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Thread: Los Angeles or Waterboarding?

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    Default Los Angeles or Waterboarding?

    A Commentary By Debra J. Saunders

    Friday, April 24, 2009

    After 9/11, Americans wanted one thing from Washington: to prevent future terrorist attacks. President George W. Bush, the CIA and other hard-working officials delivered. For their trouble, a handful of those individuals now have reason to fear that they may be ruined.

    My guess is that President Obama realizes it was a big mistake for his administration to release four memos written by Bush administration lawyers sanctioning enhanced interrogation techniques. Already, rage on the left has
    prompted Obama to go squishy on his once-insistent opposition to prosecuting any Bush administration officials. Now he says he might let his attorney general prosecute Bush lawyers.

    That would be criminalizing the politics of 2002. George Tenet wrote in his book "At the Center of the Storm," "After 9/11, gripped by the same emotions and fears, Congress exhorted the intelligence community to take more risks to protect the country." Civil rights? Then-Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., noted
    at a 2002 Senate intelligence committee that "we are not living in times in which lawyers can say no to an operation just to play it safe." Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz defended the use of rough treatment -- "the third
    degree" -- in order "to elicit information from terrorists about continuing threats." The Bush administration authorized techniques that the ACLU calls
    torture.

    Seven years later, Obama banned those techniques, as he promised. But in releasing the memos last week, Obama unwittingly reinforced Osama bin Laden's view of America as a country of pantywaists. Now America's enemies
    know they have nothing to fear but bad lawyering if U.S. forces catch them.

    The memos describe "enhanced" techniques used on 28 high-value detainees. Protocol called for operatives to begin with tamer methods. To wit: the "attention grasp," the "facial slap" and "dietary manipulation -- that is, "presenting detainees with a bland, unappetizing but nutritionally omplete
    diet." Read: Ensure Plus. Really.

    "Walling" involved pushing a detainee into a wall -- but a phony wall to prevent injury. The CIA was going to try to scare al-Qaida biggie Abu Zubaydah with insects, but the bugs had to be harmless and not cause an
    allergic reaction. I can see the al-Qaida boys chortling in their cave over the very idea that these techniques would even be controversial -- not to mention out of bounds under the Obama administration.

    If the tamer methods did not work, operatives could ask CIA headquarters for permission to use more daunting techniques -- such as sleep deprivation and waterboarding. Three detainees were waterboarded before the last waterboarding in March 2003. The memos revealed that two detainees -- Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (aka KSM) -- were water boarded a total
    of 266 times.

    Some maintain that the CIA might have learned what it needed to know without waterboarding. But as one memo reported, before the questioning got tough, "KSM resisted giving any answers to questions about future attacks, simply
    noting, 'Soon you will know.'"The questioning got tougher. As the memo noted, the CIA believes that "the intelligence acquired from these interrogations has been a key reason why al Qaeda has failed to launch a spectacular attack in the West since 11 September 2001."

    And: Once "enhanced techniques" were used on KSM, interrogations "led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the 'Second Wave,' . to use East Asian operatives
    to crash a hijacked airliner' into a building in Los Angeles."
    Do I like waterboarding? No, but it is not life threatening; in extreme cases, I can live with it. And I'll take waterboarding over a 9/11 in Los Angeles any day.

    One last point: The Navy has used waterboarding in training. Obama put a stop to the "enhanced" techniques because he believes they have tarnished America's image abroad, which makes Americans less safe. People of goodwill
    can disagree on that point.

    But when Obama opened the door for his attorney general to prosecute Bush lawyers, that flip-flop told U.S. intelligence and law enforcement operatives that Obama's assurances cannot be trusted. That can't be good for America's safety.

    Former California Gov. Pete Wilson, who served on the Bush Defense Policy Board, was appalled. "If they try to prosecute that, that should spark mass resignations in the government," he told me Tuesday.
    As for Obama, Wilson said, "This is a guy who was teaching law. Good God."
    2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
    McCain to Obama. "If you don't like our bill, send troops to help us."

    Obama, himself attempted to filibuster Justice Alito, who now sits on the Supreme Court.

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    Fallacy of false choice.

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    some lawyers just need to be shot.
    A sad commentary on we, as a people, and our viewpoint of our freedom can be summed up like this. We have liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, yet those very people look at Constitutionalists as radical and extreme.................so those liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans must believe that the constitution is radical and extreme.

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    The military agency that provided advice on harsh interrogation techniques for use against terrorism suspects referred to the application of extreme duress as "torture" in a July 2002 document sent to the Pentagon's chief lawyer and warned that it would produce "unreliable information."

    "The unintended consequence of a U.S. policy that provides for the torture of prisoners is that it could be used by our adversaries as justification for the torture of captured U.S. personnel," says the document, an unsigned two-page attachment to a memo by the military's Joint Personnel Recovery Agency. Parts of the attachment, obtained in full by The Washington Post, were quoted in a Senate report on harsh interrogation released this week.

