing again.  Hmmm, commerce, that covers a LOT of things.  Why, the government can go into the banking business as well, right?  And of course life and property insurance is a given.  And the rest of the financial sector as well.  I can find a lot of sad stories of people who don't "have" but "need" and the government should provide it.!  

Let's just not use the document if we can just read whatever we want into it.

Quote from: stephendare on August 31, 2009, 03:38:47 PM
strange commentary from the blushing handmaiden of the Constitution that can't see where healthcare is specifically authorized by the Constitution.
:D

I'm no scholar, so you should not be surprised to learn that like notnow, I can't see where the constitution authorizes heathcare. Nor do I see where the constitution authorizes publicly funded heathcare, nor publicly administered healthcare.

To be fair, I don't see where it explicitly prohibits such legeslation from being written.

Quote from: stephendare on August 31, 2009, 03:50:17 PM
Isnt that the true test of character, buckethead?

Its impossible for the person directly involved to make a decision that is dispassionately just, and we don't allow that to happen.  Its called a conflict of interest and you have to remove yourself from the decision making chain of command.

Putting the person directly affected in charge of the process is the very barbarism that we established our laws to prevent.

I agree with the premise, but I for one would be willing to face the consequences for my actions after I authorized the murder of the family along with the countrymen, and the ancestors of the perpetrator.

Perhaps one among many reasons I am unfit to be placed in a postion of authority.

Quotehow can you see where it allows torture despite its clarity?

Probably the same place where it says you can send Americans to internment camps because they are Japanese.

I seem to remember an apology of some sort... Was there a prosecution of anyone? Even an Attorny general or congressional law clerk?  It seems some pound of flesh should have been taken... as that is exactly what you are advocating.

QuoteDuring his Fox interview, Cheney repeated his defense of the effectiveness of what are called enhanced interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding.

It's strange that Cheney is touting the effectiveness of torture. The effectiveness has absolutely nothing to do with the legality.

Murdering a key witness that is about to testify against you is very effective at silencing them, but that does not change the legality of the situation.

What if it turned out that you life, specifically was spared due to sheek hoozyamama being waterboarded?

Still bad?


I know... you'd be against it because your such an honorable person.

It would still be illegal I suppose.

Im game for waterboarding

Quote from: stephendare on August 31, 2009, 04:51:49 PM
What if the only way to get pizza hut guy to tell you the truth was to perform unnatural sex acts with a lima bean and two (male)camels?

I bet you'd think kinky camel/lima bean sex was alright then, wouldnt you?

Could I video tape this?  ;D

The real issue about torture is very clouded.

What makes this issue sticky is, it depends from situation to situation on if it should be used or not. If your in the situation and know or think it can make a big difference or not.

To me this issue is kinda like a bureaucrat scrutinising combat decisions. Decisions made in real time arnt always pretty, but are typically made with the best intentions.
A split second to make a decision to do something, with a lifetime to sit back and tear it appart it after its been done.


Problem is people want a pretty war, and for both sides to play fair. There Is No Such Thing.

I dissagree, you can use torture that takes much less time.
BUT, Typically those arnt NATO friendly.


The rules of war even on our side goes out the door when there isnt a F-ing reporter around.
And as horrible as things can get, and they can I have some storys, things get done.
War is legal murder.

"HEY that guy is wearing something close enough to a specific outfit I get to shoot him!"
In a very twisted way its kinda war of fashion (my humor)

The moment war can be waged with no loss of life on either side I will be for the ban of torture, untill then let it rain present. Like I said I got some storys of it helping our troops over in the sandbox.


There will always BE torture even from our side tho. Its just going to be done in more intresting ways to not get caught.

Quote from: stephendare on August 31, 2009, 05:36:28 PM
Well you can also silence your neighbors with a shotgun when they get lippy.

In fact, we could just avoid the whole thing altogether sports by just dropping nukes.

The issue isnt what you could do, because we could do literally anything... but what is legal to do.

Im not found of my neighbors anyway, well the ones to the right of me. I'll give you there address and let you handle that.
Isnt this war kinda already illegal anyway? Why stop there. Besides if beating one terrorist with a brick to the gibblets saves a friend of mine's life. Im for it.

Quote from: stephendare on August 31, 2009, 05:44:32 PM
hopefully, if your parents or family are ever held prisoner, the other guy won't think that.

If that happens I'll find and skin them alive on there own TV station. I am all about making an example to scare away others.

Quote from: stephendare on August 31, 2009, 05:48:22 PM
won't bring your parents back though.

And that mentality is called jihad, incidentally.

In all reality if one's loved ones are taken, the likely hood of there safe return is increidbly low.
and jihad is "struggle in the way of God" or "to struggle to improve one's self and/or society" Not making a horrific example to ward off others.

Back to the subject matter. WHY dont you agree with tortue?

Quote from: stephendare on August 31, 2009, 04:51:49 PM
What if there were three million green hobgoblins, but they were all secretly miniaturized into a Klondike Bar? 

And say, there was a guy at pizza hut who was a socialist that knew when the green hobgoblins were going to  erupt in the frozen foods aisle.....

and Say, your mom called to say she was on her way to the store for a klondike bar!!!!

What if the only way to get pizza hut guy to tell you the truth was to perform unnatural sex acts with a lima bean and two (male)camels?

I bet you'd think kinky camel/lima bean sex was alright then, wouldnt you?

I suppose the whole camel/lima bean sex thing could net me a few dollars from the intewebs.

