CIA Torture Report Released

[rambone]

The first rule of CIA Torture Club is you do not talk about the law

In 2002, detainee Abu Zubaydah spent a total of 266 hours (11 days, 2 hours) in a coffin-sized confinement box and an additional 29 hours in an even smaller confinement box (21 x 30 x 30 inches). The CIA interrogators told Abu Zubaydah that the only way he would leave the facility was in the coffin.

Abu Zubaydah frequently "cried," "begged," "pleaded," and "whimpered," but continued to deny that he had any additional information on current threats to, or operatives in, the United States.

DETENTION SITE GREEN personnel informed CIA Headquarters that it was their assessment that they were "approach[ing] the legal limit" regarding the extensive use of the coffin.

The chief of CTC, Jose Rodriguez, responded: "Strongly urge that any speculative language as to the legality of given activities or, more precisely, judgment calls as to their legality vis-a-vis operational guidelines for this activity agreed upon and vetted at the most senior levels of the agency, be refrained from in written traffic (email or cable traffic). Such language is not helpful."

 

[Leadeye]

i was told by a liberal the other day that our drone strikes are what has created these muslim terrorists. The insanity and stupidity is amazing with the left. You cant even debate with the level of ignorance they exhibit.

Drones are chump change, to really test that belief try daily Arc Light.

 

[rambone]

Russian Roulette

Page 424

 

[DragonGunner]

So when we capture a terrorist and we find out he planted a nuclear bomb in a city…..we don't torture, we make him feel good and comfortable and wait for the bomb to go off. I don't have a problem with torture, they are the enemy trying to kill us, they torture and kill us. To do it just for sport or fun like they did to McCain in "Nam" I'm not for that, but for life saving intel, ya, have at it. And I won't condemn those who were given the OK by politicians who knew what was going on but now want to rewrite history and make criminals out of them now. At least the terrorists aren't two faced.

 

[Denny347]

So when we capture a terrorist and we find out he planted a nuclear bomb in a city…..we don't torture, we make him feel good and comfortable and wait for the bomb to go off. I don't have a problem with torture, they are the enemy trying to kill us, they torture and kill us. To do it just for sport or fun like they did to McCain in "Nam" I'm not for that, but for life saving intel, ya, have at it. And I won't condemn those who were given the OK by politicians who knew what was going on but now want to rewrite history and make criminals out of them now. At least the terrorists aren't two faced.

Torture, Ticking Time Bombs, and Waterboarding Americans - The Atlantic

 

[Jludo]

So when we capture a terrorist and we find out he planted a nuclear bomb in a city…..we don't torture, we make him feel good and comfortable and wait for the bomb to go off. I don't have a problem with torture, they are the enemy trying to kill us, they torture and kill us. To do it just for sport or fun like they did to McCain in "Nam" I'm not for that, but for life saving intel, ya, have at it. And I won't condemn those who were given the OK by politicians who knew what was going on but now want to rewrite history and make criminals out of them now. At least the terrorists aren't two faced.

Right, how many ticking nuclear bombs did our torture program uncover again?
At some point you are just torturing for fun. I.e. Abu Ghraib.

Especially considering they still could never prove definitively that they got Intel through torture which couldn't have been obtained through other means.
not torturing people, no matter how evil, is supposed to be one of the things that separate us from them.

 

[iChokePeople]

Especially considering they still could never prove definitively that they got Intel through torture which couldn't have been obtained through other means.

Curious -- how, exactly, would one prove that?

 

[GodFearinGunTotin]

Torture, Ticking Time Bombs, and Waterboarding Americans - The Atlantic

It's never happened before, so it could never happen?

 

[Thor]

At some point you are just torturing for fun. I.e. Abu Ghraib.

I don't care how 'outraged' adherents to the religion of perpetual outrage were, the stupid frat house/high school pranks at Abu did not rise to the level of torture. If you think they do then every practical joker needs to be pursued as a torturer.

These people are not Citizens of this country, they get no protections under our constitution, they are not fighting in an organized army against a nation state, they are fighting in a tribe against a way of life, they get no protections under international rules of war.

As far as I'm concerned they are rabid dogs that need to be contained or put down before their contagion spreads, I am not averse to making them uncomfortable and asking them a few questions along the way.

