No, the Feinstein Report is not the last word:
In a bid to bring the “rest of the story” to the nation about the CIA’s detention and interrogation of al Qaeda terrorists, eight former top CIA officials, including three directors, are publishing a rebuttal to the sensational Senate Democratic “torture report.”
Early next month, the U.S. Naval Institute Press will release “Rebuttal: The CIA Responds to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Study of Its Detention and Interrogation Program.”
~~~ The key essays about the program are written by three former CIA chiefs: George Tenet, Porter Goss and retired Gen. Michael V. Hayden. Other contributors include two former deputy directors, John McLaughlin and Michael Morell, former clandestine service boss Jose A. Rodriguez, former CIA and FBI counterterrorism official J. Philip Mudd and former CIA Acting General Counsel John Rizzo.
The intelligence community has been eager to counter the Democratic report by the committee’s chairwoman, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, which many said has been unfairly characterized as the main report on the CIA’s enhanced interrogation programs.
After it came out, current CIA Director John O. Brennan said the interrogations helped produce information that helped set the stage for the 2011 raid by Navy SEALs on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.
It would seem to me that if the CIA legitimately had skeletons in their closets, they would quietly let this lie. The fact that they are drawing further attention to it indicates they feel they can be vindicated with facts.
Lord knows, this administration is not going to stand up for what is right. They are more than happy to see information distributed that weakens America.
The methodical torture of captives as a matter of policy unworthy of the United States of America. I really don’t give a rat’s ass what the people responsible for this stain on the nation’s honor might have to say in the way of rationalization. If it were remotely acceptable, there would have been no need to destroy audio and video interrogation tapes.
@Greg:
You realize that this is the evaluation of the Feinstein version of events in which NO input from those actually involved and with the information were consulted. In other words, the opinion based on ignorance.
@Greg:
Absolutely hysterical that you make this statement while defending Clinton’s arguably illegal unsecured private email server, and your continued defense of PP.
Any sane person understands the difference between waterboarding and real torture, and when dealing with the scum who are waging jihad, PC stupidity will get Americans killed. I know this makes leftist heads explode, but I really don’t give a rat’s ass for the wellbeing of terrorists. By the choice to enagage in terrorism, they are no longer deserving of decent treatment. They deserve only extermination, after extracting whatever actionable intelligence they may have.
@Pete, #4:
The difference is little more than a convenient fantasy, based on the premise that deliberately putting human beings into prolonged states of mortal terror and extreme physical distress doesn’t count as torture so long as it doesn’t leave any marks on their bodies. I reject that premise.
I don’t care so much about the well-being of terrorists either. What I care about is that any elected official would assume they have the power to have people tortured in the name of my nation. Such an assumption is unacceptable.
And how sane is an assumption that a sentient human being exists from the moment of conception, automatically having constitutional rights that outweigh those of a woman who must be compelled to allow a pregnancy to continue whether she wishes to give birth or not?
Sorry. Giving the state power to take control of women’s bodies and reproductive choices is something else I find totally unacceptable, whatever my own personal opinions about abortion might be. The state has no such right.
@Greg:
Do you also object that our SEALs are water boarded during SEAL training? Would you prefer that we just shoot our captured enemies like we did during World War II?
Bogus argument. Women have already made a choice about their reproductive systems when they engage in behavior that results in a pregnancy.
You remain ever the idiot.
Pregnancy requires the participation of a male. Perhaps the state should require a castration or vasectomy in exchange for every denied abortion. Men also made a choice about the behavior they engaged in.
@Greg:
That’s right, Greggie Goebbels. It is a mutual decision. And in that same vein, men should be allowed to stop a woman from killing HIS unborn child. If she doesn’t want the baby, he should have the options of taking custody of it when it is born. With equal responsibility goes equal rights.
Only when the man is not willing to support the children he has.
And don’t try to push that crap that it’s her body. She already gave it to someone else and that is how she got pregnant in the first place.
@retire05, #8:
It is her body, over which she should have sovereign authority and control. Who the hell else do you think it “belongs” to?
This is precisely the sort of crap that gives the lie to all right-wing pretense concerning individual freedom, personal responsibility, and constitutional rights. Either you believe in those things or you don’t.
