930 Forums
=> GENERAL DISCUSSION => Topic started by: Sage 703 on April 21, 2009, 04:09:42 pm
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I've been following the release of the torture memos with interest, but this nugget from today's Washington Post op-ed from a Bush administration official blows my freaking mind.
The job of the interrogator is to safely help the terrorist do his duty to Allah, so he then feels liberated to speak freely.
From the Post:
The writer, a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, served in senior positions in the Pentagon and the White House from 2001 to 2009, most recently as chief speechwriter for President George W. Bush.
Yes, this quote is pulled from a larger article that makes many points - but sweet jesus. This is pretty disgusting, Orwellian stuff. I'm coming around to the idea of criminal prosecutions for those responsible, and I'm beginning to think it more likely.
Whole article in the Post is here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/20/AR2009042002818.html
EDIT - Fuller context below:
Critics claim that enhanced techniques do not produce good intelligence because people will say anything to get the techniques to stop. But the memos note that, "as Abu Zubaydah himself explained with respect to enhanced techniques, 'brothers who are captured and interrogated are permitted by Allah to provide information when they believe they have reached the limit of their ability to withhold it in the face of psychological and physical hardship." In other words, the terrorists are called by their faith to resist as far as they can -- and once they have done so, they are free to tell everything they know. This is because of their belief that "Islam will ultimately dominate the world and that this victory is inevitable." The job of the interrogator is to safely help the terrorist do his duty to Allah, so he then feels liberated to speak freely.
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oh hai!
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=46949
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"as Abu Zubaydah himself explained with respect to enhanced techniques, 'brothers who are captured and interrogated are permitted by Allah to provide information when they believe they have reached the limit of their ability to withhold it in the face of psychological and physical hardship." In other words, the terrorists are called by their faith to resist as far as they can -- and once they have done so, they are free to tell everything they know. This is because of their belief that "Islam will ultimately dominate the world and that this victory is inevitable." The job of the interrogator is to safely help the terrorist do his duty to Allah, so he then feels liberated to speak freely. [/i]
as far as i know, this is not official doctrine - it's one person's take. i'm not certain they teach "resist as long as you, but when you cave do so fully" at terrorist school. so to base an agency's policy on this anecdote seems... convenient. and idiotic.
speaking of which:
http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=46949
yeah, that doesn't sound like someone is trying to cover their asses AT ALL. they knew it was wrong, they knew they'd need cover, and they knew that no one would ever be able to prove otherwise (i.e. disprove their claim that torture led to success). at least, that view is just as valid as believing this story at face value.
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LOL@sweetcell. I guess theyre covering "their asses" as much as the new administration is trying to play politics with all this. lol
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still seems mean to me.
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(http://bradbobo.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/vanhalen_1984_fcover.jpg?w=500&h=500)
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administration is trying to play politics with all this.
politicians, playing politics? ai iz shoked.
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but i thought this was "change?"...maximum lolz. :D :D
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Whoever wins this LOLZ off, we lose :(
but i thought this was "change?"...maximum lolz. :D :D
administration is trying to play politics with all this.
politicians, playing politics? ai iz shoked.
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nkotb with the lol!!!!!!
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now this conservative dishrag of a paper is reporting this...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us/politics/22blair.html?_r=1
wut da lol?
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now this conservative dishrag of a paper is reporting this...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us/politics/22blair.html?_r=1
wut da lol?
The fact that it may have yielded some useful information doesn't justify it. It also ignores the fact that there are other ways to glean information that could have been utilized.
Ultimately, this is about what values you prioritize as an American. Personally, I don't want the United States affiliated or identified with the methods utilized as described in these memos, no matter what information they produce.
Frankly, we're better than that.
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saving lives > pouring water on blindfolded people aka known terrorists (thats what the d'classed documents have made clear)..give me a fucking break dooood~~~
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also...please describe to me the methods in which you would use to get this info seeing as the CIA says these were the means that they used to obtain such information...i'm sure you have some ideas. also, how do you define "torture?" don't link me to something..i want your definition. lol.
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for someone who never puts forward an idea of his own, only links to other's content, and has never answered a question with anything other than "stfu lol"... you're in a very poor position to demand anything.
as john mccain has pointed out, one of the problems with torture is that it opens the door for the other side to use it. do we want american soldiers that are captured to be treated humanly? uh huh.
and just because it's effective doesn't mean we should do it. wanna be safe? don't go outside. do you want a government to impose safety on you by controlling your movements and telling you where to go? people are very safe in an authoritarian regime, police states are very effective.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."" - some crazy dead dude
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sweetcell stfu and gtfo. im sure if your parents were being held hostage by a terrorist you would ask them nicely to please let them go . ::)
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now this conservative dishrag of a paper is reporting this...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us/politics/22blair.html?_r=1
wut da lol?