I think the parallel I made was a bit more in line with what the Bush administration is claiming as a justification for actions taken.

Personally, I would feel quite content with a terrorist being beheaded, tortured maimed or forced to watch Will and Grace reruns fo life.

The problem: Who is deeming who as a terrorist?

Again, the "torture" in question falls a bit short of such heinous acts. I'm not sure that I'm all up in arms over waterboaring terror suspects/un-uniformed enemy combatants, although I'm certain I don't wan't to be waterboarded.

Quote from: stephendare on August 31, 2009, 05:48:22 PM
won't bring your parents back though.

And that mentality is called jihad, incidentally.

The justification asserted, is that the parents were spared death by terrorists.

*poke* back on teh subject matter

They WILL torture and behead our troops. Why are you against somethign that is just mental?

Two wrongs dont make a right but when it does save lives and used properly, the prisoner is still living. Rather then what alot of troops are doing now, since alot of the prisoners wont be touched and will get a trial, I know for a fact alot of troops switched to just outright killing the wounded and letting them die rather then taking them in.

Whats a lesser of two evils?

What a Dick!

Quote from: buckethead on August 31, 2009, 06:00:57 PM
What a Dick!

I'v been called worse by others. Mainly a Staff Sargent

Quote from: stephendare on August 31, 2009, 06:01:56 PM

So you think that they will behead our troops as a result of our torturing their friends and family?

They will regardless. They where ruled by fear once, and it worked.

Gee whiz StephenDare!, since you continue to give out what my opinion is, can I give out yours?  Or would you agree that I should state it myself?  When you twist and spin it is called LYING.  Stop LYING about what my opinion is.  Just ask and I will be happy to give it.  

When you state that the interrogation techniques do not work you are wrong, at least in this case.  It has been well established that the information provided prevented the deaths of Americans:

http://www.cnsnews.com/Public/Content/Article.aspx?rsrcid=46949

Were those techniques illegal?  Let's see what Obama's special prosecutor comes up with.  I will be just as interested as you to see the outcome.  Your glee may be somewhat premature.

Do you really believe that we should release and apologize to Khalid Mouhammed?

And what is with the fixation on animal sodomy?  That's kind of a weird focus.  Blushing handmaidens and bestiality....hmmm.

Quote from: stephendare on August 31, 2009, 06:00:12 PM
The Bush Administration has already admitted that Torture wasnt really useful.

The guy who Authorized it, against our treaties, is the only one who is claiming that it was justified.

Dick Cheney.

Could you show me your source for these two statements please?

If it stops or deturs the loss or mistreatment of captured US troops it would be worth it.Since simply detaining them and treating (the majorty) fairly isnt working, a more aggressive approach would be nice. But then again we dont have to, we have other allies to do it for us lol

Quote from: NotNow on August 31, 2009, 06:15:06 PM
And what is with the fixation on animal sodomy?  That's kind of a weird focus.  Blushing handmaidens and bestiality....hmmm.

Makes me nervious!!!

Quote from: stephendare on August 31, 2009, 06:27:49 PM
you might have a leg to stand on.

Paw*


lol


and where do you get the facts about the recrutment tools for iraqie rebs?

Also AG was a poorly supervised group of guards.  They were punished for their childish pranks.  Hardly "torture".

Quote from: Sportmotor on August 31, 2009, 06:08:35 PM

Quote from: buckethead on August 31, 2009, 06:00:57 PM
What a Dick!

I'v been called worse by others. Mainly a Staff Sargent

Quote from: stephendare on August 31, 2009, 06:01:56 PM

So you think that they will behead our troops as a result of our torturing their friends and family?

They will regardless. They where ruled by fear once, and it worked.

Sorry sport... That was in response to SD and his Dick Cheney comment.

We simulposted!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-zoPgv_nYg

John McCain is not qualified to speak.

Our daily 5 minutes of Emmanuel Goldstein time

Leon Panetta said that information obtained using enhanced techniques led directly to OBL.   He said this when he was the Director of the CIA.  The former Director of Clandestine Operations Jose Rodriguez said the same thing.  I think these two men are in a position to know.

I am glad to see that you have changed your mind about wartime operations since Obama came into office though.  You now support entering into another sovereign nation in order to kill our enemies.  You now support killing American citizens who support or join those who would harm our nation.  You now support the interment of terrorist and their supporters at Gitmo in order to save American lives.  You support the use of electronic eavsdropping to locate our enemies so that they can be killed by military force.  Congratulations for coming around.

I can only assume the President has good reason to kill these guys on sight as opposed to capturing them and interrogating them for information. 

The democrats knew EXACTLY what was going on... and did not object... until they decided to try and make political points with it...  Clearly Pelosi and others... are also liars...

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/04/30/pelosis_tortured_explanation_96262.html

QuoteApril 30, 2009
Pelosi's Tortured Explanation
By Debra Saunders

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been pushing for a "truth commission" to investigate the CIA's use of "enhanced interrogation" techniques like waterboarding -- until Republicans started shining the spotlight on Pelosi herself. Now she is not so adamant.

Spokesman Brendan Daly told me that Pelosi wants a truth commission, "but she still realizes the political reality" -- as in the opposition of President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

The rest of the reality may well be this: Pelosi knew that White House lawyers had sanctioned waterboarding in 2002 -- and did not protest.

According to the Senate Intelligence committee, the CIA briefed Pelosi, then the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah -- who was waterboarded -- in 2002.

