I didn't think this group could answer a simple A or B question.
It's absolutely a valid question as it gets to the heart of the matter of whether or not you think any type of torture(I hate that word, I'd prefer physical persuasion) is wrong 100% of the time. And if put in that situation, what would you do.
Only Laser had the balls to answer and while we disagree I totally respect him for his honest answer.
C'mon have some cajones and tell us....should the cop get charged with a crime or not??
I didn't think this group could answer a simple A or B question.
It's absolutely a valid question as it gets to the heart of the matter of whether or not you think any type of torture(I hate that word, I'd prefer physical persuasion) is wrong 100% of the time. And if put in that situation, what would you do.
Only Laser had the balls to answer and while we disagree I totally respect him for his honest answer.
C'mon have some cajones and tell us....should the cop get charged with a crime or not??
I answered... Reading Is Fundamental...
again I say: Torture is never acceptable.
Yes the cop should be prosecuted, he went way beyond reasonable force.
And don't try to dress it up as 'physical Persuasion" Torture is torture there is nothign PC about it. Say it for what it is.
1) FBI and CIA interrogators are against torture. They do not think it provides reliable information. They will get some valuable information, and they will also get a lot of crap simply because the person that is being tortured wants it to stop. If you had read my post the most effective interrogation technique advocated by the CIA and FBI is to befriend a person and then use that to manipulate them into giving you information. If you establish some kind of relationship with the person, they are much less likely to lie to you and that is the whole point, to get useful information from the detainee.
2) I think the trend is pretty apparent that once you open the box to torture it will occur all over to all kinds of people. The scenario often made such as yours is that you capture someone and you need information immediatley to save someone, stop a bombing, etc. In REALITY anyone captured that you think is useful might know about an on-going operation so therefore you can torture them under the scenario. That basically means EVERYONE captured almost can and should be tortured. That's what happened in Iraq. Soldiers heard and believed Bush when he said Iraq was the main battlefront in the war on terror. They heard the White House say that the Geneva Conventions didn't count in this war, and therefore they beat, abused and killed many Iraqis, a lot, and I mean A LOT of which were simply innocent people swept up in mass arrests by U.S. forces.
Which leads me to my original question which seems to have been ignored:
If CIA and FBI interrogators don't want to use torture, and if cases of torture have led to bad intelligence, and public knowledge that we are engaged in torture makes more people want to fight against us in Iraq, why use it? What makes it effective?
Which leads me to my original question which seems to have been ignored:
If CIA and FBI interrogators don't want to use torture, and if cases of torture have led to bad intelligence, and public knowledge that we are engaged in torture makes more people want to fight against us in Iraq, why use it? What makes it effective?
Which leads me to my original question which seems to have been ignored:
If CIA and FBI interrogators don't want to use torture, and if cases of torture have led to bad intelligence, and public knowledge that we are engaged in torture makes more people want to fight against us in Iraq, why use it? What makes it effective?
No question that the CIA/FBI have decried "CERTAIN" interrogation techniques as being ineffective. The following is a list of those that were used in 2002 with the results you describe.
1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.
2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.
3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.
4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.
5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.
6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.
According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.
And according to Wikipedia......
"Interrogation methods used at Guantanamo Bay and many other U.S. camps for illegal combatants could, with special approval, include sleep deprivation, exposure to extremes of cold and heat, and placing prisoners in "stress positions" for long periods of time. It has been suggested in various media outlets that such harsh treatment during interrogation may[/b] cross the boundary between acceptable methods of gaining information and torture."
HOWEVER[/b]
There ARE effective interrogation techniques that ARE used by the CIA/FBI that people also consider "torture". One that is commonly used is the "Reid Technique" along with the sound and light techniques that I mentioned earlier.
If you are suggesting thet the ONLY method of interrogation approved and used by the CIA/FBI is to "become friends" you are mistaken....and I think you know that.
Which leads me to my original question which seems to have been ignored:
If CIA and FBI interrogators don't want to use torture, and if cases of torture have led to bad intelligence, and public knowledge that we are engaged in torture makes more people want to fight against us in Iraq, why use it? What makes it effective?
Not so much ignored as unanswerable.
Every once in a while I have to leave my SS Utopia and do some actual work. My answer is above.
3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.
They should use the raspberry. That shit will get them talking and just maybe they will become friends.
3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.
They should use the raspberry. That shit will get them talking and just maybe they will become friends.
A good wet willie will put a motherfucker in their place. Er, um, I mean get them to share valuable information about their diabolical scheme to take over the world through violence and terror.
A good wet willie will put a motherfucker in their place. Er, um, I mean get them to share valuable information about their diabolical scheme to take over the world through violence and terror.
Plaese to explain this "wet willie" ....is this something every grade school kid does or is it Barbaric torture???
You are worse than the most mealy mouthed liberal who refuses to say illegal alien. What are your terms? "Alternative physical persuasion" "unique interriorgations" "differently achieved at confessions"?
Torture is not hard to define. The Genevia Convention defines torture. US Military guidelines define torture. If they don't follow those techniques and guidelines they are using torture.
As you say even the best CIA officers confessed after water boarding. If they had been asked to say they were Osama Bin Laden they would have said it. That is not good information.
ALL[/b] of the techniques you just listed were the ones implimented AFTER the White House told them to not follow previous procedures and started writing legal documents saying that they could torture people.
FBI and CIA interrogators have a variety of methods to deal with prisoners, but from what I've read, the most EFFECTIVE means is to befriend them.
All of the procedures you listed were written up by the civilian leadership in the White House and Pentagon, and most FBI and CIA interrogators did not think they were necessary.
