Obama Declassifies Bush Admin Torture Memos

[2322]

Over objections from the U.S. intelligence community, the White House is moving to declassify—and publicly release—three internal memos that will lay out, for the first time, details of the "enhanced" interrogation techniques approved by the Bush administration for use against "high value" Qaeda detainees. The memos, written by Justice Department lawyers in May 2005, provide the legal rationale for waterboarding, head slapping and other rough tactics used by the CIA. One senior Obama official, who like others interviewed for this story requested anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity, said the memos were "ugly" and could embarrass the CIA. Other officials predicted they would fuel demands for a "truth commission" on torture. -Newsweek

Well, well.... seems the Bush chickens are coming home to roost. Cheney's probably furious he didn't shred those documents before he left his command post aboard The Executor.

 

[pym]

Remember Jason.......if you question Things........it makes you a Yellow dog liberal. Who doesn't support the troops. Perhaps a supporter of the Axis of Weasel?

 

[treefarmer]

The only bad thing about this is that Obama isn't using the memos to torture more terrorists.

 

[Skull Mason]

So head slapping is "enhanced interrogation"'? Is that code for torture? Head slapping? I think that is fucking hilarious, some CIA operative slappin some could-be terrorist upside the head.

YouTube - The Chris Rock Show: Smack Rampage

 

[Flashy]

frankly, i think if they slapped Khalid Sheik Muhammed in the head a dozen times, and that proved to uncover, as it did a treasure trove of information about Al Qaieda, along with some sleep deprivation, playing loud music endlessly and yelling at him for hours on end, i don't really care.

as long as they did not rip his fingernails out, or truly "torture" him, i do not really care.

my mother is the most dyed in the wool liberal there ever was...she actually worked for Jimmy Carter's campaign, if you can believe that, and actually voted for Michael Dukakis...

even she does not care about this topic, as long as they are not ripping out fingernails, or sticking needles in people's eyes, she does not care what they do to high value Al Qaeida targets.

as she said to me the other day when we were discussing this topic at lunch she subscribes to the "Jack Bauer on 24" approach to "torture". she said she would hate to explain to the parents of kids in a school that was just blown up by terrorists, why she had a member of the terror cell in custody, who knew about the upcoming attacks and why she didn't waterboard him to get the info if that would have done it.

this is an easy topic to discuss when viewed in a vacuum...but when viewed in the cold light of reality, and the consequences...things unfortunately become different

 

[splitface]

lol sitting here, looking at the Recent Threads, I am all like how can somebody dlassify a bus, not to mention declassify one? Can you imagine a classified bus like sneaking around a city, only at night when no one can see it....

 

[D_Ireonsyd_Colonrinse]

I love Christopher Hitchens unconditionally.

Chistopher Hitchens was a strong supporter of "W"'s pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, a stance I find abhorrent, but as I said, I still love him unconditionally. He's rigorously honest (as he sees it) and is rigorously learned and rational.




Bill O'Reilly debates Hitchens on torture and waterboarding:

YouTube - O'Reilly/Hitchens on torture and water-boarding



For anyone getting into Christopher Hitchens, here is Hitch debating God with Sean Hannity:

YouTube - Hitch vs. Sean on the existence of God



and Hitchens discussing the "Rev" Falwell's death with Anderson Cooper:

YouTube - Hitch on Falwell

 

[Phil Ayesho]

frankly, i think if they slapped Khalid Sheik Muhammed in the head a dozen times, and that proved to uncover, as it did a treasure trove of information about Al Qaieda, along with some sleep deprivation, playing loud music endlessly and yelling at him for hours on end, i don't really care.

Not true.

Those who actually conducted the torture and spoken up have revealed that torture did not provide ONE piece of actionable information.

Why? Because people being tortured will keep saying different things, trying desperately to find the ONE thing that will stop the torture.
The things they spout are mostly fabricated, and self contradictory...

The USEFUL information came from more sophisticated interrogation where the interrogator tries to develop sympathy in the detainee.

The ONLY thing torture is good for is when you want people to confess to something.
Even something they did not do.

Like the inquisition.... NONE of the people garroted or burned alive were witches, in league with the devil, guilty of blasphemy.



And, Flashy, I have to say that it is NEVER right to abandon your ethics in favor of expediency.
Your position is worse that that... its the total lack of ethics in regards to how you treat other people.

Violating our own constitutional principles simply because some folks want to kill us is worse that unethical;
It being chickenshit.


Either you stand for something...
Or you resort to acting out of fear.

With the former, even if you lose, you still win.
With the later, even in winning, you have lost.

