BS: Obama and torture

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Bobert
Date: 17 May 09 - 05:11 PM

So, Rigs, are ya' saying that torturing folks keeps the country safe???

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Riginslinger
Date: 17 May 09 - 10:05 PM

Yes! And anyone who thinks other political powers don't engage in torture is living in a dream world. My opinion, of course.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Bobert
Date: 18 May 09 - 07:23 AM

How about the many experts who claim that torture only gets you bad intllegence??? And what about decisions that are made based on bad intllegence??? Hmmmmmm???

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Riginslinger
Date: 18 May 09 - 10:21 AM

If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. One would think the CIA, FBI, NSA, etc., etc. would know. But once you go down the road of having politicians making military decisions--including intellegence, you're probably on your way to disaster in any event.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: CarolC
Date: 18 May 09 - 11:33 AM

The experts say it doesn't work. This was shown by the fact that people who were tortured clammed up after the torture commenced, while they had been cooperating before that. It also puts the lives of our military people at much greater risk, because it creates a backlash.

The only reason people use torture is to get people to say things that aren't true. People will say anything to get the pain to stop. It does not produce reliable intelligence.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Peter T.
Date: 18 May 09 - 11:49 AM

Actually, I think Riginslinger is right -- nations all over the world do torture. That is why it should be stopped -- and it should be stopped particularly in the nations that supposedly uphold and parade their committments to democracy and human rights -- especially since there are all kinds of nasty regimes that keep calling themselves democracies and have seats on Human Rights Tribunals and so on. Otherwise the whole thing is meaningless.

I think people do torture to get information. There are sadists, and they may all be sadists, but there are people trying to get information. The Nazis tried to get information from people by torture, and they succeeded. That was why the informal Resistance rule was 24 hours (so I have heard) -- you resist for 24 hours and then tell whatever.

The moral dilemma is not whether it works or not. The moral dilemma is whether you use it even though it works. I say no: I say it is (as Obama said before he turned tail and ran) part of the price.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 18 May 09 - 02:40 PM

Y'know, I suspect that, under sufficient enhanced interrogation, Cheney would admit to being the brains behind 9-11. Or even to plotting the crucifixion.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Bobert
Date: 18 May 09 - 07:40 PM

Yeah, seems that even if it does work in certain circumsatnces who is to know exactly which certain circumstance is ***the*** certain circumstance??? So, you might get good or bad intellegence with torture... The problem is that when you plan field operations around "good or bad" intellegence you get a mixed bag of failure and success...

Folks who outsmart the folks they are trying to get information from get better intellegence because in outsmarting these folks what is told them is more accurate than torture... This has been stated by expert after expert...

Now we learn that much of the torture that has been carried out was done so after private contractors suggested these meathods??? Who exactly made private contarctors the authority on intellegence???

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 18 May 09 - 08:04 PM

I don't believe I'm reading this. Not at any time in the last 60 years do I believe that anyone could put up the arguments being put up here.

All you defenders of torture, just how many witches do you think actually used to exist, and how many of the women murdered for being witches actually were witches?

And what produced the evidence and confessions of being witches, the stories of the devil's icy cold member, the drinking of the blood of children, etc, etc, etc>

Oh yes. Torture.

It really helps to get at the truth, does torture...

More power to your elbow on this thread Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 18 May 09 - 08:08 PM

Oh, and that cheap racist crack about ham sandwiches is about on the par with some of the van der Merwe jokes that used to circulate in white South Africa. Or Lisa and Rastus jokes. Shame on you.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Bobert
Date: 18 May 09 - 08:15 PM

Well, with the witches they would dunk the suspected witch under water... If the woman drowned then that was evidence that the woman was not a witch... If she lived then that was proof that the woman was a witch and therefore should be done away with???

What barbaric thinking...

Like you, Richard, I can't believe tghat we are having this discussion, some 60 years after the United States put Japanese people on trial for war crimes for doing what Dick Cheney has been running around the country saying is okay in his book...

