First and foremost, I do not want or like etc torture. I’m not one of those millions of Americans who wanted Osama Bin Laden’s skin peeled on pay per view.
However, the myth that a ticking bomb scenario doesn’t exist is a lie. It DID exist, and it does exist today. Before 911, the US new for months that a big attack was coming. George Tenet told the Joint House/Senate inquiry (as also reported in the 911 Commission and Richard Clarke’s book, Against All Enemies) that he was running around DC like he was on fire. Then, the FBI grabbed Zacarias Moussaoui, and his laptop computer. The investigative process blocked American investigators from looking at the laptop which would have revealed the 911 plot and likely prevented it. Equally, he was not allowed to be tortured. America could have prevented 911 if the investigative process wasn’t hindered, OR if he was tortured.
Months later, Zubaydah and KSM are captured. Intel agencies know another 911 attack is coming, but the process can’t figure it out (again). This time, harsh interrogations were used, and then torture (not all harsh interrogation is torture and vice versa), and a 911 attack was prevented (according to multiple CIA directors, the Vice President, the President, and the new Director of National Intelligence.
Sick and sad as it is to say, torture worked. It was a last resort, and it worked.
SO, we can look at it simply. When intel says there’s an attack coming, and the investigative process is stumped, America can either:
A) stoop to torture and hope that it reveals the attack like it would have with Moussoui, and did with KSM
or
B) refuse to stoop so low, and know that lives could have been saved.
I say the lesson here is do like the Navy does in a sinking ship. When you’re told to close the hatch and let people die so that the ship may survive, close the hatch. Let the people in NYC, DC, Los Angeles, San Fran, etc., let them get attacked & then tell their families that we had people in custody who knew of the attack, but we didn’t want to torture em. We CHOSE to let the people die. That’s the decision.
Do like they do in the military and cut your losses. Close the hatch. Let the attack happen (still understanding that the investigative process is blocked like before and after 911).
The families won’t understand, and politically it’s equally suicidal, but the honor of the flag is protected. Besides, maybe then Richard Clarke’s testimony to the 911 Commission will be remembered, ‘America needs more body bags before people will get it.’
See author page
Anyone who calls waterboarding torture is an ignorant ass. But given the nationwide stupidity of the general public, perhaps a good, major replay of 9/11 is just what is needed. It may wake up that part of the population which has allowed the perpetual theft of its rights, money and property by Washington political thugs. The last 9/11 created enough of a patriotic bent that the left was afraid to speak for a couple of weeks. Perhaps a second attack will help stretch that to a few months.
When Obama leaves office (hopefully after only another 3 years), we’ll have to dredge up something to prosecute him for.
Apparently, the discussion has moved away from the effectiveness of torture to whether the Bush administration should be prosecuted. I hate to see a crucial, thought-provoking, debatable topic being spun into merely a political fight.
Nonetheless, seems like more and more people are against the prosecution: http://www.newsy.com/videos/to_prosecute_or_not_to_prosecute
Question….(I do not know the answer) How many countries in the world allow for water boarding? At the police level vs. the military level?
I have heard reference to the hypocrasy of countries that are condemning America, that use water boarding on a regular basis. I heard it but would like to know if it is true and how many.
It is believable, especially given the number of third world nations and islam nations that don’t recognize human rights in ANY form?
Here’s a thought… if the dip sticks weren’t terrorists they wouldn’t be worried about being tortured!!!!
Apparently it’s ok in some of these idiots minds that Americans being beheaded then the video is posted on the internet is ok, but we shouldn’t be allowed to make someone feel like they will die if they don’t talk???
Now that is a very twisted version of what actually happened…
Do you want the truth?? here is the truth:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/4/23/723439/-FBI-Agent:Abu-Zubaydah-gave-up-KSM-w-o-tortureand-more
Do you want to see the LIAR??? here he is:
Rap, that’s not even a nice try. Citing a Daily KOS piece? Dude, c’mon and step up. Besides, the fact remains that-according to Obama’s DNI-torture was used and successfully stopped another 911 in LA. Multiple CIA directors say the same.
Good attempt at distraction, but the premise remains (again, based on Obama’s DNI statement and others)
that torture was used
the torture prevented another 911 in LA (and more attacks too).
Please try again
Can anyone tell me exactly what torture took place?
Don’t bother trying to say water boarding, sleep deprivation, stress positions,
or puting them in a box with a bug.
