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America The Torturer, dragged down and -stained forever by dubya, rummy, head and the rest of their oil-thirsty, blood-thirsty, criminal mob. An even tier mob of bags than Tricky 's gang. All Repugs, of course.
Interesting new book by a guy who spent his career as a professional interrogator.
1) Torture such as waterboarding just gets you what the person thinks you want to hear.
2) Torture, such as waterboarding, is ineffective.
The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda
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In the new book The Black Banners: The Inside Story of 9/11 and the War Against al-Qaeda, former FBI agent and interrogator Ali Soufan says that the government missed key opportunities to prevent terrorism attacks and find Osama bin Laden sooner because of mismanaged interrogations and dysfunctional relationships within the government's counterterrorism agencies.
On Tuesday's Fresh Air, Soufan describes some of the key al-Qaida interrogations he conducted after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which provided valuable intelligence to U.S. officials. During one interrogation, Soufan and his partner got Abu Jandal, bin Laden's former bodyguard, to identify several of the Sept. 11 hijackers. He also interrogated a terrorist named Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan after Sept. 11. Soufan got Zubaydah to give up valuable information — including the fact that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind behind the Sept. 11 attacks, and that Jose Padilla was plotting to detonate a dirty bomb in the United States — by using techniques that hinged on building trust and rapport with Zubaydah, withholding information and determining exactly what the terrorist knew.
"We started with Abu Zubaydah with a very simple question — asking him his name — and he responded by giving a fake name," Soufan tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "After he gave that fake name, I said, 'What if I call you Honey?' — the name which his mother nicknamed him as a child. ... We needed to shake this individual and say, 'Look, we know a lot about you. Don't lie to us.' "
Halfway through Zubaydah's interrogations, which Soufan refers to as "mental poker games," the CIA decided to take over the sessions. They brought in a private contractor to use what they called enhanced interrogation techniques with the terrorist.
"He had a different approach that [those of] us on the ground with the counterterrorism team were a little nervous about," says Soufan. "We had never done something like this in the U.S. government. ... At the time, the idea was to stop this rapport thing, stop talking to him, and try to find ways to diminish his abilities to resist. That was nudity, sleep deprivation, loud music, etc."
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Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP
Ali Soufan testifies from behind a black curtain and a room divider to protect his iden y in 2009, during a Senate hearing to examine the Bush administration's detention and interrogation program.
Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Ali Soufan testifies from behind a black curtain and a room divider to protect his iden y in 2009, during a Senate hearing to examine the Bush administration's detention and interrogation program.
Soufan says that he objected to the enhanced techniques, which eventually included waterboarding Zubaydah 83 times.
"I think the frustration part was [thinking], 'OK, we have a guy cooperating [with our methods]. Why stop? If it's working, why break it?' " he says.
Soufan also tells Terry Gross that the information received from the enhanced techniques was later distorted by some in the intelligence community.
"When there was a pushback later about enhanced interrogation techniques, we were giving alleged facts that enhanced interrogation techniques [like waterboarding] produced a lot of actionable intelligence that saved lives," he says. "We were told that Abu Zubaydah, after being waterboarded, identified Jose Padilla as the alleged dirty bomber and that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was the mastermind behind 9/11. The problem with this [was that] these allegations were totally false, because Abu Zubaydah gave this information well before these advanced interrogation techniques were applied."
http://www.npr.org/2011/09/13/140401...-story-of-9-11
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Torture got a guy who wasn't even a member of Al Qaeda to admit he was the #3 in AQ, and that Saddam and AQ were working together, both of which were patently false, and which the guy thought we wanted to hear, just so the torture would stop.
America The Torturer, dragged down and -stained forever by dubya, rummy, head and the rest of their oil-thirsty, blood-thirsty, criminal mob. An even tier mob of bags than Tricky 's gang. All Repugs, of course.
Last edited by boutons_deux; 09-14-2011 at 01:01 PM.
So do mental games always work and enchanted interrogation never work?
Osama bin Laden killed: CIA admits waterboarding yielded vital information
Give it up. You can scare people into telling the truth.
What do you want the torturer to say Yoni? That waterboarding was a failure 99% of the time?
In the context of what was being achieved and who was being waterboarded (not tortured), a 1% return on that investment would have been acceptable. But, since only 4 people were actually subjected to the enhanced interrogation technique, 25% is the worst we could have done.
You have a small point.waterboarding yielded some of the intelligence information
It works.
But it is far less effective than not torturing people, and using conventional techniques, and much more likely to get you bad information.
That is aside from the fact that it is morally repugnant.
Why are you advocating immoral, inefficient, questioning?
One of the guys was subjected to waterboarding 189 times. .25/189= 0.1%
When will we decide that it doesn't work well, 101st time or...?
