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i maintain that 8 consecutive posts in one thread is "a bad"
Gee, where would I think that?
i maintain that 8 consecutive posts in one thread is "a bad"
Because hurr durr internet reasons.
Americans are cowards who see their cowardice as strength or something.
That a majority of people seem to think this torture is fine sickens me.
Senator Wyden's reply to the WSJ op-ed denouncing the torture report is worth quoting in full:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...-torture.shtmlLast week, Senator Ron Wyden picked apart a Wall Street Journal "op ed" by former CIA directors, attacking the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA's torture program. However, with more CIA defenders coming out of the woodwork, he's done so again. He's written the following for Techdirt in response to a misleading op-ed published by former CIA acting director and deputy director John McLaughlin that was published in the Washington Post. As you can see, the Senator finds that if there are distortions being made, it is from these former CIA officials.
With the release of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee's report on the CIA's use of torture, many former CIA officials have rushed to defend themselves and their actions. Unfortunately, many of these responses mischaracterize the report's contents and continue to repeat inaccurate information about the results of torture and the CIA’s years of misrepresentations. Hopefully these responses, including specific citations, to former CIA official John McLaughlin will help set the record straight.
The most incredible and false claim in the Senate intelligence committee’s report on the CIA interrogation program is that the program was neither necessary nor effective in the agency’s post-9/11 pursuit of al-Qaeda.Actually, the Committee's report does not include conclusions about the effectiveness of "the CIA interrogation program" -- its conclusions address the CIA's use of torture. The Committee's report identifies numerous instances in which detainees who had not been tortured (or not yet been tortured) provided useful information.
The report, written by the committee's Democratic majority and disputed by the Republican minority and the CIA, uses information selectively and distorts facts to “prove” its point.The Committee's report was approved on a bipartisan vote of 9-6, and the Committee elected to release it on a bipartisan vote of 11-3, along with additional and minority views. When the report was publicly released on December 9, 2014, Senators from both parties, including Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) spoke in favor of it on the Senate floor.
Furthermore, the Committee’s report is comprehensive, not selective. The public version of the Committee’s report is 499 pages and includes 2,725 footnotes. The full, classified version is over 6,700 pages, with approximately 38,000 footnotes, which appears to make it the largest Senate report in history.
Finally, the facts laid out in the Committee's report come almost entirely from the CIA's own internal records. And they show that the CIA repeatedly provided inaccurate information to the White House, the Justice Department, Congress and the public. Chairman Feinstein also noted in her March 2014 Senate floor statement that the CIA's own internal "Panetta Review" came to many of the same conclusions as the Committee's investigation. The Panetta Review currently remains classified.
I won’t try to convince you that the program was the right thing to do — reasonable people will differ. Nor will I discuss the management of the program, other than to say that the record clearly shows the agency went to extraordinary lengths to assure it was both legal and approved — and the CIA halted the program when uncertain.The CIA received legal and policy approvals for coercive interrogations after it provided extensive inaccurate information to the Justice Department, the White House and Congress about their use and effectiveness.
The Committee's report do ents this inaccurate information in detail. For example, on pp. 217-225, the report describes the CIA's inaccurate claim that coercive interrogations led to the discovery of particular terrorist plots, and on pp. 49-50, 59, and 69, the report describes the CIA's inaccurate claims about the training and qualifications of CIA interrogators.
The Democratic staffers who drafted the report assert the program contributed nothing important, apparently to bolster a bogus claim that the CIA lied.The Committee’s report does not assert that CIA interrogations contributed "nothing important." The report evaluates the CIA's repeated claims that its coercive interrogations provided critical "otherwise unavailable" information, and finds that the CIA's own internal records do not support this claim. In all twenty cases that the Committee examined, the CIA had access to the information from more traditional intelligence sources, and later attributed it to the use of coercive interrogations.
The man who led the United States to bin Laden, a courier known as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, was mentioned by earlier sources but only as one of many associates bin Laden had years beforeThis is not accurate. As detailed on pp. 378-400 of the Committee's report, the CIA had substantial intelligence on Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti prior to any CIA detainee reporting about him. In particular, CIA records show that in August 2002 a detainee in foreign custody with known links to al-Kuwaiti reported that al-Kuwaiti was "one of a few close associates of Usama bin Laden."