In the early days of the Obama administration, to combat the rising tide of religious fanatacism and terrorism, the POTUS gave Attorney General Eric Holder leave to move without let or hindrance throughout the land, in a reign of violence, terror and torture that makes a smashing film. This was the Guantanamo Inquisition…
Holder: Now, Achmed — you are accused of terrorism on three counts — terrorism by thought, terrorism by word, terrorism by deed, and terrorism by action — *four* counts. Do you confess?
Achmed: I don’t understand what I’m accused of.
Holder: Ha! Then we’ll make you understand! Secretary Clinton! Fetch…THE CUSHIONS!
[JARRING CHORD]
[Hillary holds out two ordinary modern household cushions]
Holder: Here they are, lord.
Holder: Now, Achmed — you have one last chance. Confess the heinous act of terrorism, reject the works of the ungodly — *two* last chances. And you shall be free — *three* last chances. You have three last chances, the nature of which I have divulged in my previous utterance.
Achmed: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Holder: Right! If that’s the way you want it — Hillary! Poke him with the soft cushions!
[Hillary carries out this rather pathetic torture]
Holder: Confess! Confess! Confess!
Clinton: It doesn’t seem to be hurting him, lord.
Holder: Have you got all the stuffing up one end?
Clinton: Yes, lord.
Holder [angrily hurling away the cushions]: Hm! He is made of harder stuff! Secretary Clinton! Fetch…THE COMFY CHAIR!
[JARRING CHORD]
[Zoom into Hillarys horrified face]
Hillary [terrified]: The…Comfy Chair?
[Hillary pushes in a comfy chair — a really plush one]
Holder: So you think you are strong because you can survive the soft cushions. Well, we shall see. Secretary Clinton! Put him in the Comfy Chair!
[They roughly push Achmed into the Comfy Chair]
Holder [with a cruel leer]: Now — you will stay in the Comfy Chair until lunch time, with only a cup of coffee at eleven. [aside, to Hillary] Is that really all it is?
Hillary: Yes, lord.
Holder: I see. I suppose we make it worse by shouting a lot, do we? Confess, terrorist. Confess! Confess! Confess! Confess
Hillary: I confess!
Holder: Not you!
Hard right are you that misinformed??
Try water boarding 183 times. and that is just a start.. don’t bother telling me that water boarding isn’t torture.. Do you really believe that??? I pity you if that’s your actual belief.
Scott that premise of avoiding a second 9/11 is total BS… Apparently you didn’t read the article…
The FBI says that information would have been forth coming with conventional interrogation techniques.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/4/23/723439/-FBI-Agent:Abu-Zubaydah-gave-up-KSM-w-o-tortureand-more
@Real American Patriot:
KSM wasn’t waterboarded 183 times, 183 represents applications/drips of water during 5 interrogations. KSM has publicly confirmed that he was waterboarded 5 times, I posted the source a couple of days ago.
And no one is saying other types of interrogation WOULD have had the same results, no one is claiming that.
RAP. no, I didn’t read the article from Daily KOS. It’s a hack site that’s propaganda. I don’t cite from FOX or Free Republic for similar reasons. I did skim the docs Obama released, and it said that other, traditional methods had been tried, and torture/enhanced methods/whatever wasn’t tried until the benign FBI style means had failed.
Zubaydah wasn’t the one who had the intel on the LA 911 attack either. That was KSM.
More than anything though, the point of my article here remains: next time, if traditional means don’t work, DO NOT TORTURE…..just let the people die.
I was in the Air Force for 10 years. I was aircrew for about half that time. As such, I went through SERE School. I have no intentions of talking about what took place during SERE School. I’ve never even told my wife everything that happened there, and I tell her everything. Suffice it to say, there are some enhanced interrogation techniques that work. Is it torture? Seeing people eat when you haven’t in 3 days is torture. Being where you don’t want to be is torture. Being imprisioned period, is torture.
RAP, you know not from whence you speak. Go ahead and pass judgement on people while you sit on your couch with Ben and Jerry’s watching Olbermann. The people that are interrogating prisoners almost certainly had to go through the same interrogation techniques themselves. They know what it feels like and what information they can gain from it. But Olbermann told you that wasn’t true and you believe him. Get over yourself.
