Obama releases the "Torture Memos"

[kellyahern]

I'm not sure what you mean. Of course it's still going to hurt.

Then why be upset about the disclosure of it by saying that they will "prepare against" it?

How do you prepare against being fake drowned? The memos said a few of the terrorists were waterboarded hundreds of times. I would think he would have been "prepared" for it after about the first 50 times or so. Yet they still kept on doing it.

Besides the fact that everyone has known about this "enhanced interrogation" technique for years.

 

[Irvine511]

According to former CIA director Michael Hayden fully half of our government's knowledge about the structure and activities of al Qaeda came from those early interrogations. It is healthy, as a nation, to have a discussion about these things but please don't forget the feeling of vulnerability we felt as a country after the 9/11 attacks. And try and understand the responsibility the Bush administration felt in preventing another attack.

in 2005? these memos were issued in May of 2005! this wasn't November of 2001. i've even said that in the days following 9-11, much of this would be understandable, but not excusable. but this continued long, long after 9-11, just as Zubdayah was tortured long, long after he had told us everything we knew. in 2007, George Bush said, "we do not torture." as we know now, that is a lie.


B

y the way, are you still outraged about your civil liberties vis-à-vis government wiretaps now that the Obama administration has chosen to basically continue the Bush program as is? Or was that and "The death of habeas corpus" just part of the Left's anti-Bush hysteria of which Bush-as-war-criminal is just the final vestige?

i encourage you to start a thread on this. i haven't looked into this issue as much, but start a thread, i'll do some reading, and i'll give you my opinion.

Illegal combatants, such as terrorists, pirates or international arms dealers are not -- repeat, not -- prisoners of war covered by the Geneva convention. But, after years of deliberation and weighing positive and negative implications we, as a country, now choose to treat them as such.
That does not, however, automatically make earlier actions war crimes.

firstly, this goes beyond the Geneva Convention. you are aware that there are laws beyond that, yes? secondly, simply because enemy combatants might not fall under whatever terms laid out by the GC, that does NOT mean that these people can and should exist in a legal netherworld where they have no rights. nor does the GC apply to whether or not we torture. it doesn't matter if we were waterboarding your average German soldier in 1945, a teenage Viet Cong soldier in 1967, a member of the Republican Guard in 1991, or someone we pulled out of the sands of Afghanistan. focusing on the legal status of the detainee ignores the fact that IT IS ILLEGAL TO TORTURE, and illegal by our own set of laws that the president, even President Bush, is bound to uphold. if it were not torture, why the need for these tortured memos?

that makes it a war crime. this was not Lyndie England. this was Bush and Cheney and their team of lawyers, and Bybee should be stripped of his federal courtship, at the absolute least.

Congress could have specifically outlawed waterboarding. They didn't until last year.

do you think that had anything to do with the fact that it was a Republican Congress until January of 2007.

the point, INDY, is not even that there was waterboarding, but that this was a program. a program! does this not strike you as being the exact same thing as the whole WMD fiasco. "i know there are weapons, find them!" "i want to waterboard someone, provide me the legal justification!" it's so shockingly Orwellian and terrifying, and i can't, for the life of me, understand why this is excusable but, say, a government bailout of a bank or government run health care is somehow the end of the world.

"Gestapo and Khamer Rouge techniques." That is downright insulting to members of our intelligence services. Please, for one instant, allow for the possibility that these, and only these, techniques used on but a handful of very bad men have saved the lives of American citizens. How many, what number, would it take for you to say, "Oh, well I guess I'm OK with it then"? 100? 1,000? 10,000?

who's insulting our intelligence services, then? those that carried out the torture, or those that broke the law and created this program and policy? these are absolutely techniques that were used by Stalin and by the Khamer Rouge. they were. that's historical fact. that's why they're illegal!

one concession: the Nazis didn't waterboard. that was too much even for them.

i will concede one point. there is a difference between men who torture in order to preserve civilization and those that torture in order to destroy it.

