Where fools rush in.. (Dem's & hearings)

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

The CIA says "no":

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...print/asection

Two weeks ago, Bush's vice president, Richard B. Cheney, renewed that assertion in an interview with CNN, saying that "the enhanced interrogation program" stopped "a great many" terrorist attacks on the level of Sept. 11.

"I've seen a report that was written, based upon the intelligence that we collected then, that itemizes the specific attacks that were stopped by virtue of what we learned through those programs," Cheney asserted, adding that the report is "still classified," and, "I can't give you the details of it without violating classification."

Since 2006, Senate intelligence committee members have pressed the CIA, in classified briefings, to provide examples of specific leads that were obtained from Abu Zubaida through the use of waterboarding and other methods, according to officials familiar with the requests.
The agency provided none, the officials said.

That article in the ... ahem... Washington Post seems to focus on one individual.

But Cheny stating that lives were saved will obviously be dissmissed as a lie becaus well its Cheny saying it.

[Max2147]

The Dems should have stood up and protested against torture as soon as it became public. Several Dems did so as individuals, but they should have done so as a party.

That said, I'm gald to see them making up for their mistakes.

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by Max2147

The Dems should have stood up and protested against torture as soon as it became public. Several Dems did so as individuals, but they should have done so as a party.

That said, I'm gald to see them making up for their mistakes.

Thats whats so freakin aggrivatting about the whole thing.

It has nothing to do with making up for their mistakes.

It has to with ripping the Bush administrration and maintaining their power.

The topic is almost irrelevant to them.

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by SteamWake

Thats whats so freakin aggrivatting about the whole thing.

It has nothing to do with making up for their mistakes.

It has to with ripping the Bush administrration and maintaining their power.

The topic is almost irrelevant to them.

I have to agree here. Why is it so relevant today as opposed to 2003? Busy at work looking to secure another 4 years. Nothing more.

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by mookiemookie

The CIA says "no":

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...print/asection

That depends on who you ask: http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/po...wonders_e.html

Here's a blog discussing your article: http://patterico.com/2009/04/26/wate...-tower-attack/

The bottom line is that I really don't give a damn about the comfort of those who support the actions of suicide bombers in a civilian shopping district. Waterboarding is not injuring the detainees ... it is merely causing physical and mental distress.

Oh well.

[Fr8monkey]

My question is during the debates Sen. McCain stated he believes in Water boarding and stated himself that it saves lives; but as a POW in Vietnam HE was water boarded and said he would say anything to get it to stop. Hypocracy, indeed?

[AVGWarhawk]

Originally Posted by Fr8monkey

My question is during the debates Sen. McCain stated he believes in Water boarding and stated himself that it saves lives; but as a POW in Vietnam HE was water boarded and said he would say anything to get it to stop. Hypocracy, indeed?

Can you find that article where McCain states this for me?

[Tchocky]

Originally Posted by August

But if she was on the senate committee then she did have the legislative power.

The chances of an investigation being successful and clear are higher under a friendly administration than under the BUsh Administration. Obama has shown a remarkable willingness to get the facts out in the open. This makes the political atmosphere easier.
basically what Max2147 posted.


I can't get my head around the feelings that certain Democratic politicians are the ones at fault, and more deserving of ire and disrespect than the people who ordered the torture in the first place.

As for those arguing whether torture saves lives or not, I hope you can see what's wrong with that question.


There have been several investigation running since this came to attention, mostly in 2003/4, but now is the first time that documents have been willingly provided by the White House or any governement agency, documents that show the tortured logic and legal stovepiping that was going on after 9/11.

Read the memos released, they're harrowing.

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by Tchocky

Obama has shown a remarkable willingness to get the facts out in the open.

That all depends on which facts your talking about.

But yes there is a willingness, hell even a compulsion to get the facts out in the open regardless of consiquences but thats another debate.

[heartc]

I must have missed the memo that showed how waterboarding is torture.

Ok, let's see:

-We must not make "wars of aggression" against those who harbor and support terrorists.
-We must not increase security and public surveillance measures to spot them and shut them down (I can agree with not doing that, the state is a too dangerous being for it).
-Using common sense in form of ethnic profiling is racist.
-And when we finally have some top suspect or indeed identified terrorist in custody, we must handle them with velvet gloves.

OK, so I guess all we can do is just sit there and wait. Once the first nuke goes off in a Western city, or large scale bio attack happens, all this crap is gona go right out the window anyway.

[Max2147]

If American soldiers were being waterboarded by an enemy, we'd call it torture.

Torture gives you plenty of information, but most of it is garbage. Everybody who has spoken about waterboarding from personal experience says that they'll do anything to make it stop. That means that the guy who knows nothing will start spewing stuff about any terrorist plot he can think up on the spot.

The problem for American intelligence these days isn't a lack of information. If anything, they have too much information. Their problem is digesting all the information and picking out the useful stuff. It's like going through a massive car junkyard to find the exact parts you need, and there's only one of each in the entire place. Adding more junk to that pike isn't going to help us, and it might end up hurting us.

[SteamWake]

Originally Posted by Max2147

If American soldiers were being waterboarded by an enemy, we'd call it torture.