?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,? Admiral Blair said in a written statement issued last night. ?The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."
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funny how the quote you pulled was stated a week after the original memo was released. someone got a "talkin to"...
this is backfiring on the messiah. LOL!
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lol @ u poking holes in your own source
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um...see the first paragraph when it said the memo was released last week. then in the quote you posted it says "last night"...
reading comprehension. LOLz
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i understand that
you linked an article that quotes only blair and his spokesperson. in one part he says torture yielded significant results, and in another part he said the ends dont justify the means. either he's credible or not, and seeing as how you linked the article i would assume you agree
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Paging Venerable Bede.
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now this conservative dishrag of a paper is reporting this...
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us/politics/22blair.html?_r=1
wut da lol?
you do realize there is a difference between something being reported ("CIA spokesperson said today...") and it being true (aka proven)? oh no, wait, you probably don't.
Paging Venerable Bede.
yes please. let's inject some intelligence in this exchange STAT.
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i think i'd take the word of a private memo from a week ago rather than a written public statement from a day ago. LOL@sweetcell failing in this thread.
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i understand that
you linked an article that quotes only blair and his spokesperson. in one part he says torture yielded significant results, and in another part he said the ends dont justify the means. either he's credible or not, and seeing as how you linked the article i would assume you agree
like i said earlier...it seems that he had to change his tone after this memo leaked and he had a "talkin to"...get it?
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the part i quoted is in line with blairs confirmation hearing statement. the 'is torture effective' question is not as important as 'is it worth it'
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this thread fits my definition of torture. lol
good to see you back mannie. ;)
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ill believe the private internal memo.
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this thread fits my definition of torture. lol
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Hear hear!
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this thread fits my definition of torture. lol
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Hear hear!
So go to another thread. ::)
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how would you feel if your parents were on a forum with this thread?
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how would you feel if your parents were on a forum with this thread?
it would be torture cause I'd have to explain to them what a internet forum is all about :p
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uhmmm, torture.
(http://www.charlescountycafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/bondage_wings_by_arobst.jpg)
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this thread fits my definition of torture. lol
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Hear hear!
So go to another thread. ::)
well, i will now, but i came here thinking I was gonna get some cool George Orwell conspiracy shit.
instead i got political doucheness and a whole crunkload of "lolz"
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lol gtfo
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thank you obama. sorry i yelled at you earlier in some other thread.
(http://www.undiplomatic.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/picture-11.png)
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thank you obama. sorry i yelled at you earlier in some other thread.
(http://www.undiplomatic.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/picture-11.png)
OMG..not a bug in a box!!!!!! im so ashamed of my country!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! bush you evil, evil man!!!!!!!!!!!!
lol.
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Dude, is it one of these things:
(http://www.dorlingkindersley-uk.co.uk/static/clipart/uk/dk/exp_insect/exp_insect012.jpg)
Because those things freak me out. I'd be so scared, I'd even divulge kissing my cousin in the 2nd grade. Just not that all of my cousins are boys. Oops.
OMG..not a bug in a box!!!!!! im so ashamed of my country!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! bush you evil, evil man!!!!!!!!!!!!
lol.
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Ahh, and the landscape just becomes more and more clear:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66622.html
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.
(John Walcott and Warren P. Strobel contributed to this article.)
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"A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue" LOL!
and
"http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66622.html"
double LOL!
in other news...what do you think this latest push against bush anc co is all about? hmmmm..
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manimtired, I couldn't ask for a better example of the Sarah Palin/Rush Limbaugh/Sean Hannity GOP. Thanks!
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i couldnt ask for a better example of far left/bush derangement syndrome/keith olberman. ty.
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uhmmm, torture.
(http://www.charlescountycafe.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/bondage_wings_by_arobst.jpg)
you call that torture, i call it a typical night in the Vinyl household.... the only thing missing is an iPhone so i can twitter during the experience
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i mean doesnt the world already regard bush as hitler and an evil torturer? why bring this all up again? even though its starting to backfire on the messiah. oops!
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Ahh...it just gets better.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us/politics/22detain.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all
Long article, so I won't reprint the whole thing. But the intro section sums it up:
...In a series of high-level meetings in 2002, without a single dissent from cabinet members or lawmakers, the United States for the first time officially embraced the brutal methods of interrogation it had always condemned.