Doing what you need to do to save your family and fellow citizens from monsters does not make you a monster. We would not be questioning them if they were not actively trying to destroy us.

In an analogy of St. George vs the Dragon some here would like to side with the dragon because anyone dressed in armor defending their way of life is obviously the monster. You're wrong, arguing for the comfort of the dragon that will kill you is lunacy. I am not interested in preserving the comfort or way of life of the dragon. I will fight the monster will all the tools at my disposal...and put in the situation to act on that would not ask the legality of it ahead of time.

Of course in a past life this attitude 'may' have earned me a full month of Geneva Convention effectiveness classes...PC has been occluding reality for a long time...

 

[DragonGunner]

Right, how many ticking nuclear bombs did our torture program uncover again?
At some point you are just torturing for fun. I.e. Abu Ghraib.

Especially considering they still could never prove definitively that they got Intel through torture which couldn't have been obtained through other means.
not torturing people, no matter how evil, is supposed to be one of the things that separate us from them.

The old "us" better than them is crap, always has been always will be. In the Civil War the Southerners started making land mines for Shermans troops to walk on…..some thought this was the worse thing anyone could ever do to another human being. Sherman put Southern prisoners out front to walk and trip the mines……guess what, they stopped putting out mines. War is hell, there is no such thing as "us" being better. In WWII the Japs tortured and killed many of our troops, my Dad shot and killed men, woman and sometimes children that tried swimming out to the ships with hand grenades they were given to blow up sailers that tried to help them. Some terrorist sets a dirty bomb in a city and doesn't want to tell anyone where its at, I don't want a panzi more worried about his "civil rights", I want him to go to town on him to try and save the thousands that are going to be killed, the hell with lets be better than that crap.

 

[cobber]

Right, how many ticking nuclear bombs did our torture program uncover again?
At some point you are just torturing for fun. I.e. Abu Ghraib.

Especially considering they still could never prove definitively that they got Intel through torture which couldn't have been obtained through other means.
not torturing people, no matter how evil, is supposed to be one of the things that separate us from them.

They'd better hope we never become like them in our war against them. In fact, they're counting on that.

If they guess wrong, there might not be enough virgins in paradise to entertain them all...

 

[cobber]

Torture, Ticking Time Bombs, and Waterboarding Americans - The Atlantic

No one can cite even a single terrorist attack that has been stopped, or could have been stopped, with torture in this manner. Scour all of history and you come up empty. Little wonder that it's always invoked as a hypothetical, not a cautionary tale.Who can prove it won't ever happen?

"History" is only the distillation of facts that are known. Not all events that occurred.

 

[halfmileharry]

They'd better hope we never become like them in our war against them. In fact, they're counting on that.

If they guess wrong, there might not be enough virgins in paradise to entertain them all...

I think they're a bit short sighted on that virgin thing.

 

[JollyMon]

I think they're a bit short sighted on that virgin thing.

Agreed.... Only 300 minutes for all of eternity.

 

[rambone]

Torture apologists during the Spanish Inquisition (where waterboarding was invented).

 

[Blackhawk2001]

I've read a few books and the one I am now has a chapter addressing this. They have interviewed those who trained the interrogators, those that used to run the SERE schools. They all agreed that what they taught in the school (the manuals of which the White House used as the blueprint for their current program) was only used for compliance or punishment. That these methods were ineffective at gaining ACCURATE intelligence. I guess we will agree to disagree. This is the same wide wide berth given to the US Gov in the name of security that they use to target people as "terrorists" (even US citizens) but will not release one bit of information to back their claim up. The transparency demanded of our government is overlooked when someone yells "terrorist". The funny thing is that Bin Laden won after 9-11. The US became a nation of frightened children fearful that a terrorist is hiding behind every corner and giving the US Gov unparalleled authority to spy and disappear whom ever they see as a "threat to national security". We gave our moral compass away after 9-11 and no one seems to miss it. Sad.