And meanwhile??? Not one shread of evidence that torture saved so much as one life??? Let alone thousands...

I'm sniffin' another round of mushroom cloud lies from Cheney...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Riginslinger
Date: 18 May 09 - 10:00 PM

Richard - I'm pleased that someone finally got it, but it just goes to make the point: What's torture for one is not necessarily torture for all.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: CarolC
Date: 18 May 09 - 10:05 PM

The reason we are having this discussion is because as the world's biggest and most powerful superpower, we only believe in "might makes right" any more. We no longer believe in ethics or the rule of law (if we ever did, which I tend to doubt). Approaching it from the perspective of ethics and rule of law isn't going to work any more for the people in the US, because those who advocate torture don't give a shit about those things, and there isn't anyone in the world who can force the most powerful country in the world to start caring about those things. The only way to persuade them to stop doing it is to show them how it damages the US more than it helps the US. That's just the way it is.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Riginslinger
Date: 18 May 09 - 10:24 PM

Well, Carol, that's one reason to have this discussion, but one of the by-products might be to arrive at some workable solution as to how to extract information for a prisoner without the use of torture.

                   Shaving the beards off of detainees, or making them eat ham sandwiches should be a good way to get information without the use of torture. After all, it's not the fault of the captor that the prisoner is addicted to some ancient superstition or another.

                   And for Richard to call it racism is totally out of line. People from every race all over the world will happily eat a ham sandwich. It's only the addicts that will not. At the end of the day, it would be no different than withholding heroin from a junkie.

                   They could have done that to get the information that they wanted. The reason they might not have is because so many of them were addicts themselves. On NPR today, there was a discussion about how Rumsfeld posted Biblical quotes to his intelligence briefings. I suppose he thought god was on his side, but...

                   If sober people could have been in charge, we might have known everything.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: CarolC
Date: 18 May 09 - 10:39 PM

They already have methods other than torture that work better than torture, and that don't compromise our military people overseas. There is absolutely no reason to torture, except to force people to say things that aren't true.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Riginslinger
Date: 18 May 09 - 11:56 PM

So it's the voters' fault for electing addicts in the first place. There's no sense in going further. Obama, his administration, and the entire country will not be served by prosecuting fools for being stupid.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: CarolC
Date: 19 May 09 - 12:51 AM

Addicts? We need to prosecute those responsible if we want to be a part of the world community instead of a rogue state.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Teribus
Date: 19 May 09 - 01:23 AM

Camberwick Green, or Trumpton, that's where I believe most of you live having read down through this thread.

Your views on "Torture" are based on comic book interpretations of torture for torture's sake.

The one thing that you are showing that you know nothing about whatsoever is interrogation of someone who has been trained to withstand it.

The other thing that you are pointedly ignoring are the circumstances under which interrogation is required.

"They already have methods other than torture that work better than torture, and that don't compromise our military people overseas. There is absolutely no reason to torture, except to force people to say things that aren't true." - CarolC

That is the most stupid remark that I think I've heard on the subject.

Ask anybody who has been through SERE training what they are advised to do if captured and interrogated. I take it that this training still goes on, which means that Obama will allow US Forces personnel to be "tortured" by US Instructors, but not the "enemies" of the USA - ludicrous.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: CarolC
Date: 19 May 09 - 03:11 AM

Interestingly, it's precisely that SERE training that points up the fact that the Bush administration's torture program was explicitly for the purpose of getting people to say things that weren't true. The SERE program was instituted to train US military personnel to be able to resist the kinds of torture that people like the Chinese and North Vietnamese were using to force US military personnel to say things that weren't true, and use those statements from those US military personnel (obtained though torture) as propaganda.

