Torture: Still doesn't work

[spurraider21]

If Australia tortured more they could have prevented the current Sydney hostage situation

[Yonivore]

There's 10+ pollsters included on the report, each with their own questions. As any statistical analysis, more samples are actually conducive to better quality.

And, my charge is your paper writer picked polls that asked questions the way he thought they should be asked. And, no, more samples are not necessarily conducive to better quality, they can be conducive to reaching a pre-conceived notion if you choose from the available samples very carefully.

I think your problem is that you don't think some of that stuff is torture where the majority of people do feel that way (also reflected on the report). Part of the disconnect I was mentioning earlier, IMO.

You're right, I don't believe the enhanced interrogation techniques, designed by the CIA and vetted by the DOJ, cons ute torture. And, I think people only believe it is torture because others, such as yourself, continue to conflate the techniques with torture. As designed by the CIA, waterboarding is different that the waterboarding conducted by others that often resulted in permanent injury and death.

[ElNono]

We already know your opinion, Yoni, it's written in some blog somewhere. You asked me to support my contention, and I did. I have no expectations that you'll agree with it.

[Yonivore]

We already know your opinion, Yoni, it's written in some blog somewhere. You asked me to support my contention, and I did. I have no expectations that you'll agree with it.

You supported your position with an academic paper written by someone who, even you admitted, has an unknown position and could be biased.

10 polls out of how many conducted during those years? Why those 10? There were thing mentioned in some of the questions that aren't even a part of the enhanced interrogation program; electric shock? , even I agree that's torture.

Do you at least see my point?

I supported my position by posting a poll that asked the specific question that aligns with my understanding of the program and a majority of people are okay with the program as I understand it. You can continue to conflate the issue with torture but, those of us who support it (the majority of Americans) understand it for what it is; a carefully proscribed set of 7 techniques that were developed so as not to cross the line into torture.

[ElNono]

You supported your position with an academic paper written by someone who, even you admitted, has an unknown position and could be biased.

10 polls out of how many conducted during those years? Why those 10? There were thing mentioned in some of the questions that aren't even a part of the enhanced interrogation program; electric shock? , even I agree that's torture.

Do you at least see my point?

I supported my position by posting a poll that asked the specific question that aligns with my understanding of the program and a majority of people are okay with the program as I understand it. You can continue to conflate the issue with torture but, those of us who support it (the majority of Americans) understand it for what it is; a carefully proscribed set of 7 techniques that were developed so as not to cross the line into torture.

You have not substantiated your claims that the report is inaccurate. It's your claim, the onus is on you to prove it. Until then, I think the report is comprehensive enough.

I also disagree with the question asked in your blog post, as I don't think it reflects what the majority of Americans feel is what happened during the torture sessions of the past.

[Yonivore]

You have not substantiated your claims that the report is inaccurate. It's your claim, the onus is on you to prove it. Until then, I think the report is comprehensive enough.

I also disagree with the question asked in your blog post, as I don't think it reflects what the majority of Americans feel is what happened during the torture sessions of the past.

Okay, almost 2/3 of those polled disagree with you.

[ElNono]

okay

[Yonivore]

okay

Yep, okay.

You picked a report that gave you the result you wanted. I picked a poll that asked the right question.

Unless, of course, you want to argue the people were tricked by the question being asked that way.

Would you support the CIA using enhanced interrogation techniques on ISIS or other radical Islamic terrorists if it meant preventing another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001?

Everyone asked that question was free to infer "enhanced interrogation techniques" to mean torture, just like you. And, even if they did, the majority were still okay with it.

The questions in your polls included elements that weren't part of the program and then biased the polls with use of the word torture.

[ElNono]

If you think the report is inaccurate, please feel free to prove it. So far, you established you didn't like the questions asked by multiple pollsters. You don't have to like them. They don't make the polls any less accurate.

[Yonivore]

If you think the report is inaccurate, please feel free to prove it. So far, you established you didn't like the questions asked by multiple pollsters. You don't have to like them. They don't make the polls any less accurate.

I didn't say it was inaccurate for what it represented. I merely said, there are more than 10 polls from that time period and the questions I read seemed biased. You conceded not knowing if the author was biased.

My poll, on the other hand, was straightforward. If you wanted to infer EIT were torture, you could.

Is that smiley emoticon a nervous tic or something?

[ElNono]

I thought those polls were generally straightforward too... if anything, we were talking about Chump's point of view, not your point of view. His point of view was that it was torture, thus those polls accurately reflect that in the questions asked.

[Yonivore]

I thought those polls were generally straightforward too... if anything, we were talking about Chump's point of view, not your point of view. His point of view was that it was torture, thus those polls accurately reflect that in the questions asked.

Yeah, I know.

Had I been asked any of the question I read in Appendix A, I would have said no, too. The questions don't define what they consider to be torture, they could have been referring to (as was listed in appendix B) applying electrical shock which isn't one of the 7 specifically defined enhanced interrogation techniques.

[ElNono]

Yeah, I know.

Had I been asked any of the question I read in Appendix A, I would have said no, too. The questions don't define what they consider to be torture, they could have been referring to (as was listed in appendix B) applying electrical shock which isn't one of the 7 specifically defined enhanced interrogation techniques.

There's another appendix with specific questions about different methods and whether they approve or not... which largely do not approve save a few exceptions...