however, when you make torture part of your policy you're destroying civilization! when does it end? once you start, when and where do you stop? what if it works? do you keep going? should we chop off a pinky finger, but not a thumb? or maybe a thumb, but not both thumbs?

it doesn't end. it's a cycle down a drain. and it destroys it's practitioners as much as it destroys the detainee as much as it destroys the government that enabled it's practice.

and, no, INDY. i do not have to consider the possibility that these techniques saved anyone. because you know what? there's no proof that they did. the onus of proof is on you to prove that such information was unattainable without torture, and that such information was invaluable to the prevention of an imminent terrorist attack.

and if these techniques are so useful and so productive, why then were tapes of the waterboarding of Zubdayah and KSM destroyed?

if the program is so defensible, then why don't you defend it instead of excuse it?

you broke the law. you changed the rules. prove to me that it was necessary.

I can accept the possibility that our government went too far in some of their interrogation techniques. I don't belive that now, but I could accept it. But sorry, it would have been done solely with the best of intentions, to save innocent human life. NOT with the same evil design of silencing political dissent and genocide that motivated "Gestapo and Khamer Rouge techniques."

this is how democracies die. when you believe so much in their greatness that you excuse their faults. when you don't ask questions. when you trust the government to do things that they're not going to tell you about.

god forbid you ever are mistaken for Jose Padilla.

The largest one day sporting event in the world. The Indianapolis 500.

and i'm sure waterboarding has prevented it from being attacked.

keep on thinking that.

 

[Irvine511]

I might be off topic here,

but there is a war being waged.

so the rules no longer apply?

 

[INDY500]

I might be off topic here,

but there is a war being waged.

Didn't you get the memo? War is such a harsh word that kinda implies good guys and bad guys. It's Overseas Contingency Operations now.

 

[Irvine511]

Didn't you get the memo? War is such a harsh word that kinda implies good guys and bad guys. It's Overseas Contingency Operations now.

you're right. war makes everyone morally equivalent. we do whatever we need to do in order to make us think that we are winning, no matter the cost to others and ourselves, and no matter the cost to American soldiers who are now in more danger of bad treatment should they be captured by our enemies, and no matter the recruitment tool it becomes to angry 15 year old boys across the arab world who have no chance of getting a job or laid.

 

[INDY500]

war makes everyone morally equivalent.

It's just the opposite I would think. Is that what you meant to say? Both sides usually claim moral superiority rather than recognize each other as moral equivalents.

we do whatever we need to do in order to make us think that we are winning, no matter the cost to others and ourselves, and no matter the cost to American soldiers who are now in more danger of bad treatment should they be captured by our enemies, and no matter the recruitment tool it becomes to angry 15 year old boys across the arab world who have no chance of getting a job or laid.

Sounds nice but how much of that is really true? The way the Geneva Conventions work is through the mutual consent of signees. Treat our soldiers this way and we will do likewise. And above all, keep civilian involvement to a minimum. Al-Queda isn't a signee. We know they target civilians, hold Americans hostage or execute them. Where do they hold POWs?

The 9/11 attackers and London bombers were not poor. Can't speak to their luck with the ladies or lack thereof.

At any rate, I think you give people willing to blow themselves up in crowded shops, on buses or in schools waaaay too much credit if you believe they will match our restraint with their own.

Better to crush them then wait to find out if you ask me. Then again, at the rate Western countries are giving in to Islamic demands through appeasement, terrorism may soon become unnecessary.

 

[Irvine511]

It's just the opposite I would think. Is that what you meant to say? Both sides usually claim moral superiority rather than recognize each other as moral equivalents.

you're willing to torture. our moral superiority, our better way of life, is meaningless in war, evidently. we toss out our rules if it suits our purposes, and we cite existential threats.

just like all torture regimes have done through history.

Better to crush them then wait to find out if you ask me.

crush a child's testicles?

 

[INDY500]

you're willing to torture. our moral superiority, our better way of life, is meaningless in war, evidently. we toss out our rules if it suits our purposes, and we cite existential threats.

just like all torture regimes have done through history.

