McClatchy:
The CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush administration thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to recently declassified Justice Department memos.
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REPUBLICANS BELIEVE IN TORTURING POLITICAL PRISONERS.
This is the message they are sending out now to the US and the whole world. They need to retract or they will not recover their reputation. If they also do not retract, they will put pressure on government to take it to court or do some other things to make sure the whole US does not seem to condone. Very basic message everybody understands.
Does Cheney read anything besides comic books and the Neo-Con Daily?
Perhaps it is not too late for him to read the above article, among others.
He watches TV. FoxNews and 24 are two of his favorites.
The vast majority of torture and abuse cases I've heard about seemed to have had little if anything to do with gaining necessary information. They seemed to have more to do with "pay-back". And it didn't seem to much matter who was being payed-back for what. At Fallugha Marine snipers were in the habit of killing ambulance drivers. A Marine caplain was recorded telling his men that they were agents of God's retribution. The right-wing are masters at deflection. We sat 'torture', they say 'waterboarding'. We say 'abuse' and they say 'ticking timebomb'. They're deflecting - the REAL topic is American cruelty and revenge.
Reagan On Torture Prosecutions
From his signing statement ratifying the UN Convention on Torture from 1984:
"The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention . It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.
The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called 'universal jurisdiction.' Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution."
My italics. Reagan was admant about prosecuting torture, but also prosecuting inhuman treatment that some might claim was not full-on torture. Now go read National Review or The Weekly Standard. And look what has happened to conservatism in America.
This is a quote from The Atlantic, The Daily Dish by Andrew Sullivan. Reagan's statement is in quotes. That was the conservative statement on torture, a statement I think all of us could agree with; however, I know there are some out there who don't.
I thought #40 was God to the Republicans. My, my, they're a conflicted lot.
I guess Reagan was a wimpy liberal after all.
I am fascinated by the inconsistency of the Right's philosphy. On the one hand, they argue that America is exceptional with a sort of divine right to be richer, better, and more moral than anyone else in the world. America is the example that the rest of the world should aspire to and emulate.
At the same time they argue that America is right to torture because that is what our enemies do. On torture, American exceptionalism goes right out the window.
Torture does not work. The US knew this as far back as the Korean War. They knew that the coercive management techniques (sleep deprivation, prolonged constraint, exposure) employed by the Chinese Communist to obtain confessions proved ineffectual since many of the confessions made by the US prisoners were false.
In fact, in 1957, a sociologist who worked for the Air Force, Albert D. Biderman wrote an article “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War” detailing how such practices didn’t work. All we did was recycle the Chinese interrogation methods and called them our own.
Those in charge, GWB and company, had a limited grasp of history.
There is also no proof that Obama has stopped the torture.
You're ignoring Obama's public statements and executive orders to the contrary. But just how would you propose going about proving that particular negative? The Right loves to retreat to this particular debating ploy... requiring their opponent to prove a negative. They're doing it on the torture issue by making the assertion that torture worked and kept us safe. Thus, they make their opponents try to prove that no actionable intelligence came from torture. Bit by bit, that is in fact being proven but it is always a hard thing to do. When is Cheney or anyone else going to step up with the incontrovertible evidence that torture stopped a terrorist plot?
Despite all that has been written since the torture policy of the Bush administration began to leak, I've seen no one address the fundamental dishonesty of the "torture is necessary" or "torture works" crowd, namely, the "ticking time bomb" hypothetical. Alan Dershowitz, its earliest proponent, used it to justify torture. If anyone should know better, lawyers whose profession is analytical thinking should.
The fundamental error of that justification is that one can never "know" what is within the knowledge of another. At most, one may suspect. The inadequacy of that excuse for torture is demonstrated by the water-boarding of a mentally-ill prisoner some 80+ times in a month to obtain information he didn't have.
Lawyers use "slippery slope" arguments to suggest that a judgment that may be reasonable in one case will lead to terrible results in later ones. Such arguments are often dismissed as the fevered imaginings of creative lawyers, but the torture memos demonstrate the occasional validity of such arguments. The "ticking time bomb" hypothetical is the necessary first step onto the slippery slope. From the hypothetical prisoner who "knows," it's a tiny step to one who MAY know, and it's all downhill after that.
