Torture memos

[lookout123]

After prolonged torture and cruel and degrading treatment, he lost focus and gave information.

He named names....the Green Bay Packer offensive line.

He named cities in Vietnam.....cities that were not targets of opportunity.

Huh, funny thing is I seem to remember one of McCain's greatest sources of personal shame is that he did finally crack and give them what they wanted on at least one occasion.

But I should probably just ask you if you really equate going years malnourished, disfigured, and in solitude with preventing someone from sleeping for 48 hours? I see a difference. One = discomfort the other is permanently scarring.

Originally Posted by lookout123

Huh, funny thing is I seem to remember one of McCain's greatest sources of personal shame is that he did finally crack and give them what they wanted on at least one occasion.

But I should probably just ask you if you really equate going years malnourished, disfigured, and in solitude with preventing someone from sleeping for 48 hours? I see a difference. One = discomfort the other is permanently scarring.

This is what McCain wrote in his memoirs:

McCain explained that after refusing an offer of early release, North Vietnamese soldiers "worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me." While McCain did not go in to detail during his speech, he explained in his memoir Faith of my Fathers that the information he gave the Vietnamese after being "broken" was out of date, fabricated, or of little use to his captors:

Eventually, I gave them my ship's name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant. Pressed for more useful information, I gave the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line, and said they were members of my squadron. When asked to identify future targets, I simply recited the names of a number of North Vietnamese cities that had already been bombed.

McCain..."waterboarding is torture"

[lookout123]

And the second part of my post?

McCain..."waterboarding is torture"

McCain... "Sarah Palin is my choice for Vice President"

Originally Posted by lookout123

And the second part of my post?

Cruel and degrading treatment is also prohibited under UNCAT.

Because it is often difficult to distinguish between cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and torture, the Committee regards Article 16's prohibition of such treatment as similarly absolute and non-derogable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...ding_treatment

UNCAT text

We (Reagan) signed it, we (the US) should live by it.

Originally Posted by lookout123

McCain... "Sarah Palin is my choice for Vice President"

I have no explanation for that decision.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by lookout123

McCain... "Sarah Palin is my choice for Vice President"

Originally Posted by Redux

I have no explanation for that decision.

lol - We all agree with that assessment!

[TheMercenary]

There are a few facts associated with a interrogation situation. First it is not what you know as much as how long you can hold out. After 24 hours, and knowing that you are missing, all information that you know will be changed. You are trained to hold out for as long as possible within your means. Second is that every person can be broken. Every single person. Some sooner than others. And every person that you know who is read in knows this as well. There is no shame lost in it.

[classicman]

Obama Intel director: High-value info obtained

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration's top intelligence official privately told employees last week that "high value information" was obtained in interrogations that included harsh techniques approved by former President George W. Bush.

"A deeper understanding of the al-Qaida network" resulted, National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair said in the memo, in which he added, "I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past." The Associated Press obtained a copy.

Critics of the harsh methods—waterboarding, face slapping, sleep deprivation and other techniques—have called them torture. President Barack Obama said Tuesday they showed the United States "losing our moral bearings" and said they would not be used while he is in office. But he did not say whether he believed they worked.

Obama ordered the release of long-secret Bush-era documents on the subject last week, and Blair circulated his memo declaring that useful information was obtained at the same time.

In a public statement released the same day, Blair did not say that interrogations using the techniques had yielded useful information.

As word of the private memo surfaced Tuesday night, a new statement was issued in his name that appeared to be more explicit in one regard and contained something of a hedge on another point.

[tw]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

Any government that releases all it's secrets will not be around for very long. Regardless of what kind of gov it is.

Which is why an extremist George Jr administration successfully saved the nation by repeatedly subverting the 911 Commission.

Honesty exposed that not one wacko extremist did anything to save America that day. A Secret Service agent finally had to push the president onto Air Force One (in FL) because nobody from George Jr on down could make a decision. Could not even decide to get on Air Force One. Good thing we saved America by keeping that secret hidden. Good thing we keep America from learning of incompetence everywhere in that administration that day - including the VP, Transportation Secretary, Sec of Defense, National Security advisor, FAA Commissioner, ...

Best way to save America – keep it dumb and uninformed.

[tw]

And still some deny we were torturing people. How does that make America any different than Nazis? From the NY Times of 21 Apr 2009:

Report Gives New Detail on Approval of Brutal Techniques
A newly declassified Congressional report released Tuesday outlined the most detailed evidence yet that the military’s use of harsh interrogation methods on terrorism suspects was approved at high levels of the Bush administration. ...

The Senate report documented how some of the techniques used by the military at prisons in Afghanistan and at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as well as in Iraq ...

According to the Senate investigation, a military behavioral scientist and a colleague who had witnessed SERE training proposed its use at Guantánamo in October 2002, as pressure was rising “to get ‘tougher’ with detainee interrogations.” Officers there sought authorization, and Mr. Rumsfeld approved 15 interrogation techniques.