And as far as I can tell you still haven't answered my question.
Rock I am assuming that you didn't dhear the news about Colon Poweell's letter to Senator McCain regarding the secret prisons and Bush's attempts at rewriting the Geneva Conventions... He was very dire about it and expressed EXTREME opposition to the current administration's tactics regarding the Geneva Conventions and what it thinks it can legally do. I will post a link when I find it.
This is from Ron Suskind???s One Percent Doctrine book from 2006. He???s a writer from the Wall St. Journal. It begins with a debate between the FBI and Tenet and some of the leadership at the CIA who wanted to torture detainees, and then the torture of an Al Qaeda operative who told the CIA about all kinds of alleged Al Qaeda plots, all of which turned out to be false. Any typos are mine.
???At the same time, a parallel debate was unfolding as to tactics: what worked. The battle over al-Libi [an al Qaeda captive], won by the CIA when the captive was ???rendered??? to the torture chambers of Cairo [Egypt], didn???t end the debate.
It continued to rage between Langley [CIA HQ] and FBI headquarters in Washington, where the bureau???s agents ??? especially those with experience questioning al Qaeda operatives ??? wanted to get at Zubaydah [another al Qaeda captive], even if they were convinced he was mentally unbalanced.
???These guys are involved in a lifelong conspiracy,??? said Dan Coleman, who had experience with almost all the star witnesses of the FBi???s prosecutions during the 1990s. ???The CIA wants everything in five minutes. It???s not possible, and it???s not productive. What you get in that circumstance are captives and captors playing to each other???s expectations, playing roles ??? essentially ??? that gives you a lot of garbage information and nothing you can use.???
Inside of the FBI, Mueller [FBI director] and his deputies thought hard about whether access to the high-value suspects ??? if bought by compromising the FBI???s ???debriefing??? standards ??? was worth the price. ???If it is discovered that the FBI is involved in extra-legal methods,??? Mueller told one top deputy, ???it will haunt us for years in every courtroom.???
As to the underlying issue of effectiveness, of determining what works, the FBI had ammunition to support its ???meeting expectations??? critique of the CIA???s brutal, impatient techniques. Agents passed around copies of a training manual that was discovered in November in the ruins of Mohammed Atef???s bunker in Kandahar. It informed al Qaeda recruits that if they were captured, they???d face torture, dismemberment, and certain death.
What the captives didn???t expect, FBI interrogators knew from experience, was respect and judiciously offered favors. Coleman and FBI interrogators had successfully plied prisoners ??? like Wadi el Hage, a key player in the 1998 embassy bombings, or Jamal al Fadl, a close aide to bin Laden and Zawahiri who turned into a witness-stand star ??? with Chinese food, porn, and, in one case an operation for a captive???s wife. Agents were present when the grateful wife told her husband, ???Now, you tell them whatever they want.??? He did.
CIA??? counterpoint, however, was one that had adherents among an army of self-styled amateurs on interrogation in the U.S. government, from the Oval Office on down. No one has time to build ???relationships??? ??? a word that was repugnant to those who viewed al Qaeda operatives, as evil incarnate. In the debate between Mowatt-Larssen and Cofer Black, the impatient institutional energies of the U.S. government had settled on Black???s position; do everything and quickly.
Choices made, Zubaydah now recovered, it was time, in May of 2002, to test boundaries.
According to CIA sources, he was water-boarded, a technique in which a captive???s face is covered with a towel as water is poured atop, creating the sensation of drowning. He was beaten, though not in a way to worsen his injuries. He was repeatedly threatened, and made certain of his impending death. His medication was withheld. He was bombarded with deafening, continuous noise and harsh lights. He was, as a man already diminished by serious injuries, more fully at the mercy of interrogators than an ordinary prisoner.
Under this duress, Zubaydah told them that shopping malls were targeted by al Qaeda. That information traveled the globe in an instant. Agents from the FBI, Secret Service, Customs, and various related agencies joined local police to surround malls. Zubaydah said banks ??? yes, banks ??? were a priority. FBI agents led officers in a race to surround and secure banks. And also supermarkets ??? al Qaeda was planning to blow up crowded supermarkets, several at one time. People would stop shopping. The nation???s economy would be crippled. And the water systems ??? a target, too. Nuclear plants, naturally. And apartment buildings.
Thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each flavor of target. Of course, if you multiplied by ten, there still wouldn???t be enough public servants in America to surround and secure the supermarkets. Or the banks. But they tried. The FBI generally kept its various alerts secret. But word drifted out to the media, time and again, considering the thousands who were involved.
???
Zubaydah said that al Qaeda was close to building a crude nuclear device. This sent shock waves through the government. But it was unconfirmable.???
Most of what Zubaydah said turned out to be false. The one bit of information that turned out to be confirmable was the name of Jose Padilla, who was later arrested.
People should also note that when the CIA wants prisoners to be tortured they don't do it themselves, they have a system called "renditions" where captives are taken to friendly countries such as Egypt or Thailand, and they're tortured there by those foreign security services with CIA agents present. So Rock, we may have limits on what we're willing to do to people, but once we get there, we have other people do the "real" dirty work for us.
People should also note that when the CIA wants prisoners to be tortured they don't do it themselves, they have a system called "renditions" where captives are taken to friendly countries such as Egypt or Thailand, and they're tortured there by those foreign security services with CIA agents present. So Rock, we may have limits on what we're willing to do to people, but once we get there, we have other people do the "real" dirty work for us.
The CIA claims that torturing is ineffective.
Yet they authorize it and hire people to do it for them.
Why??
And Motown I'd love you to answer MY question about whether you'd testify against the policeman or not....it will just help color in the picture for the peanut gallery.