The Washington Post reported in 2007 that the 2002 briefing provided Pelosi and company with a "virtual tour" of interrogation techniques. At the time of the story, a congressional source speaking for Pelosi, however, told the Post that Pelosi thought waterboarding was in the planning stages. The source admitted Pelosi did not object.

Who then is Pelosi to go after Bush lawyers for sanctioning waterboarding, which she now refers to as torture? This is what Pelosi told reporters last week: "We were not -- I repeat -- we were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used." Yes, the Bush Office of Legal Counsel said the techniques "could be used," she explained, "but not that they would."

So Pelosi thought that just because the Bushies were sticking out their necks and authorizing the CIA's use of waterboarding, that did not mean the CIA would use it. And the Democrats called George W. Bush dim and ineffective?

Note that Pelosi used the term "enhanced interrogation methods" when referring to her CIA briefing. Not torture. On Tuesday, Pelosi added a twist to the story. She told CNN that the briefers "said they had a legal opinion they said they weren't going to use and when they did they would come back to Congress to report to us on that."

Daly added, "There's really not a whole lot you can do when you're being briefed" and you're a member of the minority. Then what is the point of having a bipartisan intelligence committee? Why not just buy a rubber stamp? Porter Goss, the House Intelligence Committee chairman in 2002 who went on to become director of the CIA has a different recollection. As he wrote in the Washington Post, he, Pelosi and the ranking Senate Intelligence Committee members were briefed extensively, "understood what the CIA was doing," and "gave the CIA our bipartisan support." Goss was "slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were actually to be employed."

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the Intelligence Committee, has called on the director of national intelligence to release complete CIA briefing documents -- including information as to who attended and what was said, so that Americans will know what congressional leaders like Pelosi knew. Daly told me that Pelosi supports that effort, as she generally believes in transparency.

Good riddance to a "truth commission." It's pretty sickening to think some Democrats have been poised to investigate and possibly prosecute those who sanctioned waterboarding in 2002. Yet when Pelosi knew the White House was pushing it, she did not try to move heaven and earth to make sure it never happened.

Quote from: stephendare on May 04, 2012, 12:50:14 AM

Quote from: NotNow on May 04, 2012, 12:08:09 AM
Leon Panetta said that information obtained using enhanced techniques led directly to OBL.   He said this when he was the Director of the CIA.  The former Director of Clandestine Operations Jose Rodriguez said the same thing.  I think these two men are in a position to know.

I am glad to see that you have changed your mind about wartime operations since Obama came into office though.  You now support entering into another sovereign nation in order to kill our enemies.  You now support killing American citizens who support or join those who would harm our nation.  You now support the interment of terrorist and their supporters at Gitmo in order to save American lives.  You support the use of electronic eavsdropping to locate our enemies so that they can be killed by military force.  Congratulations for coming around.

I can only assume the President has good reason to kill these guys on sight as opposed to capturing them and interrogating them for information.

Leon Panetta is also a proven liar, and every official since then has said the literal opposite..  So um, thanks for trying to drag everyone else down into the kind of cesspool where they support torture, but its just not based on the facts.

Leon Panetta has been a prominent Democrat since the mid sixties.  He is a US Army vet, a former congressman, has served as Obama's CIA Director and is the current Secretary of Defense in the Obama administration.  If your going to call him a "proven liar", then you should provide some justification. 

As for "dragging everyone" anywhere, your dragging this country around and slinging mud is an obvious left wing political effort.  I pointed out two men of opposite political stripes who held the top jobs in the CIA.  I named them.  They both say the same thing. 

BT, some politicians just make you want to throw up, don't they?  Principles, honor, and character have always been rare qualities.

Once again, a personal attack is not an acceptable answer.  Would you try to keep yourself under control and tell us:

What makes you say Panetta is a proven liar?
Why do you disregard the statement of the man who was on the scene (Rodriguez)?
Why do you not explain (or even admit) your "sudden change of principles" now that it is Obama doing the killing of American citizens overseas, the invasion of other countries, and the maintenance of a prison in Cuba?
Why do you suddenly support the killing of terrorist (rather than having them interrogated, or "tortured" in your opinion)? 

I've actually been in this fight.  Your use of the term "relish" is offensive.  Your assumption of moral authority is just as offensive.  Try to stick to your arguments and leave the personal attacks out of it.

Try to stick to your arguments and leave the personal attacks out of it.


NN If he did this he would have nothing to say and god does he like to hear himself talk. Being the smartest guy in the room and all.

A secret Senate report on CIA interrogations "tells a story of which no American is proud", a leaked White House memo states.

The report was described in a draft memo of media talking points proposed by the state department, which was first reported by the AP news agency.

The memo says now-discontinued CIA interrogation practices were brutal and produced little intelligence of value.

President Barack Obama halted the CIA programme when he took office in 2009.

During the presidency of George W Bush, the CIA operation known internally as the Rendition, Detention and Interrogation programme saw as many as 100 suspected terrorists held in "black sites" outside the US and interrogated using methods such as waterboarding, slapping, humiliation, exposure to cold, and sleep deprivation.

Quote"The report leaves no doubt that the methods used to extract information from some terrorist suspects caused profound pain, suffering and humiliation," the document states.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-28589393

Quote from: stephendare on August 01, 2014, 10:13:30 AM
I imagine that the people who supported this kind of anti american, illegal activity will have to lie to their grandchildren for the next few decades.