The Bush administration used in its own torture program, the very same torture techniques that the SERE program was designed to help US military personnel resist. It used those torture techniques for precisely the same reason the Chinese and Vietnamese and other governments that used those techniques used them... to force people to say things that aren't true in order to use them as propaganda tools.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 19 May 09 - 03:37 AM

Rig, I suggest you ask the usually very restrained Rabbi-Sol here what he would call it if one were to threaten to force an orthodox Jew to eat a ham sandwich.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Riginslinger
Date: 19 May 09 - 08:14 AM

I wouldn't do it, of course, unless I thought he had information that I needed to protect the safety of civilians or people serving under me--or if I were in a military situation and I thought it would help me gain an advantage. At that point, the ham sandwiches would come out.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Peter T.
Date: 19 May 09 - 10:53 AM

It is probably a weary thing to add to this discussion, but as far as I can see torture in the American "ticking bomb" scenarios would be an admission of terrible failure in at least two of the three basic threats of any seriousness. Biological warfare is not a mass threat to anyone, in spite of the hoo-ha about it. The only weapons of mass destruction that matter are nuclear weapons or dirty nuclear bombs. The three basic threats at the top end of the scale are: the disintegration of Pakistan to the point where one of the terrorist groups gets hold of a nuclear weapon; the whole entanglement of Israel, Iran, and Iraq to the point of a war; and three, the leaking of a nuclear weapon from the Russian stockpile. I don't see anything else on the apocalypse scale. Two of the three are resolvable with some decent politics to an extent that the threat would ease. The Russian case is different: that is why the Americans threw money at the containment. (They did the same with the Pakistanis who probably spent it on tanks to attack India).

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: CarolC
Date: 19 May 09 - 11:15 AM

It doesn't look to me like the people advocating for the use of torture are necessarily talking about WMD. It looks to me like they're saying that torture is justified if any civilians or military personnel could be killed.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Riginslinger
Date: 19 May 09 - 12:40 PM

Do we have a definition of torture. It sounds like some folks think torture is threatening somebody with a ham sandwich.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: beardedbruce
Date: 19 May 09 - 01:02 PM

"Biological warfare is not a mass threat to anyone"

Bull!!

Caribe Indians as a counterexample.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 19 May 09 - 01:09 PM

Rig, thus threatening someone to whom ham is religiously unclean, and joking about it, is rather vile racism.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Riginslinger
Date: 19 May 09 - 01:19 PM

Not really, Richard, the problems are all in their head. It looks to me like one would be doing the individual a favor.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Peter T.
Date: 19 May 09 - 03:05 PM

Biological weapons such as they are require a closed space (Tokyo subway) and dissipate really easily. No one has thought of a plausible way of doing it. Giving indians blankets is not exactly 21st century.....

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Donuel
Date: 19 May 09 - 03:47 PM

The Chinese ham sandwich torture is simple....but insidious.


SOme of the arcane language the Bush lawyer stooges used to redefine torture is cruel and unusual.

"whereas the degree of pain shall not exceed that of fatal organ failure pain"


sheeesh

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Riginslinger
Date: 19 May 09 - 04:01 PM

"The Chinese ham sandwich torture is simple....but insidious."


                   It might be insidious, but think of the possibilities. First you have a subject that abhores the idea of eating a ham sandwich, but you keep coaxing and coaxing, and then, when he finally gets hungry enough, he takes a nibble. After a sandwich or two, he discovers he likes them.

                   After a while, the interrogation subject begins to feel he can't get through the day without a ham sandwich or two. His dependancy increases. Finally, you let him have all the ham sandwiches he wants, until one day you suggest that he might want to cut down on them.

                   In the end, you have the National Security Advisor develop a 12 step program to help break the addiction to ham sadwiches. The subject shows up at group therapy one day, and he tells you everything.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: beardedbruce
Date: 19 May 09 - 04:21 PM

"Biological weapons such as they are require a closed space (Tokyo subway) and dissipate really easily. No one has thought of a plausible way of doing it."