People should also note that when the CIA wants prisoners to be tortured they don't do it themselves, they have a system called "renditions" where captives are taken to friendly countries such as Egypt or Thailand, and they're tortured there by those foreign security services with CIA agents present. So Rock, we may have limits on what we're willing to do to people, but once we get there, we have other people do the "real" dirty work for us.
The CIA claims that torturing is ineffective.
Yet they authorize it and hire people to do it for them.
Why??
And Motown I'd love you to answer MY question about whether you'd testify against the policeman or not....it will just help color in the picture for the peanut gallery.
Interrogators have been against it because they think it is ineffective. The White House and Pentagon leadership, and Tenet, former head of the CIA were for it. There's a difference.
And why don't you answer my question first since I posted it first?
Did you read the Suskind piece I just typed up? Here is an actual case where an Al Qaeda operative got tortured by the CIA and all of his stories about impending Al Qaeda attacks all over the U.S. he made up. Sound effective?
You want us to believe that the leadership of this country insisted on torturing people, MADE the CIA do it, and in every single case they never, ever got information that helped them in the war on terror.
That in effect, they did this just for the hell of it.
Not buying it....regardless of how many articles you quote to that effect.
I hope we have methods of torture(and I'm sure we do) that neither you, me or our enemy know about. And if we use them sucessfully in 1 out of 100 cases and it helps our cause I'm for it.
Whether it's drugs, psychological or depravation we have spent 50 years and countless money researching the most effective ways to extract information from enemies.
And you believe that after all that research, becoming their friend is the most effective method.
I don't believe that terrorists deserve Geneva Convention rights nor do I believe they should have due process in our judicial system.
And personally I find it more despicable to take action that would ruin the life of a law enforcement officer who saved your loved one because he got "rough" with a suspect, than to slap the belly of a guy who would chop your head off if given the chance.
This is my opinion, it's loud and clear, and the reason we all love America is that we are free to have our own opinions.
I'm probably the only American that has this opinion based on this extensive SS discussion.....so once you convert me, all will be solved.(hmmm...sounds familar)
or
Just write me off as ignorant, barbaric, or just plain stupid.....I can live with that just fine.
I'll continue to give my opinion here unashamedly.
And if someone gives an opinion I don't agree with I promise not to call for them to get kicked off SS or call them derogatory names.
And if even just one of my posts makes someone sit back and think in a way they haven't thought in the past I'll consider sharing my opinion worthwhile.
I want to know how other folks think, especially when it's their own thoughts as opposed to cutting and pasting other peoples thoughts.
I thought that's why we do this?
And as scary as it might be, my vote counts every bit as much as yours.
You want us to believe that the leadership of this country insisted on torturing people, MADE the CIA do it, and in every single case they never, ever got information that helped them in the war on terror.
That in effect, they did this just for the hell of it.
Not buying it....regardless of how many articles you quote to that effect.
Do you read? I really want to know this.
Yes, the White House, the civilian leadership at the Pentagon, and some of the CIA leadership wanted to OK torture after 9/11. There are a lot of legal documents drafted by the White Houst to justify this. You can read them on line. It was their idea.
I want to know how other folks think, especially when it's their own thoughts as opposed to cutting and pasting other peoples thoughts.
Wow, so you've never heard of backing up your arguments with some facts.
As far as I can tell, I never attacked you personally in this thread. I haven't called your out. You started talking about torture and I gave some reasons why it doesn???t really work, and why some people, including me, are against it.
Now it seems like you???re getting all pissy because people are disagreeing with you and you???re packing up all your toys and going home.
I mean c???mon. Talking about I???m an American and I have a right to an opinion! What the fuck is that about? You want people???s ???real opinion??? and not a bunch of cut and pasted stuff? Didn???t you just do that with Wikpedia????
This is more from Ron Suskind???s book on the origins of the ideas that torturing terrorists was OK came from the White House immediately after 9/11.
???The companion question, of what could be done to captives while in custody, became a pressing issue at the end of 2001. A few high-value captives had been picked up, and by January 2002, hundreds of assorted prisoners, mostly low-rung al Qaeda and Taliban soldiers, began to arrive at Guantanamo Bay. A memo drafted on January 9, 2002, from John Yoo ??? a deputy assistant attorney general who???d marshaled legal analysis to support the Vice President???s expansive view of executive prerogative ??? asserted that the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of prisoners of war did not apply to al Qaeda or the Taliban. He and his co-writer, Robert J. Dellahunt, reasoned that al Qaeda, as a nonstate actor, is not a party to the international treaties of war, nor was the Taliban so ???intertwined??? with al Qaeda as to make the two indistinguishable. The memo went on to state that the President was not bound by international law because it is not formally recognized in the U.S. Constitution and that, in any event, the resolution on September 14 gave the President ???sweeping authority with respect to the present conflict.???
This memo created quite a bit of havoc among government lawyers, prompting sharp retort from the State Department that such analysis was ???seriously flawed.??? The President did not agree. On January 18, he sided with the ???sweeping authority??? position that Geneva didn???t apply and passed that proviso to the Pentagon. This drew a concerned response from Colin Powell ??? the most experienced military man among the President???s senior officials. The Geneva Conventions protected all soldiers, of all types, Powell asserted. If we threw them away, we???d be harming our own men and giving up a precious perch of moral probity.
The President called upon his White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales ??? his trusted legal arm since his days as governor of Texas ??? to explain to Powell the authorized policy on the matter.