By heavens… if you can be water boarded for the max minutes (20 some and under), with medical experts standing by, 183 times (by CRAP’s version), just how “tortuous” can it be? Can the man walk? Function? Procreate? Can he, unlike McCain, raise his arms above his shoulders? Can he live to plan another assault on the infidel? Got all his digits? His head?? Does he possess the mental capacity to assume the “victim” stance and take advantage of the US judicial system with an ACLU lawyer by his side?
Torture my ass. Torture is listening to you whiny ass, politically correct types give your synthetic gonads away because you couldn’t personally take one iota of what our military.. or even these scumbags… endure daily. Tell me, who do I sue? Who do I call to press torture charges against people like CRAP and ilk for me having to listen to their pompous, pampered and secured arses moan and groan about crap they know nothing about… nor the circumstances that may have demanded such action by the interrogators, please? How can you have “transparency” when you should not, and cannot, and didn’t release the classified info that may have lead to difficult decisions to use EITs?
Simple.. you can’t. You will never have the entire story. You will have the story the political agenda machine wants to feed you.. nothing more. And it requires you to believe our interrogators and military are sadistic animals who live to maim and torture others. Bloody sick ‘tude, if you ask me.
And oh yes.. since when is “transparency” more important than national security? What did we gain from this release other than Obama getting the lead role to play Pontius Pilate in Reid/Pelosi’s Congressional crucifixion trials? If the big Zero genuinely wanted to “stop” such action, was it necessary to make military procedures of detainees public for the enemy to see?
Or was this all political? Get the public in an uproar… not hard to do with types like CRAP… in order to demand the witch hunts and allow Obama to “wash his hands” and absolve himself of all responsibility?
Why stop there? While we’re at it, let’s telegraph every military maneuver to the pollsters ahead of time so we can get CRAP and his buds’ approval? After all, these do-gooders feel they need to know everything because they are so danged astute they can process information infinitely better than the pros.
Feh
Yeah… too many of you sit around and pronouce judgment, and demand the heads of those that have endured, and inflict, physical coercion in their daily intel tasks just to protect your sorry ass butt. But the only thing you know about what they do, or have endured, is what you read in your favorite candy ass, feel good, nanny news supplier and their excerpted op-ed paragraphs from a publication that specializes in outing military secrets.
Tired of this, I am. Days and days of idiots saying waterboarding is/was illegal, waterboarding our troops is okay but doing the same, with the same restraints (and with medical backup), to detainees to get info is totally immoral. Get a f*#king grip.
So CRAP… just when do we start prosecuting the SERE military trainers? Been thru SERE training yourself, or just talking out your rear end? Did you see Soufan advocating prosecution or investigation of interrogators? Or didn’t you bother to follow KO links?
/Rant off…
Aqua… you be batting 1000+ plus with me, guy. I think I’m in cyber-love… LOL Fire at will. I’ll always have your back. And I’m quite sure I’m not alone.
Apparently the “LIAR” is you, CRAP. The “FBI” did not say that. It was one lone agent, Ali Soufan. Although I sure would like some proof that he is omnipotent and can predict the alternate parallel events and futures. Otherwise… just a lot of BS and grandstanding.
However, according to the CRAP view of the world, that one underling speaks for the entire FBI.
Nice try.. and in the Aye Chi spirit… “thanks for playing”.
RAP, you cite the DailyKOS? Give me a break, I can’t even type the name without getting nauseous.
However, since you favor the left slanted version of the story….here’s what your own had to say oh….back in the day….
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/258258
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/08/AR2007120801664.html
I lost my best friend almost 8 years ago – all that’s left of her and the man she loved is ashes in a field in Pennsylvania, I volunteered to go into NYC to help with the clean up that first week. If you want to be glib and hold some high moral ground wailing about this terrorist and that terrorist be my guest; I prefer to LIVE. And if I had to make the choice between making some ideologue comfortable (who btw thinks it’s ok to kill you and thousands of my countrymen & women) and being able to prevent that, I know where I stand.
@Aqua:
You forgot tickling….tickling is obvious torture. Even the Bush lawyers knew it without even having to deliberate upon it. It is that obvious and that depraved.
Here’s an example that fits what I’d consider the “classical” definition of real torture:
Please contrast that with the Bush lawyer team hand-wringing over dropping bugs into a confined box with Zubaydah:
Oooooh….a caterpillar! Scary, scary stuff! I can only fathom to guess how the moonbats would foam at the mouth had it been a jar of cockroaches, instead.
Let the prosecutions begin!
Sounds like some folk round here are saying we owe the japanse a posthumous pardon..