This extraordinary consensus was possible, an examination by The New York Times shows, largely because no one involved ? not the top two C.I.A. officials who were pushing the program, not the senior aides to President George W. Bush, not the leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees ? investigated the gruesome origins of the techniques they were approving with little debate.
According to several former top officials involved in the discussions seven years ago, they did not know that the military training program, called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, had been created decades earlier to give American pilots and soldiers a sample of the torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War, methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans...
Even George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director who insisted that the agency had thoroughly researched its proposal and pressed it on other officials, did not examine the history of the most shocking method, the near-drowning technique known as waterboarding.
The top officials he briefed did not learn that waterboarding had been prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II and was a well-documented favorite of despotic governments since the Spanish Inquisition; one waterboard used under Pol Pot was even on display at the genocide museum in Cambodia.
They did not know that some veteran trainers from the SERE program itself had warned in internal memorandums that, morality aside, the methods were ineffective. Nor were most of the officials aware that the former military psychologist who played a central role in persuading C.I.A. officials to use the harsh methods had never conducted a real interrogation, or that the Justice Department lawyer most responsible for declaring the methods legal had idiosyncratic ideas that even the Bush Justice Department would later renounce.
The process was ?a perfect storm of ignorance and enthusiasm,? a former C.I.A. official said.
***
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wow..all these new stories about waterboarding. something we knew about years ago. what is your point?
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i love how the libs and their media buds are now ramping up the attacks due to this huge backfire. bugs in boxes! waterboarding a whole 3 known 9/11 terrorists that proved extremely useful!!!sleep deprivation!!!!
MAKE IS STOP CALLAT703...ITS ALL TOO MUCH!!!
lol.
the obama camp looks stupid here..
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even though its starting to backfire on the messiah. oops!
Yep, clearly backfiring.
http://politics.theatlantic.com/2009/04/whos_more_popular_than_republicans_these_days.php
Who's More Popular Than Republicans These Days?
Yes, stealing this blatantly off of a liberal website, but it explains why the White House is so confident and has so much breathing room: As Chris Bowers writes: "A new CNN poll has found that Venezuela -- an anti-American, socialist-block forming, oil-cartel -- is now more popular than the Republican Party." Also more popular among Americans than Republicans: China and legalizing pot.
My Republican friends keep asking me when I'll take the GOP seriously again and why I've stopped writing about ticky-tak political gamesmanship and GOP consultant tricks. When they're a serious party with serious ideas, then we can talk.
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rofl
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you just wait...4 years will go by fast. the man child will prove to be jimmy carter part 2. lol!
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do some analysis of these polls..im sure you can do it without copying and pasting a link of someone else's analysis.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKzLChQ1p7k
Philip Zelikow, executive director of the 9/11 Commission, former Director of the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, and Counselor at the United States Department of State.
http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/04/21/the_olc_torture_memos_thoughts_from_a_dissenter
I first gained access to the OLC memos and learned details about CIA's program for high-value detainees shortly after the set of opinions were issued in May 2005. I did so as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's policy representative to the NSC Deputies Committee on these and other intelligence/terrorism issues. In the State Department, Secretary Rice and her Legal Adviser, John Bellinger, were then the only other individuals briefed on these details. In compliance with the security agreements I have signed, I have never discussed or disclosed any substantive details about the program until the classified information has been released.
Having been the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, I'm aware of what some of these captives did. The Commission wondered how captives were questioned (for details on that, see this previously disclosed report), and the matter is now the subject of a federal criminal investigation by special prosecutor John Durham. Nonetheless, the evidence against most -- if not all -- of the high-value detainees remains damning. But the issue is not about who or what they are. It is about who or what we are.
Based on what had earlier been released, I have offered some general views on "Legal Policy for a Twilight War." With the release of these OLC memos, I can add three more sets of comments, each of which could be developed at much greater length.
1. The focus on water-boarding misses the main point of the program.
Which is that it was a program. Unlike the image of using intense physical coercion as a quick, desperate expedient, the program developed "interrogation plans" to disorient, abuse, dehumanize, and torment individuals over time.
The plan employed the combined, cumulative use of many techniques of medically-monitored physical coercion. Before getting to water-boarding, the captive had already been stripped naked, shackled to ceiling chains keeping him standing so he cannot fall asleep for extended periods, hosed periodically with cold water, slapped around, jammed into boxes, etc. etc. Sleep deprivation is most important.