Basically, you’re wanting to give government authority to impose your own religious and moral beliefs on those who do not share them in the most intrusive manner possible. Nothing is more personal and private than an individual’s reproductive choices and the personal religious or non-religious beliefs that inform them.
@Greg:
So, how about me declaring MY house as my sovereign? Whomever is in MY house are MINE and I can kill whomever is in my house. Does that fly?
Why not?
Why don’t we just have the right to kill whatever inconveniences us?
@Greg:
At the point she conceived, her body was being shared with someone else. If she didn’t want the potential consequences of that sharing, she should have kept it to herself.
I am wanting the government to do what it claims to do; protect life. You know, Greggie Goebbels, that who “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” thing? Just because you think that an unborn baby is not a human, and you deny the science that says differently, doesn’t mean that we should continue to kill babies and yes, reduce the black population more than it already has been.
Perhaps you don’t fully comprehend how babies are created. I don’t know; you are pretty stupid. But the choice made by the woman was made BEFORE she conceived when she agreed to have unprotect sex.
Pregnancy is a choice like a hang over is a choice.
Oh, and for all you deniers who seem to think that the Planned Parenthood videos have all been edited, here’s this little tidbit from the left’s most respected news publication:
Correction: August 6, 2015
An article on July 21 about a video made by abortion opponents, which they said proved that Planned Parenthood sells tissue from aborted fetuses for profit, referred incorrectly to the timing of the release of what was described as the full-length, unedited version of the video showing a Planned Parenthood employee talking about how much clinics charge for specimens. The full video was posted at the same time as the edited version. It is not the case that the full video was not released until “after Planned Parenthood complained of selective, misleading editing.”
A version of this article appears in print on July 21, 2015, on page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: Congress Told More Videos of Clinics Might Surface. Order Reprints|
There is something really sick and depraved about people like you, Greggie Goebbels, that seems to think it is OK to rip a human being to pieces because the results of a woman’s actions turns out to be an inconvenience to her.
@Greg:
It is very sane, despite your persistent dehumanization of those in the earliest stage of human development, which every single individual who has escaped the womb had to go through to exist.
If a terrorist was suspected of having information about a nuclear terrorist attack, but refused to give information, I have no problem at all using waterboarding, which leaves no scars or causes no permanent injury whatsoever to get that information to save American lives. I feel the same about using such measures to save a single US life from terrorist activity. Terrorists are scum who because of the choice they make to engage in terrorism, deserve no special protections nor consideration for their wellbeing. By your statements, you are giving more value to the welfare of vicious terrorists than to innocent human life in the womb.
@Greg:
Yes. Yet while the male has no legal right to stop his child from being aborted, should the female decide to keep the baby, the male is held accountable for child support. How can such a contradiction be justified?
The entire point of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is to protect individual freedom from the tyranny of people like you. It’s not sufficient that you have the freedom to conduct your own lives in accordance with your own personal beliefs; you also want other people to be compelled to think and live as you believe proper.
@Greg: If I were the President, I wouldn’t hesitate one second to use torture in the right circumstances. First as soon as the prisoner knew for a fact that they would be tortured til they broke, the more likely it is that they would start singing without actually being tortured. I understand many sang without torture in Vietnam.
But not one person reading this would say that if their wife and children were being held by someone and would die when their air supply ran out in 6 hours if they weren’t rescued that they would not resort to torturing the person that could have them released. I would personally assure that person that if the 6 hours lapsed without them talking that they would die at the same time.
There are other situations that I would authorize torture being used also. We all know that our enemy is going to use whatever torture they need to to get someone to talk.
Those that want the ‘moral high ground’ are most likely lying to impress someone.
@Greg:
you would also require a hysterectomy or tubes tied for getting an abortion?
@Greg:
you just said two comments above that a man is shares responsibility for her getting pregnant. Now you say she has soverign authority and control. Which is it? Is it her alone, or does he have some input also?
@Greg:
Doesn’t that kinda also include the right to life of the baby?
