“‘Give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I’ll do better.’”

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Unofficial drafts of executive orders on reviewing current terrorism interrogation practices and examining the possibility of reopening CIA blacksites for business were leaked to WaPo and the NYTimes, apparently:

The interview came the same day a series of extraordinary documents claiming to be drafts of executive orders were leaked to the New York Times and Washington Post and quickly flew across the Internet. The one that caused by far the biggest stir would create a pathway for the CIA to re-open the “black site” prisons it once maintained overseas for interrogating and at times torturing suspected terrorists, and orders a review of the Army field manual, which all U.S. agencies must, by law, use when interrogating suspects.

Reports indicate that Pompeo and Mattis had no idea the document existed, and were “blindsided” when they were leaked to the press.

Speed read. White House spokesman Sean Spicer quickly said the document wasn’t theirs, but the New York Times contradicted that account later in the day when it tracked down three Trump administration officials who provided a tick-tock for how the document made it though Trump’s national security staff on Tuesday morning.

“If Trump does follow through with such an order, it would run smack into existing law and the stated views of Trump’s just-confirmed Cabinet secretaries and top national security chiefs, including Mattis and Pompeo,” FP’s Molly O’Toole and Paul McLeary report, and it promises “to revive the searing debates of the mid-2000s over torture and secret CIA prisons where al Qaeda suspects were kept for weeks at a time outside the bounds of international law.”

President Trump also gave an interview with ABC News in which the topic of waterboarding once again came up:

In an exclusive interview with ABC News, President Donald Trump said he “absolutely” thinks waterboarding works and would consider reinstating it as an interrogation technique, depending on the advice of Defense Secretary James Mattis and CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

“I will rely on Pompeo and Mattis and my group. And if they don’t want to do, that’s fine. If they do wanna do, then I will work toward that end. I want to do everything within the bounds of what you’re allowed to do legally,” Trump exclusively told “World News Tonight” anchor David Muir during an interview at the White House. “But do I feel it works? Absolutely, I feel it works.”

Trump explained it’s important to reconsider the use of waterboarding as an interrogation technique because, he said, “we’re not playing on an even field.”

“When they’re chopping off the heads of our people and other people. When they’re chopping off the heads of people because they happen to be a Christian in the Middle East, when ISIS is doing things that nobody has ever heard of since medieval times, would I feel strongly about waterboarding? As far as I’m concerned, we have to fight fire with fire,” he said.

“I’m going to go with what they say,” Trump said of Mattis and Pompeo. “But I have spoken as recently as 24 hours ago with people at the highest level of intelligence, and I asked them the question ‘Does it work? Does torture work?’ And the answer was ‘Yes, absolutely.'”

I’m thinking that one of those persons “at the highest level of intelligence” that he may have spoken to on the efficacy of waterboarding, might have been Jose Rodriguez. Back in November, post-election win:

DONALD TRUMP MAY select Jose Rodriguez, one of the primary architects of the George W. Bush torture program, to run the Central Intelligence Agency, according to a law firm with close ties to Trump.

Rodriguez, the former director of the National Clandestine Service, helped developed the CIA black sites, secret prisons operated in foreign countries where interrogators used a range of torture tactics, including the use of “waterboarding,”

Daily Beast:

The former senior CIA officer who championed waterboarding hopes President-elect Donald Trump will bring back harsh interrogation methods—and bring the CIA back into the business of interrogating terrorist suspects.

“We have to be able to capture terrorists. We have to be able to interrogate them. We don’t do that anymore,” said Jose Rodriguez, who led the CIA’s clandestine service during the Bush administration.

A Trump supporter, Rodriguez said he didn’t want to lead the CIA, though he has been named as a possible pick. But he does want to bring back some form of now-illegal interrogation measures, like waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and other so-called “enhanced interrogation methods” approved by the Bush White House to question terrorist suspects in the wake of the al Qaeda attacks of 9/11.

Mike Pompeo has ended up to be Trump’s pick for CIA Director. He, along with General Mattis, are against bringing back enhanced interrogation practices, for either CIA or military. ABC News:

But Trump’s position on the use of waterboarding seems to differ from some of his Cabinet picks’. In an interview with The New York Times last year, Trump said he was “impressed” by a recommendation from Mattis, who at the time was under consideration for defense secretary.

“I said, what do you think of waterboarding? He said — I was surprised — he said, ‘I’ve never found it to be useful.’ He said, ‘I’ve always found, give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers, and I do better with that than I do with torture.’ And I was very impressed by that answer. I was surprised, because he’s known as being, like, the toughest guy,” Trump told the Times.

During his confirmation hearing to become CIA director, Pompeo was asked whether he would comply if Trump issued a presidential order calling for the reinstatement of enhanced interrogation techniques that fall outside the Army Field Manual.

“Absolutely not. Moreover, I can’t imagine I would be asked that by the president-elect,” Pompeo said. “There is no doubt in my mind about the limitations placed not only on the DOD but on the intelligence agency, and I’ll always comply with the law.”

This blog draft was originally started Dec 10th and never finished:

Today is Human Rights Day. What better day than this to discuss the issue of Enhanced Interrogations (the title of James Mitchell’s new book) and waterboarding?

A couple of weeks ago, the President-elect Trump appears to have chosen for his Secretary of Defense, also supposedly changed Trump’s tune on torture and waterboarding within the hour upon meeting:

one issue that has been simmering on the back burner for the whole election cycle is Trump’s opinion that “torture works.” Will we begin torturing enemy captives again?

It doesn’t look likely. As he has already done with some of his more well known campaign promises, Trump has reversed himself on torture. His views changed after a meeting with Marine Gen. James Mattis, whom Trump is considering for Secretary of Defense.

