Does Torture Work?

[moonpuppy]

Torture does work. Everyone has a breaking point in which they will agree with whatever the torturer is trying to extract. Be it a BS confession that the Communist Vietnamese were trying to extract from our POWS or vital information we are trying to extract from known terrorist. Even in mid evil times it worked, it all depends on what information the person is trying to extract.

“One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn't put out the memos that showed the success of the effort. And there are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified.”

“I formally asked that they be declassified now. I haven't announced this up until now, I haven't talked about it, but I know specifically of reports that I read, that I saw that lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country.”

“And I've now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos so we can lay them out there and the American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was, as well as to see this debate over the legal opinions.”

Dick Cheney calls for Memos to be declassified. Now we'll see the attacks on Cheney's character and we'll see him called names. But will we see the memos or will they send Sandy Berger in again?

[sargebaby1]

Did you watch Glenn Beck today? Good show, and it was about the Geneva Convention, versus how it is today with the current action. Lots of technical information dealing with the GC, the Supreme Court, and the fact that the jihadists are ineligible to be treated under the articles of the Geneva Convention.

[moonpuppy]

And argument i've made many times. They are not legal combatants is what I would say.

CIA Confirms: Waterboarding 9/11 Mastermind Led to Info that Aborted 9/11-Style Attack on Los Angeles

The Central Intelligence Agency told CNSNews.com today that it stands by the assertion made in a May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that the use of “enhanced techniques” of interrogation on al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) -- including the use of waterboarding -- caused KSM to reveal information that allowed the U.S. government to thwart a planned attack on Los Angeles.

Before he was waterboarded, when KSM was asked about planned attacks on the United States, he ominously told his CIA interrogators, “Soon, you will know.”

According to the previously classified May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that was released by President Barack Obama last week, the thwarted attack -- which KSM called the “Second Wave”-- planned “ ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles.”After KSM was captured by the United States, he was not initially cooperative with CIA interrogators. Nor was another top al Qaeda leader named Zubaydah. KSM, Zubaydah, and a third terrorist named Nashiri were the only three persons ever subjected to waterboarding by the CIA. (Additional terrorist detainees were subjected to other “enhanced techniques” that included slapping, sleep deprivation, dietary limitations, and temporary confinement to small spaces -- but not to water-boarding.)

This was because the CIA imposed very tight restrictions on the use of waterboarding. “The ‘waterboard,’ which is the most intense of the CIA interrogation techniques, is subject to additional limits,” explained the May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo. “It may be used on a High Value Detainee only if the CIA has ‘credible intelligence that a terrorist attack is imminent’; ‘substantial and credible indicators that the subject has actionable intelligence that can prevent, disrupt or deny this attack’; and ‘[o]ther interrogation methods have failed to elicit this information within the perceived time limit for preventing the attack.’”

So we get to the ticking time bomb scenario.

Torture Works.

[Spider]

MoonPuppy sez ...

"Everyone has a breaking point in which they will agree with whatever the torturer is trying to extract.

Be it a BS confession that the Communist Vietnamese were trying to extract from our POWS or vital information we are trying to extract
from known terrorist."

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So where is 'the evidence' that there ever was a planned attack
as the CIA report indicates?

Perhaps he said that just to get them to stop torturing him?

Perhaps the CIA simply created that report (at the time)
in order to justify their use of torture?

Why do Republicans always believe what they read
without digging deeper?

.. I'm Waiting ..
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[moonpuppy]

I've always wondered why liberals disbelieve anything the government says.

It would make sense that he would tell them what they want to hear but if what he tells them turns out to be Bull, then back to the screws he goes. After a couple of lies he would learn, like a dog, not to make that mistake again.

I have not seen any detailed report about the attack that was thwarted. I may never see it as I suspect it has stuff in it that does not need to be made public.

In the mean time some terrorist who looks like Ron Jerremy got roughed up and spilled the beans. I'm all broken up about it.

[Spider]

Detainee's Harsh Treatment Foiled No Plots

Waterboarding, Rough Interrogation of Abu Zubaida
Produced False Leads, Officials Say

By: Peter Finn and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, March 29, 2009

When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, they were convinced that they had in their custody an al-Qaeda leader who knew details of operations yet to be unleashed, and they were facing increasing pressure from the White House to get those secrets out of him.

The methods succeeded in breaking him, and the stories he told of al-Qaeda terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads.

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.

Moreover, within weeks of his capture, U.S. officials had gained evidence that made clear they had misjudged Abu Zubaida. President George W. Bush had publicly described him as "al-Qaeda's chief of operations," and other top officials called him a "trusted associate" of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and a major figure in the planning of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. None of that was accurate, the new evidence showed.
Continued

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The Torture Apologists Have No Place Left To Hide
By: Susie Madrak
Monday Mar 30, 2009

"'I said he was important,' Bush said to Tenet at one of their daily meetings. 'You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?'

Dan Froomkin has written a comprehensive piece making the case there was simply no logical reason for the Bush administration to torture suspects. He thinks it was about retribution for the World Trade Center attacks.

I figured out a few decades ago that when there's no logical reason for an action, there's usually a subconscious, compulsive one. Froomkin reminds us there were simply no intelligence gains to be had, yet the Bush administration was very, very focused on torturing prisoners, anyway. It seems obvious to me that the question is the answer: George W. Bush.

What do you know about his character that makes you think he would be something other than vindictive and vicious? I mean, the only job at which he was ever really successful was running the dirty tricks operation for his father's campaign. Why wouldn't he authorize torture? It made him feel presidential.

And if we've learned anything in the past eight years, it's that it's all about George:

Abu Zubaida was the alpha and omega of the Bush administration's argument for torture.

That's why Sunday's front-page Washington Post story by Peter Finn and Joby Warrick is such a blow to the last remaining torture apologists.

Finn and Warrick reported that "not a single significant plot was foiled" as a result of Zubaida's brutal treatment -- and that, quite to the contrary, his false confessions "triggered a series of alerts and sent hundreds of CIA and FBI investigators scurrying in pursuit of phantoms."

Zubaida was the first detainee to be tortured at the direct instruction of the White House. Then he was President George W. Bush's Exhibit A in defense of the "enhanced interrogation" procedures that constituted torture. And he continues to be held up as a justification for torture by its most ardent defenders.
Continued

Do you need/want more MoonPuppy?
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[moonpuppy]

No, to be perfictly honest, I'm not real worried about how they treat terrorist who would use innocent people as weapons, who target the innocent and use our freedoms as weapons. If using "harsh" treatment on this POS ringed out the rest of what he knew, or didn't know, it's fine with me.

Looking for sympathy from me, I'm all out giving it to the innocent.

[bob]

When they are behind bars they will still tell you to your face how they will like to kill you and when some were released they went right back to what they were doing before. Killing innocent people.