CIA Torture Report Set to Go Nuclear

[Orignal Earl]

What horrid people run this nation.

But when it comes to other places, like the Palestinians for example..if they voted for their gov then its ok for everyone to suffer

 

[fskimospy]

I have to say that the response of conservatives to this has broadly been absolutely revolting. They complain about tyranny when it comes to helping poor people get health care, but when it comes to imprisoning and torturing innocent people, -you know, actual tyranny- they are either silent or actively in favor.

These people need to take a long look at their own moral code, because it seems pretty gross from here. Btw, some conservatives such as Hyabusa and Genx have been admirably against this, so it is certainly not all conservatives.

 

[Orignal Earl]

Btw, some conservatives such as Hyabusa and Genx have been admirably against this, so it is certainly not all conservatives.

These two give me faith

 

[Pens1566]

Can't say I'm surprised that Cheney defended "rectal rehydration" at all. I bet he never leaves US soil again.

 

[ivwshane]

Can't say I'm surprised that Cheney defended "rectal rehydration" at all. I bet he never leaves US soil again.

I'm pretty sure I saw an interview with him and the interviewer asked him about rectal hydration and he said he wasn't familiar with it and it wasn't part of the approved procedures. Now I hear him saying that it was done for medical reasons.

Quite a turnaround in less than a week.


I would give up prosecuting all the other people involved with torture if it meant Cheney would be prosecuted and put in jail.

 

[bshole]

I'm pretty sure I saw an interview with him and the interviewer asked him about rectal hydration and he said he wasn't familiar with it and it wasn't part of the approved procedures. Now I hear him saying that it was done for medical reasons.

Quite a turnaround in less than a week.


I would give up prosecuting all the other people involved with torture if it meant Cheney would be prosecuted and put in jail.

I am no fan of Dick Cheney either.

It’s official: torture doesn’t work. Waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, did not in fact “produce the intelligence that allowed us to get Osama bin Laden," as former Vice President Dick Cheney asserted in 2011. Those are among the central findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA interrogation and detention after 9/11.


The report’s executive summary is expected to be released Tuesday. After reviewing thousands of the CIA’s own documents, the committee has concluded that torture was ineffective as an intelligence-gathering technique. Torture produced little information of value, and what little it did produce could’ve been gained through humane, legal methods that uphold American ideals.

I had long since come to that conclusion myself. As special agent in charge of the criminal investigation task force with investigators and intelligence personnel at Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq, I was privy to the information provided by Khalid Sheik Mohammed. I was aware of no valuable information that came from waterboarding. And the Senate Intelligence Committee—which had access to all CIA documents related to the “enhanced interrogation” program—has concluded that abusive techniques didn’t help the hunt for Bin Laden. Cheney’s claim that the frequent waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed “produced phenomenal results for us" is simply false.


The self-defeating stupidity of torture might come as news to Americans who’ve heard again and again from Cheney and other political leaders that torture “worked.” Professional interrogators, however, couldn’t be less surprised. We know that legal, rapport-building interrogation techniques are the best way to obtain intelligence, and that torture tends to solicit unreliable information that sets back investigations.
Yes, torture makes people talk—but what they say is often untrue. Seeking to stop the pain, people subjected to torture tend to say what they believe their interrogators want to hear.

The report is essential because it makes clear the legal, moral, and
strategic costs of torture. President Obama and congressional leaders should use this opportunity to push for legislation that solidifies the ban on torture and cruel treatment. While current law prohibits these acts, US officials employed strained legal arguments to authorize abuse.


Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/12/torture-report-dick-cheney-110306.html#ixzz3LzZ1pd7P

 

[Pens1566]

Yep. Two things he was ok with yesterday on MTP were the medical efficacy of the rectal rehydrations and that torture works.

 

[Jeff7]

No joke, they tried to argue that since extrajudicial torture isn't a "punishment" administered by a court, it isn't punishment so the ban on cruel and unusual punishment doesn't apply.

Think of how truly insane and evil that is. For a bunch of people who claim to always want to know what the founding fathers wanted they are arguing that the government is more free to inflict horrible things on people is GREATER when they have been convicted of no crime. It's things like this that makes me say we need to go after the lawyers.

"It's not punishment. It's a government employment program for people who are otherwise unemployable due to an inherent, and sometimes violent, lack of empathy, compassion, or ethics."

When two branches of government don't reign in something so obviously illegal and our only hope is for a disfunctional congress to do something, democracy and the system we believe in has failed.

Truly disgusting!

That's what makes it so unsettling. The idea of the Constitution was that it would protect people from past injustices of governing bodies. Now we've deliberately attempted to bypass it, and now are rationalizing it out to be not only tolerable, but even acceptable and desirable.
What has happened is precisely what some of our oldest laws oppose. Innocent people were imprisoned, and both guilty and innocent people were tortured, and the people who ordered and committed the acts will see no consequences.
Couple that with our counting of drone strike casualties:
Approximately this many people died, and they were probably militants.
Maybe we killed the right people, maybe not. Whatever, close enough.