The most specific information about the courier came from a detainee, Hassan Ghul, who, after interrogation, strengthened the case by telling of a specific message the courier had delivered for bin Laden to operations chief Abu Faraj al-LibiAs detailed on pp. 395-396 of the Committee's report, Hassan Ghul provided the most accurate CIA detainee reporting on bin Laden BEFORE being subjected to the CIA's coercive interrogations. During this period Ghul told CIA debriefers that al-Kuwaiti was bin Laden's "closest assistant" and listed al-Kuwaiti as one of three individuals likely to be living with bin Laden. Ghul also discussed bin Laden's likely living arrangements, and made statements about al-Kuwaiti moving messages to Abu Faraj al-Libi. Some of this information was corroborative of intelligence collected by the CIA in 2002, which was also unrelated to the CIA’s coercive interrogations.
Finally, interrogated senior operatives such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who by that time was enormously cooperative, lied when confronted with what we had learned about the courierAs detailed in the Committee's report, CIA records describe in detail how the CIA assessed KSM was continually uncooperative before, during, and after the use of torture. See pp. 81-96 and 210-216.
The staffers who prepared the Senate draft do not appear to understand the role in analysis of ac ulating detail, corroboration and levels of confidence in making momentous decisions like the May 2011 Abbottabad operation that killed bin Laden.As detailed throughout the Committee's report, the CIA repeatedly told the Justice Department, Congress and the White House that coercive interrogations were necessary to obtain "otherwise unavailable" information. These statements were not supported by CIA records. In all cases cited by the CIA, the CIA had either obtained the information previously from other intelligence sources, or never obtained it from the detainee in question.
If the CIA had said only that tortured detainees provided information that corroborated other sources, or that they repeated information that they had provided before being tortured, this claim would have been accurate.
Capturing 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. This led to disrupting numerous plots. But the committee says interrogation of detainees did not play a role in getting him because a CIA asset (not a terrorist detainee) helped us. This is astounding to those of us involved in capture operations. In fact, interrogated detainees were essential to connecting the source to Mohammed. The CIA will not permit me to reveal the operational details — a classic problem for intelligence officers seeking to defend against outlandish charges.The capture of Khalid Shaykh Muhammad (KSM) is detailed on pp. 326-333 of the Committee's report. This section clearly explains how a sensitive CIA asset led the CIA directly to KSM, and how the asset's access to KSM was described in CIA records from 2001.
This section of the report is based on both contemporaneous CIA internal communications as well as after-action interviews conducted by the CIA's Oral History Project. The CIA officer who 'handled' the sensitive asset and who was directly involved in the capture of KSM described it as "a HUMINT op pretty much from start to finish." (The CIA's claims regarding the role of detainee reporting are discussed in the footnotes to this section.)
After interrogation, Khalid Sheik Mohammed told us he transferred money to Hambali via a certain individual to finance attacks in Asia. This triggered a string of captures across two continents that led us to Hambali in Southeast Asia.The capture of Hambali is described on pp. 301-311 of the Committee's report. CIA officials repeatedly told policymakers and the Justice Department that the information about this money transfer was first provided by KSM as a result of the use of the CIA's coercive interrogation techniques. However, CIA records show that the information about the money transfer was first obtained from a detainee in foreign government custody, who was questioned using non-coercive interrogation methods. (See footnote 1721 on pp. 307-308 for the CIA's description of these methods.)
The committee says a source run by another country mentioned a plot to use airplanes to strike West Coast targets. But that's all we knew — none of the details needed to stop it.The Committee's report discusses this plotting on pp. 246-258. CIA records actually show that this plotting was disrupted in early 2002, and that a CIA detainee in foreign government custody (who was questioned using non-coercive interrogation methods) provided detailed information about the plotting, operatives and proposed method of attack.
That information came from detainees, starting with Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who told us after interrogation that Hambali would replace him in this plot.