Or worse yet, see their grandchildren suffer the same fate if captured by an enemy.

Taxi to the Dark Side should be required viewing.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0854678/

Quote from: BridgeTroll on April 21, 2009, 11:11:54 AM
I still have not seen any indication of torture.  Waterboarding does not really fill the bill.  Descriptions of it being an attempt to nearly drown the person is faulty.  It is designed to give the person the perception that he may drown.  I realize this IS torture to someone who would be against a mild scolding... or horrified by a slow internet connection.  Harsh? yes... torture? I dont think so.

Reading the remarkably reported NYT story on the unimaginable horrors endured by the Westerners captured by ISIS makes the more harrowing scenes from this season of The Walking Dead seem tame. The sadism, the brutality, the torture, the isolation, the terrible loneliness and terror: it's all there, a stark sign of the sheer, unbridled evil unleashed in the Iraqi and Syrian civil wars. That this despicable cruelty was visited on many who had risked their lives to help people trapped in those conflicts makes the nihilism even deeper.

And, yes, these men were tortured. They were not subject to "enhanced interrogation techniques." And it remains an unshakable and terrible truth that what was done to them mimicked in critical features what the CIA and Special Forces did to terror suspects in US custody in the Bush-Cheney era:

QuoteAt one point, their jailers arrived with a collection of orange jumpsuits. In a video, they lined up the French hostages in their brightly colored uniforms, mimicking those worn by prisoners at the United States' facility in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

    They also began waterboarding a select few, just as C.I.A. interrogators had treated Muslim prisoners at so-called black sites during the George W. Bush administration, former hostages and witnesses said ...

    The person who suffered the cruelest treatment, the former hostages said, was Mr. Foley. In addition to receiving prolonged beatings, he underwent mock executions and was repeatedly waterboarded. Meant to simulate drowning, the procedure can cause the victim to pass out.

    When one of the prisoners was hauled out, the others were relieved if he came back bloodied. "It was when there was no blood," a former cellmate said, "that we knew he had suffered something even worse."

Prolonged beatings: check. Mock executions: check. Waterboarding: check. And how many Bush apologists are now claiming that what was done to Foley and the others was not actually torture?

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/26/world/middleeast/horror-before-the-beheadings-what-isis-hostages-endured-in-syria.html

These idiots are a new breed of evil.

Quote from: NotNow on May 04, 2012, 11:17:19 AM
Once again, a personal attack is not an acceptable answer.  Would you try to keep yourself under control and tell us:

What makes you say Panetta is a proven liar?
Why do you disregard the statement of the man who was on the scene (Rodriguez)?
Why do you not explain (or even admit) your "sudden change of principles" now that it is Obama doing the killing of American citizens overseas, the invasion of other countries, and the maintenance of a prison in Cuba?
Why do you suddenly support the killing of terrorist (rather than having them interrogated, or "tortured" in your opinion)? 

I've actually been in this fight.  Your use of the term "relish" is offensive.  Your assumption of moral authority is just as offensive.  Try to stick to your arguments and leave the personal attacks out of it.

It would have been quite the show if some of these people ( who are so bent-out-of-shape that we didn't provide massages and herbal tea to enemies in a time of war ) were around when we decided to blow Japan off the grid. Can you imagine the comments directed at those who supported Truman's bombing? Yatzee!

Quote from: WarDamJagFan on October 28, 2014, 10:32:47 AM
It would have been quite the show if some of these people ( who are so bent-out-of-shape that we didn't provide massages and herbal tea to enemies in a time of war ) were around when we decided to blow Japan off the grid. Can you imagine the comments directed at those who supported Truman's bombing? Yatzee!

So you fully support the torture of Westerners by ISIS.  It's unusual that someone would admit to such a thing in a public forum, so props for your honesty.

Quote from: finehoe on October 28, 2014, 11:13:03 AM

Quote from: WarDamJagFan on October 28, 2014, 10:32:47 AM
It would have been quite the show if some of these people ( who are so bent-out-of-shape that we didn't provide massages and herbal tea to enemies in a time of war ) were around when we decided to blow Japan off the grid. Can you imagine the comments directed at those who supported Truman's bombing? Yatzee!

So you fully support the torture of Westerners by ISIS.  It's unusual that someone would admit to such a thing in a public forum, so props for your honesty.

I support winning. And letting our side do whatever it takes to win a bloody, awful war - even if it includes things you may not agree with. Just like when we ended lives of hundreds of thousands in Japan - which resulted in the conflict of the Pacific coming to a screeching halt. The aftermath of that incident was indeed grotesque and tough to stomach, but it was ultimately the only way to end a brutal conflict between nations.

But spinning this into me somehow supporting ISIS is absolutely hilarious.

Quote from: WarDamJagFan on October 28, 2014, 11:31:19 AMBut spinning this into me somehow supporting ISIS is absolutely hilarious.

If you believe it's okay for one side to violate the Geneva Conventions, then you must believe the other side should be able to as well.

Doesn't mean I support them. And last time I checked, we aren't lopping people's heads off on TV, nor are we lining up the firing squads on people we take captive.

Quote from: WarDamJagFan on October 28, 2014, 11:46:32 AM
Doesn't mean I support them.

No, it means you support them using torture.

Quote from: WarDamJagFan on October 28, 2014, 11:46:32 AM
And last time I checked, we aren't lopping people's heads off on TV, nor are we lining up the firing squads on people we take captive.

