posted December 15, 2014 07:34 PM            

What with the Dems screaming to stay in the potus seat, I`d say perfect timing!

The thing with Mr Cheny is, he truely believes the torture was necessary while Bush went along for the ride.

There doesn`t seem to be the global fallout of the revelations they expected either.

posted December 16, 2014 11:16 AM            

BTW, there are tens of thousands of US military personnel and CIA personnel who have been waterboarded as part of their S.E.R.E. training.

I suppose the dunderheads in the demoscat party say the US "Tortured" our own soldiers and CIA agents.

posted December 16, 2014 11:11 PM            

Agreed and Merry Christmas too.

Now, if the demoscats tried to use the CIA so called torture issue in either the just finished midterm elections or the coming presidential elections, it would be a dead bang loser for demoscats.

posted December 18, 2014 10:39 AM            

You do not speak for me, jwhop. I would have thought speaking for "most Americans" would be a denial of your Conservative principles. Aren't we all entitled to our OWN opinions and voices? I believe you are also WRONG. Tho many can't be bothered to think about it at all, like voting, most people anywhere are decent not violent folk...

Love the euphemism Enhanced Interrogation. I invite you to sample it and report back how it is not torture.

But rest assured, it will unlikely be anything but another talking point since this government has too much on its plate trying to shame the President and repeal Obamacare.

posted December 20, 2014 09:32 AM            

I didn't say "most Americans". I said "the majority" of Americans approve of what is known as "enhanced interrogation techniques" when questioning captured terrorists.

Too bad I don't speak for you. If I did, you'd make a hell of a lot more sense.

Waterboarding isn't torture.
Playing loud obnoxious music isn't torture.
Keeping terrorists awake isn't torture.
Putting terrorists in uncomfortable positions isn't torture.
Exposing terrorists to heat or cold isn't torture.
Slapping terrorists isn't torture.
Keeping terrorists alive who are refusing to eat isn't torture.

Only in the fuzzy thinking little leftist minds of demoscat terrorist supporters...is any of that...torture.

December 20, 2014
Diane Feinstein, the Iron Maiden
By Deana Chadwell

Language, that contract that we make with the members of our society, holds our society together; without it we can accomplish nothing. Nor can we function without the protection of good and selfless people who step forward to face the evil that always threatens successful nations.

Diane Feinstein’s release of the enhanced interrogation technique documents is, on both national and linguistic fronts, an act of treason. To attack the language by which we carry on our national dialogue and the methods we use to protect our right to have a national dialogue is unforgivable.

Let’s look at the language part of this first.

Torture is a concept way out on the edges of cruelty and evil. It is not merely making a person uncomfortable. Torture causes screaming, mind-destroying agony. It is not merely scaring or even terrifying a person. It is not humiliation, nor is it mere confinement. Nor is it the same as irritation, or annoyance, or frustration. It’s not merely causing distress or anxiety. Torture leaves physical scars -- twisted limbs, missing fingernails, missing fingers, toes, eyes, tongues. It drives people permanently mad. To torture is to cause maximum pain while still keeping the victim alive, and has been used throughout human history to extract information, to effect revenge, to punish in such a way as to scare others out of committing the same crime -- Braveheart comes to mind.

To think that pouring water on a prisoner reaches that level is to demonstrate a complete lack of knowledge about what man is capable of doing to his fellow man. It is ignorance of history. When the CIA waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed they followed strict guidelines, allowing breaks every few seconds; they had doctors and minders and interpreters in the room with him. There were strict limits. With torture there are no limits. Allow me to elaborate:

In the Middle Ages torturers liked to place men in coffin-shaped cages -- if possible cages really too small for the man’s size. They’d hang the cage outdoors and leave the victim there until he rotted. The French liked to arrive at the same end by using the oubliette -- a narrow, deep dungeon into which they’d lower their victim, and forget about him – hence the name oubliette from oublier, to forget. Those in power abused their power by letting their evil imaginations run rampant. The iron maiden -– horrible name -– imprisoned a man in its hollow interior –- an interior filled with iron spikes. As the inquisitor fired questions, he’d push on the door, driving the spikes ever deeper into the victim.