Of note, the President's Homeland Security Advisor stated in a February 2006 White House briefing that this plot had been disrupted in February 2002, which was over a year prior to the capture of KSM.
This drove our effort to find Hambali.As noted on p. 302 of the Committee's report, internal CIA communications described Hambali as the CIA's "number one target" in Southeast Asia a year before the capture of KSM.
We located him and found he had recruited 17 Southeast Asians and was apparently trying to arrange flight training for them to attack the West CoastAs detailed on p. 255 of the Committee's report, the information that led to the capture of Hambali's brother came from Hambali himself, who provided his brother’s true name and location while still in foreign government custody. Furthermore, the report describes how Hambali's brother provided information about this group of Southeast Asians while in foreign government custody. A wide body of CIA records indicates that this group was not witting of or involved in the "second wave plotting." See p. 247-248 and pp. 483-484.
The committee says interrogation played no role in heading off attacks on the Pakistani hotels, where U.S. and other Western visitors stayed. But it leaves out the fact that detainee Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, better known as Abu Zubaida, provided information on how to locate al-Qaeda “safe houses” in Karachi. One of these provided us a letter that tipped us to the plots. That is how those famous “dots” really get connected.As detailed on pp. 239-246 of the Committee's report, the CIA's own records state that the Karachi plotting was disrupted when key captures were made by Pakistani authorities based on "unrelated criminal leads."
To drive home their points, the committee frequently cherry-picks do ents. It describes officers expressing concern via e-mail that they will be “ostracized” for saying that certain detainees “did not tell us everything.” But the staff leaves out the critical context: The CIA officers were actually discussing their dismay over the agency’s decision to cease the interrogation program, causing the loss of important intelligence information.The Committee's report provides additional context about these communications on p. 213. The interrogator who wrote "I'm ostracized whenever I suggest those two [KSM and Abu Zubaydah] did not tell us everything" also wrote in the same exchange "I think it's a dangerous message to say we could do almost the same without measures. Begs the question -- then why did you use them before?" This interrogator also told the CIA inspector general that KSM had "beat the system" and that KSM responded better to "creature comforts and a sense of importance" than to "confrontational approaches."
Many administration and congressional officials ritualistically say we will never know whether we could have gotten important information another way. This is a dodge wrapped in political correctnessThe Committee's report does not conclude that the answer to this question is unknowable. The report systematically examines the top twenty examples that the CIA used to justify its use of torture. In each of these twenty cases the CIA's claims were verifiably inaccurate – in every case the information that CIA officials later attributed to coercive interrogations was actually obtained from other sources. (See pp. 172-401 of the Committee’s report.)
The point is we did succeed in getting vital information — during a national emergency when time was limited by the great urgency of a clock ticking on the next plot.The Committee's report includes substantial information about the counterterrorism threats faced by the United States, and the successes that the CIA and other US government agencies had in uncovering and disrupting those plots. The report also details how CIA officials often inaccurately claimed that coercive interrogations had produced "otherwise unavailable" information that was key to disrupting these plots. As detailed on pp. 172-401 of the Committee's report, these statements are not supported by CIA records.
Terrorists had just killed thousands of Americans, and we felt a deep responsibility for ensuring they could not do it again.
We succeeded.
The release of this report finally makes the facts about torture available to the American public, and is an important step toward making sure that the US never repeats these mistakes. Another important step is calling out the defenders of torture any time they distort or deny the facts. Correcting years of misrepresentations from these officials is the only way to ensure the informed public debate that is necessary to keep America safe.
Honorable conduct and morality be damned, popularity is all that matters:
https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20...lls-well.shtmlNow, an actual reporter might point out that (1) these Americans are wrong and (2) that it doesn't ing matter whether or not torture works -- it's still reprehensible. But, instead, Blake concludes that, boy, this sure is a loss for the Democrats:
And as long as people believe torturing terrorism detainees leads to valuable information, the CIA's interrogation program — and torture in general — are unlikely to face a major public backlash.So the only "reality" in the article is the fact that the public's depraved position is bad for one particular party. Apparently, it's not bad for "humanity" or common sense or human rights or America. It's just bad for one party? Rather than actually educating the public -- which reporters are supposed to be doing -- the focus is just on what these polling numbers mean for torture -- presented in the same way one might discuss the polling numbers for a regular election.