And yet someone had to recognize as evil, stand up to, fight and ultimately defeat at any cost each of these very real torture regimes or they wouldn't be banished to history books would they?

Let us hope we never run out of Churchills.

We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

 

[Irvine511]

And yet someone had to recognize as evil, stand up to, fight and ultimately defeat at any cost each of these very real torture regimes or they wouldn't be banished to history books would they?

Let us hope we never run out of Churchills.

did Churchill torture? when? where?

you're fundamentally misunderstanding what he means by "cost." he doesn't mean "self-immolate."

 

[yolland]

The Nazis had been torturing and executing dissidents for several years before the UK declared war on Germany, Churchill knew it perfectly well, that had nothing to do with the decision.

 

[indra]

And yet someone had to recognize as evil, stand up to, fight and ultimately defeat at any cost each of these very real torture regimes or they wouldn't be banished to history books would they?

Let us hope we never run out of Churchills.

Hmm. Since we can certainly now be considered a torture regime, maybe we should hope instead that no Churchhills come after us.

 

[INDY500]

Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in a month

Doesn't this prove he was a terrorist? I mean, if he was innocent the water would not have rejected him, he would have drowned and thus been proven innocent.

To FYM (This is a Dennis Miller joke but at least pretend for a just moment that we're the good guys and that GWB really isn't our greatest enemy. Then maybe y'all can laugh at it)

 

[deep]

here is one picture (does flickr load on here?)


here is an article from local paper

Bush lawyer defends waterboarding in local debate John Yoo, whose memos justified controversial interrogation tactics, defends the practices during a Chapman University debate.

By MARTIN WISCKOL The Orange County Register

ORANGE – John Yoo, a former Bush administration lawyer whose memos justified coercive interrogation tactics including waterboarding, said at a debate today that the controversial tactics were appropriate in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. "Three thousand of our fellow citizens had been killed in a deliberate attack by a foreign enemy," he told an audience of several hundred at Chapman University. "That forced us in the government to have to consider measures to gain information using presidential constitutional provisions to protect the country from further attack." Yoo worked in the White House's Office of Legal Counsel and was among those who wrote the legal memos that provide the CIA with guidelines for interrogation.
Waterboarding, a tactic that simulates drowning, has been condemned by Atty. Gen Eric Holder as torture and, along with other aggressive interrogation techniques, has been banned by President Obama. Opponents of the practices on hand at today's debate including four people with black hoods reminiscent of those worn by prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and catcallers who interrupted Yoo three times. But the principal opponents at the debate – Chapman law professors Katherine Darmer and Lawrence Rosenthal – attacked the coercive interrogation techniques from a legal standpoint.
"Prior to the War on Terror, we took the position that waterboarding was torture and prosecuted it as such," Darmer said of the interrogation method. Darmer and Rosenthal also challenged the effectiveness of the technique – particularly in light of CIA memos recently released that reported that waterboarding was used 183 times in one month against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described planner of the Sept. 11 attacks, and 83 times in one month against Abu Zubaydah, a Qaeda operative. "How effective is a tactic you have to use 266 times?" said Darmer. "We are lawyers. Our job is to follow the law. Torture is illegal and it's also wrong." Yoo, who was joined in his defense by Chapman law school Dean John Eastman, scoffed at his opponents. "What I hear from Prof. Darmer and Prof. Rosenthal is that they would, in the same circumstance, rule out any form of coercive interrogation no matter who we help – including and up to Osama bin Laden – no matter what the circumstances," said Yoo, who is now a visiting professor at Chapman law school. "Was it worth it? We haven't had an attack in more than seven years. Fifty percent of the information that we have on al Qaeda and its workings came from interrogation." Darmer and Rosenthal argued that much of the information from interrogations came prior to the use of coercive techniques, and that coercive methods are often counterproductive and yield bad information. "These tactics, not surprisingly, sent us on wild goose chases after false leads," Darmer said. Obama has said his administration would not prosecute CIA agents who used waterboarding and other controversial interrogation techniques, but has not ruled out prosecution of the lawyers, like Yoo, who fashioned the legal guidelines for interrogation. When Yoo first came to the podium to speak today, he was greeted with yells of "war criminal" and "He doesn't belong in the university – he belongs in jail." Yoo responded with a slight smile. "Maybe you all should conduct the debate," he said. "I'll write questions on cards and hand them in."

here is a picture I took of the photographer taking the picture

 

[deep]

One more picture from the paper.