[Yonivore]

There's another appendix with specific questions about different methods and whether they approve or not... which largely do not approve save a few exceptions...

And, they didn't define any of them, except to stipulate they cons uted torture.

None of the techniques that were included in the 7 vetted by the DOJ were put in the context of the restrictions placed on their use to prevent if from being classified as torture. And, then they just threw in a few real torture techniques, such as electrical shock, to bias the crowd.

Sorry, you're not convincing me of the validity of your white paper.

[Yonivore]

I particularly love this qualifier on Table 3:

Note. *indicates technique approved by Bybee or Bradbury memoranda; + indicates technique similar to techniques
approved by the Bybee and Bradbury memoranda. For details on polling questions, see appendix B.

+ = similar? How similar? define the differences.

* = technique approved by Bybee or Bradbury? Which is it, Bradbury or Bybee because most of the techniques had been discontinued before Bradbury came along and, whatever he put in his memos has not been put into practice that we know of.

[ElNono]

And, they didn't define any of them, except to stipulate they cons uted torture.

Again, your opinion of what cons utes torture or not is immaterial. That's a full list of well known torture methods, most (all?) of which existed prior to 9/11...

I have no interest in going in circles on this. You're certainly en led to whatever reality you want to live in.

[Yonivore]

Again, your opinion of what cons utes torture or not is immaterial. That's a full list of well known torture methods, most (all?) of which existed prior to 9/11...

What matters is what cons utes torture. Calling something torture doesn't make it so -- even if the name is similar to something that is torture.

I have no interest in going in circles on this. You're certainly en led to whatever reality you want to live in.

I'll be here with the majority.

[ElNono]

okay

[ChumpDumper]

lol nervous tic

[boutons_deux]

new poll for The American Sheeple: Do you approve of CIA torture, gratuitous enemas, indefinitely repeated waterboarding, etc applied by Muslims to US citizens?

and of course, like the US police do to young blacks, and probably done to CIA victims, kidney pounding until pee turns to blood.

replace enema of pureed hummus,nuts, raisins, etc with pureed BigMac value menu, maybe add some habaneros.

The American Sheeple are reputed to be "fair play" so how could the be against torture of Americans for years?

[boutons_deux]

holy , Repugs will always say just anything

Incoming Senate Intelligence Chief Plans ‘Real Time’ Scrutiny Of CIA


http://www.nationalmemo.com/incoming...-scrutiny-cia/

All Talk, and very clear No Walk

of course, for Repugs, CIA torture doesn't require scrutiny.

[boutons_deux]

s bag Yoo

John Yoo, author of interrogation memo and UC Berkeley law professor, says CIA maybe went too far

“If these things happened as they’re described in the report … they were not supposed to be done. And the people who did those are at risk legally because they were acting outside their orders,”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/12/j...-went-too-far/

like any lawyer , Bybee, Yoo will "just follow orders" by fabricating any bull their employers want.

[Winehole23]

checked against the CIA's own records, their pronunciamentos about the efficacy of torture and lives saved by it evaporate:

The Senate’s report lists the plots the CIA has relied most heavily on when making the case for the efficacy of torture:




The report goes on to debunk torture’s role in each of these cases. Here are the key points:




So in this case, all the intelligence necessary to thwart a barely existent plot by utterly unserious criminals was discovered before torture was instigated at all.



Another claim eviscerated by the CIA’s own evidence.



Again: torture was utterly irrelevant to this amorphous plot far from being operational.




Another phantasm of a plot revealed by sources independent of the torture program.




So this canary sang without any torture at all.




And so it goes. Notice that all of this evidence is taken from the CIA’s own internal do ents. This is not the Senate Committee’s conclusion; it is the CIA’s.




Yet another dud. And therefore yet another lie.



Look: if every single one of the CIA’s own purported successes evaporates upon inspecting the CIA’s own records, what’s left?

http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/...ill-lying-ctd/

[Winehole23]

McClatchy, 2009: Cheney and Rumsfeld pushed EITs designed by communists to elicit false confessions, to try to get evidence of operational ties between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. They failed to so.

"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.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/04/2...d-to.html?rh=1

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/04/2...#storylink=cpy

[Winehole23]

the US relied on false confessions elicited by torture to justify the war:

The truth is that torture did work, but not the way its defenders claim. It worked to produce justifications for policies the establishment wanted, like the Iraq war. This is actually tacitly acknowledged in the report -- or one should say, it's buried in it. Footnote 857 of the report is about Ibn Shaykh al-Libi, who was captured in Afghanistan shortly after the U.S. invasion and was interrogated by the FBI. He told them all he knew, but then the CIA rendered him to the brutal Mubarak regime in Egypt, in effect outsourcing their torture. From the footnote:

"Ibn Shaykh al-Libi reported while in [censored: 'Egyptian'] custody that Iraq was supporting al-Qa'ida and providing assistance with chemical and biological weapons. Some of this information was cited by Secretary Powell in his speech at the United Nations, and was used as a justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Ibn Shaykh al-Libi recanted the claim after he was rendered to CIA custody on February [censored], 2003, claiming that he had been tortured by the [censored, likely 'Egyptians'], and only told them what he assessed they wanted to hear. For more more details, see Volume III." Of course, Volume III has not been made public.


So, while CIA head John Brennan now says it's "unknowable" if torture led to information that actually saved lives, it's provable that torture led to information that helped lead to war and destroyed lives.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-hu...b_6315678.html