Sorry, but biological weapons would include ANY contagious disease. Since we have pandemics, naturally, I fail to see how you can dismiss the possibility of planned disease as a weapon.

Yes, it is probably easier to spread in inclosed spaces, such as aircraft, subways, and convention centers. But unless you prevent contact with other people, it can be spread easily. Worst case would be to use some other vector. A well known short story had a disease spread by contamination of the glue that is put on stamps.


BTW, the Tokyo Subway was ricin, a chemical agent.


And are you aware of how many tons of clorine are passing through major cities every day?

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: CarolC
Date: 19 May 09 - 04:46 PM

Definition of torture from earlier in the thread. Under this definition, the ham sandwich would be considered torture, because forcing someone to eat it might cause them to believe their soul could be endangered. I realise this might seem like a laughing matter to some people, but to those who are brought up in strict religious contexts, it is anything but.


Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: CarolC - PM
Date: 30 Apr 09 - 10:14 PM

Here's the definition of torture according to the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, to which the US is a signatory, which makes it a law of the land...

http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/cat.htm

1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: CarolC
Date: 19 May 09 - 04:54 PM

The idea of people using biological weapons is a tricky one, because the populations related to those using the weapons would be just as vulnerable to being wiped out by them as those they were trying to wipe out. That makes them a lot less likely to be used. The smallpox bio-weapons were effective because Europeans tended to already have some degree of immunity to smallpox, and the indigenous Americans did not, and the indigenous populations were fairly isolated from the other populations. This is not the case with modern bio-weapons, although we did see that someone (someone employed by the US government) was able to use anthrax to kill a small number of people through the mail in 2001.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 19 May 09 - 07:52 PM

Teribus-
the point is that torture of captured personnel is against US law, and violates treaties that the US signed. Whether or not it works is wholly irrelevant. So is that fact that some individual US citizens may volunteer to be tortured.

It's really not very complicated.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Riginslinger
Date: 19 May 09 - 09:20 PM

"Definition of torture from earlier in the thread. Under this definition, the ham sandwich would be considered torture, because forcing someone to eat it might cause them to believe their soul could be endangered."

                      Here is where all the signed treaties go out the window. If I thought I could get information that would save lives or change the course of a battle by simply forcing somebody to do something that wouldn't harm them, I'd do it in a New York minute, and feel good about it.

                      The funny part is, this is the one thing George W. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al decided not to do.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Peter T.
Date: 19 May 09 - 09:32 PM

Actually, you made my point better than I could. Biological weapons are very difficult to control, spread vaguely, and take time. Chemical weapons are a problem, but they too require very specific conditions to do serious damage. Nuclear weapons and nuclear material are the only weapons of mass destruction of real concern. Except for television of course.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Bobert
Date: 19 May 09 - 10:30 PM

Exactly, Dick G-house...

The reason that countires enter into treatiies is because in doing so they are protecting their own citizens...

Duhhh!!!

Breaking such a treaty endangers both sides or mutii-sides... Thatnis what internation law is all about...

We either respect international law or we don't...

No middle ground...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Riginslinger
Date: 19 May 09 - 11:42 PM

When they make these laws, they ought to make provisions for amendments. When they originally entered into these treaties, nearly everyone was addicted to some ancient superstition or another, now many more people are not. In a few years, hardly anybody will be. We could be nearing the end of the need for war.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Teribus
Date: 20 May 09 - 01:06 AM

"the fact that the Bush administration's torture program was explicitly for the purpose of getting people to say things that weren't true." - CarolC

This is based on what??

"Biological weapons such as they are require a closed space (Tokyo subway) and dissipate really easily."

So how long was it before the island of Guinard deliberately infected with anthrax (A biological agent) during the Second World War was given the "all clear"?? IIRC it was some forty odd years and guess what the island was far from being an enclosed space.

"Biological weapons are very difficult to control, spread vaguely, and take time. Chemical weapons are a problem, but they too require very specific conditions to do serious damage."

