Waterboarding Rocks!

[Brainster]

It happened in Iraq and Afghanistan. And Yoo should be placed in a ConEx box and taken to meet the families of the peole it happened to.

Erm, wouldn't that be torture?

 

[Lonewulf]

I made no such estimation of BAC"s posts. However, you did make that estimation of gdnp's "posts."

You mean the one that you obviously quoted without reading and made a snarky remark towards?

Yes. Yes I did.

You might want to read it. Or any posts, for that matter.

 

[MikeSun5]

Erm, wouldn't that be torture?

That logic's lost on him...

 

[BeAChooser]

You seem to think this is an important question.

I do. I think the answer is quite revealing in some cases.

The former hypothetical is extremely rare.

Perhaps. Note that such a situation could easily have arisen just before the 9/11 attack with just a minor tweaking of the facts. So perhaps we need to be prepared?

In fact, I don't know of a single case in which this has actually come up.

That doesn't mean it couldn't come up and in fact you don't know all of the cases that exist, if for no other reason than that governments keep secrets. You aren't privy to secrets ... other than those that Obama or the NYTimes have chosen to unwisely disclose ... are you?

And please understand that my purpose was to demonstrate that some of the folks most vocal about "torture" here don't seem to have much moral clarity. That there are indeed situations where torture might be justified. In this I think I succeeded.

Another choice is to use conventional interrogation methods such as those recommended by Jack Cloonan, Daniel Coleman, Stuart Herrington and other professional interrogators.

Please note the source I provided in an earlier post indicated that months of conventional interrogation was totally ineffective with regards to KSM and some of the other al-qaeda operatives who were captured. Yet according to the reports, they broke right away when some of the non-lethal *torture* methods, particularly waterboarding, were employed.

Therefore a question needs to be asked of those who advocate the use of torture. Suppose there is not an incredibly-short time limit (necessitating the use of unconventional methods because it is felt conventional methods can't produce results quickly enough) as in the artificial hypothetical which has been constructed, but rather a more normal situation in which there is sufficient time for conventional methods to work. Are you willing to forbid the use of dubious techniques such as water-boarding and to let professional interrogators use the methods which over time have been found to be most effective and most reliable?

Sure. But that does assume you already know the timeline the other side is operating under. It assumes you know that some attack is months off. That it's not going to occur tomorrow. But if you don't know when ... just that it is going to happen, and the consequences of the attack might be the deaths of tens or even hundreds of thousands of people, can we afford to always take the chance and act as if we do have months?

One thing you need to understand it that the world changed on 9/11. A lot of folks on the left simply don't appreciate that fact. Terrorists showed a willingness to cross the WMD threshold. In no war in the past have we faced this dilemma. During the cold war, we were literally willing to ride out a nuclear attack in order to be sure it was real. The efforts to end torture grew out of those earlier periods when there wasn't the urgency to find out what one person knows because a small group had the capability of inflicting tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of deaths in a single attack. That wasn't a threat. Sure, in the past we were facing state sponsored threats of that magitude but deterrence was considered an adequate defense to those threats. But how do you deter small groups of terrorists? They do not fear retribution ... in fact, they are willing to give their lives up in the attack. And who do you unleash your deterrent forces on after they attack? They may even try to make the attack look like it came from another party. No, the only real way to address the terrorist WMD threat is to deal with it before the terrorists can unleash it. And to do that effectively, we have to have information ... information that one captured individual may have. Given that and given how important it is to find out the details concerning any large scale attack as soon as possible, I'm not sure your scenario isn't the rare one.

 

[leftysergeant]

Erm, wouldn't that be torture?

He's cool with that. Where's the problem?

 

[BeAChooser]

But there are hundreds of unproven non-traditional methods from which to choose.

Well you better get busy and prove them, if you want us to use them. I certainly don't want to rely on them when so much is at stake RIGHT NOW.

