Nice title, HuffPo:
WASHINGTON — In a collection of essays set to be released this week, former CIA Director Michael Hayden unabashedly defends the CIA’s post-9/11 torture program, and says last year’s gruesome report from the Senate Intelligence Committee doesn’t hold water.
In an upcoming book entitled Rebuttal: The CIA Responds to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Study of Its Detention and Interrogation Program, Hayden says when Senate Democrats — led by former Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) — released a summary of the committee’s 6,700-page report in December, they approached the study from a pre-drawn conclusion.
HuffPo then goes on to talk about walling. Really?! This is the technique that justifies the nonsense title of your article?
Anyone interested in the CIA’s rebuttals can order a copy directly from the U.S. Naval Institute.
Has Huffnpuffpo ever addressed how many civilians Obama has killed with his drone program and how that benefits the terrorists’ recruitment?
Here are the civilian casualty estimates for drone strikes in each theater of operation from 2004 through 2014. Each shows the lowest and the highest estimated number.
Drones cause far fewer civilian casualties than conventional shelling and bombing tactics. That doesn’t make drone warfare a benign thing. It’s just a choice of a lesser evil. A third option might be to do nothing at all, in which case a lot of terrorist leaders who are now gone would still be engaging in terrorist attacks.
@Greg: How the images of children killed by drones is being used
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=children+killed+by+drones&FORM=HDRSC2#a
Civilians claim to be “terrorized” by drones
So, you find little or no difference between how the Bush administration fought terror and how Obama is fighting it?
I don’t believe the invasion of Iraq turned out to be a useful response to terrorism in any way whatsoever. In my opinion, we would be far better off if we had narrowly focused on al Qaeda in Afghanistan. I don’t see much point in discussing it further. All of the arguments have already been made. No one who has thought things through is very likely to change their position. Those who learned nothing are ready to take on Iran, despite the dangers and with no more likelihood of a good long-term outcome. Of course they won’t come right out and say that. Not with an election only a year away.
@Greg:
This is because you cannot disengage from the left wing propaganda of the reasons for the invasion and accept the facts of it. Indeed, under those circumstances, there is no reason to discuss it further.
If I had been president, there would have been an invasion in Iraq in 03. Those that still believe the WMD’s weren’t there are just ill informed. But there were other reasons also. Afghanistan, maybe. Iran now, NO AGREEMENT.
The only WMDs found in Iraq were odd lots of ordnance left over from the Iraq-Iran conflict, so old, degraded, and/or unstable that it could no longer be considered a reliable offensive weapon. The fact that it was still hazardous doesn’t mean it it had any potential military use. Unexploded artillery shells lurking in the fields of France and Belgium since World War One pose the same sort of hazard.
Miscellaneous caches of deteriorating chemical ordnance do not fill the bill as justification for invading Iraq. It’s not the threat we had to have a preemptive war to neutralize. Had there been a full inventory of this crap beforehand, it couldn’t have been used to convince anyone of an imminent danger of attack, nor can it be honestly used as a justification now.
@Greg:
As I said, you’re just ill informed. We know where the weapons went.
Of course once it was removed, what was left wasn’t fighting over. But they had the opportunity to get rid of them prior to the US invasion. It was too little too late once the starting pistol had been fired.
@Greg:
Thousands of them. Thousands and thousands.
Except that they WERE put to military use, weren’t they? They were used against our forces in Iraq. So, if left in place, how can anyone say they could not have been used in the same manner against a US city?
Who says? You?
But, in hindsight, even if true, that is not the issue, is it? The issue is that the intelligence SHOWED that they were there (and, ultimately, some WERE there) and that was the justification. Further, since Bill, Hillary, Gore, Kerry, Albright, Berger, Kennedy, Levin, Daschel, Pelosi, Graham, Byrd, Rockefeller, Waxman and more ALL supported that intelligence and deposing Hussein BEFORE Bush took office and 9/11, so that pretty much totally dispels any of the idiotic lies that Bush cooked that intelligence in order to justify attacking Iraq.
@Redteam, #8:
Of course you do, because somebody posted a satellite photograph of a convoy of trucks leaving a supply depot with a claim that it showed WMDs being spirited away to Syria.
@Greg: See, when prompted and reminded, you learn things. Too bad you didn’t already know about that.
This thread is titled about CIA torture, but I don’t think there has been one word about CIA torture.
So I will. If I were in charge and there was a good reason to use torture, I would use torture. Why not? If I were being tortured, I’d likely tell whatever I knew. I’m only human.
@Greg:
So what do you think was in those trucks?
@Redteam:
Cupcakes?
As it was taken before we invaded, and as we had thoughtfully announced to the world that we were soon going to invade and could be seen massing our military forces in preparation for doing so, the truck convoy was most likely moving war materials from centralized munitions depots—aka primary bombing targets—to locations where it would soon be needed by Iraq defense forces.
That’s what anyone would expect to be happening under such circumstances. Putting a caption on a photo saying “Iraqi trucks moving WMDs to Syria” doesn’t make it so.
Why would they have been wasting limited time and resources moving weapons that could have been used to repel invading forces out of the country?
Latest:
@retire05: Cupcakes? strong possibility…
@Greg:
I can’t imagine. Maybe to hide them, or something…..