From left, Chapman law school Dean John Eastman, Bush administration lawyer John Yoo and Chapman law professor M. Katherine B. Darmer
laugh before the debate as the moderator asks for a heckle-free session. Yoo wrote or co-wrote memos justifying the use of waterboarding.

CINDY YAMANAKA, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Several hundred attended the debate on "Presidential Power and Success in Times of Conflict" held at Chapman University's Memorial Hall.
John Yoo, the Bush administration lawyer who wrote or co-wrote memos justifying the use of waterboarding and other interrogation techniques was one of the speakers.

CINDY YAMANAKA, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Ok, that's me in the front row, blue shirt, long sleves.

 

[INDY500]

Ok, that's me in the front row, blue shirt, long sleves.

Wow !! Front row center. Did you get your tickets through presale by being a member of JohnYoo.com?

 

[mobvok]

From Philip Zelikow, Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission
Link

The underlying absurdity of the administration's position can be summarized this way. Once you get to a substantive compliance analysis for "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" you get the position that the substantive standard is the same as it is in analogous U.S. constitutional law. So the OLC must argue, in effect, that the methods and the conditions of confinement in the CIA program could constitutionally be inflicted on American citizens in a county jail.

In other words, Americans in any town of this country could constitutionally be hung from the ceiling naked, sleep deprived, water-boarded, and all the rest -- if the alleged national security justification was compelling. I did not believe our federal courts could reasonably be expected to agree with such a reading of the Constitution.

To those who support this torture: Pray you are never subject to the whims, bias, mistakes, and curious ideas of the Executive Branch. That's all the protection you'll have if they ever come one day. That innocent man from Oregon whose fingerprint was "found" with the Madrid bombing would be thankful.

America has executed people for using these torturing techniques. Of course those who authorized it will claim it was inevitable and necessary. Would they say otherwise? Of course, that puts them in awkward company with a long parade of petty and murderous tyrants who could claim threats that, with heavy heart, they reluctantly conceded to this...unpleasantness.

It's not just the action itself that is forbidden, the point of treaties banning it is the consensus there is never a cause that justifies it. What burns all the more is the continuation after July 22, 2004: after the 9/11 commission report detailed that the success of these stupid men was in large part due to structural, bureaucratic flaws that prevented shared information that would have ended their plot. Had the left hand talked to the right, we'd have simply stopped it.

 

[INDY500]

I'm gonna repeat an offhand joke I made here just over a year ago here. Less of a joke now I fear.

How can one be guilty of a war crime in a "so-called' war?

 

[Irvine511]

How can one be guilty of a war crime in a "so-called' war?

the inconsistency rests on you, friend.

you're saying that this is a war, yet no one on our side can be guilty of war crimes (for if the president does it, then it is legal).

just like we don't torture, but we do, but it works, making it not torture, even after the 83rd time. we stole our techniques from the communists, but we're better than they are because we're not communists.

the self-refuting logic continues.

 

[BVS]

I'm gonna repeat an offhand joke I made here just over a year ago here. Less of a joke now I fear.

How can one be guilty of a war crime in a "so-called' war?

Oh, the beauty of conservative intelligentsia...

Wage war on ideas, that way they can last forever.

But it's not a real war, that way we can torture them and not follow any moral code.

But remind people it's a war every chance you get, that way you can keep them in fear and not have to talk about the other issues to which you fail at time and time again...

This is the neo-CON.

 

[Irvine511]

now all those really tortured rationales and excuses for the Iraq War are starting to make sense.