???As you have said,??? Gonzalez wrote to Bush, ???the war against terrorism is a new kind of war. It is not the traditional clash between nations adhering to the laws of war that formed the backdrop for [Geneva Convention III, on the Treatment of Prisoners of War]. The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians, and the need to try terrorists for war crimes such as wantonly killing civilians. In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva???s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded such things as commissary privileges, scrip (i.e., advances of monthly pay), athletic uniforms, and scientific instruments.??????
This is from ???The Hidden Power??? by Jane Mayer of the New Yorker, 7/3/06 on the same topic and the role of Cheney's office in actual drafting the memos. And also on Guantanamo.
???On September 25th [2001], the Office of Legal Counsel issued a memo declaring that the President had inherent authority to take whatever military action he deemed necessary, not just in response to the September 11th attacks but also in the prevention of any future attacks from terrorist groups, whether they were linked to Al Qaeda or not.
???
Another memo sanctioned torture when the President deems it necessary; yet another claimed that there were virtually no valid legal prohibitions against the inhumane treatment of foreign prisoners held by the C.I.A. outside the U.S. Most of these decisions, according to many Administration officials who were involved in the process, were made in secrecy, and the customary interagency debate and vetting procedures were sidestepped. Addington [Cheney???s Chief of Staff and at the time his legal adviser] either drafted the memos himself or advised those who were drafting them. ???Addington???s fingerprints were all over these policies,??? said Wilkerson, who, as Powell???s top aide, later assembled for the Secretary a dossier of internal memos detailing the decision-making process.
???
Meanwhile, Addington has fought tirelessly to stem reform of other controversial aspects of the New Paradigm, such as the detention and interrogation of terror suspects. Last year, he and Cheney led an unsuccessful campaign to defeat an amendment, proposed by Senator John McCain, to ban the abusive treatment of detainees held by the military or the C.I.A. Government officials who have worked closely with Addington say he insists that legal flexibility is necessary, because of the iniquity of the enemy; moreover, he does not believe that the legal positions taken by the Bush Administration in the war on terror have damaged the country???s international reputation. ???He???s a very smart guy, but he gives no credibility to those who say these policies are hurting us around the world,??? the senior Administration legal adviser said. ???His feeling is that there are no costs. He???ll say people are just whining. He thinks most of them would be against us no matter what.??? In Addington???s view, critics of the Administration???s aggressive legal policies are just political enemies of the President.
Yet, from the start, some of the sharpest critics of detainee-treatment policies have been military and law-enforcement officials inside the Bush Administration; people close to it, like McCain; and our foreign allies. Just a few months after the Guant??namo detention centers were established, members of the Administration began receiving reports that questioned whether all the prisoners there were really, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had labelled them, ???the worst of the worst.??? Guter said that the Pentagon had originally planned to screen the suspects individually on the battlefields in Afghanistan; such ???Article 5 hearings??? are a provision of the Geneva Conventions. But the White House cancelled the hearings, which had been standard protocol during the previous fifty years, including in the first Gulf War. In a January 25, 2002, legal memorandum, Administration lawyers dismissed the Geneva Conventions as ???obsolete,??? ???quaint,??? and irrelevant to the war on terror. The memo was signed by Gonzales, but the Administration lawyer said he believed that ???Addington and Flanigan were behind it.??? The memo argued that all Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees were illegal enemy combatants, which eliminated ???any argument regarding the need for case-by-case determination of P.O.W. status.??? Critics claim that the lack of a careful screening process led some innocent detainees to be imprisoned. ???Article 5 hearings would have cost them nothing,??? the Administration lawyer, who was involved in the process, said. ???They just wanted to make a point on executive power???that the President can designate them all enemy combatants if he wants to.???
Guter, the Navy JAG, said that, before long, he and other military experts began to wonder whether the reason they weren???t getting much useful intelligence from Guant??namo was that, as he puts it, ???it wasn???t there.??? Guter, who was in the Pentagon on September 11th, said, ???I don???t have a sympathetic bone in my body for the terrorists. But I just wanted to make sure we were getting the right people???the real terrorists. And I wanted to make sure we were doing it in a way consistent with our values.???
While the JAGs??? questions about the treatment of detainees went largely unheeded, he said, the C.I.A. was simultaneously raising similar concerns. In the summer of 2002, the agency had sent an Arabic-speaking analyst to Guant??namo to find out why more intelligence wasn???t being collected, and, after interviewing several dozen prisoners, he had come
back with bad news: more than half the detainees, he believed, didn???t belong there. He wrote a devastating classified report, which reached General John Gordon, the deputy national-security adviser for combatting terrorism. In a series of meetings at the White House, Gordon, Bellinger, and other officials warned Addington and Gonzales that potentially innocent people had been locked up in Guant??namo and would be indefinitely. ???This is a violation of basic notions of American fairness,??? Gordon and Bellinger argued. ???Isn???t that what we???re about as a country???? Addington???s response, sources familiar with the meetings said, was ???These are ???enemy combatants.??? Please use that term. They???ve all been through a screening process. We don???t have anything to talk about.???
A former Administration official said of Addington???s response, ???It seemed illogical. How could you deny the possibility that one or more people were locked up who shouldn???t be? There were old people, sick people???why do we want to keep them???? At the meeting, Gordon and Bellinger argued, ???The American public understands that wars are confusing and exceptional things happen. But the American public will expect some due process.???
Addington and Gonzales dismissed this concern. The former Administration official recalled that Addington was ???the dominant voice. It was a non-debate, in his view.??? The confrontation made clear, though, that Addington had been informed early that there were problems at Guant??namo. ???There wasn???t a lack of knowledge or understanding,??? the former official said.???
You're probably right......you did not call for Ban or other immature inferences, but some did.