@Greg:
No that would be the lefts view
Conservatives would be live and let live so long as they were not required to fund or participate on the majority of issues
Again you show that you think it’s your right to force people to pay or participate in your agenda and then claim its your constitutional right as it’s about your freedom
Still waiting on your comparison between Marxists and liberals BTW
Not until a baby actually exists. @Redteam:
Perhaps you should consider the possibility that some people might actually take the concept of morality seriously. Principles that are abandoned when they become inconvenient weren’t really principles to begin with.
Who is biologically responsible for a pregnancy is a separate issue from a woman’s sovereign authority to continue or end it.
That’s not a good argument establishing a torture program as a matter of administrative policy. A lot of people whose loved one’s have been harmed would have no problem summarily putting a bullet through the perpetrator’s forehead and a lot of people would sympathize with such a response, depending on the circumstances. That doesn’t mean it should become an administrative policy.
Until fetal development has progressed to the point where consciousness exists, there is no baby. There is only the potential for one to come into being.
@Greg:
Oh, they just take the hypocrits position so they can claim the high ground. Our policy is ” We will not torture anyone”, er, uh, unless they need it.
Why not just be honest and say, we don’t believe in torture, but we damn sure will use it if we need to.
That would be when a woman is pregnant, right?
@Greg:
You do realize that when a pregnant woman is murdered that the killer is charged with 2 counts of murder, don’t you? And that is NOT based on how many days or weeks she is pregnant.
@Greg: #20
I must disagree. Physical discomfort to one degree or another is not torture. I have seen no accounts of treatment of terrorists that included anything to which I was not subjected in my own training. Uncomfortable? Check. Frightening? Hella check. Humiliating? Check again. Torture? No.
Even though I actually, truly believed that the SOBs (And DOBs – some were women) weren’t going to stop until I was really, no shit, dead…
Which is where I broke and gave them what they wanted.
Yes, everybody breaks sooner or later.
But it isn’t torture.
Now, what the Mujhadeen did – and are doing – to prisoners and their own people, men, women, and children , now THAT’s torture.
Now, as for your tangent about abortion…
It is my belief that the first duty of any true man is to protect those who cannot protect themselves.
A human fetus is about as helpless as they come.
That is a duty that transcends political correctness, anyone’s “rights”, and the convenience of the mother.
I, personally, and only for myself, would not consider anyone who is pro-abortion to be a man, or even a civilized human being, no matter what words they use or veneer they wear.
Other opinions may vary.
@Greg:
And what are you doing, other than engaging tyranny, when demanding that people with a.constitutionally protected right to free.expression of religion be forced to participate in an activity that violates thoe religious beliefs?
@Greg:
Your dehumanization of the preborn – for convenience of those farther along the human life cycle – is no different than the dehumanization of the nazis towards Jews, and of slaveholders to slaves. It is not based on the science of the human life cycle.
@Pete, #26:
Consciousness and sentience are two basic qualities that define the attainment of personhood, in my world view. Before they come into existence there is no human being. For what it’s worth, my world view is anything but materialistic.
Suggesting some moral equivalency between the termination of pregnancies before consciousness and sentience exist and the Nazi extermination of millions of human beings throws all moral discernment out the window.
@Greg:
Greg,
You should read Jose Rodriguez’ book (or Mike Morrell’s) regarding the reason why those tapes were destroyed.
I have no doubt that for the average civilized Joe, a great many things that are legal and morally justifiable can still be disturbing viewing for those weak of stomach. You see this all the time in video snippets of police or prison guards restraining someone who is resistant. Devoid of context of what happened before the video clip begins, of why the person is being “brutalized” by several officers, one’s natural sympathize goes to the “victim” being restrained. There may not even be physical abuse going on in said video; however, when the person being restrained is carrying on, screaming bloody murder, writhing and crying, it makes for a disturbing view.
Public release of those videos- and anything similar- can be propagandized for the benefit of gaining sympathy for actual criminals.
Waterboarding 3 of the worst of the worst HVTs most likely wasn’t a pretty sight. It’s not meant to be a pleasant experience. But it’s arguable whether it constitutes “torture”. The way the left wishes to have it, anything then can be argued as “torture” including tickling. But then, why should that be surprising when it’s those on the left who have no problem with redefinitions.
@Greg:
Just consider them “deleted”. Then everything just smooths on out.