“Eight men in all were taken prisoner by the Japanese and held in inhumane conditions from which four survived. Colonel Nielsen spent 40 months as a prisoner of war, most of the time in solitary confinement, before being rescued at the end of the war by an Office of Strategic Services para-rescue team and brought back to the U.S.
Colonel Nielsen returned to Shanghai, China, in January 1946 to testify in war crimes trials against his former captors, who had tortured him using water-boarding techniques.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Neilsen
Yeah… about as much as we owe Al Capone an apology for convicting him of tax evasion instead of murder and racketeering.
mynameis shoulda read the article. This discussion is about whether or not to use tougher forms of interrogation after traditional means have failed. It’s not a debate about whether or not water-boarding is torture. Good spam though.
@mynameis:
The problem with the arguments dredging up the Japanese issue is that the story goes above and beyond waterboarding alone.
The POWs in question were beaten to the point of broken bones, many were burned, and some suffered even more heinous treatments.
Only one Japanese soldier who was charged with waterboarding alone was found guilty. His offense was committed against a civilian, thus making it a violation of the GC.
I have a question about harsh interrogations in general and not limited specifically to Water-boarding. If there is nothing wrong with the use of these techniques then why did so many members of the US military object to their use?
http://documents.nytimes.com/report-by-the-senate-armed-services-committee-on-detainee-treatment#p=20
Once you click on the link, wait a second and the cover page of the report becomes a list of legal advisors and military personal who objected to the legality of such techniques.
It seems when I raise objections about harsh interrogation techniques I’m accused of being naive or lacking intellectual ability, and yet so many other agencies including the FBI objected to the use of such tactics.
Ron
Ron, perhaps you’re looking for some other discussion, but the piece I wrote above isn’t about whether or not coercive interrogations are torture or right or wrong. THIS conversation is my plea to NOT do anything that can be misconstrued as torture. Next time-when “traditional interrogation methods fail” just stop. Let the attacks happen & let the people die.
If you have a better solution, I invite/beg its presentation. Till then, I say let em die. Right?
Good point Scott. I apologize for being off topic.
Ron
Happens to us all mon ami! I’m just happy to see people reading this-thanks! & have a great weekend!!!
Mata my response to your #15
right from the horses MOUTH!!! That would be the former HEAD of the FBI…
check out this!!!
http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/probes-of-bush-administration/flashback-bushs-fbi-director-said-torture-didnt-foil-any-terror-plots/
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/us/politics/23detain.html?_r=1&hp
http://www.taylormarsh.com/2009/04/23/cheney-torture-lies-continue-to-unravel/
NICE try and “Thanks for Playing”
@Mata – Thank-you, I’m truly honored and flattered!
@RAP – Did you read the links you posted? Mueller said he didn’t “believe” that to be the case. Who cares what he believes? The CIA says it did. CIA Says It Helped
Thanks for calling the game for everyone. But before you leave, answer the real intent of Scott’s post. Obviously from your post, you believe we should do nothing and let people die in another attack. If not, and since you obviously know the answer, what do we do?
My favorite line in the NYTimes linked by RAP:
The political credibility stakes are running high.
Standing by Cheney’s assertions:
About this….
….the “rapport-building” approach takes time; if KSM responds to my inquiry into future plots by threatening, “soon you will know”, that sounds like a ticking bomb to me; in which case, I’m all for the Jack Bauer doctrine where time may be of the essence.
But we wussed out on the Jack Bauer approach and merely waterboarded the bastard…. 😉
Can you possibly be this reading challenged, CRAP? What the heck are you responding to? Let’s reiterate, shall we?
You said:
Now if my reading ability remains in tack… as well as intact… the subject you, yourself, brought up was whether intel would have been more readily given up with conventional interrogation techniques instead of coercive EITs. And to cite this, you mentioned that a lone agent writing an op-ed in the NYTs was proof of this… crediting the entire FBI.
When I point out the flaws of your dementia – i.e. the opine of one lone agent, predicting future parallel alternative paths (i.e. palm reading), and not the Agency – you come back triumphantly with three articles about whether waterboarding did, or did not foil terrorist plots.
Hardly the subject you broached.
I might as well have asked you for a recipe for roasted pork butt, and you came back to me with today’s weather report. I’d thank you for playing, but obviously you haven’t even shown up to participate….
@ Wordsmith
I bet you’re ticklish. C’mon fess up!
Kitchy kitchy koo!