It seems my opinion(s), moreso that anyone else who posts here, are constantly called out to be defended and/or justified....mostly because I am not in lockstep with the "popular opinion"........paranoia???
Or maybe it's that a middle age white guy just has no business being at a website created for a very different demographic
Cutting and pasting quotes from multiple posts of mine and stringing them together to discredit or "prove me wrong" seems to be a little childish to me.
I know as a fact that other people with "differing" opinions refuse to post on certain subjects to avoid this kind of bullshit.
I mean damn....Sabadaba got his own friggin Graemlin here whereas he'd be just another nameless face at any of the 1,000's of Rush Limbaugh websites.
It sucks having to piss off SOI with the "Rockadelic Show" everytime I post something because it's attacked from so many directions.
So understand why/when I say I've had enough and am ready for Record Day.
This is from "FBI ripped tactics at Guantanamo," Josh White, Washington Post, 2/24/06
"FBI officials who were interrogating terrorism suspects at the U.S. detention site at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2002 and 2003 strenuously objected to aggressive techniques the military was using and believed they could be illegal, according to FBI memos released Thursday.
The agents wrote in memos that they were at odds with interrogators working for a Defense Intelligence Agency human intelligence group and with guidance from senior Pentagon officials. The agents also repeatedly expressed their concerns to the senior military office at the base ??? Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller ??? and argued that the less aggressive FBI-approved methods were more effective.
???Although MGEN Miller acknowledged positive aspects of this approach, it was apparent that he favored DHS???s interrogation methods, despite FBI assertions that such methods could easily result in the elicitation of unreliable[/b] and legally inadmissible information,??? one FBI agent wrote to senior FBI officials in May 2003, referring to the Defense Humint Service.???
Rock, I've been there with you. Before your time here I got into a bunch of arguments over my record reviews, and one time I got REALLY, I mean reaaalllly pissy because I almost broke up with my girlfriend that day and took down all of my reviews. It happens.
Comments
Please get back on the meds.
It's absolutely a valid question as it gets to the heart of the matter of whether or not you think any type of torture(I hate that word, I'd prefer physical persuasion) is wrong 100% of the time. And if put in that situation, what would you do.
Only Laser had the balls to answer and while we disagree I totally respect him for his honest answer.
C'mon have some cajones and tell us....should the cop get charged with a crime or not??
I answered... Reading Is Fundamental...
again I say: Torture is never acceptable.
Yes the cop should be prosecuted, he went way beyond reasonable force.
And don't try to dress it up as 'physical Persuasion" Torture is torture there is nothign PC about it. Say it for what it is.
1) FBI and CIA interrogators are against torture. They do not think it provides reliable information. They will get some valuable information, and they will also get a lot of crap simply because the person that is being tortured wants it to stop. If you had read my post the most effective interrogation technique advocated by the CIA and FBI is to befriend a person and then use that to manipulate them into giving you information. If you establish some kind of relationship with the person, they are much less likely to lie to you and that is the whole point, to get useful information from the detainee.
2) I think the trend is pretty apparent that once you open the box to torture it will occur all over to all kinds of people. The scenario often made such as yours is that you capture someone and you need information immediatley to save someone, stop a bombing, etc. In REALITY anyone captured that you think is useful might know about an on-going operation so therefore you can torture them under the scenario. That basically means EVERYONE captured almost can and should be tortured. That's what happened in Iraq. Soldiers heard and believed Bush when he said Iraq was the main battlefront in the war on terror. They heard the White House say that the Geneva Conventions didn't count in this war, and therefore they beat, abused and killed many Iraqis, a lot, and I mean A LOT of which were simply innocent people swept up in mass arrests by U.S. forces.
Which leads me to my original question which seems to have been ignored:
If CIA and FBI interrogators don't want to use torture, and if cases of torture have led to bad intelligence, and public knowledge that we are engaged in torture makes more people want to fight against us in Iraq, why use it? What makes it effective?
Not so much ignored as unanswerable.
No question that the CIA/FBI have decried "CERTAIN" interrogation techniques as being ineffective. The following is a list of those that were used in 2002 with the results you describe.
1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.
2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.
3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.
4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.
5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.
6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.
According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.
And according to Wikipedia......
"Interrogation methods used at Guantanamo Bay and many other U.S. camps for illegal combatants could, with special approval, include sleep deprivation, exposure to extremes of cold and heat, and placing prisoners in "stress positions" for long periods of time. It has been suggested in various media outlets that such harsh treatment during interrogation may[/b] cross the boundary between acceptable methods of gaining information and torture."
HOWEVER[/b]
There ARE effective interrogation techniques that ARE used by the CIA/FBI that people also consider "torture". One that is commonly used is the "Reid Technique" along with the sound and light techniques that I mentioned earlier.
If you are suggesting thet the ONLY method of interrogation approved and used by the CIA/FBI is to "become friends" you are mistaken....and I think you know that.
Every once in a while I have to leave my SS Utopia and do some actual work. My answer is above.
They should use the raspberry. That shit will get them talking and just maybe they will become friends.
Purple Nurple!!
Plaese to explain this "wet willie" ....is this something every grade school kid does or is it Barbaric torture???
Torture is not hard to define. The Genevia Convention defines torture. US Military guidelines define torture. If they don't follow those techniques and guidelines they are using torture.
As you say even the best CIA officers confessed after water boarding. If they had been asked to say they were Osama Bin Laden they would have said it. That is not good information.
ALL[/b] of the techniques you just listed were the ones implimented AFTER the White House told them to not follow previous procedures and started writing legal documents saying that they could torture people.