Report: Abusive tactics used to seek Iraq-al Qaida link
Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: April 22, 2009 10:27:19 AM

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.

Such information would've provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush's main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. In fact, no evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and Saddam's regime.

The use of abusive interrogation — widely considered torture — as part of Bush's quest for a rationale to invade Iraq came to light as the Senate issued a major report tracing the origin of the abuses and President Barack Obama opened the door to prosecuting former U.S. officials for approving them.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and others who advocated the use of sleep deprivation, isolation and stress positions and waterboarding, which simulates drowning, insist that they were legal.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.

"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.

"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."

It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released Justice Department document.

"There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he continued.

"Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies."

Senior administration officials, however, "blew that off and kept insisting that we'd overlooked something, that the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information," he said.

A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.

"While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq," Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."

Excerpts from Burney's interview appeared in a full, declassified report on a two-year investigation into detainee abuse released on Tuesday by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., called Burney's statement "very significant."

"I think it's obvious that the administration was scrambling then to try to find a connection, a link (between al Qaida and Iraq)," Levin said in a conference call with reporters. "They made out links where they didn't exist."

Levin recalled Cheney's assertions that a senior Iraqi intelligence officer had met Mohammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, in the Czech Republic capital of Prague just months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The FBI and CIA found that no such meeting occurred.

A senior Guantanamo Bay interrogator, David Becker, told the committee that only "a couple of nebulous links" between al Qaida and Iraq were uncovered during interrogations of unidentified detainees, the report said.

Others in the interrogation operation "agreed there was pressure to produce intelligence, but did not recall pressure to identify links between Iraq and al Qaida," the report said.

The report, the executive summary of which was released in November, found that Rumsfeld, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and other former senior Bush administration officials were responsible for the abusive interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo and in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rumsfeld approved extreme interrogation techniques for Guantanamo in December 2002. He withdrew his authorization the following month amid protests by senior military lawyers that some techniques could amount to torture, violating U.S. and international laws.

Military interrogator, however, continued employing some techniques in Afghanistan and later in Iraq.

Bush and his top lieutenants charged that Saddam was secretly pursuing nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in defiance of a United Nations ban, and had to be overthrown because he might provide them to al Qaida for an attack on the U.S. or its allies.

they couldn't find a justification for the Iraq invasion, so they tried to torture a reason out of Al-Qaeda ... and even then, they couldn't get a justification.

 

[kellyahern]

"Ex-Abu Ghraib officer: Study proves military people were scapegoats"

CIA, harsh military interrogations linked - Capitol Hill- msnbc.com

Just when I think it couldn't have been any worse . . .

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the committee's chairman, said the report shows that abuse of prisoners was sweeping and not, as former Bush administration defense official Paul Wolfowitz once said, the result of "a few bad apples." As the No. 2 defense official, Wolfowitz was a major architect of the Iraq war.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

The Associated Press reports that the highest Bush administration officials signed off on waterboarding:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice verbally OK'd the CIA's request to subject alleged al-Qaida terrorist Abu Zubaydah to waterboarding in July 2002, a decision memorialized a few days later in a secret memo that the Obama administration declassified last week.

Rice's role was detailed in a narrative released Wednesday by the Senate Intelligence Committee. It provides the most detailed timeline yet for how the CIA's harsh interrogation program was conceived and approved at the highest levels in the Bush White House.

The new timeline shows that Rice played a greater role than she admitted last fall in written testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The narrative also shows that dissenting legal views about the severe interrogation methods were brushed aside repeatedly.

But even the new timeline has yet to resolve the central question of who inside the Bush administration first broached the idea of using waterboarding and other brutal tactics against terror detainees in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The Intelligence Committee's timeline comes a day after the Senate Armed Services Committee released an exhaustive report detailing direct links between the CIA's harsh interrogation program and abuses of prisoners at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in Afghanistan and at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

Both revelations follow President Barack Obama's release of internal Bush administration legal memos that justified the use of severe methods by the CIA, a move that kicked up a firestorm from opposing sides of the ideological spectrum.