How is it that Gen. Mattis was able to influence Trump’s position on torture? The two met for an hour this past Saturday at Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey, to discuss the possibility that Mattis could serve as defense secretary. Little of the substance of the meeting has been made public, but Trump did share a few notable moments.

Tuesday, Trump told reporters from The New York Times that he and Mattis had discussed Trump’s position on waterboarding.

From the Times:

“He said, ‘I’ve never found it to be useful,’” Mr. Trump said, describing the general’s view of torturing terrorism suspects. He added that Mr. Mattis found more value in building trust and rewarding cooperation with terror suspects: “‘Give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers and I’ll do better.’” He added: “I was very impressed by that answer.’’

Torture, Trump said after the conversation with Mattis, is “not going to make the kind of a difference that a lot of people are thinking.’’

The reversal is significant. Trump’s no-nonsense and heavy handed approach to interrogation was a fundamental characteristic of the candidate that many voted for. For him to reverse himself now won’t be an easy sell for his supporters.

How could Trump not know about the counter-arguments and factuals regarding torture and interrogation practices? Experts and critics of waterboarding have long touted the virtues of the relationship-building types of techniques favored by most. As I’ve mentioned previously, Trump shares the same narrative that the critics have bought into: That the CIA were brutal and tortured, going all Jack Bauer on jihadi-a$ses to get information. Where Trump had parted ways with the torture critics is that while he acknowledges and concedes in the belief that we tortured, whereas the Feinstein camp is outraged, Trump was not. He’s all for torturing the enemy. Bring back waterboarding “and worse”, he said. Essentially, Trump shares the same cartoonish, worldview narrative about the CIA “torture” program that the critics have pushed. It is a distorted view, filled with hyperbole and hysteria and ignorance, exacerbated by the politically partisan and deeply flawed December 2014 Feinstein Report.

This is why defenders of waterboarding and the CIA interrogation program- such as Marc Thiessen, Michael Hayden, and Mike Morell- also were opposed to presidential candidate Donald Trump, a supporter of waterboarding. His reasons for supporting it are not their reasons. His understanding was flawed misunderstanding- the same kind of misunderstanding that leads Feinstein and McCain to vehemently oppose its use. McCain says he’d have Trump in court “in a New York Minute“.

People at the time had figured that General Mattis had changed Trump’s tune, regarding “torture” and torture. Fred Kaplan, at the time, however, pointed out that this was not the case:

There’s a notion out there that, after talking with Gen. James Mattis, who might be the next secretary of defense, President-elect Donald Trump is suddenly opposed to waterboarding. In fact, this isn’t true at all.

The notion arose from a story in the New York Times about Trump’s hourlong meeting on Tuesday with the paper’s editors and reporters. The story stated:

On the issue of torture, Mr. Trump suggested he had changed his mind about the value of waterboarding after talking with Gen. James N. Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general…

“He said, ‘I’ve never found it to be useful,’” Mr. Trump said. He added that Mr. Mattis found more value in building trust and rewarding cooperation with terrorism suspects: “‘Give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers, and I’ll do better.’”

“I was very impressed by that answer,” Mr. Trump said.

Torture, he said, is “not going to make the kind of difference that a lot of people are thinking.”

However, the full transcript of the session, which the Times published on its website, reveals a different bottom line. Trump is quoted as telling the same story about Mattis, adding, “I was surprised [by his answer], because he’s known as being like the toughest guy.”

But Trump then goes on, “And when he said that, I’m not saying it changed my mind.” (Italics added.) Let me repeat that: Contrary to the Times’ own news story, it is not the case that “Mr. Trump suggested he had changed his mind about the value of waterboarding.” In fact, he explicitly said the opposite. Right after that point in the transcript, a Times editor adds the following, in parentheses and italics: “(Earlier, we mistakenly transcribed ‘changed my mind.’)” Hence the misreporting and the as-yet largely unrecognized misunderstanding.

Trump goes on in the transcript: “Look we have people that are chopping off heads and drowning people in steel cages and we’re not allowed to waterboard. But I’ll tell you what, I was impressed by that answer. It certainly does not—it’s not going to make the kind of difference that maybe a lot of people think. If it’s so important to the American people, I would go for it. I would be guided by that. But Gen. Mattis found it to be very less important, much less important than I thought he would say.”

In short, Mattis exposed Trump to a different view of torture—a view, by the way, that most American generals and admirals hold.

Rumsfeld, himself, had rejected waterboarding as an EIT, deeming it inappropriate for military use when military officers had approached him for approval on alternate interrogation techniques in dealing with some captured jihadis. And he rescinded the orders he signed approving of certain techniques, shortly after.

I doubt EITs will be used by military interrogators in the Trump-era; and they will abide by what’s approved in the current Army FM.

I do not know Pompeo’s feelings or knowledge about EITs and how they were employed within the CIA RDI program; although there is this reported in the BBC:

Mr Pompeo has been a bit more ambivalent. He has defended the use of harsh techniques but during his confirmation hearing said he would “absolutely not” reinstate those methods.

He was more equivocal in written responses, saying that if intelligence gathering was being impeded he would look into whether changing the laws was necessary.

I doubt that Pompeo would bring their usage back, for the reasons given by Michael Hayden, who in 2006, spent the summer pouring through the program’s record of use (ultimately deciding the CIA interrogation program was too important not to bring back, after having been temporarily suspended amidst passage of the 2005 and 2006 DTA and MCA- CIA and their lawyers did not want to continue with the program without knowing that they were still legally protected).

Former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden— an outspoken “NeverTrump’er”—expressed doubt the CIA would welcome a return to the interrogation mission.