Torture gives you plenty of information, but most of it is garbage. Everybody who has spoken about waterboarding from personal experience says that they'll do anything to make it stop. That means that the guy who knows nothing will start spewing stuff about any terrorist plot he can think up on the spot.

The problem for American intelligence these days isn't a lack of information. If anything, they have too much information. Their problem is digesting all the information and picking out the useful stuff. It's like going through a massive car junkyard to find the exact parts you need, and there's only one of each in the entire place. Adding more junk to that pike isn't going to help us, and it might end up hurting us.

Theres some truth in that but american soldiers werent waterboarded, their ordeal was much much worse.

The guys doing the interrigations are pretty good at spotting BS. They know what their doing.

But were wandering way off topic here. The point of the post is simply to point out the posturing and hypocracy on capitol hill.

[Aramike]

If American soldiers were being waterboarded by an enemy, we'd call it torture.

So what do you call beheading American civilians and non-combantants?

Torture gives you plenty of information, but most of it is garbage.

Hogwash. The military and CIA interrogators aren't foolish - they are unlikely to continue employing interrogation methods which don't work.

What people like you are doing is demonizing such patriots as sadists looking for a cheap thrill through hurting others. There's only three options here:

• Either enhanced interrogation works and that's why we used it.
• Enhanced interrogation does not work, and it's used only for the interrogaters to get their jollies.
• Enhanced interrorgation does not work, and the military and CIA operatives who employ the methods are morons.

Usually what makes the most sense is the answer.

Everybody who has spoken about waterboarding from personal experience says that they'll do anything to make it stop. That means that the guy who knows nothing will start spewing stuff about any terrorist plot he can think up on the spot.

You're presuming (as many of the left do, who don't independantly research the issue) that waterboarding is being used indiscriminately. What, do you honestly think that you're the only one to figure out that, should the method be used on someone with no information, that person is likely to make something up?

They're not just pouring water on people and asking "what do you know?" - that's foolish (ironically it is also the left's main argument against the method).

The method is used when we KNOW that a detainee has SPECIFIC information, but we don't know what that information is. For example, let's say we know that detainee X was at a planning session for a terrorist attack 2 years ago. We know this via satellite photography and humint. We use traditional questioning but the detainee won't reveal the contents of the meeting. That's when other techniques would be applied.

Sure, we may not stop a terrorist plot this way (plans may have changed due to the detainee's captivity, etc.) - but it IS worth a shot, considering that we're judging a known terrorist's comfort against the well-being of American civilians.

The problem for American intelligence these days isn't a lack of information. If anything, they have too much information.

You obviously know very little about how intelligence works. There's no such thing as "too much" information.

Their problem is digesting all the information and picking out the useful stuff.

That's absurd. If you're referring to, say, NSA intercepts (sigint) than yes, there's a lot to absorb. However, like I said, you obviously know little about how intelligence works.

The biggest enemy of intelligence gathering is counter-intelligence - something that Al Qaeda is very good at. Prior to 9/11, almost all of our intel on terrorism was communications (comint/sigint). This is easily defeated by simply not using the phone, for example. The problem is that we have traditionally had very little human intelligence (humint) as these groups are difficult to compromise due to their insidious nature. Even so, should a group actually be infiltrated, how do you suppose getting any information out? The groups are so small that tracing leaked information would be a fairly simple task, and due to a clear communications black-out, just getting the word out in the first place would be nearly impossible.

It's like going through a massive car junkyard to find the exact parts you need, and there's only one of each in the entire place.

This is more like going through a massive junkyard looking for a certain part, and trying to find it on a specific car. Makes more sense than arbitrarily looking through the whole damned thing, doesn't it?

Adding more junk to that pike isn't going to help us, and it might end up hurting us.

Again, you demonstrate that you don't know how the intel community works. "Adding more junk", as you put it, can be immeasurably helpful if the information proves to be accurate. If it doesn't, then we're in the same boat either way.

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by Fr8monkey

My question is during the debates Sen. McCain stated he believes in Water boarding and stated himself that it saves lives; but as a POW in Vietnam HE was water boarded and said he would say anything to get it to stop. Hypocracy, indeed?

Not hypocritcal at all. Here, again, is this foolish assumption that we are simply waterboarding everyone and asking "what do you know?".

The waterboarding McCain experienced was an arbitrary application of the method, designed simply to break a man's spirit for the sake of doing so.

The waterboarding the detainees experience is used on specific individuals to gain specific information.

[mookiemookie]

Originally Posted by Aramike

So what do you call beheading American civilians and non-combantants?

This isn't as bad Saddam Hussein or Torquemada, but it's just a few degrees from what Reagan used to condemn the Soviet Union for (while, you know, supporting far worse in Central America).

Talk about being hypocritical.

"[W]e conclude that the authorized use of sleep deprivation by adequately trained interrogators...could not reasonably be considered specifically intended to cause severe mental pain or suffering." - From page 40 of one May 10, 2005 CIA torture memo

"Sleeplessness was a great form of torture: it left no visible marks and could not provide grounds for complaint even if an inspection-something unheard of anyway-were to strike on the morrow." - From page 112 of Volume 1 of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago