Carter: America tortures

[Undertoad]

I really have no idea what the reliability is of any type of interrogation. All I've heard is a bag of wind from both sides, and never from anybody with an actual background in the matter.

[jinx]

The CIA lady that was being interviewed on one of the TVs I was watching while on the treadmill a couple days ago would not discuss any of the things we actually do to prisoners (cause the terrorists are watching and train against the stuff we admit to doing)but was sure none of it was torture.
She was very proud of the "thousands" of intelligence reports that have been generated by coercing said prisoners (in non-torturous ways of course). Would not discuss how many of those thousands were at all accurate... came off sounding like real jackass imo.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by jinx

She was very proud of the "thousands" of intelligence reports that have been generated by coercing said prisoners (in non-torturous ways of course). Would not discuss how many of those thousands were at all accurate... came off sounding like real jackass imo.

Maybe to you, but she is right on target. No one needs to know the details IMHO.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Except that torture, or being put in fear of death and pain are notorious for producing unreliable information. Given how fucking pathetic our (US and USA) intelligence was on little matters like the WMD in Iraq,

The intel was there. Those in power chose to cherry pick it and ignore what did not fit their policy plans.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

I really have no idea what the reliability is of any type of interrogation. All I've heard is a bag of wind from both sides, and never from anybody with an actual background in the matter.

I have a very good friend who is currently in Iraq as a GS worker with NCIS as an interrogator.

This can give you some insight. I gave it to a young kid in HS 2 years ago. He is now a Army interrogator.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/boo...16011532&itm=3

There is a new one out on the subject that I have not read yet but just ordered. Looks good.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/boo...51221124&itm=1

[Clodfobble]

I believe that in fact there is less torture now than there has been in the past, precisely because of the explosion in digital cameras that allowed us the unexpected glimpses into Abu Ghraib and others. The truth is you can't get away with anything these days.

A friend of my dad's served during Vietnam as a translator. The vast majority of his job was translating what prisoners were saying as they were being interrogated. According to him, he never saw a single prisoner leave the room alive, period.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Clodfobble

I believe that in fact there is less torture now than there has been in the past, precisely because of the explosion in digital cameras that allowed us the unexpected glimpses into Abu Ghraib and others. The truth is you can't get away with anything these days.

A friend of my dad's served during Vietnam as a translator. The vast majority of his job was translating what prisoners were saying as they were being interrogated. According to him, he never saw a single prisoner leave the room alive, period.

Yea, times have changed quite a bit. Even then if you have enough people involved someone is eventually going to spill the beans on what went on if wholescale illegal activity was going on.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

I really have no idea what the reliability is of any type of interrogation. All I've heard is a bag of wind from both sides, and never from anybody with an actual background in the matter.

But you have direct quotes from people who do this stuff. We have long known from professionals that torture results in inconclusive facts and more often results in lies. Furthermore, a tortured man cannot be 'read' or tested with a 'lie detector' test. A man who talks without torture can be 'read' and can tested with a lie detector machine. Professional interrogators state this repeatedly.

From the BBC of September 2006 entitled The jihadi who turned 'supergrass' and also quoted in The Cellar on 30 September 2006 as Why does America need Secret Prisons?

"I believed that the police were very cruel and used torture to get their answers," he said.

But Mr Abbas was in for a surprise. He was treated with civility and Muslim respect.

As a result, Nasir Abbas blew open the entire terrorist organization called Jemaah Islamiyah - also known as the Bali bombers. Those who remain free quickly separated from Jemaah Islamiyah and are rumored to have formed small isolated terrorist cells. Why? Mr Abbas was not tortured. Therefore he could cooperate in response to his own convictions.

Same is reported on America's earliest interrogators in a finally not secret gathering reported in The Washington Post on 6 Oct 2007 entitled Fort Hunt's Quiet Men Break Silence on WWII and also posted in The Cellar.

"We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess.

Blunt criticism of modern enemy interrogations was a common refrain at the ceremonies held beside the Potomac River near Alexandria. ...

The interrogators had standards that remain a source of pride and honor.

"During the many interrogations, I never laid hands on anyone," said George Frenkel, 87, of Kensington. "We extracted information in a battle of the wits. I'm proud to say I never compromised my humanity."

The reason to justify torture is an assumption that a tortured man will talk. Yes. And professional interrogators then note how few truths are mixed with too many lies. Torture is when the interrogator has no idea and no way of knowing what is truth – and desperately needs to know that truth. But torture often results in statements that cannot be confirmed by all common means of judging validity, is often what the interrogators want to hear, and resulting statements are too often completely bogus. Torture so routinely results in bad information as to even create a long list of phony Orange alerts.

When does torture work? When some ‘feel’ it must work. After all, anyone tortured will tell only truths – right? Therefore all that torture in Abu Ghriad with the arrival of Gen Miller got confessions of WMDs, terrorists hiding in America, and Orange Alert attacks on the Prudential Building in Newark and the Golden Gate Bridge.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by tw

Therefore all that torture in Abu Ghriad with the arrival of Gen Miller got confessions of WMDs, terrorists hiding in America, and Orange Alert attacks on the Prudential Building in Newark and the Golden Gate Bridge.