“This is not the agency disowning it’s past because it truly believes that these techniques worked and saved lives,” Hayden emailed The Daily Beast. “Rather, it is based on the sense of betrayal at the agency for having followed previous direction in good faith, and then having that overturned by a subsequent administration.”

Rodriguez said that sense of betrayal is part of why he has no desire to return to Washington.

“I would not want to go back to government even as director of CIA,” Rodriguez said Sunday. “I served my country for 31 years, and the last six-and-a-half were especially challenging. I think I fulfilled my duty, I did my part.”

But he does want Trump to unleash the CIA again to interrogate terrorist suspects, and grant them new powers beyond what the military is allowed to do.

“The Army Field Manual…is totally inadequate for a premier agency like the CIA to interrogate high level terrorists,” said Rodriguez, calling interrogation the easiest and best way to gain intelligence.

In answer to the widely reported position of General Mattis on the issue of “torture”, James Mitchell wrote an op-ed in WSJ:

It is understandable that Gen. Mattis would say he never found waterboarding useful, because no one in the military has been authorized to waterboard a detainee. Thousands of U.S. military personnel have been waterboarded as part of their training, though the services eventually abandoned the practice after finding it too effective in getting even the most hardened warrior to reveal critical information.

During the war on terror, the CIA alone had been authorized to use the technique. I personally waterboarded the only three terrorists subjected to the tactic by the CIA. I also waterboarded two U.S. government lawyers, at their request, when they were trying to decide for themselves whether the practice was “torture.” They determined it was not.

I volunteered to be waterboarded myself and can assure you that it is not a pleasant experience. But no one volunteers to be tortured.

Waterboarding was never the first, nor the best, choice for most detainees. We started out with the “tea and sympathy” approach and only escalated to harsher methods when it became clear that the detainee held vital information that might save innocent lives and was determined not to provide it. We quickly moved away from enhanced interrogations as soon as the detainee showed even a little cooperation.

The people I dealt with were not run-of-the-mill battlefield detainees, but hardened terrorists. Men like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. These people were hellbent on bringing about further devastation.

I would ask Gen. Mattis this: Imagine being captured by America’s enemies. Would you give up important secrets that could get fellow Americans captured or killed in exchange for a Michelob and a pack of Marlboros?

In our case, it is not as if we had unlimited time to see if we could buddy up to terrorists to find out if another attack was on the horizon. There were multiple attacks being planned at the time. For example, not long after 9/11 the CIA was told of an al Qaeda effort to obtain nuclear fissionable material. When KSM was captured in 2003, we asked whether another major attack was in the works, and he responded, “Soon you will know.” We didn’t have time to dither.

Critics will point to the 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee report that declared enhanced interrogation didn’t work. The investigation cost $40 million and took five years, yet investigators didn’t even speak to anyone involved in the program. Anyway, a report produced by an extremely partisan congressional committee deserves skepticism to begin with.

I am not advocating that Mr. Trump “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding,” as he suggested during the campaign. But the president-elect needs to think through what to do when the U.S. captures a major terrorist who likely has information about an impending nuclear, chemical or biological attack. Is he prepared to say that if intelligence cannot be elicited using only the tactics contained in the Army Field Manual—as President Obama has directed—we will simply have to live with the consequences?

I had ordered James Mitchell’s “Enhanced Interrogation” from Amazon and received it a week or two after its release. I only now have started reading it. No matter which side of the debate you may fall under, the book is well worth the read. There are a lot of details that have not been reported before by anyone, previous to this book’s release.

One of the reasons why CIA sought alternate techniques is because some of the HVDs had trained to resist commonly known interrogation practices. Pg 11, Enhanced Interrogation”:

I didn’t know it at the time, but we had been asked to attend because a few months earlier Bruce [Jenssen] and I had written a paper describing the resistance to interrogation techniques that terrorists familiar with the “Manchester Manual” were likely to use. The Manchester Manual is a set of how-to instructions for resisting interrogation. It was created from resistance-to-interrogation course materials stolen from U.S. Army Special Forces at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, by Ali Mohammed, a former Egyptian military officer who had immigrated to the United States and enlisted in the U.S. Army Special Forces. It turned out that Mohammed was a valuable al-Qa’ida asset, and the information he stole from the U.S. military ended up being widely circulated in multiple languages among Islamic Jihadists.

Copies of Army Field Manuals, past and present, can be found on the internet. The FM details what is allowable in interrogating captured combatants. Is it any surprise, then, that our enemy is able to train against techniques they can expect to have employed against them, if captured?

Page 13, “Enhanced Interrogation”:

As a result, it was widely believed that Abu Zubaydah might also be aware of al-Qa’ida plans for follow-on attacks on the United States. Because he ran training camps for Islamic jihadists, someone said, there was a good possibility that he had been trained to resist interrogation. Months later Abu Zubaydah would tell me that he not only had studied resistance to interrogation, he had taught it in his training camp.

wordsmith comment #9:

When the 1st detainees arrived in January 2002, military intelligence and personnel operated under procedures detailed in Army Field Manual 34-52. Some interrogators deemed this insufficient:

From the outset, military interrogators concluded that the approved FM 34-52 techniques “were ineffective against detainees who had received interrogation resistance training.” This is hardly surprising when one considers not only counter-interrogation training received in camps such as al Farouk and detailed instructions guiding detainee conduct through al Qaeda’s so-called Manchester Manual, but the example of what al Qaeda and Taliban extremists chose to subject themselves to while fighting at Qala-i-Jangi.7

pg 30, Inside Gitmo

~~~
These were extremely tough, defiant men familiar with giving and taking cruelty. The challenge faced by the military was to save lives by finding out what these men knew about al Qaeda, the Taliban, and, most critically, any future plots to attack the West. Military interrogators at Guantanamo thought that the approved FM 34-52 techniques would be ineffective in achieving this goal because they were dealing with incredibly hard men who had been drilled and trained to resist normal interrogations.
Pg 31-32, Inside Gitmo

7The Manchester Manual, discovered in a counterterrorist police raid in Manchester, England, revealed specific instructions for captured operatives to make extravagant claims of torture. In the chapter entitled “Prisons and Detention Centers,” the al Qaeda “brothers” are instructed to “prove that torture was inflicted on them” and to “complain of mistreatment while in prison.” Al Qaeda operatives are told to memorize the names of guards and to “mention those names to the judge.” If brought to a trial, the terrorists need to make certain to “notify [the court] of any mistreatment.” While in confinement they are encouraged to establish clandestine communications links with each other and to “master the art of hiding messages.” Most important, the Manual stresses, is for the jihadists to “create an Islamic program for themselves inside the prison,” and to “shout Islamic slogans out loud” if exposed to the public. These enemy combatants were thoroughly prepared to resist interrogation, defy convention, upset the court pro cesses, and play to the interests of anti- American, pro- Islamic organizations to sow dissension and further their cause. The full text of the Manual can be found in translation.

We have seen an estimated 1 in 7 Guantanamo graduates return to the battlefield, having convinced those “harsh” interrogators that they had reformed their ways, loved Americans, or were never a hardened jihadi, but a simple carpenter, tax driver, or peasant farmer that was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There are a few good interviews that you can find of James Mitchell giving interview on YouTube.

Dr. Mitchell is currently embroiled in a lawsuit over the so-called “torture” program. And, as is made clear in the preface to his book, his life and that of his family has been made endangered with a price on his head from ISIS, thanks in no small part to lawyers who leaked information as to his identity to jihadi clients sitting in Gitmo cells.

Also, in promotion of his book, there were some recent articles about a month ago.

Marc Thiessen:

Mitchell describes the day he was questioning Khalid Sheik Mohammed, when the 9/11 mastermind announced he had something important to say. “KSM then launched into a gory and detailed description of how he beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl,” Mitchell writes. Up to that moment, the CIA did not know KSM had personally carried out the murder. When asked whether it was “hard to do” (meaning emotionally difficult), KSM misunderstood the question. “Oh, no, no problem,” KSM said, “I had very sharp knives. Just like slaughtering sheep.”

To confirm his story, the CIA had KSM reenact the beheading so that it could compare the features of his hands and forearms to those in the video of Pearl’s murder. “Throughout the reenactment, KSM smiled and mugged for the cameras. Sometimes he preened,” Mitchell writes. When informed that the CIA had confirmed that he was telling the truth, KSM smiled.

“See, I told you,” KSM said. “I cut Daniel’s throat with these blessed hands.”

This is the pure evil Mitchell and his colleagues confronted each day at CIA “black sites.” “I have looked into the eyes of the worst people on the planet,” Mitchell writes. “I have sat with them and felt their passion as they described what they see as their holy duty to destroy our way of life.”

The world has heard almost nothing from KSM in the 15 years since the 9/11 attacks, but Mitchell has spent thousands of hours with him and other captured al-Qaeda leaders. Now, for the first time, Mitchell is sharing what he says KSM told him.

Mitchell is an American patriot who has been unjustly persecuted for his role in crafting an interrogation program that helped stop terrorist attacks and saved countless lives. He does not shy from the controversies and pulls no punches in describing the interrogations. If anything, readers may be surprised by the compassion he showed these mass murderers. But the real news in his book is what happened after enhanced interrogations ended and the terrorists began cooperating.

Once their resistance had been broken, enhanced interrogation techniques stopped and KSM and other detainees became what Mitchell calls a “Terrorist Think Tank,” identifying voices in phone calls, deciphering encrypted messages and providing valuable information that led the CIA to other terrorists. Mitchell devotes an entire chapter to the critical role KSM and other detainees played in finding Osama bin Laden. KSM held classes where he lectured CIA officials on jihadist ideology, terrorist recruiting and attack planning. He was so cooperative, Mitchell writes, KSM “told me I should be on the FBI’s Most Wanted List because I am now a ‘known associate’ of KSM and a ‘graduate’ of his training camp.”

KSM also described for Mitchell many of his as yet unconsummated ideas for future attacks, the terrifying details of which Mitchell does not reveal for fear they might be implemented. “If we ever allow him to communicate unmonitored with the outside world,” Mitchell writes, “he could easily spread his deviously simple but potentially deadly ideas.”

But perhaps the most riveting part of the book is what KSM told Mitchell about what inspired al-Qaeda to attack the United States — and the U.S. response he expected. Today, some on both the left and the right argue that al-Qaeda wanted to draw us into a quagmire in Afghanistan — and now the Islamic State wants to do the same in Iraq and Syria. KSM said this is dead wrong. Far from trying to draw us in, KSM said that al-Qaeda expected the United States to respond to 9/11 as we had the 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut — when, KSM told Mitchell, the United States “turned tail and ran.” He also said he thought we would treat 9/11 as a law enforcement matter, just as we had the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and the USS Cole in Yemen — arresting some operatives and firing a few missiles into empty tents, but otherwise leaving him free to plan the next attack.