2. Measuring the value of such methods should be done professionally and morally before turning to lawyers.
A professional analysis would not simply ask: Did they tell us important information? Congress is apparently now preparing to parse the various claims on this score -- and that would be quite valuable.
But the argument that they gave us vital information, which readers can see deployed in the memos just as they were deployed to reassure an uneasy president, is based on a fallacy. The real question is: What is the unique value of these methods?
For this analysis, the administration had the benefit of past U.S. government treatment of high-value detainees in its own history (especially World War II and Vietnam) and substantial, painful lessons from sympathetic foreign governments. By 2005, the Bush administration also had the benefit of what amounted to a double-blind study it had inadvertently conducted, comparing methods that had evolved in Iraq (different Geneva-based rules, different kinds of teams) and the methods the CIA had developed, with both sets being used to against hardened killers.
Opponents should not overstate their side either. Had a serious analysis been conducted beforehand (it apparently was not), my rough guess is that it might have found that physical coercion can break people faster, with some tradeoff in degraded and less reliable results.
Which underscores the importance of moral analysis. There is an elementary distinction, too often lost, between the moral (and policy) question -- "What should we do?" -- and the legal question: "What can we do?" We live in a policy world too inclined to turn lawyers into surrogate priests granting a form of absolution. "The lawyers say it's OK." Well, not really. They say it might be legal. They don't know about OK.
3. The legal opinions have grave weaknesses.
Weakest of all is the May 30 opinion, just because it had to get over the lowest standard -- "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" in Article 16 of the Convention Against Torture. That standard was also being codified in the bill Senator John McCain was fighting to pass. It is also found in Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, a standard that the Supreme Court ruled in 2006 does apply to these prisoners. Violation of Common Article 3 is a war crime under federal law (18 U.S.C. section 2441), a felony punishable by up to life imprisonment. (The OLC opinions do not discuss this law because in 2005 the administration also denied the applicability of Common Article 3.)
The OLC holds, rightly, that the United States complies with the international standard if it complies with the comparable body of constitutional prohibitions in U.S. law (the 5th, 8th, and 14th Amendments). Many years earlier, I had worked in that area of the law. I believed that the OLC opinions (especially the May 30 one) presented the U.S. government with a distorted rendering of relevant U.S. law.
At the time, in 2005, I circulated an opposing view of the legal reasoning. My bureaucratic position, as counselor to the secretary of state, didn't entitle me to offer a legal opinion. But I felt obliged to put an alternative view in front of my colleagues at other agencies, warning them that other lawyers (and judges) might find the OLC views unsustainable. My colleagues were entitled to ignore my views. They did more than that: The White House attempted to collect and destroy all copies of my memo. I expect that one or two are still at least in the State Department's archives.
Stated in a shorthand way, mainly for the benefit of other specialists who work these issues, my main concerns were:
* the case law on the "shocks the conscience" standard for interrogations would proscribe the CIA's methods;
* the OLC memo basically ignored standard 8th Amendment "conditions of confinement" analysis (long incorporated into the 5th amendment as a matter of substantive due process and thus applicable to detentions like these). That case law would regard the conditions of confinement in the CIA facilities as unlawful.
* the use of a balancing test to measure constitutional validity (national security gain vs. harm to individuals) is lawful for some techniques, but other kinds of cruel treatment should be barred categorically under U.S. law -- whatever the alleged gain.
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.
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do you have one original thought in your body?
and tldr...
lols.
what do you think about that polling data? still think obama mania is everywhere?
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and tldr...
lols.
Ah yes, the Bush era mantra that got us here in the first place. How could I forget.
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tldr prevented another terrorist attack in the US by pouring water on 9/11 terrorists heads? shameful.
thanks for posting links from the internet.
please dont make anymore threads if thats all you plan on doing. ttyl.
lol.
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in the spirit of call@703 i'm posting a link.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/21569.html
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in the spirit of call@703 i'm posting a link.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/21569.html
Read that one already, did you?
FTA:
"The implications go beyond a typical Washington spat over ?message control.? Obama?s moves virtually guarantee a sharp public focus on two uncomfortable questions that his team previously sought to leave vague:
*Should people be tried and even sent to prison?as many Democrats want?for what Obama regards as illegal practices under Bush?
*Even if wrong, did those practices have any positive results in stopping new attacks?"
The articles I've posted are attempting to answer these questions. You're a step behind where we are manimtired - reading might help with that, though. Good luck!
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are you just trying to be funny by posting links or just too stupid to debate the topic by yourself?