Threat lectures delivered on the capabilities of Soviet Chemical and Biological weapons indicated that they had weaponised agents that had definite "active lives", i.e. they could be used to saturate a target area to deny, destroy or disrupt, 12 hours later the attackers troops could pass through quite safely. NATO abandoned Chemical and Biological weapons because at that time they were indiscriminate and unreliable, the broadcast NATO response to the use of Chemical and Biological weapons by the Soviets or Warsaw Pact nations in Europe was immediate escalation to the use of tactical nuclear weapons, making use of the C & B weapons pointless - no use preparing the ground for a mass attack if your troops massed for that attack are wiped out by a tactical nuke.

On the "ham sandwich" thing it has nothing to do with religion, it is a "law" on food hygene going way back in time, which is why it is common to both Muslim and Jews, very hard to keep pork safe to eat in a climate like that of the middle-east.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: CarolC
Date: 20 May 09 - 02:13 AM

Based on how they conducted the program, and what they were trying to get out of it. They were already getting actionable intelligence that was saving lives using non-coercive methods, which the experts on interrogation say are the most effective methods. The reason they shifted into the coercive methods was to "establish" (create) a connection between al Qaeda and Saddam, and to coerce those being tortured to confess to other things that were not true.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, for instance, was waterboarded 183 times, and one of the things he confessed to, was planning, training, surveying, and financing for the second wave of attacks after 9/11, that were supposed to take down a number of sky scrapers, including Plaza Bank in Washington state. Plaza bank wasn't founded until four years after Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's arrest.

This is what one of the FBI interrogators had to say about the coercive techniques and their shortcomings as compared to the effectiveness of the non-coercive techniques (from a link in an earlier post in this thread)...


"One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn't been working. The next three memos cite the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued use. It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another FBI agent, and with several CIA officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence.

There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn't, or couldn't have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions – all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process.

Defenders of these techniques have claimed that they got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a top aide to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Mr. Padilla. This is false. The information that led to Mr. Shibh's capture came primarily from a different terrorist operative who was interviewed using traditional methods. As for Mr. Padilla, the dates just don't add up: the harsh techniques were approved in the memo of August 2002, Mr. Padilla had been arrested that May."

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Bobert
Date: 20 May 09 - 07:51 AM

Well, there has to be some reason that the Bush administration bungled foriegn policy so badly and why it left US not one, but two, unwinable stupid wars... That reason is bad intellegence... Beating the crap outta people certainly hasn't made US safer... Quite the contrary... It not only has provided US with lousy intellegence but also pissed off alot of folks enough to join in with the jahidists...

Purdy stupid!!!

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: beardedbruce
Date: 20 May 09 - 07:52 AM

Democrats' Assault On the CIA
By Michael Gerson
Wednesday, May 20, 2009

In a little over 100 days, the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress have delivered a series of blows to the pride and morale of the Central Intelligence Agency.

It began with the release of the Justice Department memos -- a move opposed by CIA Director Leon Panetta along with four previous directors. Then, Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. did not rule out Justice Department cooperation with foreign lawsuits against American intelligence operatives. Then, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the CIA of lying to her in 2002 about waterboarding, which she admitted learning about five months later anyway but did nothing to oppose because her real job was to "change the leadership in Congress and in the White House."

To stanch the CIA's bleeding morale, Democrats have tried reassurance. President Obama, speaking at CIA headquarters, took the Fred Rogers approach: "Don't be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we've made some mistakes. That's how we learn." Yes, children, hypocritical congressional investigations and foreign kangaroo courts are really our friends. House intelligence committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes sent a sympathy note to Langley: "In recent days, as the public debate regarding CIA's interrogation practices has raged, you have been very much in my thoughts." There should be a section at Hallmark for intelligence operatives unfairly accused of war crimes.