That's  irrelevant.  Two wrongs don't make a right.

Quote from: WarDamJagFan on October 28, 2014, 11:31:19 AM

Quote from: finehoe on October 28, 2014, 11:13:03 AM

Quote from: WarDamJagFan on October 28, 2014, 10:32:47 AM
It would have been quite the show if some of these people ( who are so bent-out-of-shape that we didn't provide massages and herbal tea to enemies in a time of war ) were around when we decided to blow Japan off the grid. Can you imagine the comments directed at those who supported Truman's bombing? Yatzee!

So you fully support the torture of Westerners by ISIS.  It's unusual that someone would admit to such a thing in a public forum, so props for your honesty.

+1

I support winning. And letting our side do whatever it takes to win a bloody, awful war - even if it includes things you may not agree with. Just like when we ended lives of hundreds of thousands in Japan - which resulted in the conflict of the Pacific coming to a screeching halt. The aftermath of that incident was indeed grotesque and tough to stomach, but it was ultimately the only way to end a brutal conflict between nations.

But spinning this into me somehow supporting ISIS is absolutely hilarious.

Never fight a war you don't intend to win.

"He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster."
  - Nietzsche

Our actions post-9/11 fostered a new breed of violent Islamist fundamentalism that will haunt us for decades to come.

When they come looking for a receipt for our actions during the War on Terror, the blood will be on our hands as a nation.

Those responsible need to be prosecuted for war crimes, lest our soldiers and civilians suffer the same fate in future conflicts.

"Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause... for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country."
--   George Washington, charge to the Northern Expeditionary Force, Sept. 14, 1775

Quote from: KenFSU on December 10, 2014, 12:11:00 PM
Those responsible need to be prosecuted for war crimes

There's a reason why Bush, Cheney, nor Rumsfeld haven't left US territory since they left office.

Quote from: stephendare on December 10, 2014, 03:18:00 PM
Cheney literally cannot travel to Europe because he is wanted for War Crimes.

Yet he's doubling-down:

"Cheney said he still stands behind the post-9/11 interrogation program, "and if I had to do it over again, I would do it." Cheney made that same comment in March 2014, saying "the results speak for themselves" and denying that practices like waterboarding are torture.

While promoting his book in 2011, Cheney said he has "no regrets" about the use of waterboarding."

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/09/world/dismissing-senate-report-cheney-defends-cia-interrogations.html

Quote from: stephendare on December 10, 2014, 03:11:17 PM
http://crooksandliars.com/2014/12/col-wilkerson-dick-cheney-fully-informed

I share the anger Col. Wilkerson gets across during his interview with Chris Hayes about the lies and misdirection in the CIA torture program. Wilkerson was visibly angry during the entire interview, but nowhere was that more evident than when he pointed the finger directly at Cheney at the end.

Here's the transcript, but the video says it all.

QuoteHAYES: There's one thing that struck me in this report that I have to ask you about. This is in the summary that we got today.

An internal CIA email from July 2003 noted that "...the WH [White House] is extremely concerned that Secretary Powell would blow his stack if he were to be briefed on what's been going on."

You were working for Secretary Powell at that time. Your reaction to that.

WILKERSON: I'm sure that's probably the case. I got to see him -- I worked for him for twelve years and I got to see him blow his stack worse than he'd ever blown it before at the CIA with George Tenet and John McLaughlin, because he sensed what was being done to him.

He took me into a room and told me to cut about 25 percent of the presentation he was supposed to give out. Told me to take it out because it was worthless. He was even worried that it wasn't accurate.

And then within a few minutes George Tenet showed up with the spellbinding news that high level Al Qaeda operatives had revealed under interrogation, he said -- no revealing that he was being tortured at the time -- that he'd revealed significant contacts between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's operatives in Baghdad.

This was a flat-out lie. We later learned it was Sheik Al-Libi, we learned he was being tortured, no US personnel were even present, and that in a week to ten days he recanted what he'd given under torture.

So this is the kind of thing that was happening when I was out at the CIA for five days and nights with these people who are now trying to tell the American people that they are competent and they were telling the truth.


We all have to wear the taint Richard Bruce Cheney brought down on us

Taint is tough, try oxyclean.

Quote from: BridgeTroll on April 21, 2009, 11:11:54 AM
Why are they not releasing the results of these interrogations?

Because there were none.

QuoteThe Senate investigation reveals some dreadful practices that, contrary to the CIA's protestations, have probably done little to enhance America's safety. Will the agency change its approach? The omens are not good. Before the 9/11 attacks, the CIA had already determined from its own experience that coercive interrogations "do not produce intelligence" and "will probably result in false answers". It didn't take long for it to ignore those conclusions.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26685-that-cia-torture-methods-were-pointless-is-no-shock.html#.VIjkrDHF-So

Waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation" techniques did not become "torture" until somebody figured out that making them so was a source catchy sound bytes.

This report really doesn't change anything, those that think it was torture will still think that.  Those who don't, will continue to think that.

Not about to read 22 pages of this thread, but I gotta ask

Is there anyone on this forum who still maintains the USA is not a human rights violator and should be held accountable by the ICC?

I mean really...it's SO fucking hypocritical to say a damn thing about Iran, Russia, or China (not only in light of the CIA report, but especially considering we have more people incarcerated than all of them)

haha, the Japaneesee version of waterboarding was much much worse than ours.  The 'water boarding' technique used by the Japanese could kill you. The technique used in SARS and on detainees will make your life miserable but won't end it

Quote from: ben says on December 10, 2014, 10:14:08 PM
Not about to read 22 pages of this thread, but I gotta ask

Is there anyone on this forum who still maintains the USA is not a human rights violator and should be held accountable by the ICC?