This is the unhappy reality being confronted by Democrats who had hoped to make a splash with the CIA report.
Americans were justifiably concerned about a second wave of terrorism (thwarted because of enhanced interrogation techniques) and finding the people responsible (the chief of which was located due to enhanced interrogation techniques).
We'll survive your discomfort.
What you will never admit, because it suits you to just declare the extreme, is that the Bush administration approached harsh interrogations knowing they were balancing "honorable conduct and morality" against their obligation to keep the country safe from another attack. They were mindful of our standing in the world, knew all about the laws and conventions against torture and, so, developed a regimen of enhanced interrogation techniques, designed to elicit actionable intelligence (which they did) but, did not have all the elements necessary to be classified as torture (which, again, they did not).
You and others in here can spew your spittle-flecked condemnations in here all day long but, you have yet to show where a court -- an actual court of law -- has looked at the techniques, looked at the law, and looked at the Department of Justice opinions on why they did not cons uted torture, and found the opposite. No, you have a bunch of whiners with their faux outrage or how this hurts our standing in the world and how it causes us to lose the moral high ground and how we're just like those we "torture," (which is the sickest comparison), and so on and on and on.
What you don't do, is demonstrate where these techniques and those who used them have been hauled into a court of law and tried. Because they haven't. And, according to our current Justice Department, they won't be.
You keep claiming torture doesn't work. Well, that's the best evidence yet that these techniques do not cons ute torture because, in fact, they did work.
Let me pose a not-so-unrealistic hypothetical for you...
'We have killed all the children, now what do we do?'
Do you think Boko Haram plans their attacks?
Do you think Boko Haram will perpetrate another atrocity such as this one?
Do you think the person on the other end of the phone call might have knowledge of Boko Haram's future plans?
If you were able to locate the person on the other end of that cell phone call, to whom the suicide bomber who had just murdered over a 130 children is asking, "what do we do now?," what would you be willing to do to find out if there was another massacre of schoolchildren in the works that could be stopped?
Just asking.
Me, I would instruct my intelligence apparatus to develop methods that are likely to produce that information without violating any laws or conventions and I would direct my legal counsel to make sure the developed methods are legal and then, I would tell them to go to it.
What would you do?
No, what is sufficient, is that the techniques have yet to be taken to court. Why is that?
Would they care if I did? The people subjected to the techniques weren't tourists randomly pulled out of a line and "tortured."
I didn't dodge it, I ignored it. Is this talking about SERE training and our use of waterboarding on trainees? Or, is it now being alleged we waterboarded our soldiers to extract information or punish them, somehow? Because, that would be a bigger deal than waterboarding KSM. I ignored it because, whatever you were posing about didn't seem to be new and, therefore, since it wasn't new, I assumed it was some rehashing of previously known information (such as that waterboarding is part of SERE training).
First sign?
This group had been perpetrating deadly terrorist attacks against Americans for quite some time. 1993 World Trade Center bombing; two embassies, the U.S.S. Cole. They had just murdered 3,000 people, caused billions of dollars in damage to our financial district and our military headquarters; and, they were trying to take out our seat of government. AND, there were indications the attacks were not over.
First sign?
This is the type of hyperbole that discredits your arguments.
Well, it isn't those that undertook the difficult task of trying to stop further attacks while walking a tightrope of laws and consequences that's gone weak.
Try talking to those college students that were so traumatized by the Michael Brown shooting that they had to have their finals postponed. There's your weakness in this country. Bleeding heart liberals.
Last edited by Yonivore; 12-19-2014 at 09:28 AM.