FBI and CIA interrogators have a variety of methods to deal with prisoners, but from what I've read, the most EFFECTIVE means is to befriend them.
All of the procedures you listed were written up by the civilian leadership in the White House and Pentagon, and most FBI and CIA interrogators did not think they were necessary.
And as far as I can tell you still haven't answered my question.
I am assuming that you didn't dhear the news about Colon Poweell's letter to Senator McCain regarding the secret prisons and Bush's attempts at rewriting the Geneva Conventions... He was very dire about it and expressed EXTREME opposition to the current administration's tactics regarding the Geneva Conventions and what it thinks it can legally do. I will post a link when I find it.
Bush is not happy about the letter.
???At the same time, a parallel debate was unfolding as to tactics: what worked. The battle over al-Libi [an al Qaeda captive], won by the CIA when the captive was ???rendered??? to the torture chambers of Cairo [Egypt], didn???t end the debate.
It continued to rage between Langley [CIA HQ] and FBI headquarters in Washington, where the bureau???s agents ??? especially those with experience questioning al Qaeda operatives ??? wanted to get at Zubaydah [another al Qaeda captive], even if they were convinced he was mentally unbalanced.
???These guys are involved in a lifelong conspiracy,??? said Dan Coleman, who had experience with almost all the star witnesses of the FBi???s prosecutions during the 1990s. ???The CIA wants everything in five minutes. It???s not possible, and it???s not productive. What you get in that circumstance are captives and captors playing to each other???s expectations, playing roles ??? essentially ??? that gives you a lot of garbage information and nothing you can use.???
Inside of the FBI, Mueller [FBI director] and his deputies thought hard about whether access to the high-value suspects ??? if bought by compromising the FBI???s ???debriefing??? standards ??? was worth the price. ???If it is discovered that the FBI is involved in extra-legal methods,??? Mueller told one top deputy, ???it will haunt us for years in every courtroom.???
As to the underlying issue of effectiveness, of determining what works, the FBI had ammunition to support its ???meeting expectations??? critique of the CIA???s brutal, impatient techniques. Agents passed around copies of a training manual that was discovered in November in the ruins of Mohammed Atef???s bunker in Kandahar. It informed al Qaeda recruits that if they were captured, they???d face torture, dismemberment, and certain death.
What the captives didn???t expect, FBI interrogators knew from experience, was respect and judiciously offered favors. Coleman and FBI interrogators had successfully plied prisoners ??? like Wadi el Hage, a key player in the 1998 embassy bombings, or Jamal al Fadl, a close aide to bin Laden and Zawahiri who turned into a witness-stand star ??? with Chinese food, porn, and, in one case an operation for a captive???s wife. Agents were present when the grateful wife told her husband, ???Now, you tell them whatever they want.??? He did.
CIA??? counterpoint, however, was one that had adherents among an army of self-styled amateurs on interrogation in the U.S. government, from the Oval Office on down. No one has time to build ???relationships??? ??? a word that was repugnant to those who viewed al Qaeda operatives, as evil incarnate. In the debate between Mowatt-Larssen and Cofer Black, the impatient institutional energies of the U.S. government had settled on Black???s position; do everything and quickly.
Choices made, Zubaydah now recovered, it was time, in May of 2002, to test boundaries.
According to CIA sources, he was water-boarded, a technique in which a captive???s face is covered with a towel as water is poured atop, creating the sensation of drowning. He was beaten, though not in a way to worsen his injuries. He was repeatedly threatened, and made certain of his impending death. His medication was withheld. He was bombarded with deafening, continuous noise and harsh lights. He was, as a man already diminished by serious injuries, more fully at the mercy of interrogators than an ordinary prisoner.
Under this duress, Zubaydah told them that shopping malls were targeted by al Qaeda. That information traveled the globe in an instant. Agents from the FBI, Secret Service, Customs, and various related agencies joined local police to surround malls. Zubaydah said banks ??? yes, banks ??? were a priority. FBI agents led officers in a race to surround and secure banks. And also supermarkets ??? al Qaeda was planning to blow up crowded supermarkets, several at one time. People would stop shopping. The nation???s economy would be crippled. And the water systems ??? a target, too. Nuclear plants, naturally. And apartment buildings.
Thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each flavor of target. Of course, if you multiplied by ten, there still wouldn???t be enough public servants in America to surround and secure the supermarkets. Or the banks. But they tried. The FBI generally kept its various alerts secret. But word drifted out to the media, time and again, considering the thousands who were involved.
???
Zubaydah said that al Qaeda was close to building a crude nuclear device. This sent shock waves through the government. But it was unconfirmable.???
Most of what Zubaydah said turned out to be false. The one bit of information that turned out to be confirmable was the name of Jose Padilla, who was later arrested.
The CIA claims that torturing is ineffective.
Yet they authorize it and hire people to do it for them.
Why??
And Motown I'd love you to answer MY question about whether you'd testify against the policeman or not....it will just help color in the picture for the peanut gallery.
Interrogators have been against it because they think it is ineffective. The White House and Pentagon leadership, and Tenet, former head of the CIA were for it. There's a difference.
And why don't you answer my question first since I posted it first?
Did you read the Suskind piece I just typed up? Here is an actual case where an Al Qaeda operative got tortured by the CIA and all of his stories about impending Al Qaeda attacks all over the U.S. he made up. Sound effective?
That in effect, they did this just for the hell of it.
Not buying it....regardless of how many articles you quote to that effect.
I hope we have methods of torture(and I'm sure we do) that neither you, me or our enemy know about. And if we use them sucessfully in 1 out of 100 cases and it helps our cause I'm for it.
