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

[Lunican]

'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

[Ron Mexico]

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.

[ChriswUfGator]

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...

[Ron Mexico]

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?

[jaxnative]

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!!

[ChriswUfGator]

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.

[civil42806]

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

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.

[civil42806]

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

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...

[ChriswUfGator]

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

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.

[ChriswUfGator]

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

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.

[Sigma]

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

[Sigma]

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.

[Ron Mexico]

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.

[Sigma]

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.

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.

[Lunican]

Is that article from The Onion?