BS: Obama and torture

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 - 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: 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: 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 - 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 - 10:05 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 - 10:00 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: CarolC
Date: 17 May 09 - 04:02 PM

The US didn't do what it had to do. What it did didn't contribute to keeping its citizens alive or safe, and it has been shown that what it did cost the lives of quite a few US citizens, and at the same time undermined the mission of our military people in the "War on Terror". The Bush administration tortured people because it needed a justification to wage an elective war on a sovereign country for money. Torture has been proven to be counterproductive in the long run for keeping a nation safe, and no administration will allow its use unless it is trying to force people to say things that aren't true in order to support an agenda that has nothing to do with keeping the US safe.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: CarolC
Date: 17 May 09 - 03:54 PM

Pelosi's not screwed even if she was briefed, if she continues her push to investigate, because a public official who allows those crimes to be committed, and then works to try to correct their mistake, comes out better in the long run than one who allows them (or who plans them and carries them out) and then tries to cover them up. Pelosi will look even more heroic if she potentially faces concequences herself but presses on anyway. The rest of them will look like cowards and slimeballs (which is what they will be).

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Peter T.
Date: 17 May 09 - 03:49 PM

Tell that to the North Koreans.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Riginslinger
Date: 17 May 09 - 02:12 PM

The most important thing a country does is to keep its citizens alive. Without that, none of the rest of it matters.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Peter T.
Date: 17 May 09 - 01:16 PM

The important people here are the people who were tortured and some of whom appear to have been killed in the name of America, without any recourse. The petty squabbling is, dare I say it, petty squabbling.

The most important thing a country does is uphold the laws and rights of its citizens. Without that, none of the rest matters. Without that, all the rest is destroyable -- from within, which is far worse than anything terrorists can do.
yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Bobert
Date: 17 May 09 - 09:28 AM

What "evidence", Rigs...

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Riginslinger
Date: 17 May 09 - 08:33 AM

If Cheney is right, and the evidence seems to indicate that he is, about the administrationi briefing Congress through committee chairs and ranking members, it looks to me like Pelosi is the one who is screwed.

            Personally, I don't have a dog in this fight. I think the US did what it had to do. Now that Obama has all the information in front of him, he can see that. If another 9/11 attack happened again, I think the US would do the same thing under an Obama administration.


"Such as?"

Healthcare
Banking regulation
Social Security
Medicare
Education
etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: CarolC
Date: 17 May 09 - 03:17 AM

I think history will be much kinder to Pelosi if she pushes forward with the investigations than it will be to Obama if she doesn't. Cheney's screwed either way (as he should be).

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Peter T.
Date: 16 May 09 - 11:42 PM

Such as?

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Riginslinger
Date: 16 May 09 - 09:25 PM

Okay, so Pelosi was probably briefed on a number of things the Bush Administration didn't go ahead with, and hidden in the mix was the briefing about torture. If she pushes it to the limit, the record will back Cheney. It seems to me she'd be better served to drop it and go on with something more constructive.
                  Obviously Obama has figured out that he has more important things to do.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: CarolC
Date: 16 May 09 - 06:59 PM

I was just watching an interview with a journalist named Richard Wolffe on this subject. He said members of the Bush administration told him a long time ago that they were giving useless bogus briefings to members of Congress in order to co-opt and compromise them just in case they would try to hold people responsible for torture, and so that they could then do exactly what Republicans and the CIA (with the help of Panetta, probably because he's working for Obama, who doesn't want the investigations to go forward) are now doing - trying to discredit the efforts to investigate the torture program by trying to discredit the investigators.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Peter T.
Date: 16 May 09 - 06:48 PM

I think it is all great -- if Congress has to save its ass, it may actually get off its ass and do something.

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Riginslinger
Date: 16 May 09 - 04:27 PM

It seems to me like a Congress person is in a pretty tight spot. If he/she is a committee chariman or ranking member they have to be briefed. If they say anything about the briefing they'd really get raked over the coals.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Stringsinger
Date: 16 May 09 - 01:56 PM

It's important to remember that the people who seem to interpret Osama bin Laden have never read his writings. His fanaticism is not extended to destroying America (he sees that as America doing it to itself) but he doesn't want ground troops in Islamic countries.

Torture used on Zubaydah undoubtably hardened him from responding with valid information.

A program developed by the army for future interrogations was made to elicit false information from the tortured who have been captured. This was one of the reasons
torture was used on the detainees at Gitmo but the stupidity of it was that it was shown
that resistance to torture could ensue and false information could be extracted.

If you wanted to go with the "ticking-time bomb" theory, a tortured detainee would be motivated to obscure true information until it was too late. That would be easy to do.

The CIA is not in business to be totally honest in it's dealing with the American public.
It's a spy unit and justifies all kinds of duplicity to make it's case.

Pelosi may well be telling the truth. Bob Graham backs her up with his copious notes.

She may have dodged the issue by not talking about it but she also may not have been briefed and is being vilified by Republicans for it for political purposes.