I mean really...it's SO fucking hypocritical to say a damn thing about Iran, Russia, or China (not only in light of the CIA report, but especially considering we have more people incarcerated than all of them)

We're trying to come in after the fact and self-impose a moral standard that much of the world, including the part where the subject events are taking place, simply does not buy. What we need is worldwide bright-line agreement on where the line is, and then abide by that line going forward. What we have is an agreement that is subject to a wide range of interpretation, and we are seeking to impose ex post facto, an interpretation that most of the world does not agree with. And I'm fairly certain that if we expect the Arab world, and indeed most of the third world, to abide any agreement, then waterboarding is not going to be defined as torture.

Quote from: fsquid on December 10, 2014, 10:30:18 PM
We're trying to come in after the fact and self-impose a moral standard that much of the world, including the part where the subject events are taking place, simply does not buy. What we need is worldwide bright-line agreement on where the line is, and then abide by that line going forward. What we have is an agreement that is subject to a wide range of interpretation, and we are seeking to impose ex post facto, an interpretation that most of the world does not agree with. And I'm fairly certain that if we expect the Arab world, and indeed most of the third world, to abide any agreement, then waterboarding is not going to be defined as torture.

Why would we expect the Arab world to agree with ANY of our 'standards'??? We're hypocrites and any bright line rule will (and should) be laughed at)

Furthermore, it doesn't matter if the subject matter is or is not torture in the Arab world. Isn't our whole point (America's): we hold ourselves to the highest moral standard?

What about all the other non-waterboarding torture we've done?

Op-Ed headlining CNN right now, which was just released by prison censors.

What a disgrace.

QuoteGitmo inmate: My treatment shames American flag

Editor's note: Samir Naji is a Yemeni accused of serving in Osama bin Laden's security detail and has been imprisoned for nearly 13 years without charge in Guantanamo Bay. He was cleared for release in 2009, but remains in detention. The following first-person testimony, recorded during his most recent meeting with lawyers from the international human rights organization Reprieve, has just been released by prison censors. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely his.

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (CNN) -- I've heard that the Senate report on CIA torture is 6,000 pages long. My story, though, takes place elsewhere: in Guantanamo, away from the CIA program that the report covers. The 6,000 pages of the Senate report are just the start of what Americans have to accept happened in their name.

It starts and ends in the silence of a tiny, freezing cold cell, alone.

That's when you hold yourself in a ball, and fight to ignore the confusion of what has just happened to you, and the fear of what might be coming next. Or the fear that comes when you realize that no one is coming to help; that the life, family and friends you knew are all far, far away.

The cell door opens. The next session, seemingly the 100th in a row. I think my first period of interrogation lasted three full months. Two teams of interrogators running shifts, day and night.

Each session begins with shouting, to wake me up. Then they hit me on the face and the back. I am so desperate for sleep, my head is swimming. There are photographs of faces stuck all around the walls of this room. They demand that I identify the individuals, but I can barely focus to see if I might know them. The shouting and the insults get louder, and then they nod to a man in the corner. He injects me twice in the arm with some unknown substance. It's the last thing I know.

The freezing cold cell. The cell door opens. This time the guards enter, making awful honking noises, like wild animals.

I tried to refuse to eat the little food they bring me, in protest at all this. The interrogator laughs at me, but then turns angry; he swears loudly, and pours an army meal pack over my head. They tell the man in the corner to start feeding me intravenously. He inserts the tube in two different places on my arm and makes it bleed.

The freezing cold cell. The cell door opens. This time the guards push me on the floor and take turns trampling over my back.

I tell the interrogators that I can't face not eating any more. They throw food on the floor of the room and tell me to eat like a pig. They won't let me go to the restroom. They watch as it gets more painful, and laugh as they get the translator to describe how they will rape me if I pee in my pants.

The freezing cold cell. The cell door opens. They make me stand and salute the American flag.

I'm in a sort of cinema room, where I have to watch videos of other prisoners being abused. Then they tell me that I have to dance for them, and run in circles whilst they pull on my chains. Every time I try and refuse, they touch me in my most private areas.

The freezing cold cell. The cell door opens. It has rained, and there are muddy puddles everywhere. I'm shackled, so I can't really walk; they deliberately drag me through the muddy puddles.

Now it's the pornography room. Awful pictures everywhere. There is one with a man and a donkey. I'm stripped naked and have my beard shaved, in a gratuitous insult to my religion. I'm shown pornographic pictures of women. I'm told to make the noises of different animals, and when I refuse, they just hit me. It ends with them pouring cold water all over me.

Hours later in my cell, I am discovered, nearly frozen. The doctor tells them to bring me urgently to the clinic, where I am given a blanket and treatment. Over the next hours, they observe me as I warm up. They are just waiting for the moment that they can sign off on my return to interrogation.

Four years ago, six U.S. government security agencies sat together and reviewed my case. Their conclusion? That I was innocent of any crime and should be released. The dirty and sadistic methods I endured -- which were then taken directly to Abu Ghraib -- achieved nothing, except to shame that American flag hanging in the prison corridor, which I was made to salute.