The rack was the staple of the Spanish Inquisition -– an inquisition not done to protect Spain from an enemy, but done to force citizens to relinquish their beliefs or to accuse their neighbors. The rack stretched a man, his arms and legs attached to cranks that the tormentors turned, slowly, agonizingly pulling a man apart.

The current fuss about tummy-slapping and sleep deprivation not only shows ignorance, but a naive assumption, a Darwinian assumption, that man is getting better and better, so much so that even playing loud music is too terrible to consider. After all, that other grisly stuff happened in the distant past -- those who don’t study history tend to lump all of the past together, but note that those practices were common only five or six centuries ago.

In times before that people were also doing horrible things to each other. Boiling captives in oil, impaling them, carefully pushing the stake between organs so as to keep the victim alive longer. The Assyrians enjoyed skinning their prisoners alive. They did this as a contest to see who could keep his victim screaming the longest. Perhaps entertainment should also be added to torture’s list of purposes.

And any discussion of torture has to include crucifixion, which did much the same thing as the rack, adding to the excruciating (a word derived from the word crucifixion) pain, slow asphyxiation. If the asphyxiation took too long the Romans would break the legs of the prisoner to hasten that process.

Well, this proves that mankind has learned to be kinder. I’m sure they give out Boy Scout badges for getting all bent out of shape about making people stand in front of a wall; the Age of Aquarius must be just around the corner.

No. The ISIS, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, and their ilk have driven a stake through that nonsense. Syria alone, just since the beginning of the uprising in 2011, has tortured to death an estimated 55,000 people. They specialize in using a technique called the flying carpet which involves tying a person, face down, to a hinged board and gradually bending the board, compressing the spine and eventually breaking it. They also like to handcuff a prisoner’s wrists behind his back and hang him, by his wrists, from the ceiling -- another variation on the rack.

Torture – real, debilitating, crazy-making, excruciating torture is still being carried out today by societies anxious to do those things to us. We have built systems and hired people to protect us from such monsters, and that job is ugly and requires them to rub elbows with evil, demands that they work in uncomfortable, dangerous places, and obligates them to make dreadful decisions, to look the wicked realities of human nature right in its jaundiced eye. Very few of us are willing to do that.

That doesn’t mean that the enemy tortures so it’s okay for us to do so. It does mean that we will have to get rough -- just rough enough -- to get these cowards to talk. Not rough enough to use as a scare tactic. Not rough enough to entertain anyone, but rough enough to find out ahead of time what these jackals are up to.

Liberal fantasies notwithstanding, man has not evolved into a pussycat -- not by a long shot. Many Americans have, however, become so removed from reality that they think they can just call things by different names and thereby change what-is into what-ought-to-be. They, like one of Dickens’ characters who couldn’t “look on anything that wasn’t perfectly prim, proper, and pleasant,” want to just ignore the terrifying realties of war. Even our president doesn’t want to call our efforts to stop Islamic militants “war.” He doesn’t even want to call them “Islamists.” But they are Muslims and we are fighting for our national existence. But they’ll like us better if we stop keeping them up at night, if we give them prayer rugs and home-style cooking, volleyball courts and Korans. They’ll like us even better now that we’ve come clean about how we treat “detainees.”

In what lopsided, topsy-turvy world would that work? Not in this one. In this world the Islamists will use this CIA document as a training manual. They’ll probably use it as a joke book. We will no longer know what they’re planning, no longer be able to prevent attacks. Feinstein, by releasing this document, has given aid and comfort to the enemy and has put every one of the brave and dedicated men and women who protect us in danger. It has flipped on a spotlight that’s aimed right at them.

And who wants to protect a country that will turn on you the way the Democrats have done here? Our intelligence officers, regardless of which agency, must be free to act quickly, dispassionately, decisively and do so without any hyper-prissy hesitation – to protect themselves and to protect us.

posted December 20, 2014 02:09 PM            

Do explain the difference between most and majority. And do explain how calling it Enhanced Interrogation makes it more civilized.

Does this document give away our Intelligence methods apart from interrogations?

Have you ever laid with a bath tap directly over your nose and mouth to just short of drowning jwhop? With someone pinning you down so you couldn't escape? I doubt it leaves bruises or scars but asphyxiation by water is still asphyxiation despite your talent for saying things like "most is different from the majority". Talk about twisting language...