Whether it's drugs, psychological or depravation we have spent 50 years and countless money researching the most effective ways to extract information from enemies.
And you believe that after all that research, becoming their friend is the most effective method.
I don't believe that terrorists deserve Geneva Convention rights nor do I believe they should have due process in our judicial system.
And personally I find it more despicable to take action that would ruin the life of a law enforcement officer who saved your loved one because he got "rough" with a suspect, than to slap the belly of a guy who would chop your head off if given the chance.
This is my opinion, it's loud and clear, and the reason we all love America is that we are free to have our own opinions.
I'm probably the only American that has this opinion based on this extensive SS discussion.....so once you convert me, all will be solved.(hmmm...sounds familar)
or
Just write me off as ignorant, barbaric, or just plain stupid.....I can live with that just fine.
I'll continue to give my opinion here unashamedly.
And if someone gives an opinion I don't agree with I promise not to call for them to get kicked off SS or call them derogatory names.
And if even just one of my posts makes someone sit back and think in a way they haven't thought in the past I'll consider sharing my opinion worthwhile.
I want to know how other folks think, especially when it's their own thoughts as opposed to cutting and pasting other peoples thoughts.
I thought that's why we do this?
And as scary as it might be, my vote counts every bit as much as yours.
I'm done....Record Day is upon us.
Do you read? I really want to know this.
Yes, the White House, the civilian leadership at the Pentagon, and some of the CIA leadership wanted to OK torture after 9/11. There are a lot of legal documents drafted by the White Houst to justify this. You can read them on line. It was their idea.
Wow, so you've never heard of backing up your arguments with some facts.
As far as I can tell, I never attacked you personally in this thread. I haven't called your out. You started talking about torture and I gave some reasons why it doesn???t really work, and why some people, including me, are against it.
Now it seems like you???re getting all pissy because people are disagreeing with you and you???re packing up all your toys and going home.
I mean c???mon. Talking about I???m an American and I have a right to an opinion! What the fuck is that about? You want people???s ???real opinion??? and not a bunch of cut and pasted stuff? Didn???t you just do that with Wikpedia????
Really, you sound like a little kid right now.
???The companion question, of what could be done to captives while in custody, became a pressing issue at the end of 2001. A few high-value captives had been picked up, and by January 2002, hundreds of assorted prisoners, mostly low-rung al Qaeda and Taliban soldiers, began to arrive at Guantanamo Bay. A memo drafted on January 9, 2002, from John Yoo ??? a deputy assistant attorney general who???d marshaled legal analysis to support the Vice President???s expansive view of executive prerogative ??? asserted that the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of prisoners of war did not apply to al Qaeda or the Taliban. He and his co-writer, Robert J. Dellahunt, reasoned that al Qaeda, as a nonstate actor, is not a party to the international treaties of war, nor was the Taliban so ???intertwined??? with al Qaeda as to make the two indistinguishable. The memo went on to state that the President was not bound by international law because it is not formally recognized in the U.S. Constitution and that, in any event, the resolution on September 14 gave the President ???sweeping authority with respect to the present conflict.???
This memo created quite a bit of havoc among government lawyers, prompting sharp retort from the State Department that such analysis was ???seriously flawed.??? The President did not agree. On January 18, he sided with the ???sweeping authority??? position that Geneva didn???t apply and passed that proviso to the Pentagon. This drew a concerned response from Colin Powell ??? the most experienced military man among the President???s senior officials. The Geneva Conventions protected all soldiers, of all types, Powell asserted. If we threw them away, we???d be harming our own men and giving up a precious perch of moral probity.
The President called upon his White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales ??? his trusted legal arm since his days as governor of Texas ??? to explain to Powell the authorized policy on the matter.
???As you have said,??? Gonzalez wrote to Bush, ???the war against terrorism is a new kind of war. It is not the traditional clash between nations adhering to the laws of war that formed the backdrop for [Geneva Convention III, on the Treatment of Prisoners of War]. The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians, and the need to try terrorists for war crimes such as wantonly killing civilians. In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva???s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions requiring that captured enemy be afforded such things as commissary privileges, scrip (i.e., advances of monthly pay), athletic uniforms, and scientific instruments.??????
This is from ???The Hidden Power??? by Jane Mayer of the New Yorker, 7/3/06 on the same topic and the role of Cheney's office in actual drafting the memos. And also on Guantanamo.
???On September 25th [2001], the Office of Legal Counsel issued a memo declaring that the President had inherent authority to take whatever military action he deemed necessary, not just in response to the September 11th attacks but also in the prevention of any future attacks from terrorist groups, whether they were linked to Al Qaeda or not.
???
Another memo sanctioned torture when the President deems it necessary; yet another claimed that there were virtually no valid legal prohibitions against the inhumane treatment of foreign prisoners held by the C.I.A. outside the U.S. Most of these decisions, according to many Administration officials who were involved in the process, were made in secrecy, and the customary interagency debate and vetting procedures were sidestepped. Addington [Cheney???s Chief of Staff and at the time his legal adviser] either drafted the memos himself or advised those who were drafting them. ???Addington???s fingerprints were all over these policies,??? said Wilkerson, who, as Powell???s top aide, later assembled for the Secretary a dossier of internal memos detailing the decision-making process.
???
