Merged Senate Report on CIA Torture Program

[ponderingturtle]

People who car bomb weddings are cockroaches. People who leave a van packed with explosives beneath buildings are cockroaches. People who plan, fund, and execute efforts to fly planes into buildings are cockroaches.

Scratch that. They're worse; cockroaches don't kill people.

Everyone in Afghanistan is a cockroach.

 

[Monketi Ghost]

Everyone in Afghanistan is a cockroach.

I never said that and certainly don't agree.

 

[ponderingturtle]

POLYSYLLABIC: plenty of letters, you see... yeah, linked letters arranged, basically in connection

So we torture someone who is isn't an Islamist. Who goes to prison in your world?

Which people picked up off the street and held for years who are innocent are a real person and who isn't?

 

[Polaris]

So we torture someone who is isn't an Islamist. Who goes to prison in your world?

Which people picked up off the street and held for years who are innocent are a real person and who isn't?

I don't think you meant to quote Ger on the Puzzles page....

 

[Monketi Ghost]

To suggest that harsh/enhanced interrogation never works seems to suggest that your average AQ dingleberry is immune to those techniques.

Our leaders can't so much as come out and say, "Yes, we torture and it sometimes produces results."
I'll bet though, that after all those dunkings, KSM finally started to open up a bit. He had ugly secrets, I'll bet he wanted to mislead his interrogators, and I'll further bet they tried easier methods first. Such interrogation is hard on the officers who conduct it as well as the prisoner and they'd logically want to get their intel the easiest way possible.

But think it through: of course, harsh interrogation comes up with gold sometimes.

 

[Brainster]

Long on anonymous officials who were "briefed" on the report, short on details. In fact, the only detail I saw in the article was this one:

The report describes previously undisclosed cases of abuse, including the alleged repeated dunking of a terrorism suspect in tanks of ice water at a detention site in Afghanistan — a method that bore similarities to waterboarding but never appeared on any Justice Department-approved list of techniques.

Oh, the humanity!

Also on the supposed "fact" that Osama wasn't located as a result of enhanced interrogation techniques:

The committee described a similar sequence in the interrogation of Hassan Ghul, an al-Qaeda operative who provided a critical lead in the search for bin Laden: the fact that the al-Qaeda leader’s most trusted courier used the moniker “al-Kuwaiti.”

But Ghul disclosed that detail while being interrogated by Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq who posed questions scripted by CIA analysts. The information from that period was subsequently conflated with lesser intelligence gathered from Ghul at a secret CIA prison in Romania, officials said. Ghul was later turned over to authorities in Pakistan, where he was subsequently released. He was killed by a CIA drone strike in 2012.

I am certain that the Kurdish authorities would never use any enhanced interrogation techniques beyond the comfy chair.

More on the ice-water torture:

If declassified, the report could reveal new information on the treatment of a high-value detainee named Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, the nephew of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. Pakistan captured Ali, known more commonly as Ammar al-Baluchi, on April, 30, 2003, in Karachi and turned him over to the CIA about a week later. He was taken to a CIA black site called “Salt Pit” near Kabul.

At the secret prison, Baluchi endured a regime that included being dunked in a tub filled with ice water. CIA interrogators forcibly kept his head under the water while he struggled to breathe and beat him repeatedly, hitting him with a truncheon-like object and smashing his head against a wall, officials said.

KSM's nephew.

 

[GlennB]

Back to the point made about those being tortured and their willingness to say "anything " to make it stop, doesn't "anything" possibly include the truth?

"Anything" also includes the possibility that you have the wrong person entirely, guilty of no crime and having no association with criminals.

Could be you, could be me. Personally I'd go with that pesky "due process" business.

 

[Brainster]

To suggest that harsh/enhanced interrogation never works seems to suggest that your average AQ dingleberry is immune to those techniques.

Our leaders can't so much as come out and say, "Yes, we torture and it sometimes produces results."
I'll bet though, that after all those dunkings, KSM finally started to open up a bit. He had ugly secrets, I'll bet he wanted to mislead his interrogators, and I'll further bet they tried easier methods first. Such interrogation is hard on the officers who conduct it as well as the prisoner and they'd logically want to get their intel the easiest way possible.

But think it through: of course, harsh interrogation comes up with gold sometimes.

I agree; the idea that torture never works is ridiculous. Everything in life involves some tradeoffs. We gain something but we lose something at the same time. Maybe we decide that the tradeoffs are too great; I'm willing to have that debate. But the idea that there is nothing lost by giving up the enhanced interrogation is completely BS.

 

[hgc]

To suggest that harsh/enhanced interrogation never works ...

By all means, you can call it by its real name: Torture

A harsh interrogation technique is what my father applied when I came in at 4 AM. It was enhanced with threats of confiscated car keys.

 

[Monketi Ghost]

By all means, you can call it by its real name: Torture

A harsh interrogation technique is what my father applied when I came in at 4 AM. It was enhanced with threats of confiscated car keys.

By all means, address the substance of what I wrote.

 

[Upchurch]

I'd like to address this post specifically. Upchurch, I've usually agreed with your politics and posting style, but assigning motives to me so you can sneer is frankly beneath you.

