Waterboarded 183 Times in One Month. Torture Issue Blows Up.

[finehoe]

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.

"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

[KenFSU]

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/

[finehoe]

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:

At 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

[fsquid]

These idiots are a new breed of evil.

[WarDamJagFan]

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!

[finehoe]

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.

[WarDamJagFan]

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.

[finehoe]

But 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.

[WarDamJagFan]

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.

[finehoe]

Doesn't mean I support them.

No, it means you support them using torture.

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.

[Gunnar]

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.

[fsquid]

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

[KenFSU]

"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.

[JeffreyS]

"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

[finehoe]

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.