So our foreign policy includes:
- Fly drones over another country and use missiles on people and targets that might be the right ones. If it's a wrong target, classify them as militants or foreign fighters.
- Kidnap people who might be guilty of something, and torture them until they give you the answers you want. It doesn't matter if they told you the truth already. Just keep at it. That's how torture works, you'll get every answer.


Wiretapping here at home, an overstep of the 4th Amendment.....heck of a job.

 

[Vaux]

Torture doesn't work.... bullshit it doesn't work. Where the hell do people come up with that shit? If I know you know something and I want to know it and I put your head in a fucking vice or I start cutting off your fingers you are going to be telling me pretty damn quick.

Perhaps they had the wrong people or were asking the wrong questions, but torture sure as shit works under the right circumstances. There is a reason people have been doing it to other people for centuries.

(not advocating torture, just saying)

 

[ivwshane]

^

Lol! Another moron who thinks "they know" something despite what real experts have said and what studies have proven.

 

[Vaux]

^

Lol! Another moron who thinks "they know" something despite what real experts have said and what studies have proven.

Common sense escapes you or something?

Do you think that this CIA report has been the only time in the history of mankind that torture has ever been used?

Here is one for your big brain.... man walks into a store. Pulls a gun on the clerk. Gets all the money.

Now.... lets examine this reallllll close. How did he do it? You got it! Threat of violence and scared for his life... the clerk gives him what he wanted. See how that works?

 

[Victorian Gray]

Common sense escapes you or something?

Do you think that this CIA report has been the only time in the history of mankind that torture has ever been used?

Here is one for your big brain.... man walks into a store. Pulls a gun on the clerk. Gets all the money.

Now.... lets examine this reallllll close. How did he do it? You got it! Threat of violence and scared for his life... the clerk gives him what he wanted. See how that works?

Cool story dude. Probably in the wrong thread though.

 

[ivwshane]

Common sense escapes you or something?

Do you think that this CIA report has been the only time in the history of mankind that torture has ever been used?

Here is one for your big brain.... man walks into a store. Pulls a gun on the clerk. Gets all the money.

Now.... lets examine this reallllll close. How did he do it? You got it! Threat of violence and scared for his life... the clerk gives him what he wanted. See how that works?

Uh what?

Anybody want to translate this idiots post?

 

[Vaux]

?

I said torture works, you said it doesn't. I gave you an example of how the threat of violence (and/or torture) gets somebody something that they want. I don't know what you don't understand.

I mean if I come to your house and start pounding nails in your arm and demand your bank account numbers, what are you going to do?

John Mccain gave up information when he was tortured. So did SAS great Andy Mcnab. And countless others. It does work, of course not every single time and as I said, not if they have the wrong people or are asking the wrong questions.

 

[Fenixgoon]

?

I said torture works, you said it doesn't. I gave you an example of how the threat of violence (and/or torture) gets somebody something that they want. I don't know what you don't understand.

I mean if I come to your house and start pounding nails in your arm and demand your bank account numbers, what are you going to do?

John Mccain gave up information when he was tortured. So did SAS great Andy Mcnab. And countless others. It does work, of course not every single time and as I said, not if they have the wrong people or are asking the wrong questions.

so when john mccain says that torture results in less reliable intelligence than other methods, you disagree?

after all, he's actually experienced and seen torture. unless you've been a POW as well, you're just armchair quarterbacking this.

 

[ivwshane]

?

I said torture works, you said it doesn't. I gave you an example of how the threat of violence (and/or torture) gets somebody something that they want. I don't know what you don't understand.

I mean if I come to your house and start pounding nails in your arm and demand your bank account numbers, what are you going to do?

John Mccain gave up information when he was tortured. So did SAS great Andy Mcnab. And countless others. It does work, of course not every single time and as I said, not if they have the wrong people or are asking the wrong questions.

I guess context isn't a word in your vocabulary. This thread is about the CIA torturing captured enemies. You know, our government who is required to follow the law. What your stupid little stories misses is that prisoners are already...wait for it, imprisoned, therefore the hope of everything being over soon that people in your little story have doesn't exist for prisoners. You are comparing apples and oranges and your claim is based on your own naïveté where as professionals have come to different conclusions as have people that have studied the issue.


The previous poster had the correct response...cool story bro!

 

[Victorian Gray]

I guess context isn't a word in your vocabulary. This thread is about the CIA torturing captured enemies. You know, our government who is required to follow the law. What your stupid little stories misses is that prisoners are already...wait for it, imprisoned, therefore the hope of everything being over soon that people in your little story have doesn't exist for prisoners. You are comparing apples and oranges and your claim is based on your own naïveté where as professionals have come to different conclusions as have people that have studies the issue.