“Then he looked at me and said, ‘How was I supposed to know that cowboy George Bush would announce he wanted us ‘dead or alive’ and then invade Afghanistan to hunt us down?’” Mitchell writes. “KSM explained that if the United States had treated 9/11 like a law enforcement matter, he would have had time to launch a second wave of attacks.” He was not able to do so because al-Qaeda was stunned “by the ferocity and swiftness of George W. Bush’s response.”

But KSM said something else that was prophetic. In the end, he told Mitchell, “We will win because Americans don’t realize . . . we do not need to defeat you militarily; we only need to fight long enough for you to defeat yourself by quitting.”

So we’ve gone from cowboy in the White House, to community organizer, to……?

How will Donald Trump do in his GWoT? Well, according to his America first foreign policy, this is the rhetoric:

Defeating ISIS and other radical Islamic terror groups will be our highest priority. To defeat and destroy these groups, we will pursue aggressive joint and coalition military operations when necessary. In addition, the Trump Administration will work with international partners to cut off funding for terrorist groups, to expand intelligence sharing, and to engage in cyberwarfare to disrupt and disable propaganda and recruiting.

Whether this will include a return and revamping of EITs and black sites or not, fingers crossed.

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The point being is that Trump said he would listen to those he put in charge. Our press tries as hard as they can to discredit our President but he is so far ahead of them it’s fun to watch!! I say whatever technique is most effective then use it period!!

If they get any info or not the trip is 1/2 the fun. Their thirst for blood is never slaked release after capture should not be an option.
Give them an option, if the information is useful they get a proper muslim burial, if not they will will be eaten alive by swine.
It can all be chatted over a couple of beers and a smoke.

It isn’t even a serious desire to return to the old days of torture/waterboarding.
It is the PR to the enemy that EVERYTHING is on the table.
Including torture/waterboarding.
Look at the history of these terrorists.
Do they EVER want a stand up fight?
No.
The kidnap poor souls and strap bomb belts on them to be remotely detonated when they reach a good spot.
They melt into civilian populations.
They “fight” women and children, un-armed social workers and peaceniks.
The specter of torture is probably pretty scary to them.
Keep it out there, as an option, even if the President and his Cabinet have no intentions of ever using it.

@Wordsmith:

Leon Panetta, a failed secretary of defense. You had your time, America and the World are not better for it.

Hypocrits. All of them. does torture work? is waterboarding torture? Are CIA agents going thru waterboarding training being ‘tortured’? Would you approve of torture? Would you torture someone?
Let’s give you a test. You are married with one 3 year old child. One day you come home from work and your child is missing. Your wife is frantic. A guy comes to your door and tells you that he wants a million dollars (which you don’t have) to tell you where your child is. And, that child is buried in a covered grave with a 2 hour air supply starting right now. You grab the guy and tie him to a chair or table and then ask him nicely if he’ll tell you where your child is if you promise to turn him loose. He says no. Then you offer him a cigarette and beer if he’ll tell you. He says no. Then you put his gonads in a vice and start to tighten the vice and tell him you’ll stop if he’ll tell you. He says no. you continue to tighten. Now the question. If he continues to not tell you, do you continue to tighten? I’m gonna speculate that about 98% of the people will say yes. The other 2% were just hoping to get rid of their child anyway.
How is that different from torturing terrorists? Only that the people they are killing or hurting are not ‘your’ child. But they are ‘someone’s’ child. And ‘someone’ only has you as a surrogate. Wouldn’t you do what you had to do to save your neighbors child?
Is that torture? is it illegal? is it more illegal than kidnapping? .

At least were not discussing how much empathy to have with the terrorists.

Personally I think all the terrorists in Gitmo SHOULD be released, at about 10,000 feet over the Caribbean after we’ve squeezed anything useful out of them.

@Bookdoc: good plan

And, what these troglodytes do to civilized people is not torture? When one of these subhuman cockroaches wants to do harm to myself, a family member or another American, well, they deserve what they should reeceive.

Those who want to call it torture are themselves cowards and are lying in the face of what they would do in a similar situation. How many of these dirtbag goat humpers obama released while on the way out of the door, will return to terrorist activities?

Of course no one on the left even considers that Trump may occasionally in his discussions play devils advocate. He could also be feeling out not just those hand picked for his administration, but those departmental experts left over from the Obama presidency. This “black site document” leak stinks to me of an Obama political appointee “leaking” a hypothetical exercise and calling it an “EO draft.” Bush stupidly left a good many of Clinton’s appointees in office and experienced continual leaks to the press during his administration. Has anyone considered that this “back site document” could even be a bogus “test” to ferret out “leakers”?

@Bookdoc: I think they are lonely and need company. We should fill it up.

Find me a liberal that called what those four idiots in Chicago did to the mentally disabled individual that classifies that as “torture”. Most won’t even call it a crime. Yet, they condemn any means or methods which actually provides useful information. Such opposition should not be taken seriously.

Nice long piece avoiding the point which is:
IS waterboarding torture?
What constitutes torture?

My son was waterboarded as part of his Navy training.
Do we torture our own troops?

Regardless of answer: IF we do it to our own as part of training, why cant we do it to an enemy

We are up against this:
https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=83a_1378294256

SAS: Survival Secrets – Interrogation resistance

The barbarity of ISIS’s torture of its prisoners became known after the killing of Dr. Hussein Abu Rayyan, head of the Tel Abyad border crossing and member of the Ahrar al-Sham Islamic movement
The forensic report revealed fractures in his neck and ribs, bullet wounds in his hands and legs and an amputated ear.

ISIS member would occasionally enter carrying a prisoner’s amputated head, promising the others a similar fate

The “shabeh” or “ghost” method: the warden hangs the prisoner from his hands for a period of time that may stretch into days. The prisoner often loses his ability to move his hands, dislocates his joints, and could cause damage to his brachial plexus, resulting usually in permanent disability