    It remains unclear whether the attachment reached high-ranking officials in the Bush administration. But the document offers the clearest evidence that has come to light so far that technical advisers on the harsh interrogation methods voiced early concerns about the effectiveness of applying severe physical or psychological pressure.

    The document was included among July 2002 memorandums that described severe techniques used against Americans in past conflicts and the psychological effects of such treatment. JPRA ran the military program known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE), which trains pilots and others to resist hostile questioning.

    The cautionary attachment was forwarded to the Pentagon's Office of the General Counsel as the administration finalized the legal underpinnings of a CIA interrogation program that would sanction the use of 10 forms of coercion, including waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning. The JPRA material was sent from the Pentagon to the CIA's acting general counsel, John A. Rizzo, and on to the Justice Department, according to testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.


    A memo dated Aug. 1, 2002, from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel authorized the use of the 10 methods against Abu Zubaida, the nom de guerre of an al-Qaeda associate captured in Pakistan in March 2002. Former intelligence officials have recently contended that Abu Zubaida provided little useful information about the organization's plans.

    Senate investigators were unable to determine whether William J. Haynes II, the Pentagon's general counsel in 2002, passed the cautionary memo to Rizzo or to other Bush administration officials reviewing the CIA's proposed program.

    Haynes declined to comment, as did Rizzo and the CIA. Jay S. Bybee, who as an assistant attorney general signed the Aug. 1 memo, did not respond to a request for comment.

    Daniel Baumgartner, who was the JPRA's chief of staff in 2002 and transmitted the memos and attachments, said the agency "sent a lot of cautionary notes" regarding harsh techniques. "There is a difference between what we do in training and what the administration wanted the information for," he said a telephone interview yesterday. "What the administration decided to do or not to do was up to the guys dealing with offensive prisoner operations. . . . We train our own people for the worst possible outcome . . . and obviously the United States government does not torture its own people."

    Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he thinks the attachment was deliberately ignored and perhaps suppressed. Excerpts from the document appeared in a report on the treatment of detainees released this month by Levin's committee. The report says the attachment echoes JPRA warnings issued in late 2001.

    "It's part of a pattern of squelching dissent," said Levin, who added that there were other instances in which internal reviews of detainee treatment were halted or undercut. "They didn't want to hear the downside."

    A former administration official said the National Security Council, which was briefed repeatedly that summer on the CIA's planned interrogation program by George J. Tenet, then director of central intelligence, and agency lawyers, did not discuss the issues raised in the attachment. Tenet, through a spokesman, declined to comment.

    "That information was not brought to the attention of the principals," said the official, who was involved in deliberations on interrogation policy and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. "That would have been relevant. The CIA did not present with pros and cons, or points of concern. They said this was safe and effective, and there was no alternative."

    The Aug. 1 memo on the interrogation of Abu Zubaida draws from the JPRA's memo on psychological effects to conclude that while waterboarding constituted "a threat of imminent death," it did not cause "prolonged mental harm." Therefore, the Aug. 1 memo concluded, waterboarding "would not constitute torture within the meaning of the statute."

    But the JPRA's two-page attachment, titled "Operational Issues Pertaining to the Use of Physical/Psychological Coercion in Interrogation," questioned the effectiveness of employing extreme duress to gain intelligence.

    "The requirement to obtain information from an uncooperative source as quickly as possible -- in time to prevent, for example, an impending terrorist attack that could result in loss of life -- has been forwarded as a compelling argument for the use of torture," the document said. "In essence, physical and/or psychological duress are viewed as an alternative to the more time-consuming conventional interrogation process. The error inherent in this line of thinking is the assumption that, through torture, the interrogator can extract reliable and accurate information. History and a consideration of human behavior would appear to refute this assumption."


    There was no consideration within the National Security Council that the planned techniques stemmed from Chinese communist practices and had been deemed torture when employed against American personnel, the former administration official said. The U.S. military prosecuted its own troops for using waterboarding in the Philippines and tried Japanese officers on war crimes charges for its use against Americans and other allied nationals during World War II.

    The reasoning in the JPRA document contrasted sharply with arguments being pressed at the time by current and former military psychologists in the SERE program, including James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who later formed a company that became a CIA contractor advising on interrogations. Both men declined to comment on their role in formulating interrogation policy.

    The JPRA attachment said the key deficiency of physical or psychological duress is the reliability and accuracy of the information gained. "A subject in pain may provide an answer, any answer, or many answers in order to get the pain to stop," it said.

    In conclusion, the document said, "the application of extreme physical and/or psychological duress (torture) has some serious operational deficits, most notably the potential to result in unreliable information." The word "extreme" is underlined.
    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...403171_pf.html

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    The fascists are always presenting these false dichotomies, like bank bailout versus economic calamity.