Continued "slaps" to the abdomen (another word for belly) can cause internal injuries which also do not leave bruises.

And meanwhile Cheney is taking credit for "finding bin laden" with these methods. .I guess he hasnt noticed he is not in the administration anymore and finding bin laden was something they pointedly did not do. ..and in fact Bush claimed he really didn't care about doing so, remember?

He also claims that HE deserves credit for the lack of attacks in the last 13 years... despite discontinuation of these practices when he left (even tho he doesn't realize he's no longer in control)

When Edward Snowden revealed the extreme of NSA surveillance he gave the enemy their best tool for avoiding detection. .go offline and use the old methods. Nothing much is in this report that wasn't already known; its just confirmation. And those outstanding foreign warrants (for Bush and Cheney) were issued some time ago.

I'll grant you some of those methods sound trivial. I don't think anyone calls all of them torture. .. but the fact remains that a great deal of the information gained was False..ie it didnt work very well. .. that is why we went into Iraq where al qaeda were NOT...

posted December 22, 2014 03:05 PM            

I also don't think a majority (a.k.a. "most") Americans agree with "enhanced interrogation" either. Polls of the typical tiny minorities say that indeed more Americans seem to approve of torture, but really it's only the un-knowledgeable that are able to hold such a view. The complete historical record shows that torture, by and large, does not work (this is the conclusion of torturers and non-torturers alike). That doesn't mean that it couldn't ever work, just that it's more often the case that it doesn't. If something doesn't work, then what's the point?

This also popped up today, another legacy of Bush/Cheney:

Obama: 'We're spending millions for each individual' held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

Our ruling

Obama said, "We’re spending millions for each individual" detained at Guantanamo.

The Pentagon has reported that Guantanamo’s cost comes down to about $3 million per detainee per year -- about 100 times the average annual cost of a federal prisoner. We rate Obama’s claim True. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/dec/21/barack-obama/obama-were-spending-millions-each-individual-held-/

posted December 23, 2014 08:52 AM            

The most incredible and false claim in the Senate intelligence committee's report on the CIA interrogation program is that the program was neither necessary nor effective in the agency's post-9/11 pursuit of al-Qaeda. The report, written by the committee's Democratic majority and disputed by the Republican minority and the CIA, uses information selectively and distorts facts to prove its point.

I won't try to convince you that the program was the right thing to do, reasonable people will differ. Nor will I discuss the management of the program, other than to say that the record clearly shows the agency went to extraordinary lengths to assure it was both legal and approved and the CIA halted the program when uncertain. What I want to address instead is the committee's assertion that the intelligence produced by the interrogation program was not required to stop al-Qaeda terrorists.

The Democratic staffers who drafted the report assert the program contributed nothing important, apparently to bolster a bogus claim that the CIA lied. But let's look at a few cases:

* Finding Osama bin Laden. The committee says the most critical information was acquired outside the interrogation program.

Not true. The man who led the United States to bin Laden, a courier known as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, was mentioned by earlier sources but only as one of many associates bin Laden had years before. Detainees in the CIA interrogation program pushed Kuwaiti to the top of the list and caused the agency to focus tightly on him. The most specific information about the courier came from a detainee, Hassan Ghul, who, after interrogation, strengthened the case by telling of a specific message the courier had delivered for bin Laden to operations chief Abu Faraj al-Libi. Finally, interrogated senior operatives such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who by that time was enormously cooperative, lied when confronted with what we had learned about the courier. That was a dramatic tip-off that he was trying to protect bin Laden.

The staffers who prepared the Senate draft do not appear to understand the role in analysis of accumulating detail, corroboration and levels of confidence in making momentous decisions like the May 2011 Abbottabad operation that killed bin Laden.

Familiarity with this truth is presumably why former CIA director Leon Panetta, even though he does not support the program, said, 'At bottom, we know we got important, even critical, intelligence from individuals in it.'

* Capturing 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. This led to disrupting numerous plots. But the committee says interrogation of detainees did not play a role in getting him because a CIA asset (not a terrorist detainee) helped us. This is astounding to those of us involved in capture operations. In fact, interrogated detainees were essential to connecting the source to Mohammed. The CIA will not permit me to reveal the operational details, a classic problem for intelligence officers seeking to defend against outlandish charges.

