Why now? Really…

by AlexinCT

Posted by Hal_10000 on 08/26/09 at 08:07 AM from

I don’t follow your logic here.  We should let it slide when he CIA goes *beyond* even the torture techniques authorized by the Bush Administration? And how do we reconcile this with the past Administration cutting the Abu Ghraib soldiers loose when they were using specifically authorized techniques?

Posted by AlexinCT on 08/26/09 at 10:16 AM from

We should let it slide when he CIA goes *beyond* even the torture techniques authorized by the Bush Administration?

Torture techniques? Not much room to work with after that I guess. Why do we continue to give real torturers a pass by calling stupid stuff like sleep deprivation or waterboarding torture? I am sure people that have experienced real torture would have given anything they could to be waterboarded while being sleep deprived over, to give a couple of simple examples, Saddam’s guys raping their daughters & wives in front of them, or feeding them feet first into wood chippers. Our enemy in this fight does real torture. We hand them another win when we accuse our people of torture just so we can score cheap political points.

And how do we reconcile this with the past Administration cutting the Abu Ghraib soldiers loose when they were using specifically authorized techniques?

As I tell anyone every time Abu Ghraib comes up Hal: you can get the same kind of treatment that the prisoners in Abu Ghraib got in San Francisco, except there they make you pay $200 for that underwear on the head, naked guy pyramid thinggy. Wish some people were as offended and angry when our people get tortured, for real.

Anyway, my point is that this is a political inquisition driven by an insane desire to tie the Bush administration to some crime – to delegitimize it – in the hopes of energizing the BDS infected moonbats so this new energy can be harvested to give Obama some cover from the disastrous direction their economic and healthcare policy is taking, and nothing else. If you can’t see or admit that, then I guess what I say is not going to make sense to you.

Posted by Hal_10000 on 08/26/09 at 10:43 AM from

Jesus, do we have to go through this every time?

Why do we continue to give real torturers a pass by calling stupid stuff like sleep deprivation or waterboarding torture?

Because, under US law, they are torture.  And people who have really undergone those techniques describe it as such.

As I tell anyone every time Abu Ghraib comes up Hal: you can get the same kind of treatment that the prisoners in Abu Ghraib got in San Francisco, except there they make you pay $200 for that underwear on the head, naked guy pyramid thinggy.

You can pay someone $200 to use sleep deprivation, beatings, threatening with dogs, humiliation, stress positions and so on so bad that people die of it?  That’s news to me.  Have you read the Abu Ghraib reports and seen the pictures?  There was lot more than naked pyramids.

As Lee said, you can’t have it both ways, Alex.  Either these are “fraternity pranks”—in which case, what’s the point?  Or they are torture that is vital to get information.  My position is consistent.  These are torture techniques and they do not get information—at least not enough to justify their use.

Posted by AlexinCT on 08/26/09 at 12:50 PM from

Because, under US law, they are torture.  And people who have really undergone those techniques describe it as such.

Can you point me to the US law defining sleep depravation as torture then Hal? Even waterboarding? I mean the stuff practically every military person opting for special type services goes through, not the real water torture stuff that for example the Japanese used in WW2.

You can pay someone $200 to use sleep deprivation, beatings, threatening with dogs, humiliation, stress positions and so on so bad that people die of it?

You must not really know about some of the “fun games” that many in Frisco are quite fond of. And I take serious umbrage with the claim that Manadel al-Jamadi died from sleep deprivation, threats with dogs, or stress positions. In that case the person interrogating him, a private contractor that the left has tried desperately to link to the CIA so they could then link it to Bush, used real torture to kill him. I know the left wants to claim there were a lot more deaths to, but like the war casualty numbers oft circulated by lefty orgs, that stuff is made up.

That’s news to me.  Have you read the Abu Ghraib reports and seen the pictures?  There was lot more than naked pyramids.

I have read the Abu Ghraib reports & seen the pictures. The people that did break the law were tried and sentenced. I avoid however places like Wiki or other moonbat sites that exaggerate and outright lie to make it worse than it was. Anyway, what does that have to do with any of this?

As Lee said, you can’t have it both ways, Alex.  Either these are “fraternity pranks”—in which case, what’s the point?  Or they are torture that is vital to get information.