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    Quote Originally Posted by AssHatZombie View Post
    The fascists are always presenting these false dichotomies, like bank bailout versus economic calamity.
    Of course they are. Lots of money to be "made" off of fear.
    Bush doubled the debt from 5 trillion to 10 trillion.
    Proving tax cuts work!

    Bush asked for and signed for the TARP money.
    The Republican senate leader backed Bush on this.

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    Quote Originally Posted by AssHatZombie View Post
    The fascists are always presenting these false dichotomies, like bank bailout versus economic calamity.
    Absolutely correct.

    This is just another take on "Mushroom clouds in 45 minutes."
    AMERICAN HISTORY ITSELF IS A TESTAMENT TO THE STRENGTH AND RESILIENCE OF AFRICAN PEOPLE. WE, ALONG WITH THE COURGE AND SACRIFICES OF CONSCIOUS WHITE AMERICANS, LIKE VIOLA LIUZZO, EVERETT DIRKSEN, AND MANY OTHERS, HAVE FOUGHT AND DIED TOGETHER FOR OUR FREEDOM, AND FOR OUR SURVIVAL.

    In America, rights are are not determined by what is just, fair, equitable, honest, nor by what Jesus would do. Rights are determined ONLY by what you can DEMAND.

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    That's a hard choice. Do you live in Los Angeles?
    "Do not think that I came to bring peace... I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." - Matthew 10:34

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    Quote Originally Posted by Watermarx View Post
    That's a hard choice. Do you live in Los Angeles?
    I'm sure you're being facetious but its a legitimate question. I worked in the 50-story building next to the 72-story Library Tower which was supposedly targeted in LA and there are anti-Bush liberals that worked with me that have said they are glad whatever needed to be done was done to prevent an attack from happening there.

    On my USC school board which has some smart left-leaning people posting on it there was definintely no consensus that it was wrong what was done to those two guys who possesed the most information.

    So feel free to call me a hypocrite but I've already beat you to it as I admit I am one. I'm against torture but I'm perfectly fine with what we did to those two f*ckheads that got information on the possible LA attack which could have taken out my me and my co-workers, many of whom I consider close friends.

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    Quote Originally Posted by cawacko View Post
    I'm sure you're being facetious but its a legitimate question. I worked in the 50-story building next to the 72-story Library Tower which was supposedly targeted in LA and there are anti-Bush liberals that worked with me that have said they are glad whatever needed to be done was done to prevent an attack from happening there.

    On my USC school board which has some smart left-leaning people posting on it there was definintely no consensus that it was wrong what was done to those two guys who possesed the most information.

    So feel free to call me a hypocrite but I've already beat you to it as I admit I am one. I'm against torture but I'm perfectly fine with what we did to those two f*ckheads that got information on the possible LA attack which could have taken out my me and my co-workers, many of whom I consider close friends.
    You're willing to do anything to save your co-workers?

    Anything at all?

    Even a proper, tortureless, interrogation to gain real info?
    "Do not think that I came to bring peace... I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." - Matthew 10:34

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    Quote Originally Posted by Watermarx View Post
    You're willing to do anything to save your co-workers?

    Anything at all?

    Even a proper, tortureless, interrogation to gain real info?
    When it comes to wanting to live I'm not all that principled.

    If it makes you feel superior to state otherwise please have at it.

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    Quote Originally Posted by TuTu Monroe View Post

    Former California Gov. Pete Wilson, who served on the Bush Defense Policy Board, was appalled. "If they try to prosecute that, that should spark mass resignations in the government," he told me Tuesday.
    In my opinion Pete Wilson is a terrorist who needs to be executed.
    "Do not think that I came to bring peace... I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." - Matthew 10:34

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    Quote Originally Posted by cawacko View Post
    When it comes to wanting to live I'm not all that principled.

    If it makes you feel superior to state otherwise please have at it.
    The question I have to ask is this: how many Americans have died because of the governments pollution of high-quality information channels with low-quality torture gained information?

    It shows principle that you're able to defend torture even though it may lead to your death, caw, and I respect that, but I'm a little bit more interested in living.
    "Do not think that I came to bring peace... I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." - Matthew 10:34

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    Quote Originally Posted by Watermarx View Post
    The question I have to ask is this: how many Americans have died because of the governments pollution of high-quality information channels with low-quality torture gained information?

    It shows principle that you're able to defend torture even though it may lead to your death, caw, and I respect that, but I'm a little bit more interested in living.
    No, if waterboarding that asshole Kahlid Mohammed saved my life and all my co-workers then I'm all for it.

    Like I said have at me if it makes you feel superior but don't purposely misrepresent what I said. That's bullshit.

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    Quote Originally Posted by cawacko View Post
    No, if waterboarding that asshole Kahlid Mohammed saved my life and all my co-workers
    It didn't.
    "Do not think that I came to bring peace... I did not come to bring peace, but a sword." - Matthew 10:34

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