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are you just trying to be funny by posting links or just too stupid to debate the topic by yourself?
lol@manimtired.
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what do you think about that polling data? still think obama mania is everywhere?
i thought this thread was about the illegal use of torture. you've moved on to obama's popularity? nice attempt at diversion.
i know i'm just feeding the troll by attempting to discuss anything with manimtired... but he's also hanging himself 'cause we're giving him rope.
mannie, you're making your side cringe. keep it up.
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are you just trying to be funny by posting links or just too stupid to debate the topic by yourself?
please refrain from posting to yourself.
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non-lol
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what do you think about that polling data? still think obama mania is everywhere?
i thought this thread was about the illegal use of torture. you've moved on to obama's popularity? nice attempt at diversion.
i know i'm just feeding the troll by attempting to discuss anything with manimtired... but he's also hanging himself 'cause we're giving him rope.
mannie, you're making your side cringe. keep it up.
again sweetcell doesnt grasp context. try and follow.
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non-lol
you know you smiled just a little...
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again sweetcell doesnt accept my attempts to change the topic. try and ignore my exit strategy.
corrected.
but i'll stop now. i've had enough of trying to treat manimtired like an intelligent person who has ideas to exchange.
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This is awesome. Props to FoxNews for once:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEtFMj6ZiHM
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again sweetcell doesnt accept my attempts to change the topic. try and ignore my exit strategy.
corrected.
but i'll stop now. i've had enough of trying to treat manimtired like an intelligent person who has ideas to exchange.
you are a retard.
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what do you think about that polling data? still think obama mania is everywhere?
lol@manimtired.
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/04/23/obamas-numbers-high-but-will-they-last/
A average of the most recent national polls indicates that nearly two out of three Americans approve of the job Barack Obama's doing as president.
According to a CNN Poll of Polls compiled Thursday, 64 percent say they approve of how Obama's handling his duties as president. Twenty-eight percent disapprove.
The President's approval rating also stood at 64 percent in a CNN Poll of Polls compiled in January, just after inauguration.
"Most polls have shown Obama getting fairly high marks on most of the issues he has handled so far," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "One exception has been the way he has handled government assistance to failing banks and automakers. His numbers on the federal deficit are also low in comparison to his approval ratings on the economy and foreign policy."
So how does Obama compare to his predecessors in the White House around the first 100 days mark?
George W. Bush stood at 62 percent in a CNN/USA Today Gallup poll in April 2001, Bill Clinton was at 55 percent in a CNN/USA Today Gallup poll in April 1993, George H.W. Bush stood at 58 percent in a Gallup poll from April 1989, and Ronald Reagan was at 67 percent in a Gallup poll taken in April 1981.
"The hundred-day mark tends to fall during a period when Americans are still evaluating a new president. The danger period for most presidents comes later in their first year in office," Holland says. "Bill Clinton, for example, still had good marks after his first hundred days, but his approval rating had tanked by June of 1993. Ronald Reagan's approval rating stayed over 50 percent until November of his first year in office, but once it slipped below that mark, it stayed under 50 percent for two years. So Obama's current rating certainly does not indicate that he is out of the woods yet."
The CNN Poll of Polls is an average of three national surveys taken over the past week: Gallup Tracking, Pew, and AP/Gfk.
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STAY ON TOPIC!
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and lol@ a cnn poll! LOL!
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll
since we are off topic, thanks call@703, do you think obama is a bigot seeing that he is against gay marriage? i was just reading about this on another board..
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and lol@ a cnn poll! LOL!
Right, I forgot about your reading problem. Sorry about that!
"The CNN Poll of Polls is an average of three national surveys taken over the past week: Gallup Tracking, Pew, and AP/Gfk."
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call@703..you are an idiot...i guess you dont know how polling works.
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rasmussen's data is out of wack with the other polls on real clear's poll of polls too
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval-1044.html#chart
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rasmussen had the most accurate polling in the last election so i'll go with them...
lol
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this board makes me:
(http://jasmine_1480.blogs.friendster.com/my_blog/images/smile_1.jpg)
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It will be thrilling to follow this argument on the accuracy of Obama's approval rating for the next 3.5 -7.5 years.
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rasmussen had the most accurate polling in the last election so i'll go with them...
lol
rasmussen was actually beat by the rcp poll of polls
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_obama-225.html
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poll of polls LOL :D
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you are really bad at reading
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what did i miss?
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idk, mayb lolz?