 

[Gl3nn]

^ what he said

 

[Skull Mason]

head slapping?

 

[dong20]

head slapping?

Preferably with a wet fish. :tongue:

 

[Calboner]

as she said to me the other day when we were discussing this topic at lunch she subscribes to the "Jack Bauer on 24" approach to "torture". she said she would hate to explain to the parents of kids in a school that was just blown up by terrorists, why she had a member of the terror cell in custody, who knew about the upcoming attacks and why she didn't waterboard him to get the info if that would have done it.

this is an easy topic to discuss when viewed in a vacuum...but when viewed in the cold light of reality, and the consequences...things unfortunately become different

Twenty-four and all those "ticking time bomb" scenarios are about the last thing that anyone should think of if they want to look at things "in the cold light of reality." For example, in such scenarios, it is always stipulated as part of the fiction that that there is a plot unfolding to commit some terrible act of violence against the innocent, that the person we are holding has information that would allow us to thwart the plot if we could get him to divulge that information, and that we have no other means of thwarting the plot. Further, and most preposterously, it is taken for granted that if only we inflict enough brutality on our captive, he will tell us the truth -- and we will (God knows how) know that he is telling the truth as soon as he tells us. To assume these things to be known a priori has nothing to do with reality at all. Try this scenario: there may or may not be a plot unfolding to commit some terrible act of violence against the innocent; we have captured someone who may or may not have information that would allow us to thwart the plot if we could get him to divulge it; if we torture him, he may or may not tell us things, some or all of which may be true and may be false; and we may or may not be able to tell whether he is telling the truth. I have never watched 24, so I don't know if the show ever deals with the consequences of torturing someone when it turns out that there was no plot, or there was a plot and this guy knew nothing about it, or this guy knew about it but everything that he told us was false; but if you want to be realistic, you should consider the consequences of getting such things wrong, because they are more likely to turn out wrong than right.

 

[trjnhrs9]

The question I have is why are we declassifying anything related to this at all? Let's air our dirty laundry to the world? To what end?

If the types of interrogations were inappropriate, create new rules of interrogation and let it be. Don't ad fuel to the fire for those who hate us already. In some cases, their methods of interrogation are probably much worse than anything we did, but they won't be telling on themselves, now will they? Instead they'll act indignant and the media will have a field day with their comments.

Deal with this on a private basis and then show the world that our new methods of interrogation are humane.

 

[dong20]

The question I have is why are we declassifying anything related to this at all? Let's air our dirty laundry to the world? To what end?

If the types of interrogations were inappropriate, create new rules of interrogation and let it be. Don't ad fuel to the fire for those who hate us already. In some cases, their methods of interrogation are probably much worse than anything we did, but they won't be telling on themselves, now will they? Instead they'll act indignant and the media will have a field day with their comments.

Your second paragraph goes a significant way toward providing answers for the questions asked in the first.

 

[Flashy]

Not true.

Those who actually conducted the torture and spoken up have revealed that torture did not provide ONE piece of actionable information.

sorry, that is not true at all.


I assume you are referring to the excellent Vanity Fair article

Tortured Reasoning | vanityfair.com

As for K.S.M. himself, who was waterboarded, reportedly hung for hours on end from his wrists, beaten, and subjected to other agonies for weeks, Bush said he provided “many details of other plots to kill innocent Americans.” K.S.M. was certainly knowledgeable. It would be surprising if he gave up nothing of value. But according to a former senior C.I.A. official, who read all the interrogation reports on K.S.M., “90 percent of it was total fucking bullshit.” A former Pentagon analyst adds: “K.S.M. produced no actionable intelligence. He was trying to tell us how stupid we were.”


--

your attempt to state it provided nothing is not provable, & is stated as such above. what the pentagon analyst & CIA official said are in fact, different. CIA & their Special Activities Division & DOD's operational divisions had many turf wars over who'd do what, when & where.

Note the CIA *OFFICIAL* said 90% was bullshit. the Pentagon "Analyst" said it produced no actionable intelligence.

10% was not bullshit & how would the Pentagon analyst know what the CIA special activities division would consider "actionable".

it is a fact that at time of capture, KSM was plotting various attacks at different stages against the US & UK

do you think he just said "yup I am doing it"?

the attacks being planned, were stopped, by his capture, not to mention finding out who else may have been involved through his laptop, discs etc. & even the tiniest little thing he may have given up under torture.

the real info they were able to glean & corroborate *DID* in fact lead to either capture, knowledge, identification, operational knowledge or ogranizational knowledge of at least some of Al Qaeida's operations, structure or operatives, no matter how small

*THAT* my friend, is actionable intelligence. no matter how small.