That was more like prisoner abuse, not torture, used in an effort to "soften up the prisoners" for the interrogators according to the reports. All of the pics that came out of Abu Ghraib showed prisoner abuse, none of them were torture sessions in an effort to directly get info.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Aliantha

would you like to translate that to simple english UG. There are morons in the house.

Aliantha, no I would not like. The remark gives offense. Get this and get it good: I dumb down for no one. No one in or under heaven. You come up to my level; it's both possible and it's really pretty nice here.

I can point you at things to look over and talk over. PM me if you like.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Kitsune

Define "win" in the context of this "war".

First off, Kitsune, your use of the pooh-poohing quotemarks is wholly illegitimate, and I'll thank you to stop. It is a tactic of the America-must-lose-because-it's -- well -- America faction, and those people think only in fascist drivel. Reject fascist drivel and the people who drivel it, and you'll help sustain the Republic. It will also help you to stop talking a bunch of fascistocommunist-antihuman shit and drivel. A Congressional declaration of war is not required to start the shooting, and never has been, and is very unlikely ever to be -- and the Supreme Court, both houses of Congress, and the Department of State are all fine with that, particularly in the long view -- they all recognize that situations can turn ugly fast if some peckerslap wants them to and that situations vary in size. And if we had declared a state of war, just where would the bozos of the Left be on this anyway? They'd still not be behind our winning, now would they?

This is why I'm not a leftist: I'm too honest a man.

Now that you've been reminded what good behavior and intelligent thinking are like, on to your... demand. If you think you're being patronized -- you're right. I patronize people who insist on idiot-think; they tire me. Sophomoric suits sophomores, but it's been a long time since I was one. The difference that this makes is a hard one to communicate effectively, one generation to a younger, but the difference sure is there, and it can cause impatience.

Victory lies in active reduction of the Non-Integrating Gap, as Barnett puts it, and I think he's got it right. His overall theory is that the world's troubles are going to spring not from the great powers of the developed world and probably not from the growing powers of the large nations who are well along in developing -- Russia, China, India, Brazil and one or two others -- but from those parts of the globe where globalization has not yet spread, and cultural, informational, and especially economic connectivity are not yet achieved -- almost all of Africa, Haiti and quite a bit of the Caribbean and some of its rim, the tribal territories half of Pakistan, southeast Asia -- those always-poor places that for some dang reason never seem to get a break and get rich. They are so often undemocratically run also that one can hardly believe that to be mere coincidence.

Victory in the Iraq campaign, part of the overall War on Terror, is in bringing Iraq from its previous place in the Non-Integrating Gap where Saddam like so many Arab despots was keeping it, towards at least being what Barnett calls a seam state, one both physically and in other senses on the border between the world's economically Functioning Core and the Gap. It's not an instant process; you can't push a society's development too fast or the whole shebang comes apart.

American foreign policy generally favors a "go fast" approach in developing nations out of the Gap and into the Core, and in every society in question there are both "go fast" and "go slow" factions on the matter of globalization and integration into the greater global economy. Tension is inevitable during the process, and it can become such as to create a major rift and a sizeable conflict. It depends on the strength and determination of the reaction of the reactionaries, and reactionaries must be expected. There are external "go slow" exponents also, for many varied reasons, some worthy, some just plain obstructionist. What drives the American foreign-policy ideal and a "go fast" pace is that when people get rich and have the prospect of getting steadily richer, they are much more content and much more willing to be team players with the rest of the world, and not resort to banditry. Face it, most of what vexes us about places like Syria, Iran, and North Korea is a penchant for banditry, no? Counterfeiting, even.

Well, there's likely a lot more, but it's time to let somebody else talk and bring it up.

[Aliantha]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Aliantha, no I would not like. The remark gives offense. Get this and get it good: I dumb down for no one. No one in or under heaven. You come up to my level; it's both possible and it's really pretty nice here.

I can point you at things to look over and talk over. PM me if you like.

UG, what you said doesn't make sense.

it just goes to show................. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.

[Aliantha]

BTW UG, if that's how you respond to people who ask for clarification it's no wonder people don't listen to you.

[Kitsune]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

First off, Kitsune, your use of the pooh-poohing quotemarks is wholly illegitimate, and I'll thank you to stop. It is a tactic of the America-must-lose-because-it's -- well -- America faction, and those people think only in fascist drivel.

My use of the quotation marks stems from the many varied ideas of what winning this war means to the many different people involved. Depending on who you speak to, we're fighting actions, we're fighting ideas, and/or we're fighting a religion or religious extremists. We are not fighting a traditional war, we are not fighting an organized army, we are not fighting any nation. The edges of the scope of winning are even more blurred in what it involves, depending on your point of view, and are as narrow as Iraq and Afghanistan or as wide as all of the middle east and expands, perhaps, to ideas and concepts embedded in populations worldwide. It is just as multifaceted and has just as many potential (as well as seemingly unreachable) ends as our decades long War on Drugs. I'd simply like to know how you define a win for The United States and what would determine this ordeal to be over with.

I did not realize the use of quotation marks in this fashion was a known tactic of The Enemy. I'll take note of it and, in the future, be sure to remain suspicious of anyone I witness doing it in writing or marking quote mark motions in the air with their fingers when discussing such matters.

[Aliantha]

That would be 'a good idea' Kitsune.