The previous poster had the correct response...cool story bro!

Appears to be showing signs of "Internet Tuff Guy Syndrome". There's a lot of that going around these days.

 

[Vaux]

so when john mccain says that torture results in less reliable intelligence than other methods, you disagree?

after all, he's actually experienced and seen torture. unless you've been a POW as well, you're just armchair quarterbacking this.

Well first off you have to remember that John Mccain is a politician. So right off the bat anything he says you have to think about which way the wind is blowing at the time. I have never been a POW, but I am a veteran.

And does it result in less reliable intelligence? IMO, sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depends on what you know and what you think the prisoner knows. Too bad there is no crystal ball that we can read to tell us if someone is hiding information that would save thousands of lives, eh?

It hurts to say it, but a lot of information was gained by the Viet Cong from US troops because of torture.

 

[Vaux]

Appears to be showing signs of "Internet Tuff Guy Syndrome". There's a lot of that going around these days.

Why do you (and others) always resort to attacking someone personally when they say something you don't like? It's really unbecoming.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

?

I said torture works, you said it doesn't. I gave you an example of how the threat of violence (and/or torture) gets somebody something that they want. I don't know what you don't understand.

I mean if I come to your house and start pounding nails in your arm and demand your bank account numbers, what are you going to do?

John Mccain gave up information when he was tortured. So did SAS great Andy Mcnab. And countless others. It does work, of course not every single time and as I said, not if they have the wrong people or are asking the wrong questions.

If Cheney were tortured would he have given up Bush's nuclear launch codes?

 

[Vaux]

If Cheney were tortured would he have given up Bush's nuclear launch codes?

I don't think Cheney knew Bush's launch codes but if he did, and someone applied the right pressure, maybe he would. I don't know. I don't think that is something anyone knows until they are in that situation.

By the way, if you think I am a fan of Dick Cheney or the Bush admin, I am not.

I remember when I was in the military they would say that if we were to become POW's that all we were allowed to say was name, rank, and serial number. And I remember thinking to myself, I really hope it's that easy, but I knew it wasn't.

 

[Victorian Gray]

Why do you (and others) always resort to attacking someone personally when they say something you don't like? It's really unbecoming.

Really?

"Common sense escapes you or something?

Do you think that this CIA report has been the only time in the history of mankind that torture has ever been used?

Here is one for your big brain.... man walks into a store. Pulls a gun on the clerk. Gets all the money.

Now.... lets examine this reallllll close. How did he do it? You got it! Threat of violence and scared for his life... the clerk gives him what he wanted. See how that works?"

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I don't think Cheney knew Bush's launch codes but if he did

Well there's the problem, even assuming that torture worked as well as you say. You don't think Cheney knew. Of course he didn't and that's why I picked that particular item. But what if someone believed that he did and captured him? How long and how much would he have to endure? Why should anyone care that he were captured and tortured for information he didn't have? That he was deemed "resistant" and therefore subject to increasing levels of abuse?

There's a line here that I cannot cross. I hear Cheney saying how effective this was, but nothing backs him. I hear Cheney saying Saddam had a working relationship with Al Qaeda for ten years in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

What that leaves us with is his and your contention that torture works, but that comes from "common sense" which really can't be applied when there is no reason to believe that those tortured had information which was ultimately useful, well other than the word of a proven liar. Note this is not a moral argument, but they aren't immaterial IMO. I believe that it is merely our power which prevents Cheney from being tried for violations of the Geneva Convention and there will never be accountability for wrongs inflicted on ourselves and others. Taking Cheney's word for the efficacy of torture? No, I have no reason to.

 

[trenchfoot]

Bush and Cheney are the guys that swore there were stockpiles of WMD's in Iraq, that al Quaeda was camped out there, that Saddam was developing nukes and on and on and on. "Torture works and saved thousands of lives" are words from the same mouths that spewed all those other lies.

Seems to me those very words should be taken in the same light as every other lie Bush and Cheney served up to the American people to get us to approve the invasion of Iraq.

The word of a neocon is now worth about as much as a wad of used toilet paper.

 

[fskimospy]

Well first off you have to remember that John Mccain is a politician. So right off the bat anything he says you have to think about which way the wind is blowing at the time. I have never been a POW, but I am a veteran.

And does it result in less reliable intelligence? IMO, sometimes yes, sometimes no. It depends on what you know and what you think the prisoner knows. Too bad there is no crystal ball that we can read to tell us if someone is hiding information that would save thousands of lives, eh?

It hurts to say it, but a lot of information was gained by the Viet Cong from US troops because of torture.

I think that considering the fact that people supporting to this program cannot point to a single solitary case where information was gotten through torture that was not gotten through other methods that it would be quite difficult to argue that torture works.

Shouldn't it have to... well...work to say that?