According to the new narrative, which compiles legal advice provided by the Bush administration to the CIA, Rice personally conveyed the administration's approval for waterboarding of Zubaydah, a so-called high-value detainee, to then-CIA Director George Tenet in July 2002...

As McClatchy notes, Cheney attended a meeting in 2003 to discuss the continuation of the interrogation program:

The Director of Central Intelligence in the spring of 2003 sought a reaffirmation of the legality of the interrogation methods. Cheney, Rice, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and White House counsel Alberto Gonzales were among those at a meeting where it was decided that the policies would continue. Rumsfeld and Powell weren't.

The Washington Post reports that the timeline suggests Rumsfeld and Powell were not briefed on the program until September 2003.


The AP continues to discuss the timeline of how the harsh-interrogation methods were approved:

Last fall, Rice acknowledged to the Senate Armed Services Committee only that she had attended meetings where the CIA interrogation request was discussed. She said she did not recall details. Rice omitted her direct role in approving the program in her written statement to the committee.

A spokesman for Rice declined comment when reached Wednesday.

Days after Rice gave Tenet the nod, the Justice Department approved the use of waterboarding in a top secret Aug. 1 memo. Zubaydah underwent waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002.

In the years that followed, according to the narrative issued Wednesday, there were numerous internal legal reviews of the program, suggesting government attorneys raised concerns that the harsh methods, particularly waterboarding, might violate federal laws against torture and the U.S. Constitution.

But Bush administration lawyers continued to validate the program. The CIA voluntarily dropped the use of waterboarding, which has a long history as a torture tactic, from its arsenal of techniques after 2005.

According to the two Senate reports, CIA lawyers first presented the plan to waterboard Zubaydah to White House lawyers in April 2002, a few weeks after his capture in Pakistan.

In May 2002, Rice, along with then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and White House counsel Alberto Gonzales met at the White House with the CIA to discuss the use of waterboarding.

The Armed Services Committee report says that six months earlier, in December 2001, the Pentagon's legal office already had made inquiries about the use of mock interrogation and detention tactics to a U.S. military training unit that schools armed forces personnel in how to endure harsh treatment.

In July 2002, responding to a follow-up from the Pentagon general counsel's office, officials at the training unit, the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, detailed their methods for the Pentagon. The list included waterboarding.

But the training unit warned that harsh physical techniques could backfire by making prisoners more resistant. They also cautioned about the reliability of information gleaned from the severe methods and warned that the public and political backlash could be "intolerable."

"A subject in extreme pain may provide an answer, any answer or many answers in order to get the pain to stop," the training officials said in their memo.

Less than a week later, the Justice Department issued two legal opinions that sanctioned the CIA's harsh interrogation program. The memos appeared to draw deeply on the survival school data provided to the Pentagon to show that the CIA's methods would not cross the line into torture.

The opinion concluded that the harsh interrogation methods would be acceptable for use on terror detainees because the same techniques did not cause severe physical or mental pain to U.S. military students who were tested in the government's carefully controlled training program.

Several people from the survival program objected to the use of their mock interrogations in battlefield settings. In an October 2002 e-mail, a senior Army psychologist told personnel at Guantanamo Bay that the methods were inherently dangerous and students were sometimes injured, even in a controlled setting.

"The risk with real detainees is increased exponentially," he said.

Nevertheless, for the next two years, the CIA and military officials received interrogation training and direct interrogation support from JPRA trainers.

Last week, the Obama administration's top intelligence official, Dennis Blair, privately told intelligence employees that "high value information" was obtained through the harsh interrogation techniques. However, on Tuesday, in a written statement, Blair said, "The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means."

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

Did anyone see Jon Stewart and the clip he showed of Rove yelling that they had "ruined torture" ?-something to that effect (one of the most bizarrely ironic statements ever, and he acted like a kid who had his candy taken away). Next thing you know they'll be ruining rape too. I call for impeachment hearings.

