Torture memos

[DanaC]

I seriously doubt that Lamplighter thinks you should be more like the Russians.

[Lamplighter]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Read the original story.
This barring is in response to a US barring of Russian officials who falsely prosecuted,
jailed, beat, and killed a guy, for exposing Russian corruption.
<snip>

@UT, My OP included this, and my next post conceded your point, but not everything is:
"My Country Right or Wrong", "Love It or Leave It", or "Retarded or High"

By coincidence for this entire thread, an article came out today...

NY Times
SCOTT SHANE
April 16, 2013
U.S. Practiced Torture After 9/11, Nonpartisan Review Concludes

WASHINGTON — A nonpartisan, independent review of interrogation and detention programs
in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks concludes that
“it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture”
and that the nation’s highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it.

The sweeping, 577-page report says that while brutality has occurred in every American war,
there never before had been “the kind of considered and detailed discussions
that occurred after 9/11 directly involving a president and his top advisers on the wisdom,
propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our custody.”
The study, by an 11-member panel convened by the Constitution Project,
a legal research and advocacy group, is to be released on Tuesday morning.

Debate over the coercive interrogation methods used by the administration of
President George W. Bush has often broken down on largely partisan lines.
The Constitution Project’s task force on detainee treatment,
led by two former members of Congress with experience in the executive branch
— a Republican, Asa Hutchinson, and a Democrat, James R. Jones —
seeks to produce a stronger national consensus on the torture question.<snip>

The task force found “no firm or persuasive evidence” that these interrogation methods
produced valuable information that could not have been obtained by other means.
While “a person subjected to torture might well divulge useful information,”
much of the information obtained by force was not reliable, the report says. <snip>

Mr. Hutchinson, who served in the Bush administration as chief of the
Drug Enforcement Administration and under secretary of the Department of Homeland Security,
said he “took convincing” on the torture issue. But after the panel’s nearly two years of research,
he said he had no doubts about what the United States did.

“This has not been an easy inquiry for me, because I know many of the players,"
Mr. Hutchinson said in an interview. He said he thought everyone involved in decisions,
from Mr. Bush down, had acted in good faith, in a desperate effort to try to prevent more attacks.
“But I just think we learn from history,” Mr. Hutchinson said.
“It’s incredibly important to have an accurate account
not just of what happened but of how decisions were made.”

He added, “The United States has a historic and unique character,
and part of that character is that we do not torture.”
The panel found that the United States violated its international legal obligations by engineering
“enforced disappearances” and secret detentions.
It questions recidivism figures published by the Defense Intelligence Agency for Guantánamo detainees
who have been released, saying they conflict with independent reviews.
<snip>

I urge those who have posted in this, and similar, threads to read the entire article.

[Undertoad]

Keep on beating that horse. We're ten years on now and it never gets tiresome.

[Lamplighter]

We're ten years on now and it never gets tiresome.

I'm glad you agree.

[Undertoad]

Yes, because there are still some people without opinions on the subject and discussing it will be productive and interesting.