The only effective reassurance came from Panetta, who pointed out to Pelosi and others that the CIA actually keeps records of its congressional briefings. "Our contemporaneous records from September 2002," Panetta wrote, "indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaida, describing 'the enhanced techniques that had been employed.' " A primary advocate of the "truth commission" has apparently misplaced her own supply.

Is there any precedent for a speaker of the House of Representatives seeking political shelter by blaming national security professionals? Or for a commander in chief exposing intelligence methods at the urging of the American Civil Liberties Union? Actually, such treatment has precedents. In 1975, the Church Committee nearly destroyed the human intelligence capabilities of the CIA. In the early 1990s, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan urged closing the agency entirely. The Clinton administration imposed massive budget cuts, leaving behind a demoralized institution.

And now Obama has described the post-Sept. 11 period as "a dark and painful chapter in our history." In fact, whatever your view of waterboarding, the response of intelligence professionals following Sept. 11 was impressive. Within days, the CIA had linked up with the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan and begun preparations to remove the Taliban. The counterterrorism center run of out CIA headquarters was the war on terror in the months after the attacks, making daily progress in capturing high-value targets. Now the president and his party have done much to tarnish those accomplishments. So much for the thanks of a grateful nation.

Contrast this affront to Obama's treatment of the military. When Gen. Ray Odierno argued that the release of military abuse photos would put American troops at risk, Obama quickly backed down. By one account, Odierno told the president, "Thanks. That must have been a hard decision." Obama replied: "No, it wasn't at all." Obama has deferred to his military commanders on the timing and strategy of American withdrawals from Iraq. And he has proposed an escalating military commitment in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- leading 51 House Democrats last week to vote against a military funding bill.

Defense writer Tom Ricks claims that Obama is being "rolled" by the military. Perhaps it is just an appropriate respect by the commander in chief for the troops at his command.

This obvious difference in treatment between military and intelligence is both paradoxical and hypocritical. Traveling recently in Iraq, Pelosi noted, "If we're going to have a diminished military presence, we'll have to have an increased intelligence presence." This has been the main Democratic argument against the whole idea of the war on terror -- that guns and bombs are no substitute for timely information. "This war on terror is far less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering, law-enforcement operation," Sen. John Kerry once claimed.

But this object of praise -- intelligence-gathering -- is again the object of liberal assault. "To put the matter at its simplest," writes Gabriel Schoenfeld, "American elites have become increasingly discomfited over the last decades by the very existence of a clandestine intelligence service in a democratic society."

But our democratic society still depends on intelligence officers -- just as surely as it depends on our men and women in uniform.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: CarolC
Date: 20 May 09 - 10:39 AM

We know for a fact that the CIA is lying, because one of the people they said they briefed, and they listed the dates of those briefings, has proof he was somewhere else at the time the CIA said some of the briefings took place.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: pdq
Date: 20 May 09 - 11:12 AM

Nancy Pelsoi was briefed on September 4th, 2002. The document showing precicely what Pelosi was told was supplied by Leon Panetta, current CIA director.

Panetta and CIA agents confim that contents of the breifing documents were eplained to Pelosi in person and that she had no problems with any of the harsh interrogation practices.

Porter Goss was there in person and agrees that both he and Pelosi were told specifically of waterboarding Abu Zubaydah.

The CIA agents who did the briefing, Leon Panetta and Porter Goss all tell the same story. Only Nancy Peolsi says differently.

There were numerous briefings over several years about interrogation at Gitmo with different people present and differents information passed along. What was said in those briefing is irrelevant.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Peter T.
Date: 20 May 09 - 11:28 AM

um, "bleeding morale"? (what about bleeding people?).