Why? Because people being tortured will keep saying different things, trying desperately to find the ONE thing that will stop the torture.
The things they spout are mostly fabricated, and self contradictory...

indeed, that is the case for most, but *NOT* all.

Waterboarding rarely lasts for more than a few seconds, such is the fear & panic it inspires.

the HItchens demonstration was rather amazing.


Video: On the Waterboard | vanityfair.com


18 seconds he lasted


the point is, the people interviewed for Vanity Fair it is safe to say have a ton of information about what went on.

however it it is safe to say, that they do not have *all* of it.

they do not have the information, of say, a ground unit in Afghanistan, of say the CIA Special Activities Division, or a team of Special Forces, who may have captured a militant or a weapons smuggler etc. who would not talk, until they began beating the shit out of him, not in one of the CIA special prisons, but out in the field & through that, they found out where other miltiants were etc.

is that worth it? Is that "actionable intelligence"? I would say it is. Frankly the line i blurry & neither Vanity Fair, you nor I, will ever know what the full extent is of info learned behind the scenes.

The USEFUL information came from more sophisticated interrogation where the interrogator tries to develop sympathy in the detainee.

actually, the most useful information came from tips and rewards in many cases. but i assume you are sneakily referring to the Kherchtou incident in Morrocco that Cloonan spoke of.

that was hardly "sophistication". they took advantage of the fact that Kherchtou had a wife who needed medical care that Al Qaieda would not pay for. indeed, that provided a treasure trove.

they took advantage of a very specific situation. what happens when you find a "true believer"? one with no wife or kids in need of medical care & no pressure you can exert on him through "sophisticated" interrogation or sympathy?

what then?

The ONLY thing torture is good for is when you want people to confess to something.
Even something they did not do.

not exactly always true at all. as you repeated this favorite theme above

People will say anything under torture.

3 People will say anything under torture.
Well, no, although this is a favorite chestnut of torture's foes. Think about it: Sure, someone would lie under torture, but wouldn't they also lie if they were being interrogated without coercion?
In fact, the problem of torture does not stem from the prisoner who has information; it stems from the prisoner who doesn't. Such a person is also likely to lie, to say anything, often convincingly. The torture of the informed may generate no more lies than normal interrogation, but the torture of the ignorant and innocent overwhelms investigators with misleading information. In these cases, nothing is indeed preferable to anything. Anything needs to be verified, and the CIA's own 1963 interrogation manual explains that "a time-consuming delay results" -- hardly useful when every moment matters.


washingtonpost.com

Like the inquisition.... NONE of the people garroted or burned alive were witches, in league with the devil, guilty of blasphemy.

indeed. but we know devils, witches, blasphemy are considered mostly imaginary creations

terrorists &organizational terror structures etc. are not.

And, Flashy, I have to say that it is NEVER right to abandon your ethics in favor of expediency.
Your position is worse that that... its the total lack of ethics in regards to how you treat other people.

as far as "abandoning" my ethics, color me uncaring & unethical that they waterboarded KSM. Big deal. He got far less bad treatment then the people he killed on 9/11.

they did not rip his fingernails out or stick needles in his eyes.

and it is not how i regard treating "other people". It is how you treat senior terrorists, who are known to be so.

i do not advocate that the person in the supermarket who accidentally overcharged me on Cap'n Crunch be waterboarded.

spare me the absurd parallel.

Violating our own constitutional principles simply because some folks want to kill us is worse that unethical;
It being chickenshit.

well, at the end of the day, call me when someone wants to kill you & your constitutional principles are the only thing left between you and death.

The constitution won't save me if some asshole terrorist has a gun to my head. I'd rather the SWAT team blows his head off rather then negotiate with him.

i suppose that is chickenshit? Fine. I'll take alive & in violation of "constitutional principles" than dead & in compliance. You can easily draw that comparison because you have the luxury of not being faced with the situation.

your feelings might change were you to find yourself in an actual scenario. Be sure to jot down your feelings at the time if that ever occurs.

Either you stand for something...
Or you resort to acting out of fear.

convenient, when you yourself have the luxury of commenting from the sidelines.

With the former, even if you lose, you still win.
With the later, even in winning, you have lost.

touching. yet still does not change the fact that you are better off alive & safe.

I don't care what is done to a terrorist.