From the bureaucratic "rules" of the torture memos to the reality that some prisoners were tortured to death (see photos of dead prisoners on ice at Abu Ghraib) is a short step. The Bush administration approved and implemented a torture policy; predictably, the horrors of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib followed.
Lost in the discussion of whether torture produced valuable information is the question of how man man hours and how much money was wasted chasing down false leads?
It is an inescapable fact that torture produces false confessions. Even the most hardened supporter of torture acknowledges that. How many women during the Spanish Inquisition confessed to being a witch while being waterboarding knowing full well that as a result of their confession they would be burned at the stake?
How many dead ends did we chase down? How many people did we abduct who in fact had nothing do do with the terrorists because of false confessions? How many of them did we torture?
Since we weren't attck, obviously something was working. Who to say it wasn't the interrogation?
"Who to say it wasn't the interrogation?"
According to the article -- the CIA inspector general.
So every moment that the US isn't attacked, it's because we're torturing someone somewhere? Maybe we weren't attacked because no one was prepared to attack us. The Bushies have not produced any evidence that they thwarted any legitimate threats after 9/11, and since they failed to prevent 9/11, they can hardly claim that they were good at keeping us safe.
Every full moon I swing a dead cat over my head 3 times in a cemetery to ward off terrorist attacks. We haven't been attacked since. Whose to say it wasn't the dead cat swinging.
Mr. President,
Please release ALL the memos. Particularly the sections omitted and redacted from the first release. Of particular interest is the Executive Summary and the Interrogation Results Sections.
Thank You
One only needs to read the article carefully (which most individuals on this forum consistently fail to do) to see how this representation of a 2004 CIA Inspector General (IG) report does not disprove the efficacy of the Agency's 'Enhanced Interr0gation Program.
According to a released 2005 OLC memo, IG John Helgerson's report stated that "it is difficult to determine conclusively whether interr0gations provided information critical to interdicting specific im.minent a t t a c k s ". The key terms are "determine conclusively" and "specific im.minent a t t a c k" (IA).
Remember the OLC memo claims that the program was successful in yielding valuable information. Based on CIA accounts, the memo goes on to state "that information obtained from KSM also led to the capture of Riduan bin Isomuddin, better known as Hambali, and the discovery of the Guraba Cell, a 17-member Jem.mah Isla.miyah cell tasked with executing the 'Second Wave'. "
(FYI, the above excerpt partially refutes the recent 'Second Wave' debunking attempts by some bloggers, particularly Slate's Timothy Noah. Read my partial account at the link below*)
While I believe the case that enhanced techniques yielded valuable intelligence is near concrete (most of the counter-information is coming from politicized FBI agents), it is impossible for Mr. Helgerson to include suppositions on whether extracted information definitely interdicted an IA i.e. determine conclusively the pl0t's maturity (partly because the concept is arbitrary).
Part II
The possibility exists that the Guraba Cell was about to launch its 'Second Wave', but it is more probable that the plot was still in the planning stage. This doesn't diminish the saliency of KSM's extracted intelligence, particularly when it led to the capture of the l e t h a l terr0rist Hambali. Furthermore, the CIA is not claiming that its techniques thwarted a specific IA (for some of the reasons described above). The Agency is only standing by the notion that information extracted led to the disruption of a plot and to the apprehension of several terr0rists.
Likewise, many CIA officials have concluded that information yielded from enhanced techniques substantially increased our knowledge of A Q's organizational makeup. While not interdicting a specific IA, the utility of this information vis-à-vis counterterr0rism operations is clear.
It is also important to note Mr. Helegerson's report remains classified. We cannot 'conclusively determine' what other passages speak to the validity of enhanced techniques. In fact, the document purposefully steers away from this discussion. That said, leaked/cited excerpts of the IG report contain several details that were rather critical of the program, for example, the deficient medical attention paid to det.ainees or the incorrect application of authorized-waterb0arding. But in terms of the efficacy of waterb0arding, the IG report makes no 'conclusive determination'.