But in any case, Obama's reception at the CIA didn't exactly strike one as coming from a demoralized place.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: CarolC
Date: 20 May 09 - 11:48 AM

Actually, even Panetta has said that the CIA documents are not proof of anything, and some of the other people who were supposed to have been briefed are supporting what Pelosi has said.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Riginslinger
Date: 20 May 09 - 12:16 PM

Assuming Pelosi is right, and she pushes ahead with this to the point of forcing Rumsfeld or Rove or somebody into court, Obama would be put in the position of having to defend Rumseld and Rove.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: CarolC
Date: 20 May 09 - 12:36 PM

More from FBI interrogator, Ali Soufan...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30721458/

Soufan countered that his personal experience showed that the harsh interrogation techniques did not work even when there was not a lot of time to prevent an attack.

"Waiting 180 hours as part of the sleep deprivation stage is time we cannot afford to wait in a ticking bomb scenario," he said.

Soufan said the harsh techniques were "ineffective, slow and unreliable and, as a result, harmful to our efforts to defeat al-Qaida."

Soufan testified that "many of the claims made" by the Bush administration were inaccurate or half-truths.

He cited these examples:

    * The administration said Abu Zubaydah was not cooperating before Aug. 1, 2002, when waterboarding was approved. "The truth is that we got actionable intelligence from him in the first hour of interrogating him" before that date.
    * The administration credited waterboarding for Zubaydah's information that led to the capture of Padilla, who received a 17-year, four-month sentence, although prosecutors did not present any dirty-bomb information. Padilla was arrested in May 2002, months before waterboarding was authorized, Soufan said.
    * Bush officials contended that waterboarding revealed the involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks of al-Qaida mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Soufan said the information was discovered in April 2002, months before waterboarding was introduced.


http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/05/the_agent_in_place_torture_didnt_work.php

The Senate Judiciary Committee hears testimony from former lead FBI counterterrorism agent Ali Soufan. Soufan calls "enhanced interrogation techniques" "ineffective, slow, unreliable" and therefore harmful, "aside from the important considerations that they are un-American and harmful to our case and reputation." Soufan describes the successful non-coercive interrogation of Al Qaeda terrorist Abu Jandal, who "identified many terrorists who we later successfully apprehended." Soufan describes an interrogation method he calls the "Informed Interrogation Approach," which seeks to capitalize on the natural fear that a detainee feels as a result of his custody by adopting a posture of openness and respect.

Soufan presents an interesting challenge to the Ticking Time Bomb Scenario. Noting that it took 83 waterboardings to force Khalid Shake Mohammed to cough up information, he describes that technique as "slow" and therefore unreliable when information needs to be obtained quickly. Soufan also provides an unclassified chronology of the joint FBI-CIA efforts to question Abu Zubaydah. He says that his early efforts to coax information out of the Al Qaeda operate were successful, and CIA director George Tenet prepared a congratulatory telegram. As soon as Tenet learned that FBI agents -- not his CIA team -- had taken the lead role in the interrogation, he withdrew the congratulations and sent a team from the CIA's counterterrorism center to the interrogation site. That team was assisted by a contractor who "instructed" the new CIA operatives in tougher interrogation techniques. According to Soufan, the new team began to use the EITs. Zubaydah stopped cooperating. Soon, the FBI was brought back in. Zubaydah opened up like a book.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: pdq
Date: 20 May 09 - 12:56 PM

About George Tenet:

"Tenet was appointed Deputy Director of Central Intelligence in July 1995. After John Deutch's abrupt resignation in December 1996, Tenet served as acting director...Tenet was then officially appointed Director on July 11, 1997, after a unanimous confirmation vote in the Senate. While the Director of Central Intelligence has typically been replaced by an incoming administration ever since Jimmy Carter replaced DCI George H. W. Bush, Tenet served through the end of the Clinton administration and well into the term of George W. Bush."

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 20 May 09 - 01:25 PM

Any commission is probably doomed to be as ineffective as the Warren Commission and the 9-11 commission have been--politicians aren't very trustworthy in investigating themselves. Appoint an independent prosecutor; run a thorough investigation (of Repubs and Dems alike) and let's see what really happened.

The treaties we signed really don't give us the option of sweeping alleged war crimes under a rug,