* Capturing Southeast Asian terrorist leader Riduan Isamuddin (Hambali). The committee says interrogation played no role in bringing down this architect of the 2002 Bali bombings. This is nonsense. After interrogation, Khalid Sheik Mohammed told us he transferred money to Hambali via a certain individual to finance attacks in Asia. This triggered a string of captures across two continents that led us to Hambali in Southeast Asia.

* Disrupting a second wave plot on the U.S. West Coast. The committee says a source run by another country mentioned a plot to use airplanes to strike West Coast targets. But that's all we knew, none of the details needed to stop it.

That information came from detainees, starting with Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who told us after interrogation that Hambali would replace him in this plot. This drove our effort to find Hambali. After that capture, Mohammed said Hambali's brother would take over. We located him and found he had recruited 17 Southeast Asians and was apparently trying to arrange flight training for them to attack the West Coast.

* Disrupting plots to bomb Karachi hotels. The committee says interrogation played no role in heading off attacks on the Pakistani hotels, where U.S. and other Western visitors stayed. But it leaves out the fact that detainee Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, better known as Abu Zubaida, provided information on how to locate al-Qaeda safe houses in Karachi. One of these provided us a letter that tipped us to the plots. That is how those famous dots really get connected.

To drive home their points, the committee frequently cherry-picks documents. It describes officers expressing concern via e-mail that they will be ostracized for saying that certain detainees did not tell us everything. But the staff leaves out the critical context: The CIA officers were actually discussing their dismay over the agency's decision to cease the interrogation program, causing the loss of important intelligence information.

Many administration and congressional officials ritualistically say we will never know whether we could have gotten important information another way. This is a dodge wrapped in political correctness. We could say that about all intelligence successes. We'll never know, for example, what intelligence is missed when capture is declared too difficult and terrorists are killed from the air.

The point is we did succeed in getting vital information during a national emergency when time was limited by the great urgency of a clock ticking on the next plot.

Terrorists had just killed thousands of Americans, and we felt a deep responsibility for ensuring they could not do it again.

posted December 23, 2014 05:54 PM            

quote:

---

The most specific information about the courier came from a detainee, Hassan Ghul, who, after interrogation, strengthened the case by telling of a specific message the courier had delivered for bin Laden to operations chief Abu Faraj al-Libi.

---

The linchpin in the hunt for the courier was a detainee named Hassan Ghul. But Mr. Ghul was cooperative from the outset. One officer said he “sang like a tweetie bird.” Mr. Ghul spoke expansively about the courier, describing him as Bin Laden’s closest assistant. Despite the cooperation, the C.I.A. decided to torture Mr. Ghul, subjecting him to sleep deprivation and stress positions. He hallucinated. His heart fell out of rhythm. But he provided “no actionable threat information.”

Nevertheless, after the Bin Laden raid, the C.I.A. provided Congress with a document listing Mr. Ghul as a detainee who had been subjected to enhanced interrogation and provided valuable intelligence on Bin Laden’s courier. The document did not make clear that the valuable intelligence came before the harsh tactics.

Someone's lying, Jwhop. I didn't put these stories up on the internet.

Leon Panetta himself:

“We could have gotten bin Laden without enhanced interrogation techniques, despite the implication in the film Zero Dark Thirty that the techniques, called torture by opponents, played a pivotal role in finding bin Laden."

”Yes, some of it came from some of the tactics that were used at that time, interrogation tactics that were used, but the fact is we put together most of that intelligence without having to resort to that.”

Consistent with a letter he'd sent to John McCain:

Let me further point out that we first learned about the facilitator/courier’s nom de guerre from a detainee not in CIA custody in 2002. It is also important to note that some detainees who were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques attempted to provide false or misleading information about the facilitator/courier. These attempts to falsify the facilitator/courier’s role were alerting.
In the end, no detainee in CIA custody revealed the facilitator/courier’s full true name or specific whereabouts. This information was discovered through other intelligence means.

Sometimes old people don't remember things quite right.

posted December 24, 2014 08:51 PM            

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2014/12/24/torture-used -by-u-s-to-manufacture-lies-needed-to-dupe-public-into-iraq-war-video/