I have several friends who were in the Israeli Defense Forces, many in AMAN (military intel) and in Shin Bet.

you would be surprised how much true & actionable intelligence is gleaned from "questionable" practices.

during WW2, the US Army found that most prisoners, 85-95% were willing to talk from routine interrogation and it was 90-95% effective in Vietnam. however, the British also found the most effective was to offer a simple choice.

no torture just "Talk or Die"

this is an interesting piece about Algeria

Yves Godard, Massu's chief lieutenant, had insisted there was no need to torture. He suggested having the informant network identify operatives and then subject them to a simple draconian choice: Talk or die. This would have produced the same result as torture without damage to the army.
The British successfully used precisely this strategy with German spies during World War II. British counterespionage managed to identify almost every German spy without using torture -- not just the 100 who hid among the 7,000 to 9,000 refugees coming to England to join their armies in exile each year, not just the 120 who arrived in similar fashion from friendly countries, but also the 70 sleeper cells that were in place before 1940. Only three agents eluded detection; five others refused to confess. Many Germans chose to become double agents rather than be tried and shot.



So just what you propose Phil?

Talk?
Talk or Die?
or do nothing?

there has to be something when regular talk doesn't produce the results.

what do you propose?

you have to make a choice.

what is it?

torture?
Talk or die?
Do nothing?


personally, i would prefer "talk or die", but you undoubtedly have a problem with that approach too.

so what do you do in the case of KSM, or someone you know *ABSOLUTELY* is a high level terrorist who won't speak through simple interrogation, or coercion alone?

 

[Flashy]

Twenty-four and all those "ticking time bomb" scenarios are about the last thing that anyone should think of if they want to look at things "in the cold light of reality." For example, in such scenarios, it is always stipulated as part of the fiction that that there is a plot unfolding to commit some terrible act of violence against the innocent, that the person we are holding has information that would allow us to thwart the plot if we could get him to divulge that information, and that we have no other means of thwarting the plot. Further, and most preposterously, it is taken for granted that if only we inflict enough brutality on our captive, he will tell us the truth -- and we will (God knows how) know that he is telling the truth as soon as he tells us. To assume these things to be known a priori has nothing to do with reality at all. Try this scenario: there may or may not be a plot unfolding to commit some terrible act of violence against the innocent; we have captured someone who may or may not have information that would allow us to thwart the plot if we could get him to divulge it; if we torture him, he may or may not tell us things, some or all of which may be true and may be false; and we may or may not be able to tell whether he is telling the truth. I have never watched 24, so I don't know if the show ever deals with the consequences of torturing someone when it turns out that there was no plot, or there was a plot and this guy knew nothing about it, or this guy knew about it but everything that he told us was false; but if you want to be realistic, you should consider the consequences of getting such things wrong, because they are more likely to turn out wrong than right.

I have never watched "24" either.

my point was, considering the "ticking bomb" scenario is considered by most analysts to be implausible, that theory still covers most regular people's theories towards it, even if the "ticking bomb" theory was long ago dismissed by the intelligence community and various services all over the world.

As i stated, my mother is on the far left of most issues...but even she comes down on the side of support for "torture" under the "ticking bomb" scenario, and in most other cases against known terrorists in general, in terms of things such as sleep deprivation, waterboarding, loud music, bright lights and yelling etc.

the fact is that many terrorists were subjected to listening to Eminmen albums repeatedly, over and over for a day or two, and they found it to be unbearable...i find his music unbearable at all, but if that is the extent of what they are being subjected to, then i really do not have much sympathy.

 

[transformer_99]

as she said to me the other day when we were discussing this topic at lunch she subscribes to the "Jack Bauer on 24" approach to "torture". she said she would hate to explain to the parents of kids in a school that was just blown up by terrorists, why she had a member of the terror cell in custody, who knew about the upcoming attacks and why she didn't waterboard him to get the info if that would have done it.

That's another topic that has me concerned & worried ? A lot of those kids are going to turn out bad anyway ? Might as well find out which one's they are before they become adults ? That's just the violence aspect of it. Which one's are the white collar criminal types ? AIG executive offspring ?

Map of School Shootings

We are unable to keep up with a graphic view of school violence.

violence snapshot
School Violence 04/05 School Year
School Violence 03/04 School Year

 

[B_VinylBoy]

Preferably with a wet fish. :tongue:

How did I know this was coming when I saw that link? LOL!! :biggrin1:

 

[trjnhrs9]

(Your second paragraph goes a significant way toward providing answers for the questions asked in the first. )

How so? So that our enemies can act indignant and our media can have a field day? I hope that isn't the case.

 

[faceking]

Those who actually conducted the torture and spoken up have revealed that torture did not provide ONE piece of actionable information.

Provide one credible source for this.