Meanwhile, Addington has fought tirelessly to stem reform of other controversial aspects of the New Paradigm, such as the detention and interrogation of terror suspects. Last year, he and Cheney led an unsuccessful campaign to defeat an amendment, proposed by Senator John McCain, to ban the abusive treatment of detainees held by the military or the C.I.A. Government officials who have worked closely with Addington say he insists that legal flexibility is necessary, because of the iniquity of the enemy; moreover, he does not believe that the legal positions taken by the Bush Administration in the war on terror have damaged the country???s international reputation. ???He???s a very smart guy, but he gives no credibility to those who say these policies are hurting us around the world,??? the senior Administration legal adviser said. ???His feeling is that there are no costs. He???ll say people are just whining. He thinks most of them would be against us no matter what.??? In Addington???s view, critics of the Administration???s aggressive legal policies are just political enemies of the President.
Yet, from the start, some of the sharpest critics of detainee-treatment policies have been military and law-enforcement officials inside the Bush Administration; people close to it, like McCain; and our foreign allies. Just a few months after the Guant??namo detention centers were established, members of the Administration began receiving reports that questioned whether all the prisoners there were really, as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had labelled them, ???the worst of the worst.??? Guter said that the Pentagon had originally planned to screen the suspects individually on the battlefields in Afghanistan; such ???Article 5 hearings??? are a provision of the Geneva Conventions. But the White House cancelled the hearings, which had been standard protocol during the previous fifty years, including in the first Gulf War. In a January 25, 2002, legal memorandum, Administration lawyers dismissed the Geneva Conventions as ???obsolete,??? ???quaint,??? and irrelevant to the war on terror. The memo was signed by Gonzales, but the Administration lawyer said he believed that ???Addington and Flanigan were behind it.??? The memo argued that all Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees were illegal enemy combatants, which eliminated ???any argument regarding the need for case-by-case determination of P.O.W. status.??? Critics claim that the lack of a careful screening process led some innocent detainees to be imprisoned. ???Article 5 hearings would have cost them nothing,??? the Administration lawyer, who was involved in the process, said. ???They just wanted to make a point on executive power???that the President can designate them all enemy combatants if he wants to.???
Guter, the Navy JAG, said that, before long, he and other military experts began to wonder whether the reason they weren???t getting much useful intelligence from Guant??namo was that, as he puts it, ???it wasn???t there.??? Guter, who was in the Pentagon on September 11th, said, ???I don???t have a sympathetic bone in my body for the terrorists. But I just wanted to make sure we were getting the right people???the real terrorists. And I wanted to make sure we were doing it in a way consistent with our values.???
While the JAGs??? questions about the treatment of detainees went largely unheeded, he said, the C.I.A. was simultaneously raising similar concerns. In the summer of 2002, the agency had sent an Arabic-speaking analyst to Guant??namo to find out why more intelligence wasn???t being collected, and, after interviewing several dozen prisoners, he had come back with bad news: more than half the detainees, he believed, didn???t belong there. He wrote a devastating classified report, which reached General John Gordon, the deputy national-security adviser for combatting terrorism. In a series of meetings at the White House, Gordon, Bellinger, and other officials warned Addington and Gonzales that potentially innocent people had been locked up in Guant??namo and would be indefinitely. ???This is a violation of basic notions of American fairness,??? Gordon and Bellinger argued. ???Isn???t that what we???re about as a country???? Addington???s response, sources familiar with the meetings said, was ???These are ???enemy combatants.??? Please use that term. They???ve all been through a screening process. We don???t have anything to talk about.???
A former Administration official said of Addington???s response, ???It seemed illogical. How could you deny the possibility that one or more people were locked up who shouldn???t be? There were old people, sick people???why do we want to keep them???? At the meeting, Gordon and Bellinger argued, ???The American public understands that wars are confusing and exceptional things happen. But the American public will expect some due process.???
Addington and Gonzales dismissed this concern. The former Administration official recalled that Addington was ???the dominant voice. It was a non-debate, in his view.??? The confrontation made clear, though, that Addington had been informed early that there were problems at Guant??namo. ???There wasn???t a lack of knowledge or understanding,??? the former official said.???
You're probably right......you did not call for Ban or other immature inferences, but some did.
It seems my opinion(s), moreso that anyone else who posts here, are constantly called out to be defended and/or justified....mostly because I am not in lockstep with the "popular opinion"........paranoia???
Or maybe it's that a middle age white guy just has no business being at a website created for a very different demographic
Cutting and pasting quotes from multiple posts of mine and stringing them together to discredit or "prove me wrong" seems to be a little childish to me.
I know as a fact that other people with "differing" opinions refuse to post on certain subjects to avoid this kind of bullshit.
I mean damn....Sabadaba got his own friggin Graemlin here whereas he'd be just another nameless face at any of the 1,000's of Rush Limbaugh websites.
It sucks having to piss off SOI with the "Rockadelic Show" everytime I post something because it's attacked from so many directions.
So understand why/when I say I've had enough and am ready for Record Day.
"FBI officials who were interrogating terrorism suspects at the U.S. detention site at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2002 and 2003 strenuously objected to aggressive techniques the military was using and believed they could be illegal, according to FBI memos released Thursday.
The agents wrote in memos that they were at odds with interrogators working for a Defense Intelligence Agency human intelligence group and with guidance from senior Pentagon officials. The agents also repeatedly expressed their concerns to the senior military office at the base ??? Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller ??? and argued that the less aggressive FBI-approved methods were more effective.
???Although MGEN Miller acknowledged positive aspects of this approach, it was apparent that he favored DHS???s interrogation methods, despite FBI assertions that such methods could easily result in the elicitation of unreliable[/b] and legally inadmissible information,??? one FBI agent wrote to senior FBI officials in May 2003, referring to the Defense Humint Service.???
I've been there with you. Before your time here I got into a bunch of arguments over my record reviews, and one time I got REALLY, I mean reaaalllly pissy because I almost broke up with my girlfriend that day and took down all of my reviews. It happens.