It's not extreme to say EITs are torture according to relevant US law and that by using them we abandoned honorable conduct and morality. The rationales we crafted to justify them are a fig leaf for war crimes, the actionable intelligence resulting therefrom is exaggerated and would not be exculpating even were it not.What you will never admit, because it suits you to just declare the extreme, is that the Bush administration approached harsh interrogations knowing they were balancing "honorable conduct and morality" against their obligation to keep the country safe from another attack. They were mindful of our standing in the world, knew all about the laws and conventions against torture and, so, developed a regimen of enhanced interrogation techniques, designed to elicit actionable intelligence (which they did) but, did not have all the elements necessary to be classified as torture (which, again, they did not).
Our government and people like you have de-stigmatized an intrinsic evil. Even if it were effective -- which you claim over and over again but have by no means demonstrated -- it would still be evil.
I didn't say it was extreme, I said it was unproven the EIT's cons uted torture according to relevant US law. In fact, I think it's a reasonable concern to have.
I think we fundamentally disagree on the order of events. You're suggesting the OLC memos were crafted to justify torture when the public record suggests, the OLC memorandums were the last step in a process that designed techniques that, while harsh and walked a line, were specifically designed to not meet the elements of torture and the OLC was then asked if they had succeeded in doing so. Only when the OLC said, yes, you have; did they proceeded to use the techniques. And, in doing so, they met the legal framework of the opinions; going so far as to limit prisoner's exposure loud noises so as not to be in violation of OSHA standards. You're not going to convince me that an administration that bent over backwards, making sure, interrogators, interrogations resistance experts, linguists, medical staff, and lawyers were present when these techniques were administered, are a bunch of reactionary torturers.
Developing and using the EITs was a very deliberate and thorough undertaking. I applaud the effort and its results. I think that we were willing to go to such lengths to make sure we weren't torturing speaks to the character and honor of our country. Reasonable people can disagree, it doesn't make either of us evil.
Define exaggerated because, gaining information that thwarted an attack similar to the one on 9/11 on the West Coast and eliciting information that led to the location of Osama bin Laden are pretty significant interrogatory achievements, if you ask me.
But, on your secondary comment, no one is claiming the actionable intelligence exculpates those who used the techniques (well, I can't say nobody because, there are people on my side that are just as ready to say, " 'em, torture the out of 'em" as there are people on your side willing to say, "EITs are torture, torture is torture, torture never works," etc...) what is being claimed is the legal opinion is exculpatory and, until a court decides otherwise, I'm inclined to agree. You're obviously inclined to disagree but, you don't have anything beyond the un-anchored opinions of (mostly) left-wing Bush Haters claiming the techniques were torture. It is enough for you that there is a chorus claiming so without actually having to have your arguments placed under the scrutiny of a legal forum.
What's evil is what al Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, ISIL, etc... are doing in the name of God.
sure, that's evil, too.
how does it justify torture?
does evil authorize evil, in your view?
compared with the CIA's own records, claims for the efficacy of torture evaporate:
http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/...ill-lying-ctd/The Senate’s report lists the plots the CIA has relied most heavily...:
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?
Torture didn't stop second wave attacks.
nyt editorial calls for prosecution of the torturers and the management, which for me includes dubya, head, rummy, and the DoJ, and of course CIA and the $81M guys paid to create the torture techniques.
so much for the canard that EITs led to the elimiantion of UBL. the bolded is from the report.
But the report is pretty clear that they didn't get much, if anything, of value from these techniques. It's littered throughout with examples of mountains of false leads and vast stretches of time wasted. Moreover, many of the instances of intel that supposedly was gleaned by torture turned out, upon closer examination, to have come from information provided before the interrogators started putting people in boxes or revving cordless drills up near their genitalia. The case of the famous Usama bin Laden courier, who is supposed to have lead to the Evil One's capture, is one such example:
The most accurate information on Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti — a facilitator whose identification and tracking led to the identification of UBL's compound and the operation that resulted in UBL's death — obtained from a CIA detainee was provided by a CIA detainee who had not yet been subjected to the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques; and CIA detainees who were subjected to the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques withheld and fabricated information about Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti.
Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...#ixzz3LbZssbKI
NYT editorial calls for prosecution of US torturers and their chain of command
yeah, I saw that. it's very unlikely that'll happen.
someone in Germany has filed a suit
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