It was a FALSE FLEXIBLE wall, don't forget

some of life has to be mysterious

We Don't Torture | The Daily Show | Comedy Central

 

[Irvine511]

given the Churchill comparison made the other day, i think it's appropriate to post this from Sullivan's blog:

The West has been attacked many times before by barbarians. As someone who grew up in Southern England between London and the Channel, this was perhaps more obvious to me than to some Americans. In the countryside around my home, there were still occasional concrete constructions designed to impede Nazi tanks left rotting in the woods. My high-school playground retained its air-raid shelters (we stored our dirty books there). My great aunt was blind in one eye from a bomb blast in the blitz; my grandfather lived with a brain injury when he was a prison guard in the war and was attacked by a prison inmate during an air-raid; my mother was knocked over by the impact of a rocket at the end of the war; my parents and aunts and uncles were evacuated. Most ordinary people lived through the Blitz, a random 9/11 a week, from an army poised to invade, and turn England's democratic heritage into a footnote in a Nazi empire.

As all that was happening, and as intelligence was vital, the British captured over 500 enemy spies operating in Britain and elsewhere. Most went through Camp 020, a Victorian pile crammed with interrogators. As Britain's very survival hung in the balance, as women and children were being killed on a daily basis and London turned into rubble, Churchill nonetheless knew that embracing torture was the equivalent of surrender to the barbarism he was fighting. The chief interrogator at Camp 020 was someone out of the movies:

Colonel Robin “Tin Eye” Stephens was the commander of the wartime spy prison and interrogation centre codenamed Camp 020, an ugly Victorian mansion surrounded by barbed wire on the edge of Ham Common. In the course of the war, some 500 enemy spies from 44 countries passed through Camp 020; most were interrogated, at some point, by Stephens; all but a tiny handful crumbled.

Stephens was a bristling, xenophobic martinet; in appearance, with his glinting monocle and cigarette holder, he looked exactly like the caricature Gestapo interrogator who has “vays of making you talk”.

Stephens had ways of making anyone talk. In a top secret report, recently declassified by MI5 and now in the Public Records Office, he listed the tactics needed to break down a suspect: “A breaker is born and not made . . . pressure is attained by personality, tone, and rapidity of questions, a driving attack in the nature of a blast which will scare a man out of his wits.”

The terrifying commandant of Camp 020 refined psychological intimidation to an art form.

Suspects often left the interrogation cells legless with fear after an all-night grilling. An inspired amateur psychologist, Stephens used every trick, lie and bullying tactic to get what he needed; he deployed threats, drugs, drink and deceit. But he never once resorted to violence. “Figuratively,” he said, “a spy in war should be at the point of a bayonet.” But only ever figuratively. As one colleague wrote: “The Commandant obtained results without recourse to assault and battery. It was the very basis of Camp 020 procedure that nobody raised a hand against a prisoner.”

Stephens did not eschew torture out of mercy. This was no squishy liberal: the eye was made of tin, and the rest of him out of tungsten. (Indeed, he was disappointed that only 16 spies were executed during the war.) His motives were strictly practical. “Never strike a man. It is unintelligent, for the spy will give an answer to please, an answer to escape punishment. And having given a false answer, all else depends upon the false premise.”...

Torture is the weapon of cowards and bullies and monsters. Cheney is all three. Prosecute him.

and on another note, i do think there might be an element of political calculation by the shrewder-and-more-ruthless-than-he-looks Obama.

he's called Cheney -- the most unpopular member of the Bush administraiton -- back out of his hole, forced him to defend the undefendable, and forced the GOP to have to fall into ranks behind him.

ruthless.

 

[Bluer White]

The Associated Press reports that the highest Bush administration officials signed off on waterboarding:

WASHINGTON (AP) - Then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice verbally OK'd the CIA's request to subject alleged al-Qaida terrorist Abu Zubaydah to waterboarding in July 2002, a decision memorialized a few days later in a secret memo that the Obama administration declassified last week.

Do you support prosecuting Rice? Tenet?


These people?