electric shock, which ISIS uses to interrogate prisoners is much more brutal than any movie makes out… first, you have them sit on a wet mat… then you shove a guage 12 wire up their penis… then its party time with the switch.

they even have a more midevil version of the scolds bridal for the nags that used to wear in england to shut them up.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/02/25/11/318BAEE600000578-3463337-image-a-15_1456399117350.jpg

AND do you want to know what we will send up against them to fight, to be captured and all that ?

US. Army Female Soldier Has Hard Time Shooting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_JLVKRjF4c

Female Captain Refuses to Give Up During Grueling 12 Mile March
[she has the heart!!! and the men treated her like a man to get her to move
but she is exceptional compared to the others that will be put into battle againt ISIS, Spetznaz, and more!!! how long will she last in real combat and bad conditions? her fellow troops will do the 12 miles and where will she be?]

[if only heart was enough she would be a super trooper and i would love to have her on the team, but heart is not enough, and she reduces effectiveness, because AFTER Those twelve miles she has to fight, not pass out]

anyone but me realize that we will continue to lose against all combatants because we are forcing our military to die for an experiment in social kindness to the enemy, who shares no such concept at all.

Most BRUTAL Military Drills in the World

taiwan (glass and rocks)
North Korea: (punch trees and jagged cans, then all ripped up and bloody, they punch salt)
Philipeans (get em drunk, and THEN train to weed out those whose personalities are not up to it – imagine 18 mile swim)
south korean (snow training, strip down, sub zero, – 30 degree CELCIUS
CHINA (groups stand over a pit, and plays pass the explosive instead of hot potato)
and onwards..

our opposition can sit you down, and slowly skin you while adding salt. they can take snips and snip your fingers off a little at a time. shove a wire up the penis and if you dont have a battery, just use a lighter on the end. put the head in a shop vice (eyeballs been known to pop out). and this is on top of sleep deprivation, cold, hot, buckets of ice water, blistering boiling water, hot oil.. a favorite of the south africans was to put tires around you, and the last tire, put gasoline in the space, then put that around your neck and light it for sport. then there was the children they put in a cage, and set on fire. Idie amin used to cut body parts off. one of my high school teachers was forced to slice his wifes ears off and fry them up and eat him. messed him up but he was a good teacher.

i wonder, does anyone outside of actual military and reality know what the hell they are talking about?

what if i told the author that the outcome of loss would be what?
well, in the case of latvia, loss meant about 20% -30% of the population shipped off to labor camps… in the case of isis and those groups, whole towns are put together and tortured to death

so now i ask the author this question since they are such a moralist

if you dont torture, and you lose, are you willing to accept mass slaugter of most christians in the US? or whatever place you lose in?

in other words, to keep your moral hand clean are you willing ot accept a shoa? after all, are YOU willing to accept what would happen to the whole jewish population in israel if we lose because we interogated in such a way that all the subject had to do was hold out till the information was not good any more…

before you ask the questiom of what are you willing to do to win
you should ask the question, what are you willing to accept if you LOSE

@Wordsmith:

your all nice ang good with the definitions of the law, but what the law left out, as with pornography, is a definition of torture…

if you ask a liberal siting next to a trump supporter on a plane, that is torture
if you ask another, he would laugh at that as torture
and onwards.

but here is the dictionary definition:
the action or practice of inflicting severe pain on someone as a punishment or to force them to do or say something, or for the pleasure of the person inflicting the pain.

inflict severe pain on

cause great mental suffering or anxiety to. / “he was tortured by grief”

the last one is not “real” torture is a literary vehicle. no one would say america is in violation when the state makes you choose between X and Y and your upset about neither being good… or if theere are too many forms and its tortourous to navigate.

but waterboarding does not cause serious pain (we do it to our own troops in training, you try THAT with thumbscrews and see if that would fly), it does not cause death or damage.

is it unpleasant? yes. if you dont talk, do you die? no
if you dont talk, do you get injured permanently? no
if you dont talk, do you suffer in some way? yes

either you accept this nobility (ie. the nobles were noble because they went to hell defending their fellow man, not cause they were rich, or that. ie. to protect and serve your people, one must sin, and god makes no allowances for that, and so, to sacrefice your soul for eternity for the safety and security of your fellow people not just your family, was noble, and why they were noblemen, and so on)

or you accept what happens without it

as i said, left liberal, socialist, communists, etc… have a problem with reality, they think they can have things both ways and try, and when it goes boom, and eventually craps out (while claiming their opposition is crapping out), they point blame and such.

You cant have superior morals against a amoral enemy with a fanatical passion to die for a religious cause, and expect to win – EVER

to take the idea to extreme to point out what they are trying to do here is that they want to fight the germans in WWII, but want to use NERF weapons so that they dont hurt anyone and they dont violate a moral code they use to try to beat the bible at its own game as played by athiests. (Even the bible allows for self protection)

why not go after ISIS with nerf weapons? thou shalt not kill and your morally superior and its not even your daughter or son you will get killed, it will be mine and others.

why not, drop rubber knives for the jihadies to use instead of real ones?

i know, take control of the country, and implement the Spork Decree, where you end the use of all weapons by civilians… (you do know where martial arts and the chopstick are from right? that kind of thing if you didnt know, and THEY did all manner of interesting things)

then there is the part of the incident that is never brought up by those that dont want it, but also dont fight, and arent anywhere where they can be hurt advocating it.

ie. what happens to the NEXT guy you catch?
When your known for torture, they talk fast. Soviets had that kind of success.

and they also dont get that the person being tortured is able to stop the torture any time they want by answering the questions!!!!!!!!!!! its not done for pleasure, its not done like the japanese did when they cut soldiers penis off while alive and stuffed it into their mouths bleeding out and suffocating them…