One hundred and thirty-six prisoners are still being held at Guantanamo, whilst the politicians squabble over how to black out the Senate report. America cannot keep hiding from its past, and its present, like this. Our stories, and our continued detention, cannot be made to disappear.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/11/opinion/guantanamo-inmate-naji/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Quote from: stephendare on April 21, 2009, 12:27:42 PM
hello strawman.

I agree it's a disgrace

But, the bigger disgrace may be the lack of interest the American populace had towards what they kne was going on for eons.

At what point do the silent become complicit.

American "ideals" are a sham. Glad it's finally coming full circle.

On another note: the CIA report coming out 3 days before I leave for Cairo.....not the best timing for me!!!

Quote from: KenFSU on December 11, 2014, 09:03:00 AM
Op-Ed headlining CNN right now, which was just released by prison censors.

What a disgrace.

QuoteGitmo inmate: My treatment shames American flag

Editor's note: Samir Naji is a Yemeni accused of serving in Osama bin Laden's security detail and has been imprisoned for nearly 13 years without charge in Guantanamo Bay. He was cleared for release in 2009, but remains in detention. The following first-person testimony, recorded during his most recent meeting with lawyers from the international human rights organization Reprieve, has just been released by prison censors. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely his.

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (CNN) -- I've heard that the Senate report on CIA torture is 6,000 pages long. My story, though, takes place elsewhere: in Guantanamo, away from the CIA program that the report covers. The 6,000 pages of the Senate report are just the start of what Americans have to accept happened in their name.

It starts and ends in the silence of a tiny, freezing cold cell, alone.

That's when you hold yourself in a ball, and fight to ignore the confusion of what has just happened to you, and the fear of what might be coming next. Or the fear that comes when you realize that no one is coming to help; that the life, family and friends you knew are all far, far away.

The cell door opens. The next session, seemingly the 100th in a row. I think my first period of interrogation lasted three full months. Two teams of interrogators running shifts, day and night.

Each session begins with shouting, to wake me up. Then they hit me on the face and the back. I am so desperate for sleep, my head is swimming. There are photographs of faces stuck all around the walls of this room. They demand that I identify the individuals, but I can barely focus to see if I might know them. The shouting and the insults get louder, and then they nod to a man in the corner. He injects me twice in the arm with some unknown substance. It's the last thing I know.

The freezing cold cell. The cell door opens. This time the guards enter, making awful honking noises, like wild animals.

I tried to refuse to eat the little food they bring me, in protest at all this. The interrogator laughs at me, but then turns angry; he swears loudly, and pours an army meal pack over my head. They tell the man in the corner to start feeding me intravenously. He inserts the tube in two different places on my arm and makes it bleed.

The freezing cold cell. The cell door opens. This time the guards push me on the floor and take turns trampling over my back.

I tell the interrogators that I can't face not eating any more. They throw food on the floor of the room and tell me to eat like a pig. They won't let me go to the restroom. They watch as it gets more painful, and laugh as they get the translator to describe how they will rape me if I pee in my pants.

The freezing cold cell. The cell door opens. They make me stand and salute the American flag.

I'm in a sort of cinema room, where I have to watch videos of other prisoners being abused. Then they tell me that I have to dance for them, and run in circles whilst they pull on my chains. Every time I try and refuse, they touch me in my most private areas.

The freezing cold cell. The cell door opens. It has rained, and there are muddy puddles everywhere. I'm shackled, so I can't really walk; they deliberately drag me through the muddy puddles.

Now it's the pornography room. Awful pictures everywhere. There is one with a man and a donkey. I'm stripped naked and have my beard shaved, in a gratuitous insult to my religion. I'm shown pornographic pictures of women. I'm told to make the noises of different animals, and when I refuse, they just hit me. It ends with them pouring cold water all over me.

Hours later in my cell, I am discovered, nearly frozen. The doctor tells them to bring me urgently to the clinic, where I am given a blanket and treatment. Over the next hours, they observe me as I warm up. They are just waiting for the moment that they can sign off on my return to interrogation.

Four years ago, six U.S. government security agencies sat together and reviewed my case. Their conclusion? That I was innocent of any crime and should be released. The dirty and sadistic methods I endured -- which were then taken directly to Abu Ghraib -- achieved nothing, except to shame that American flag hanging in the prison corridor, which I was made to salute.

One hundred and thirty-six prisoners are still being held at Guantanamo, whilst the politicians squabble over how to black out the Senate report. America cannot keep hiding from its past, and its present, like this. Our stories, and our continued detention, cannot be made to disappear.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/11/opinion/guantanamo-inmate-naji/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

QuoteWhy would we expect the Arab world to agree with ANY of our 'standards'??? We're hypocrites and any bright line rule will (and should) be laughed at)

But that's the point. What standard applies when dealing with others who don't accept our standards?

QuoteFurthermore, it doesn't matter if the subject matter is or is not torture in the Arab world. Isn't our whole point (America's): we hold ourselves to the highest moral standard?

What about all the other non-waterboarding torture we've done?

What if neither waterboarding nor the "other non-waterboarding torture we've done" are actually torture? Because there is a time not long ago when none of them would have been defined as torture. And it's not entirely clear that any of them are today.

If we hold ourselves to the highest moral standard, it's the highest moral standard based upon our ethnocentric definition of morality. Our "highest moral standard" is clearly not the highest moral standard when judged based upon formulations of morality in other cultures. Our "highest moral standard" is actually quite immoral by standards of the Arab world.