I disagree with this premise because it not only simplifies what is going on, but labels any actions to facilitate interrogation as torture. If I had been around I would have taken Lee to task for it too. What the Obama team wants to investigate the CIA for is not torture at all, unless we want to now declare any kind of stress or effort to impair a person of interest’s judgment so they talk, as torture. If so, then anything from police interrogations to my boss demanding I work all weekend to could be classified as torture. What’s next? You going to tell me we need to provide these poor guys with lawyers too while we interrogate them? Maybe you are ready to smack your head into the ground with your ass up in the air some five times a day while facing Mecca, but I am not ready to surrender.

My position is consistent.

And that makes you right? You can be 100% consistent and still be wrong. It’s called consistently wrong. don’t get me wrong man. I think you are a smart and well informed guy, but like our debates on AGW, I think you are wrong here. Consistent or not.

These are torture techniques and they do not get information—at least not enough to justify their use.

I think you should define your “these” above, because while I agree that torture for torture’s sake is unreliable, I know for a fact that sleep deprivation has been proven to work exceptionally well at softening the most hard core subject and made interrogation easier. You do know tired people are less able to handle even the most simple of situations right? BTW, there are also many drugs that work exceptionally well at weakening one’s ability to resist questioning. Is the use of those drugs now OK because of that? Or is that torture too? Crap every child attending school should sue under grounds they are being tortured and sleep deprived by this kind of logic.

BTW, you do know that the things that they want to investigate the CIA for now actually did work well in the interrogation of the two subjects affected right Hal? The supposed use of torture techniques, as you called them, which involved two of the three cases of waterboarding on the same subject Khalid Sheik Mohammed, yielded actionable intel that stopped several attacks and gave us unbelievably important intel on how al-Qaeda was put together and worked. The left has worked real hard to hide that fact, to exaggerate how often this was really done with bold lies, and to over inflate what went on in order to create as negative as possible of a perception, because it completely destroys their narrative otherwise.

Posted by salinger on 08/26/09 at 01:12 PM from

The supposed use of torture techniques, as you called them, which involved two of the three cases of waterboarding on the same subject Khalid Sheik Mohammed, yielded actionable intel that stopped several attacks and gave us unbelievably important intel on how al-Qaeda was put together and worked.

Simply Bullshit.

and

a newer article

Here’s a couple relevant quotes for those not inclined to click on links:

based on this evidence, it is impossible to tell whether waterboarding and other brutal methods really were more effective than nonviolent techniques in extracting credible, useful information from Abu Zubaydah or other detainees.

In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida’s tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida—chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates—was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said.

So what’s the deal Alex - ya got a mole in the CIA? How do you know all this secret stuff?

Ya got any stock tips - name of a horse maybe?

Posted by on 08/26/09 at 01:50 PM from

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

This AGAIN?!

Posted by AlexinCT on 08/26/09 at 02:56 PM from

Oh Sally please! How the hell do they have proof of what was obtained during the interrogations or not – unless you are taking Nancy Pelosi and other shills like her at their lying words for it - if the damned documents of what was actually done or obtained are classified still, huh? You do know Obama’s people only declassified some documents to prove their weak ass points, but not everything, but especially the ones that describe what was gathered, so far, right? Are you simply that stupid?

I am not usually impressed by Washington, or NYT for that matter, post articles dealing with this subject because they seem to share that anti-Bush bias pretty hard core. I prefer to take Dick Cheney’s word for what happened. Despite what you leftists would like people to believe, I trust him more than I do any of your kind. And that says a lot.

So what’s the deal Alex - ya got a mole in the CIA? How do you know all this secret stuff?

None of your business sally. But I do have the facts on my side.

Ya got any stock tips - name of a horse maybe?

Sure do. Buy Freddie & Fannie Mae stock. The government is soon going to have to give them a few trillion dollars more of our tax money to keep those loan scams to unqualified people going.

Posted by salinger on 08/26/09 at 06:44 PM from

How the hell do they have proof of what was obtained during the interrogations or not

But you do?

Gimme a break.

Posted by AlexinCT on 08/27/09 at 05:09 AM from

I do in fact sally. The fact Obama’s team did not release all the documents with the details of how well these things worked, is all the proof I need. If the partisan and craven politically motivated Obamanauts could have scored a win by showing the interrogations did not work, do you not think that would also have been released, instead of the very targeted and specifically filtered set of documents used by the idiots that claimed it did not work? Lack of logic can be the enemy of your argument, you know. What’s next? You going to tell me that I am just guessing again?

Give you a break indeed.