The report showed that Mr. Rumsfeld’s authorization was cited by a United States military special-operations lawyer in Afghanistan as “an analogy and basis for use of these techniques,” and that, in February 2003, a special-operations unit in Iraq obtained a copy of the policy from Afghanistan “that included aggressive techniques, changed the letterhead, and adopted the policy verbatim.”

Months later, the report said, the interrogation officer in charge at Abu Ghraib obtained a copy of that policy “and submitted it, virtually unchanged, through her chain of command.” This ultimately led to authorization by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez of the use of stress positions, “sleep management” and military dogs to exploit detainees’ fears, the report said.

“The paper trail on abuse leads to top civilian leaders, and our report connects the dots,” Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said on Tuesday in a conference call with reporters. “This report, in great detail, shows a paper trail going from that authorization” by Mr. Rumsfeld “to Guantánamo to Afghanistan and to Iraq,” Mr. Levin said.

But Americans don't torture? 30 years in future, expect extremists again to promote torture as if that somehow results in useful information ... when facts and examples routinely say otherwise.

Curious. Those who created the 'Saddam WMD' myths also advocated torture. Why? Because they could not find those WMDs, could not find Al Qaeda hiding everywhere to kill us all ... and could not find bin Laden because they did not want to. And yet these are honest people? With so much 'honesty' from advocates of torture, how does that make us any different than Nazis?

[tw]

From the Washington Post:

Confronting the Bush Legacy, Reluctantly
Widening an explosive debate on torture, President Obama on Tuesday opened the possibility of prosecution for Bush-era lawyers who authorized brutal interrogation of terror suspects and suggested Congress might order a full investigation. The three men facing the most scrutiny are former Justice Department officials Jay Bybee, Steven Bradbury and John Yoo.

Lying was not limited to Saddam's WMDs.

[glatt]

As much of a douche bag I think Gonzales is, I think opening the door to investigations is a bad idea.

A disturbing revelation from the most Senate recent report goes beyond the authorization of the use of torture...to part of the motivation....to "prove" a link between al Queda and Saddam:

The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist....

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.

"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.

"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."

It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released Justice Department document.

"There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he continued.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66622.html

if that is the case, that political motivation makes the act even more egregious, IMO.

BUT....I am not ready to call for criminal investigations yet.

As to the torture memos, I would like to see the results of the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) investigation of the attorneys who drafted the memos. It was held up in the last days of the Bush administration by the AG and is now evidently in the hands of the Obama AG.

If, in fact, as reported earlier this year, Newsweek and Newsweek, that the OPR found that the attorneys who drafted the torture memos violated professional legal standards by basing their opinions on political rather than legal considerations, then, IMO, at the very least, they should be disbarred.

At the same time, if that in fact, is the OPR finding, I think a broader inquiry should be conducted to determine if other top officials, particularly in the White House and DoD, knowingly and willfully participated in the "politicization" of these memos. (The DoJ-OPR internal investigation did not extend that far).

At some point, you have to ask, should top officials in the former Administration be above the law?

[Happy Monkey]

At no point.

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

At no point.

I absolutely believe that further investigation in necessary, but for now I am leaning in the direction of a "truth commission" rather than a criminal investigation, with the results pointing to where ever it may.

If such an investigation points to the White House, Cheney and Bush could testify if they chose (they probably could not be compelled). If they chose not to tesitfy, then history will be left to judge their culpability.

The question for me is balancing the need for justice to be served with the adverse impact of criminal prosecutions of folks like Cheney (who probably deserves to be prosecuted).

Such a criminal investigation would rip the country apart. Is it worth it or is getting the truth out enough?

[sugarpop]

Of course it is worth getting the truth out. What kind of country do you think this is? This is not some dictatorship. As Obama keeps saying, we are a nation of laws. Well, we have very explicit laws regarding torture. We have prosecuted people before from other countries for waterboarding. What kind of message does it send to the world if we are willing to overlook our own leaders actions for those same crimes?

I am finding it very disturbing how many people are saying we should move on and forget about this. If we use this to set a precedent by not holding anyone accountable, and I go out an commit a crime, you can bet your ass off I will have my attorney arguing in court that I didn't mean it, and it is behind me, and can't we just move forward.

In addition, if we have laws in this country, but we aren't willing to make the big decisions and follow through because it will be uncomfortable or painful for us, what kind of message does that send to those in the future who might decide to commit crimes like this?

I am also finding it very distasteful the double standard we have going on here. Those underlings at Abu Ghraib went to prison. The people who wrote the laws and ordered the torture are apparently somehow above the law. It's the same with the economic crisis. The bankers are being held to a different standard than the automakers. Where are the investigations of what happened, and holding people who committed fraud accountable? It is laughable that Obama would say on the one hand, we are a nation of laws, and by the other one he just wants to move forward and forget about what happened, other than getting the information out there. THAT does NOT represent the principles on which this country was founded.