I wasn't sneering, but there is no reason why I shouldn't: You are advocating torture in this thread and you are being incredibly blasé about it.

There are very few moral absolutes in this world, but yeah, I will get on a high horse about it and I will look down my nose at you because there are very few things as inherently wrong as torturing another human being, let alone a prisoner. Maybe we have been desensitized to violence, but this is the line that should never be crossed and it is never wrong for people to stand up and say so. We could use more people willing to do so.

If you don't like me calling you out for saying reprehensible things, I hope it is because you are rightly ashamed of what you said. Until you get your priorities straight, you don't get to judge me.

Back to the point made about those being tortured and their willingness to say "anything " to make it stop, doesn't "anything" possibly include the truth?

Therein lies the problem with torture as an intelligence gathering tool, how do you tell the truth from the fiction?

It's great to point out the moral problems, but I've a perhaps dimwitted notion that torture during interrogation works.
It defies belief that such interrogation has never produced useful intelligence.

No one said it never produced useful information. All torture does is produce whatever will get the torturer to stop. That might be useful information. It might be complete fiction. It will always be what the torturer wants to hear.

 

[Brainster]

I wasn't sneering, but there is no reason why I shouldn't: You are advocating torture in this thread and you are being incredibly blasé about it.

The problem is that there is a continuum of interrogation techniques and the question of what actually constitutes torture is far from settled. The DOJ came up with a rulebook that the CIA was supposed to use for guidelines on what was acceptable and what was not.

Waterboarding, for example, is used on US soldiers by our own military in SERE training (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape).

 

[eeyore1954]

So we torture someone who is isn't an Islamist. Who goes to prison in your world?

Are you against drone bombings also?
When a drone kills an innocent who goes to jail? In war innocents are harmed all the time.

 

[hgc]

The problem is that there is a continuum of interrogation techniques and the question of what actually constitutes torture is far from settled. The DOJ came up with a rulebook that the CIA was supposed to use for guidelines on what was acceptable and what was not.

Waterboarding, for example, is used on US soldiers by our own military in SERE training (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape).

I don't know when the question of waterboarding as torture became up for grabs. For instance, when the US prosecuted Japanese soldiers as war criminals for waterboarding American prisoners following WWII, it was pretty clear what it was.

 

[Unabogie]

Oh, the humanity!

Mocking torture victims: conservatism in a nutshell.

Truly despicable, and the number one reason to fight against conservatives ever taking power.

A bunch of sociopaths who use that power for evil and mock the victims.

 

[Unabogie]

People who ARE ACCUSED OF car bomb weddings are cockroaches. People who ARE ACCUSED OF leaveING a van packed with explosives beneath buildings are cockroaches. People who ARE ACCUSED OF BEING PEOPLE WHO plan, fund, and execute efforts to fly planes into buildings are cockroaches.

Scratch that. They're worse; cockroaches don't kill people.

Fixed that for you, to highlight the obvious problem in your logic.

 

[Unabogie]

I don't know when the question of waterboarding as torture became up for grabs. For instance, when the US prosecuted Japanese soldiers as war criminals for waterboarding American prisoners following WWII, it was pretty clear what it was.

It's hard to believe that Ronald Reagan once proudly signed this treaty.

http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/39/a39r046.htm

Today's right wingers would call him a traitor for it.

 

[Upchurch]

The problem is that there is a continuum of interrogation techniques and the question of what actually constitutes torture is far from settled. The DOJ came up with a rulebook that the CIA was supposed to use for guidelines on what was acceptable and what was not.

Waterboarding, for example, is used on US soldiers by our own military in SERE training (Survival Evasion Resistance Escape).

1. Since when did the Department Of Justice get the power to unilaterally redefine torture?
2. Waterboarding is a part of soldier training to help teach them to resist torture. The use it because it is torture.
3. There is a world of difference in experiencing torture in a training setting surrounded by friends, where you know you will survive, and experiencing it at the hands of an enemy.

I thought these clumsy arguments died years ago. I had no idea people were under the illusion that they were valid.

 

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Were I in charge I'd have the CIA disbanded and those in authority jailed or quietly executed. That agency is more of a liability than an asset, and has gotten the nation in more trouble than it has resolved. I'd say our own agencies are a bigger threat to the US than most of our enemies are.

Between the CIA and the NSA, America has some very well-funded enemies...

Yes, I've seen interviews with him. WW2 is quite different conflict.

Right. Stakes were higher and, apparently, our soldiers were weaker then than these terrorists are today.

No, sorry. People haven't changed.

 

[Minoosh]

I would probably want revenge on the specific person who was responsible for my torture - what I wouldn't do is find some substitute(s) who just happened to be of the same nationality or religion and take my revenge out on them, which is unfortunately seems to be seen as acceptable by a large number of Islamists.

"Seems to be seen as acceptable" - do you have any evidence of that?

How do you define an "Islamist," let alone someone who's tortured, then takes it out on the torturer's culture at large? I'm not saying evidence doesn't exist; just that you haven't cited any.