again… the question is this. you have a small town, 4000 people. you going to let them all be seriously really tortured to death and maimed, or you going to make it very unpleasant for someone till they talk and they walk after whole, not dead, and not injured other than the mental anguish they volunteered to endure until they spoke.

you cant have it both ways
you either say you dont do it, and accept the downsides in completion
or you dont accept them and act

the same is true with the left and their bs on war
if you dont interfere, you get an army calling for an end to the oppression
if you DO interfere, they forget the oppression, and attack you for a war

cant have it both ways, can you?
you cant save the iraq people from brutal saddam without a war
and you cant have a war without accepting it to save the people

i guess you can do what trump says, and just stay out of it. but then the left wont like that either. thats the problem with malcontent,s they are never happy, and idiots spend time trying to make them happy, so malcontents for a short while do better abusing the good will of people. but good will is never infinite and once people realize that damned if you do damned if you dont is the key, they ignore the protest and never pay attention again. ask the boy that cried wolf

this reminds me of my childhood and a star trek episode.
in the episode an elite academic admiral takes over the command of the enterprise
he gets into trouble with the romulans
shooting is going on, and all that, and the admiral says
bring up a hailing frequency and lets talk terms for our surrender
Checkov replies, sir, the romulans do not take prisoners
and the academic admiral didnt know what to do as he could not fight to get out of what he got into, and since his assumptions about all of it were wrong, he could not save anyone even by giving up.

outside of jizya and certain things, islam takes no prisoners…

i ask the author, if the opposition wins, would it be ok if they played with your sister mother brother and boyrfiends?

Shocking footage inside ‘ISIS prison’ where women tortured and kept as sex slaves
Rebel fighters made the discovery in the recently liberated Syrian town of Manbij, where women who defied orders were held and tortured

by the way, you do know that the germans and russians of the past used such things so much, they had special rooms that the horror movie hostel copied for the movie. tile walls, all floors angled to a drain like a shower but no showers. hooks on the walls for rubber sheets…

if you visit the counry my famly ecaped from you can tour such things:
[and remember american left admire this regime and want the same!!! you know they want the same as they make apologies for this and special cases, and not denounce it and accept that its part of such a system where you make winners who get resources happy to hurt losers you take from to redistribute]

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/06/04/secret-kgb-torture-house-opens-its-doors-in-riga.html
Secret KGB Torture House Opens Its Doors in Riga
For decades, the Corner House stood as a silent reminder of Russian oppression. Now, the former KGB headquarters are open and exposing the horrors committed against the people of Riga.

In Riga, Latvia’s capital, the KGB set up its stronghold in an elegant building along the grand boulevards of the city center. The Latvians dubbed it “Stūra māja”—the Corner House, an ironically docile name considering the wicked machinations undertaken behind its walls

On the eve of June 14, 1941, an unrelenting sequence of prisoner massacres and Siberian deportations came to a head when over 15,000 “blacklisted” people disappeared, essentially annihilating Riga’s elite in one fell swoop

-=-=-=-

While the upper floors were the prim domain of police officers and clerical staff, the basement contained a labyrinth of holding cells and interrogation rooms that led to a firing wall. Subterranean temperatures were kept above a sweltering 30 degrees Celsius (over 85 degrees Farenheit) to incite paralyzing thirst, as prisoners were stuffed 20 to a cell in rooms meant for four inmates. Blinding lights prevented sleep, the fetid stench of overflowing chamber pots made it hard to breathe, and captives were randomly selected for execution to maintain an air of continuous fear.

Apskatei atkal atver izstādi ‘Disidents’ Stūra mājas pagalmā

check this imaeg out from Stura Majas (its mock not real, but of a real thing)
http://g4.delphi.lv/images/pix/520×315/_9BI5g89n84/izstade-disidents-6-45975063.jpg

@July 4th American: Those who want to call it torture are themselves cowards and are lying in the face of what they would do in a similar situation. How many of these dirtbag goat humpers obama released while on the way out of the door, will return to terrorist activities?

no, i have met their kind before, they are the ones that if you did something to their kid they would not have the will, strength, or whatever to face frontally whatever it was and defend the kid (though i can see not revenge)

you see.. the men who held bats trying to stop the massacre, the kid that died trying to jump the gunman last night, the firemen who died in the trade center, the soldiers who volunteer to fight, the man who defends his wife and dies to save her.

real men make faux men look really really bad and they then feel really really bad as they did not do everyhthing they would later claim, to help, act, do or what

women in general are not disposable and unimportant enough to act like that, and most dont, but in the world of equal, such men make such women look bad… so they call it toxic masculinity…

that way, when someone needs to be rescued, we all stand around and do nothing waiting for the men who are experts and allowed to show up. why? cause we wont put the female officer in danger to save a public person, with females on the force, the public comes second to a policewoman that comes first. not like the old days, when the public came first, and the policeman was second.

the whole point is that he can arguye that since he is willing to make the supreme sacrifice for abtraction, he should get more or have some favoritism, and that is a no no… so they disparage military, they lower the burdens and so on and so forth…

but then, what happens when they stand up against a real enemy that has decided to take advantage of such a military or fighting system?

heck. right now california people are signing a petition to succeed from the USA.
i wonder, will they set up their own mlitary, or will they expect the countryh they just dumped to defend them? what if mexico invades the land of california which has no weapons? military? navy?

how large a force would be needed to take over california if all american troops left, and so on? and they succeeded from the union (for race reasons AGAIN. the first civil war was not enough for trotskyites)….how large and how long?

would they accept that the US would not allow them free travel across the border?