FOX News has learned there were more than 30 meetings and briefings with members of Congress on the subject since 2002.

The first such briefing dealt with the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, the Al Qaeda operations chief who ran the training camps in Afghanistan where the Sept. 11 hijackers were trained. Sources said California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, now the speaker of the House, attended the meeting with then-Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla. (who later became CIA director), and she did not raise any objections.

The briefings were given to the chairmen and ranking members of the intelligence committees in the House and Senate until 2006. That could cover Sen. John Rockefeller, W.Va., and Rep. Jane Harman, Calif., both Democrats, as well as Sen. Pat Roberts, Kan., Sen. Lindsey Graham, S.C., Sen. Richard Shelby, Ala., and Rep. Pete Hoekstra, Mich., all Republicans.

Defenders of the interrogation program note that if Congress had wanted to kill the program, all it had to do was withhold funding, which didn't happen.

Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, has personally requested from Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair an unclassified list of names of all members of Congress who attended those briefings, complete with dates and locations.

Republicans Claim Top Lawmakers Were in the Loop on Interrogations - First 100 Days of Presidency - Politics FOXNews.com

 

[Irvine511]

Do you support prosecuting Rice? Tenet?

we'll see as roles become clearer.

i absolutely support the prosecution of Cheney and at the very least the removal of Bybee from the 9th Circuit.

 

[INDY500]

pressure is attained by personality, tone, and rapidity of questions, a driving attack in the nature of a blast which will scare a man out of his wits.

Is there any, ANY, doubt that if this was the worst of it, Bush critics would label this as torture?

First it was The "so-called" War On Terror

Then it was "The Patriot Act and Terrorist Surveillance Programs shred the Constitution."

Who's to say that raising your voice, interrogating a suspect without a breath mint, or acting in a manner to "scare a man out of his wits" doesn't fall under the ambiguous term of torture? If Bush lawyers and Dick Chaney deemed it not torture you can damn well be sure that Patrick Leahy and Keith Olbermann would say it was. Call it a hunch.

Hamstrung electronic eavesdropping. No harsh interrogation. The New York Times doesn't print al-queda's top secrets on their front page, just ours.

So just how were we supposed to get intelligence?

 

[Irvine511]

Is there any, ANY, doubt that if this was the worst of it, Bush critics would label this as torture?

First it was The "so-called" War On Terror

Then it was "The Patriot Act and Terrorist Surveillance Programs shred the Constitution."

Who's to say that raising your voice, interrogating a suspect without a breath mint, or acting in a manner to "scare a man out of his wits" doesn't fall under the ambiguous term of torture? If Bush lawyers and Dick Chaney deemed it not torture you can damn well be sure that Patrick Leahy and Keith Olbermann would say it was. Call it a hunch.

Hamstrung electronic eavsdropping. No harsh interogation. The New York Times doesn't print al-queda's top secrets on their front page, just ours.

So just how were we supposed to get intelligence?

INDY, you don't have arguments. you don't even have a hunch. you just hate "liberals."

the terms of torture were clear. Cheney obfuscated them. we knew what was legal, and we knew what was illegal. the whole point of these memos was to undermine language itself in order to justify what was clearly already illegal.

 

[Salome]

So just how were we supposed to get intelligence?

well, not electing Bush would have been a good step

 

[BVS]

Is there any, ANY, doubt that if this was the worst of it, Bush critics would label this as torture?

First it was The "so-called" War On Terror

Then it was "The Patriot Act and Terrorist Surveillance Programs shred the Constitution."

Who's to say that raising your voice, interrogating a suspect without a breath mint, or acting in a manner to "scare a man out of his wits" doesn't fall under the ambiguous term of torture? If Bush lawyers and Dick Chaney deemed it not torture you can damn well be sure that Patrick Leahy and Keith Olbermann would say it was. Call it a hunch.

Hamstrung electronic eavesdropping. No harsh interrogation. The New York Times doesn't print al-queda's top secrets on their front page, just ours.

So just how were we supposed to get intelligence?

Pathetic...