Arbitrarily selecting torture

It wasn't an arbitrary decision. It was a decision based on the fact that the conventional methods were not working against individuals that were materially involved in 9/11 and who had information we needed to know ASAP. Sending in armies of lawyers with promises of deals and threats of prosecution didn't work either. Torture was chosen because torture is still the best and perhaps only effective approach in such circumstances. And it wasn't done cavalierly. The May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo stated that waterboarding "may be used on a High Value Detainee only if the CIA has ‘credible intelligence that a terrorist attack is imminent’; ‘substantial and credible indicators that the subject has actionable intelligence that can prevent, disrupt or deny this attack’; and ‘[o]ther interrogation methods have failed to elicit this information within the perceived time limit for preventing the attack.’” That was the case. When you develop a machine that can accurately read thoughts, you get back to us. Until then, frankly I think all you are blowing is smoke.

As for my answer to the hypothetical: No, I would not torture the captive -- nor would I engage the services of Noreen Renier -- since in my estimation both these choices would reduce rather than increase the chance of detecting and de-activating the device.

Well, I think you are wrong. I think the facts we already know prove you are wrong. I think that if the OP case goes to trial, then most likely the defendants will be found not guilty, precisely because witness after witness and fact after fact will be presented to show you are wrong. Will show that torture of individuals like KSM worked when nothing else did over months of time, that it was vital we find out what he knew (because WMD scale attacks had entered the picture), and that there was an urgency to finding out what he knew ... the clock was quite possibly ticking on the next attack. Which is why I'm all for Obama's minions bringing this case to trial. I think the result will badly embarrass Obama and his administration and force them to rethink the dubious and dangerous approach they are now taking.

If there were any good evidence that the use of torture or the use of psychics were more likely to produce useful results than conventional interrogation methods, then this might be a difficult moral choice.

But there is. For example, the case of KSM is excellent evidence. You just choose to ignore it. You just choose to ignore the fact that the government is telling you that torture did work in this case when nothing else did. And that we learned a great deal as a result. And what we learned has saved lives. But apparently, BDS knows no bounds.

 

[leftysergeant]

Perhaps. Note that such a situation could easily have arisen just before the 9/11 attack with just a minor tweaking of the facts. So perhaps we need to be prepared?

The only time we have been able to stop attacks aforehand, it has been by good police work.

If torture could stiop terrorist attacks aforehand, the Gestapo would have rolled up all the resistance groups in occupied Europe within days.

Torture is unproven. Police work works.

Your delusions have nothing to do with the real world.

I find it interesting that the only people I see advocating for torture are people of limited intelligence, life experience or respect for human life. That they snivel about wanting to save lives does not mislead me.

And then there are worthless sacks of stuff like Hannity, Beck, and the fat deaf eunuch with no military experience who think that you have to be tough enough to bully the world around or you will be under attack and that it is perfectly okay for a soldier to torture a prisoner.

They know better than the generals, right?

What I see in the pro-torture camp is the stupid being led by the delusional.

And please understand that my purpose was to demonstrate that some of the folks most vocal about "torture" here don't seem to have much moral clarity. That there are indeed situations where torture might be justified. In this I think I succeeded.



Please note the source I provided in an earlier post indicated that months of conventional interrogation was totally ineffective with regards to KSM and some of the other al-qaeda operatives who were captured. Yet according to the reports, they broke right away when some of the non-lethal *torture* methods, particularly waterboarding, were employed.

But you failed to prove that they got any actionable intelligence. Your super tanker of fail has arrived.

 

[BeAChooser]

I'd rather rely on the expertise of people such as Stuart Herrington than on the fantasy notions of people who have watched one too many episode of 24.

Your characterization that folks like me rely on episodes of "24" for our views is simply dishonest. You know full well that there are many experts, who have just as much hands on experience as the one you name, who disagree with you and your expert about the effectiveness of torture. Would you like a sample, NL?

Consider Mr. Kiriakou, a retired CIA agent of 14 years. He was involved in the capture of Abu Zubaydah, a high value Al Qaeda, and then his interrogation, which spanned weeks before waterboarding was tried. According to the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/10/AR2007121002091.html ), he said Zubaydah (they spelled it Zubaida) was

ideologically zealous, defiant and uncooperative -- until the day in mid-summer when his captors strapped him to a board, wrapped his nose and mouth in cellophane and forced water into his throat in a technique that simulates drowning.