its all the same stupidity made by people who live in boxes and dictate how the world works. after all, your average phd person went to prek, kindergarten, grade school, junior high, high school, 2 year college, 4 year college, etc…

at what time did they ever get out of that box and learn about the real world and the world away from the cosseted nice areas that colleges are in?

thats why they look down on the others, they didnt get such a special education but in many ways are more able and adept in the world… which is why they hate to be shown up by someone who didnt get all that education for all that money and who knows more about life than they do or ever will.

heck. a farmer who breeds animals would tell them reams about how bad it is to take resources from the pick of the litter and give it to the runts… but that is our welfare system… no one is saying to do eugenics, but you also dont have to do dysgenics as the only response to not having eugenics.

they just wont let the cards fall and responsiblity stick

@Wordsmith: Under President Obama, the world was told in great detail what he would NOT do. I think that President Trump may be trying to send a message that he’ll use options… vetted by good and experienced people, but he won’t share what those options are with those who may be subject to questioning. By using a hot button term, waterboarding, he brings attention to the issue of changing the approach to how terrorists are treated.

@Artfldgr:

Nice long piece avoiding the point which is:
IS waterboarding torture?

Dude….Are you new around here?

Click the category link on CIA Interrogation programs if you want more on my thoughts regarding waterboarding. Not avoiding anything except being redundant. Trying to just update and address the more current news and pick up where I left off last time. 😉

Thanks for the comments, though.

I don’t want anyone to misunderstand where I am about ‘torture’. If you are dealing with someone you know is the enemy, you do what is necessary to accomplish your goal. If you were to capture someone that you thought had vital information that you absolutely had to have, then do whatever you think it will take to get that information. That’s what he would do if the situation were reversed. But whereas I might leave him alive at the end, he would not likely leave me alive in situations reversed.

Waterboarding is not torture, it’s just extremely stressing. cutting off fingers ‘is’ torture. Doing anything that leaves a permanent mark or condition is likely torture. If it meant saving someone I care about, or someone YOU care about, then it’s worth it.

I wonder if chopping off someone’s head is really torture? I’m sure it’s not painful because the instant it happens, you are dead and there is no pain after you’re dead. And it certainly isn’t painful before the chop. If your enemy is using that technique, then it’s okay to use it. It might encourage the person standing next to the decapitated to start talking.

Should we use women in combat? If the woman really wants to and is actually physically capable of doing it. The woman above in the 12 mile run had the ‘want to’ but not the capability.

What is going to help is our guys being able to shoot back, without calling in for permission. Kill the enemy at will. I say take no prisoners! They are way too expensive to keep. Let them know if they surrender its bacon for breakfast bacon cheese burgers for lunch and pork-chops for dinner bon appetit.
.

99 bombings in first 3 days sounds like take no prisoners

@Richard Wheeler: and RT

I honestly don’t have an opinion on this.

You’re kidding, Right?

@RedTeam: Like I said I’ll go with Marine Generals Mattis and Kelly as well as Mac–You think you know better than they do?
You’d be more arrogant than Trump.

@Richard Wheeler: Do you honestly think anyone who has the power to make policy really truly gives a damn what I and RT post?
Absolutely what ever Mad Dog chooses to do with these creatures will be fine with us, including aeration and over seeding with lead.

@Richard Wheeler:

You’d be more arrogant than Trump.

Probably, as I haven’t seen any arrogance in Trump.

I honestly don’t have an opinion on this.
You’re kidding, Right?

So you don’t have an opinion, or you’re just not saying what your opinion is? Opinions and a$$holes, everyone has one.

I guess I don’t understand the reluctance for someone to say that torture should be used under certain circumstances. We all know it would be, I guess everyone just wants to believe that it is ‘beneath them’ to admit such a thing. I don’t believe a former combat Marine would sit by and watch his wife being choked to death by a terrorist and not figure out some way to stop it. Even including torturing the guy. If you will admit that you would not, then you need to resign your former Marine status and call yourself chickensh!t.

Marine Generals Mattis and Kelly as well as Mac

who is “Mac”? You’re not referring to the songbird of the Hanoi Hilton are you? You think he didn’t say whatever they wanted him to say? If you do, go over to Palm Springs and get an oceanfront lot.

kitt:

Do you honestly think anyone who has the power to make policy really truly gives a damn what I and RT post?

I hope those people aren’t wasting their time reading our crap. I’d rather they go torture some terrorists.

@RedTeam: they’re definitely “not reading your crap.” lol
Why would you understand a battle tested Marine like Mattis? You been in combat?
Only fools denigrate the service of John McCain.

@Richard Wheeler:

Why would you understand a battle tested Marine like Mattis? You been in combat?

I understand Americans and patriotism. have I been in combat? you know what years I served.

Only fools denigrate the service of John McCain.

So telling the truth is ‘denigrating’. He flew a bombing mission off of an aircraft carrier, his plane was shot down, he ejected. did something wrong and brokel both arms while ejecting. Was taken prisoner. Was tortured. Was known as the songbird of the Hanoi Hilton, got released when the war was over. Is there anything denigrating in that sequence? It’s what happened, if something is denigrating, he was the one involved. I don’t personally think anything in that was denigrating. I’m sure others would have done the same as he did if they were faced with his situation.
I can see why you defend him tho, but it’s because he is one of the RINO class and backs the libs all the time. I know of nothing heroic about him.

@Wordsmith:

The talking point that “detainees will tell you what ever you want them to say to make the torture stop” and “false confessions” reveal an ignorance on the part of the critics. These are strawman statements.

I certainly agree. In the situation I stated above where I’m squeezing someone’s gonads in a vise until he tells me where the person in the grave is, he knows what I want him to tell me, but he also knows that within 30 minutes I’ll know if he told the truth or not and he’ll know that if I didn’t save the child he won’t have any gonads left. I would bet that the ‘torture’ would work.