Yeah, I've read a few books as well, and talked to a POW survivor about the treatment he received, and took the SERE class in flight school in 1972 (full disclosure - my group managed to avoid the "Prison Camp" by getting thoroughly lost during the evasion portion of the exercise and not being "found" until daylight; an experience I put to good use with another group in another SERE exercise at Ft. Lewis some years later; that group didn't get captured either - we cheated and hid out on the adjacent Indiana Reservation). "Ineffective" is an interesting term, somewhat subject to interpretation depending upon the intent of the bestower of the adjective. It is certain that information provided by KSM lead, eventually, to the killing of OBL. It apparently also led to foiling between 22 and 30 other terror plots KSM had either coordinated or was aware of. I hope you had a chance to read that STRATFOR article for which I posted a link; it had some interesting materials about acknowledged mistakes made in the scramble for information in the aftermath of 9/11. Apparently those mistakes were made because the CIA had no previous experience with torturing prisoners (kinda hard to believe) or perhaps because their previous institutional experience had been with the methods used by the Viet Cong and North Koreans, and they were being restricted in the methods they were being allowed to use. I don't know, and of course, neither do the Senate Intelligence Committee staffers because they NEVER INTERVIEWED ANY INTERROGATORS!!! And of course, Democrat Congresscritters and Administrations have been hamstringing CIA HUMINT since 1979.

 

[Blackhawk2001]

So when we capture a terrorist and we find out he planted a nuclear bomb in a city…..we don't torture, we make him feel good and comfortable and wait for the bomb to go off. I don't have a problem with torture, they are the enemy trying to kill us, they torture and kill us. To do it just for sport or fun like they did to McCain in "Nam" I'm not for that, but for life saving intel, ya, have at it. And I won't condemn those who were given the OK by politicians who knew what was going on but now want to rewrite history and make criminals out of them now. At least the terrorists aren't two faced.

I'm afraid I have to disagree with your impression that the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong tortured civilians and POWs "for sport or fun;" they had definite objectives they were trying to further. In the case of torturing and mutilation of civilians, they were demonstrating that the South Vietnamese government couldn't protect them and cowing the civilians into protecting and supporting them logistically and with intelligence support. They tortured and mutilated South Vietnamese and American POWs to negatively affect their morale and to incite matching atrocities (Mei Lai was by no means the only American atrocity of the war) among the civilians they were forcing to help them. They also tortured American and South Vietnamese prisoners for immediate tactical information (where they could get it), and to break the prisoners' will to resist, hoping to "turn" one or two as a further method of reducing morale, cohesiveness of the prisoners and their resistance to strategic intelligence interrogations. While there may have been guards who reveled in their assignments to torture the prisoners, the interrogators had a cold-blooded purpose to the courses they pursued. We should hope our CIA interrogators had the same cold-blooded attitude toward gathering the Essential Elements of Information which were their goals.

 

[BigBoxaJunk]

"History" is only the distillation of facts that are known. Not all events that occurred.

Distillation is a good word for it, because the process often includes concentrating the parts we like and volatilizing and gassing off those other parts we don't so much want to accept.

 

[Denny347]

Yeah, I've read a few books as well, and talked to a POW survivor about the treatment he received, and took the SERE class in flight school in 1972 (full disclosure - my group managed to avoid the "Prison Camp" by getting thoroughly lost during the evasion portion of the exercise and not being "found" until daylight; an experience I put to good use with another group in another SERE exercise at Ft. Lewis some years later; that group didn't get captured either - we cheated and hid out on the adjacent Indiana Reservation). "Ineffective" is an interesting term, somewhat subject to interpretation depending upon the intent of the bestower of the adjective. It is certain that information provided by KSM lead, eventually, to the killing of OBL. It apparently also led to foiling between 22 and 30 other terror plots KSM had either coordinated or was aware of. I hope you had a chance to read that STRATFOR article for which I posted a link; it had some interesting materials about acknowledged mistakes made in the scramble for information in the aftermath of 9/11. Apparently those mistakes were made because the CIA had no previous experience with torturing prisoners (kinda hard to believe) or perhaps because their previous institutional experience had been with the methods used by the Viet Cong and North Koreans, and they were being restricted in the methods they were being allowed to use. I don't know, and of course, neither do the Senate Intelligence Committee staffers because they NEVER INTERVIEWED ANY INTERROGATORS!!! And of course, Democrat Congresscritters and Administrations have been hamstringing CIA HUMINT since 1979.

Well we all have our opinions and they're is no changing our minds. I've said my peace and is time to bow out.

 

[GCA321321]