... snip ...

The waterboarding lasted about 35 seconds before Abu Zubaida broke down, according to Kiriakou, who said he was given a detailed description of the incident by fellow team members. The next day, Abu Zubaida told his captors he would tell them whatever they wanted, Kiriakou said.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=3978231&page=1

"From that day on, he answered every question," Kiriakou said. "The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks."

How about another example where waterboarding was used:

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/11/exclusive-only-.html

The most effective use of waterboarding, according to current and former CIA officials, was in breaking Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, known as KSM, who subsequently confessed to a number of ongoing plots against the United States.

A senior CIA official said KSM later admitted it was only because of the waterboarding that he talked.

... snip ...

"KSM lasted the longest under waterboarding, about a minute and a half, but once he broke, it never had to be used again," said a former CIA official familiar with KSM's case.

... snip ...

According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the waterboarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in.

And there are lots of historical examples where torture was effective:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200201/hoffman

You can be sure some of those experts will get called to the stand as well, during the upcoming trial. There is going to be a trial, isn't there? Or is all this complaining by Obama's minions just for show and to savage the CIA and Bush's administration in the democrat controlled press?

 

[MikeSun5]

Torture is unproven. Police work works.

Police work? Well, why haven't we thought of that already?!? Let's send some LAPD guys to Kabul and let them take care of this whole Osama Bin Laden situation for us. Jeez, leftysergeant, where where you 7 years ago?

I find it interesting that the only people I see advocating for torture are people of limited intelligence, life experience or respect for human life. That they snivel about wanting to save lives does not mislead me.

And since you're of such high intelligence and deep wisdom, why can't you "see" that nobody here advocates torture? Some of us advocate changing the UN definition to exclude mental stress, but nobody advocates torture.

As for your "respect for human life..."

the interrogator using this technique needs to be taken out and castrated with a dull knife.

Yoo should be placed in a ConEx box and taken to meet the families of the peole it happened to.

wow...

 

[BeAChooser]

Torture - evil - subsume the will to that of the other. Perhaps a greater moral outrage than actually killing.

You are a good example of the left's insanity. You clearly have a broken moral compass if you think 35 seconds of waterboarding is worse than actually killing the person ... much less killing tens of thousands (which is what that person might do if you don't learn what he knows).

Survellance is our strong suit.

And exactly how is the left going to surveil al-Qaeda when the left even objects to monitoring calls from known al-Qaeda members to people in the US. When the left objects to the government building a data base of what phone numbers call what phone numbers so one can break up potential terrorist networks more easily. When the left objects to any infringement on privacy (except, of course, when the left is gathering information to use against its political opponents). How exactly are you going to infiltrate al-Qaeda? You don't think that's been tried? Of course it has. So what exactly are you going to do that is any different? Don't just blow smoke in our faces.

You see folks, this is how insane the left is in America. They are working overtime to damage our ability to fight a war against terror. A very real war. And there will eventually be consequences if they get their way. Like I said in my first comment on this thread, Liberal thinking is going to get a lot of Americans killed some day in an event that could have been prevented.

 

[BeAChooser]

It takes times water was applied over a 5 day period with each application lasting 40 seconds or less and extrapolates that to a 30 day period.

Which explains why KSM said he was only waterboarded 5 times?

 

[leftysergeant]

Police work? Well, why haven't we thought of that already?!? Let's send some LAPD guys to Kabul and let them take care of this whole Osama Bin Laden situation for us. Jeez, leftysergeant, where where you 7 years ago?

What has Afghanistan, where we are fighting a known enemy with known or suspected locations and centers of operations to do with torutring some poor sod about someone who might be some place unknown?

And since you're of such high intelligence and deep wisdom, why can't you "see" that nobody here advocates torture? Some of us advocate changing the UN definition to exclude mental stress, but nobody advocates torture.