So whose standards apply? How do we deal with other cultures that have vastly different standards of morality? Do we insist on doing our thing and asserting moral superiority over them? If the goal is to piss them off, that's probably a good approach. Do we do like 18th century Japan, or modern day North Korea, and isolate? Do we "go native" whenever we are in a different culture?

And in a world where regardless of our intentions we require intel to survive, and obtaining intel requires doing unsavory actions and associating with nefarious people, where do we draw the lines?

There are some tough questions here, because it's a tough world we live in, and pretending that all we have to do is comply with our own ethnocentric notions of morality is incredibly naive.

What Is Torture? Our Beliefs Depend In Part On Who's Doing It.

http://www.npr.org/2014/12/11/370022493/what-is-torture-our-beliefs-depend-in-part-on-whos-doing-it

Quote from: fsquid on December 11, 2014, 12:49:04 PM
And in a world where regardless of our intentions we require intel to survive, and obtaining intel requires doing unsavory actions and associating with nefarious people, where do we draw the lines?

An easy line to draw would be one of effectiveness. Regardless of morality, there are mountains of data -- the Senate report included -- demonstrating that information obtained through torture is almost never actionable or accurate. People will say anything under duress, and by relying on such dubious information, you are poisoning the well of credible intelligence gathered through much more reliable, traditional methods. In this particular case, there was quite literally zero upside, and an avalanche of consequences that continues to mount.

Everything we were told about the imminence of terrifying terror attacks after 9/11 was a huge exaggeration of the actual risks we faced. Which means that the torture program was set up to prevent a fantasy built on fear and panic – not on real threats to the homeland, let alone thousands of American lives. What you get from this report is a clear sense that on 9/11, thanks in part to incompetence at the CIA, the Jihadists got lucky. That's all. It was not the beginning of a wave of terror; it did not reveal the existence of a massive clandestine plot to attack the US with WMDs or flocks of suicide bombers. We were fighting a menace that was a pathetic shadow of what we actually believed. And the people who are supposed to have an adult assessment of the risks, the men in charge of the US government, threw out any skepticism, trashed any contrary analysis, and went head-first into this astonishing campaign of torture, bombing and invasion in what history will surely judge was the most grotesque over-reaction to a threat in American history.

The UN, human rights activists and legal experts have renewed calls for the Obama administration to prosecute US officials responsible for the CIA torture programme revealed in extensive detail following the release of a damning report by the Senate intelligence committee.

The report, released on Tuesday, found the CIA misled the White House, the Justice Department, Congress and the public over a torture programme that was both ineffective and more brutal than the agency disclosed.

"Today's release once again makes crystal clear that the US government used torture. Torture is a crime and those responsible for crimes must be brought to justice," Amnesty International USA's executive director, Steven W Hawkins, said in a statement.

"Under the UN convention against torture, no exceptional circumstances whatsoever can be invoked to justify torture, and all those responsible for authorising or carrying out torture or other ill-treatment must be fully investigated."

In Geneva, the United Nations's special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, Ben Emmerson, said CIA officers and other US government officials should be prosecuted.

"The fact that the policies revealed in this report were authorised at a high level within the US government provides no excuse whatsoever," Emmerson said in a statement.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/09/torture-cia-amnesty-international-human-rights-watch

At some point human beings need to come to some universal standard from which we base our interactions with "other" human beings. This question of how to treat "others" has been a painful plague for too many for too long. In the U.S. there were and still are questions about how to treat the following "others" (in no particular order): nonpropertied others, female others, the "Negro Question" was raised in regards to African others, lgbt others, polish others, Irish others, Italian others, Jewish others, catholic others and I am sure I am missing some others but you get the picture.
Now the pertinent issues, in addition to the still simmering others is how to treat Muslim others, detainee others, and illegal immigrant others. Lgbt others are also at the forefront. Our country has not figured out to deal. Obama may still be "evolving" on the matter. Its hard to say what mayor Brown's progress or position is because he refused to take any position firmly or decisively either way when it came to the Human Rights Ordinance. I bet he breathed a sigh of relief at being able to evade voicing a public opinion because it did not get past the City Council. But I digress...
My point is that humans like to make up "others" who we can deny the rights and privileges we would desire in a similar circumstance.
We need to stop this. It paves the way to torture.

Prosecute those responsible.

(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4FtUpuFojJc/VJC5BShKghI/AAAAAAAAgxk/auYPEujLWbQ/s1600/Reagan-on-Torture.jpg)

Quote from: ben says on December 13, 2014, 07:30:34 PM
Prosecute those responsible.

The only people who get prosecuted are the whistleblowers who expose the crimes. 

Detainees can sue Bush-era officials over post-Sept. 11 treatment

Former detainees who say they faced harsh jail conditions due to their faith and ethnicity following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks can pursue a lawsuit against former top U.S. law enforcement officials, a sharply divided federal appeals court ruled on Friday.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York voted 6-6 not to hear the case again before the entire court, leaving in place an earlier decision from a three-judge panel. A majority of the court's active judges must approve such a rehearing, known as an "en banc" review.

The plaintiffs were arrested on minor immigration violations and eventually cleared of any connection to terrorism, according to the lawsuit, which was first filed in 2002. Friday's decision clears the way for a possible trial in federal court.

The former detainees have sued officials from the administration of President George W. Bush, including former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller and former Immigration and Naturalization Service Commissioner James Ziglar.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/arab-muslim-detainees-can-sue-bush-era-officials-over-post-sept-11-treatment