All the more reason for that some of the related classified material should be released (pending the appropriate national security reda.ctions).
*link to another thread that addressed the issue of the Library Tower Plot aka the 'Second Wave' a t t a c k:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/23/torture-prevented-los-ang_n_190841.html?page=5&show_comment_id=23467783#comment_23467783
To date, there has not been ONE credible, documented, irrefutable example of "enhanced interrogation" preventing a single domestic act of terrorism or protecting Americans.
Not ONE.
NADA.
ZIP.
Lots of ALLUSIONS to such instances, not a SINGLE provable example.
... unless you count, maybe, one or two cases of a Baghdad safe house being betrayed by some hapless teenaged "detainee" that resulted in one of those 'surgical' raids (with unreported civilian "collateral damage") that conceivably protected some of our troops from a few insurgents.
... AFTER we invaded and trashed THEIR country.
Your elegant disposition on the question of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin is duly noted.
It contributes nothing to the conversation, other than revealing the murky, stagnant waters one must navigate when the offending aggression is passively accepted and the search for "intelligence" has shifted, almost exclusively, to scrutinizing in excruciating detail those with the temerity to reject our hostile advances.
Your well written albeit flawed arguments assume that the same people that lied to get the torture program in the first place are now telling the truth about the results. All of that aside, what is described in the memos is indeed torture by all definitions that the United States and countless other nations signed off on years ago. If it wasn't torture, then why keep it a secret?
We are supposed to be better than this. Our nation has a legacy that dates to the treatment of British Regulars and Hessian mercenaries in 1773. General George Washington admonished his soldiers to "give them [prisoners] no cause for complaint". These were people that only days earlier had tortured, raped, and publicly executed both civilians and American Revolutionary soldiers. Do you think those circumstances were in some way less dangerous to the colonists than Al-Qaeda is to modern day America?
The true danger today lies in our nation's ability to deal with terror within the framework of our Constitution and in the ethos that founded our country and that which provides honor to the men and women who have served us throughout our history.
Torture is morally repugnant and it's illegal - that's why we don't do it.
"most of the counter-information is coming from politicized FBI agents"
Well if the FBI is politicized, why do you think the CIA and other Bush admin members who say torture did work are not? The reality is that the CIA, Cheney, et al have the greatest reason to spin the facts because they potentially face legal issues. The FBI, who bowed out of interrogations as soon as torture techniques started being used, have no such motivation.
Central to the slogan-laden, fact-challenged drivel of the right wing is the assurance that, when it goes into an uncontrolled skid that ends in a pile of rubble against an overpass abutment, no one will stop to examine the wreckage. We'll just 'move on', learn nothing and let them give it another shot on another stretch of highway.
This is not complicated.
Facts speak.
... and, as we learned from the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, while people are entitled to their own opinions, they're NOT entitled to their own facts.
Let the games begin. If it further polarizes the national conversation, so be it. At the far end of that turbulent, messy process, the facts will stand... and those who ardently dismissed and chose to ignore those facts will be reduced to mocked and ridiculed ignominy.
Sounds like a win-win to me.
Bush deceived everyone. Now, it's time to repair the damages.
Republicans..it is hard to admit that you were taken in by Bush, but you were. Disassociate yourself from him and his administration. Admit that he did things you would not sanction in a Democrat and it is your party loyalty that is why you defend the Bush administration.
Many Catholics hated to admit their priests were pedophiles. Especially those who had the ability to put a stop to it, the hierarchy. Sometimes you just have to face the truth.
Let's assume that the soldiers who were convicted and jailed were made to believe they were simply following orders, then Obama ought to release and reinstate these solders without prejudice asap.
During the Nuremberg trials, the standard defense of crimes against humanity and the unspeakable acts committed in the concentration camps was that the perpetrators were “following orders.” Based on that precedent, those American troops convicted and sentenced could not adopt the same defense and be pardoned and returned to duty.
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| 04/25/09 01:45 PM