Stop contradicting youreself.

As for your "respect for human life..."






wow...

So are you saying that Yoo and the child torturers are not cool with being treated like the animals they are? They should really, then, give more thought to what they recommed be done to people they don't like.

I am not sure Yoo is fully human. He seems not to be very bright.

 

[MikeSun5]

What has Afghanistan, where we are fighting a known enemy with known or suspected locations and centers of operations to do with torutring some poor sod about someone who might be some place unknown?

You are clearly out of touch with reality AND current events if you think that we are fighting a known enemy in Afghanistan. Do you think you, with your vast experience and intelligence, could discern between an Afghan shoe maker and an Afghan bomb maker? How about a sheep herder and a gunfighter? I'm sure you probably could, but 82nd Airborne and 36th ID seem to be having trouble.
The ENTIRE problem in Afghanistan is we have no intel there. We can't see through mountains with satellites, and the local people can see a foreigner coming a mile away - no matter how good the disguise - and will not divulge any information regarding "locations and centers of operations." Police work is simply ineffective in an area like Afghanistan. They need ground intel, which they can not get without interrogation.

Stop contradicting youreself.

So are you saying that Yoo and the child torturers are not cool with being treated like the animals they are? They should really, then, give more thought to what they recommed be done to people they don't like.

Contradicting myself?? *sigh*

 

[leftysergeant]

You are clearly out of touch with reality AND current events if you think that we are fighting a known enemy in Afghanistan. Do you think you, with your vast experience and intelligence, could discern between an Afghan shoe maker and an Afghan bomb maker? How about a sheep herder and a gunfighter?

If you can't tell in less time than it takes to waterboard them, you are too stupid to be on a battlefield anyway.

They need ground intel, which they can not get without interrogation.

And you are not going to get it with torture.

 

[MikeSun5]

And you are not going to get it with torture.

I didn't say torture, I said interrogation. Please read the posts. Anyway, my question to you now is this:

How do you get the ground intel, O wise one?

(I will be sure to forward your response to NATO's ISAF)

 

[Dr Adequate]

Under the scenario I outlined (regardless of whether you think it plausible or not), would you apply non-lethal pain to a prisoner in the hopes of saving a hundred thousand lives or perhaps a few billion lives? Yes or no?

But this is such a stupid question, because it would justify anything.

Yes, if it was certain that it would save billions of lives, then I would torture someone. Also, if it was certain that it would save billions of lives, I would rape a child or set fire to a kitten.

When you have to invoke the saving of billions of lives to justify an action, then that's kind of a big clue that it is not, under any normal circumstances, justifiable.

 

[Dr Adequate]

And exactly how is the left going to surveil al-Qaeda when the left even objects to monitoring calls from known al-Qaeda members to people in the US.

Please quote anyone objecting to this.

 

[applecorped]

Are they calling collect?

 

[gdnp]

And there are lots of historical examples where torture was effective:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200201/hoffman

You can be sure some of those experts will get called to the stand as well, during the upcoming trial. There is going to be a trial, isn't there? Or is all this complaining by Obama's minions just for show and to savage the CIA and Bush's administration in the democrat controlled press?

How effective was it?

The exculpatory philosophy embraced by the French Paras is best summed up by Massu's uncompromising belief that "the innocent [that is, the next victims of terrorist attacks] deserve more protection than the guilty." The approach, however, at least strategically, was counterproductive. Its sheer brutality alienated the native Algerian Muslim community. Hitherto mostly passive or apathetic, that community was now driven into the arms of the FLN, swelling the organization's ranks and increasing its popular support. Public opinion in France was similarly outraged, weakening support for the continuing struggle and creating profound fissures in French civil-military relations. The army's achievement in the city was therefore bought at the cost of eventual political defeat.

Sounds vaguely familiar...kind of like the Iraq war...

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

When you have to invoke the saving of billions of lives to justify an action, then that's kind of a big clue that it is not, under any normal circumstances, justifiable.

Very good point!