These people expect to be tortured, and generally are pretty resistant to it.
The guy who wrote the book in the OP was extensively trained, educated, and got much better results not using such things.
waterboarding = torture, I don't care how you want to paint it.
And the consequences of doing it go well beyond whatever actionable intelligence you can gather.
uh-huh. Keep telling yourself that.
Some enterprising Fox journalist acted on that assumption and concluded otherwise, if memory serves.
I will buy that as soon as you subject yourself to the technique 189 times.
Until then, you coward,
shut.
the.
.
up.
Not only does it not work, it makes us into the evil country that AQ says we are.
AQ ideology is an idea, like communism, fascism, libertarianism, or western liberalism.
The main component of that idea is that the US is evil.
Fighting the idea that you are evil by being evil is straight up ed.
I know you don't care but, the law does.
There are a myriad of practices that have been lumped into the term "waterboarding" and then, we've all been beaten over the head with a media-created narrative that the enhanced interrogation technique used by our intelligence forces cons utes torture when, in fact, it does not.
For instances, the Japanese used a form of torture, also called "waterboarding" that bears little resemblance to the enhanced interrogation technique tagged with the name "waterboarding." Their form of "waterboarding," many time resulted in the death of the person being tortured because, they would actually force the ingestion of water, bloat the victim's stomach, and strike them in their bloated stomach, often rupturing the organ and causing mortal injury.
The enhanced interrogation technique used by our intelligence forces is the identical practice used on those same intelligence forces and certain other of our military when being trained to resist, or when they are being shown how to apply, the technique.
I disagree and, apparently, so does the current administration. They're probably kicking themselves for categorically ruling out the availability of this interrogation technique in the future...particularly when they discovered exactly what intelligence it produced.
I'm sure it was part of that Day 1 orientation, I've described before, where Obama learned, upon assuming office, exactly how effective our anti-terrorism policies had been to that point. To his credit, he's continued the vast majority of those policies.
On this one, he took it off the table before he ever took the opportunity to understand its true effectiveness.
US armed personnel have waterboarded others in the past, and it was found to be torture.
The Bush administration took waterboarding off the table.I disagree and, apparently, so does the current administration. They're probably kicking themselves for categorically ruling out the availability of this interrogation technique in the future...particularly when they discovered exactly what intelligence it produced.
I'm sure it was part of that Day 1 orientation, I've described before, where Obama learned, upon assuming office, exactly how effective our anti-terrorism policies had been to that point. To his credit, he's continued the vast majority of those policies.
On this one, he took it off the table before he ever took the opportunity to understand its true effectiveness.
lol true effectiveness
The appropriate response to this is, our enemies are going to call us evil and take any opportunity to exploit our practices to make us out to be evil.
BFD.
The problem I have is people like you and other's not being able to make the fundamental distinction between the enhanced interrogation technique we employed and the one that cons utes torture.
The problem I have is people like your and others' not realizing that the "fun" waterboarding you refer to had already been deemed torture by the US long before its use after 2001.
they think gays are evil. they think the existance of Israel is evil. they think our open, permissive, and fair (esp. in regards to women) culture is evil. i would like to know how much waterboarding figures into the equation of how much were are viewed as evil to them.
Do they really need more ammunition, especially something about which they would be right?
i'm going to ask this question again:
Do mental games always work and enchanced interrogation never work?
Ask the people who actually interrogate. Oh look, there's one in the OP.
If the guy who actually did the waterboarding writes a book, I'll read it. If it's as much fun as yoni makes it out to be, why would he keep it a big secret?
So you are going with:
Don't underestimate the power of the dark side?
That's what you are going with? The same argument used by a movie villian?
No.
And, I would add to that; when non-enhanced interrogation practices are employed -- and, they don't work -- you've wasted precious time. When enhanced interrogation practices are employed -- and, they do work -- you have actionable intelligence that may actually avoid the loss of life.
Also, it should be pointed out, enhanced interrogation techniques were employed on only 4 persons and, only after non-enhanced interrogation techniques failed to produce results in an environment where the interrogators believed it was imperative to elicit information on an imminent event.
Why don't we use that little truth serum that makes people blurt out the truth?
reasonable torture isn't wrong if it leads to a good thing. if two guys came into my house and took my sister and i was able to catch up ton of them and the othe rone got away, i'd waterboard the out of him to get information on where the other guy is taking her.
There is more risk to introducing the various pharmaceuticals (the most famous of which is sodium thiopental) into the body of a person than there is in engaging in the enhanced interrogation technique called "waterboarding."
Interaction with other chemicals already present in the body, overdose, and anaphylaxis chief among them.
Oh, and the administration of any form of drug - legal or not - considered to be a "truth serum" has been deemed to be torture.
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