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rasmussen had the most accurate polling in the last election so i'll go with them...
lol
rasmussen was actually beat by the rcp poll of polls
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2008/president/us/general_election_mccain_vs_obama-225.html
ACTUAL RESULTS: Obama 52.9, McCain 45.6
Ipsos/McClatchy (10/30-11/2) - Obama 53, McCain 46
AND
CNN/Opinion Research (10/30-11/2) - Obama 53, McCain 46
Rasmussen results (11/1 - 11/3): Obama 52, McCain 45
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Gallup 10/31 - 11/02 2472 LV 2.0 55 44 Obama +11
LOL@gallup.
703..you didnt answer my question about obama being a bigot bc he's against gay marriage. what say you?
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LOL! http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/04/goss_obama_decision_crossed_a.asp
LOL! http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124044375842145565.html
im going to out-link 703 today!
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yes, someone please put this thread out of its misery.
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yes, someone please put this thread out of its misery.
Or, you know, don't read it. ::)
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why do people just hate joe biden?
http://realclearpolitics.blogs.time.com/2009/04/23/vp-shock-biden-less-popular-than-cheney/
see my new link! LOL!
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Paging Venerable Bede.
yes please. let's inject some intelligence in this exchange STAT.
sorry, skipped out of work early yesterday so my wife and i could take our 5 1/2 week old baby girl to her first baseball game. . .a glorious day game at at&t park that went into extra innings. . .
sorry vansmack that her first taste of at&t park will not include you in your angels poncho....
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i can assure you that was a MUCH better use of your time.
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yes, someone please put this thread out of its misery.
Or, you know, don't read it. ::)
oh, are you having fun lol-ing back and forth with manimlame?
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yes, someone please put this thread out of its misery.
Or, you know, don't read it. ::)
oh, are you having fun lol-ing back and forth with manimlame?
I just don't get the "stop by a thread to say you don't like a thread" phenomenon.
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yes, someone please put this thread out of its misery.
Or, you know, don't read it. ::)
oh, are you having fun lol-ing back and forth with manimlame?
I just don't get the "stop by a thread to say you don't like a thread" phenomenon.
you can't know my intentions. I "stopped by" to see if anything intelligent was happening. the thread had possiblility.
most recently, i stopped by to see your reply to me! see how it works?
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Yeah yeah, I'm hoping now that Venerable has checked in, we can actually have a discussion about the issue itself - or perhaps he agrees with Shep Smith?
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i guess you cant have a discussion b/c i disagree with you and think youre misguided sheepish fool? fine...
lol
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as much as i would rather read any threads involving mannie, than think of some political post to put in it, i did find this headline on cnn today, delicious:
Commentary: Obama waffled on torture -- and looks weak.
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Yeah yeah, I'm hoping now that Venerable has checked in, we can actually have a discussion about the issue itself - or perhaps he agrees with Shep Smith?
thanks for thinking so highly of me. . .
frankly, i don't have much to say on this topic, other than i don't get the allusion to 1984. my concern would be that if the current administration is willing to release only some of the documents, why not go ahead and release all of the documents. . .until that time, i don't really see how one can make a truly informed decision on the merits of the information gathered via "torture." not to mention asking the obvious question about whether or not the administration only released the incriminating documents first, and are withholding the other documents for obvious political purposes.
this is all without speaking to the ethical and moral questions related to torture and what, if any, actual information they received that did stop any potential terrorist attacks. there are consequences both in inaction and action, it's simply a matter of how far one is willing to bend towards one side or the other and are willing to deal with those consequences. see, this season of 24. i, for one, am unwilling to sit here and say that i know what happened, that i know the circumstances of the situation, or that i would never approve or engage in such activity (the stanford prison experiment has pretty much debunked (http://www.prisonexp.org/) the ability of any of us to make those statements).
the other thing, as rep. peter hoekstra put it in his wsj editorial (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124044188941045415.html), is that congress knew about these procedures, yet continued to provide funding for these programs, and the administration released the documents over the objections of not only the current cia chief, but also 4 previous cia chiefs.
it's easy to play monday morning quarterback and pass judgment on prior acts that may or may not have actually provided information that resulted in thwarting potential terrorist acts. . .are we so willing and able to say no torture, even if there is evidence that, say, 50% of the time it provides some amount of reliable and valuable intelligence? or even 15% of the time? for my own part, i can't say yes or no, rather, there needs to be some accounting for the situation, and not be viewed in a vacuum of only ethical and moral determinations.
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?We Could Have Done This the Right Way? - How Ali Soufan, an FBI agent, got Abu Zubaydah to talk without torture (http://www.newsweek.com/id/195089)