I suspect that the CIA is not in the business of informing anyone about it's secretive
activities. I think the Republican senators who are accusing her of dissembling are themselves capable of it as well as their self-righteous support of the CIA.

Whether Pelosi knew or not is of course obscured by the fact that she didn't raise a ruckus but who in congress who were briefed did? They are all culpable if they in fact knew of it.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Peter T.
Date: 16 May 09 - 11:21 AM

And now Obama is back to the military tribunals.   It appears the main reason (apart from pusillanimity on his part) is that the defendants couldn't now be tried in a regular court because they were tortured. Thus the stain continues to spread.   

yours,

Peter T.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Bobert
Date: 16 May 09 - 08:26 AM

Correction: It is not "in"concievable that thr CIA sugar-coated their briefings to Congress...

BTW, I saw last night where Bob Graham has had a life long habit of carrying around little spriil notebooks and writing down everything that happens as it is happening... He even writes down what he has for breakfast... Now, if the CIA had said that it was using "water-boarding" then it is not too far of a stretch to think that Graham would have had that in his note book covering that briefing...

I mean, this whole think about Pelosi is just another Republican dirty trick, something that the Repubs have perfected over thge years and something that the American people are sick of and why the American people are increasingly quitting on the Republican Party...

Talk about backfires...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Charley Noble
Date: 15 May 09 - 11:36 PM

Rig-

Not a bad thought considering. It's unlikely that anyone can convict her as a principal agent of "torture policy."

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Riginslinger
Date: 15 May 09 - 10:56 PM

Personally, I think Nancy Pelosi has more important things to do. I think she should get out of this and go on.

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Bill D
Date: 15 May 09 - 10:43 PM

And it seems former Senator Bob Graham was also briefed in the same general time frame as Pelosi, and HE says they never mentioned waterboarding.
   He asked the CIA what dates he was briefed,and they gave him 4 dates. He reports that HIS records indicate that on 3 of those dates, he was not even there! Sen. Graham keeps meticulous records, and the CIA had to back down!
   Further, during briefings, members of Congress being briefed are not allowed to take notes, while the CIA briefers are.... and no one is allowed to SEE the CIA's notes. What a system, huh? There seems to be no way to show whether YOUR memory of what you were told is correct - so Pelosi can't 'prove' her claims.

Further, the CIA routinely dissembles and misleads in other venues.... it is how they THINK on many topics. You think they wouldn't purposely be misleading or vague to a member of Congress if it suited their purpose: especially when their notes are by definition not subject to review?

sheesh!@

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Bobert
Date: 15 May 09 - 09:05 PM

Yo, bb...

Same ol' bb game... You say that Pelosi "KNEW" (SCREAMing again) and then I ask you how you knew that Pelosi knew and then you say that I am not telling the truth???

Like, huh???

You need to talk with yer shrink about these little problems you have with false accusations... And while yer at it, yer anti-social beahvior of thinking that if you SCREAM loud enough that it will make yer positions correct... Very bad behavior...

Now let me ask you again... How do you ***know*** what Pelsoi was told... Were you there??? Seem there are conflicting stories from folks who were there...

Yet you seem to think that you have the ***right*** story... What makes your story right??? Because you can SCREAM??? Ever been in a state mental hospital??? Lotta folks in there SCREAM, too... But they are in there for reasons aother that they were ***correct***...

I mean, I've been in meetings where bad stuff was so sugar-coated that everyone came away thinkin' that everything was fine... Is it not concievable that the CIA sugar coted their breifings to Congress??? This is, after all, a world in which folks "frame" positions...

For you to claim, well before any "Truth Commission", that you have the ***correct*** story makes you look to be very foolish...

And pleeeze spare all of the adults here yet another "Bobert is a liar" tirade... You are more intellegent than to walk that dead dog in public... Folks don't buy it here, bb...

Bobert

Subject: RE: BS: Obama and torture
From: Bill D
Date: 15 May 09 - 04:50 PM

If you turn on the news RIGHT NOW you will see that it is still not clear. It is still being debated who was told what and when...and in how definitive terms.

*IF* you believe Pelosi was either too dumb to hear the facts clearly, or that she is afraid to admit she heard & ignored facts about illegal stuff, it is still the case that illegal stuff was being DONE at the behest of Bush's administration!
No member of Congress should be PUT in the position of having to decide whether they have heard semi-illegal stuff and how to deal with it when the briefings were totally off-the-public-record and it was not yet clear what information was being gained to benefit the country. There should BE no illegal, immoral interrogation to report on!

As I say, I will wait till I see the transcript of the briefings to decide. I wasn't there...and none of YOU were either. But I'd be willing to bet a nickel that CIA briefers didn't take Pelosi & Goss & others into a room and say, "Hey...we're using torture on Zubeida, but it's ok...Cheney approved it and the SOB is talking!"
You know that whatever was said was couched in ambiguous terms in anticipation of this debate.
   Panetta says "it is not CIA policy to torture...".....right. Bush said the same thing, and meant "when we do it, we define it as "not torture."

   Boy, it sure is easy for some of you to figger it all out from vague remarks from 3-4 people, some of whom were not IN the room!