WATERBOARDING
WATERBOARDING
It’s not that bad, really. Neither is a shotgun to the face.
(Dick Cheney)
Picture by: dunno source. Caption by: aeroseth2k via Poster Builder
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WOOT! Happy Friday afternoon, PKers!
I’m off to the river for some waterboarding… oh wait…
Wakeboarding!
….bringing the bangsticks for a little skeet practice, too….
I suck at wakeboarding. Have fun though!
I prefer to kneeboard, but I need to try wakeboarding. Is it hard?
Sort of, except you’re standing up instead of kneeling.
But if you fall and get a face full of water, it’s real torture!
I face-planted on a kneeboard and the Docs said I came close to perforating my eardrum or something like that…. All I know is it sucked and hurt at the same time.
Thanks! I seriously am going in about two hours
‘kay, I’ll be the big guy in the kayak shaking his fist at all the damn gas powered boats
That’s right. Let’s just have a pillow fight with the terrorists instead. That’ll teach ‘em!
Never underestimate the escalation-ability of a pillow fight.
Linkey.
“Yikes. Looks like I need a distraction.”
Somewhere along the line, I developed the idea that you and I had strong political disagreements.
After that clip, though, I’m not so sure.
How about using interrogation methods proven to actually deliver reliable information? Torture will only get people to say what they think you want to hear. In this case, what Cheney and the gang wanted to hear was, “Al Qaeda buy weapons from Saddam,” and that is what they heard, even though it isn’t true.
Latest news, another senator who saw the CIA reports came out and verified that they do not show ANY reliable information was gained through torture, and that torture hasn’t saved a single American life. Not that it would be worth it even if it had, what is the point of winning a war if you’ve lost everything that really matters?
I just saw that on CNN. And Cheney still seems to want reports declassified. Is he eager to wear egg on his face?
I wish more people understood what you do, I must say.
If he were certain there was egg in those memos, I’m sure he’d shy away. With as vehement as he is about people seeing *all* of them and not just redacted versions, I’m sure there’s some really good stuff in there. We have half of the story, what’s the harm in getting all of it?
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Or, ut oh, will the wrong people then get in trouble? Oh noes!!!!
He’s running a bluff. He’s scared of prosecution for his crimes and he doesn’t believe it will all be released.
And yes, there are probably people on both sides of the aisle who are culpable. Some of us just think that justice should be served, regardless of who is affected. Our constitution is more important than party, and the rule of law is more important that power.
He’s bluffing, and he’s also counting on being able to weasel his way out of anything they find if they *do* declassify everything. He’s counting on our government to NOT prosecute the former vice president of the United States, and he’s probably right.
Are you freaking KIDDING me? He’s *demanding* that the full contents be released since even the few that have been released (which he didn’t want) have ONLY SERVED TO BACK UP EVERYTHING THEY’VE SAID FOR YEARS. He’s got nothing to hide; they went through all the channels that you morons CLAIMED they never went through and you all have so much egg on your face there’s omelettes enough to feed the entire population of California. Get. freaking. real. My god, this is stupid.
Senator Carl Levin, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, had this to say on Thursday night:
“I do so as Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which recently completed an 18-month investigation into the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody, and produced a 200-page bipartisan report, which gives the lie to Mr. Cheney’s claims. I do so because if the abusive interrogation techniques that he champions, the face of which were the pictures of abuse at Abu Ghraib, if they are once more seen as representative of America, our security will be severely set back.”
Also: (via TPM)
Regarding Cheney’s claim that classified documents will prove his case — documents that Levin himself is also privy to — Levin said: “But those classified documents say nothing about the numbers of lives saved, nor do the documents connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of abusive techniques. I hope that the documents are declassified, so that people can judge for themselves what is fact, and what is fiction.”
When are you going to get it? Everything else they’ve ever said about the classified documents has proven true – Obama was a FOOL to release any of them, handpicked or not. Until proven otherwise, considering it’s all proven true so far, I will believe they’re going to back up the case just as they have thus far. Estimating numbers saved is impossible – on 9/11 our first estimates ranged in the hundreds of thousands because of building capacity – rescue efforts and actual occupancy reduced that number to a few thousand. That doesn’t make the attack NOT worth stopping – it would have been far better to stop them. I smelled the bodies so don’t even tell me it wouldn’t have been worth it. Worth anything at all. Including EIT that was NOT torture. It would have been worth torture, but we didn’t know what was coming, when, or where. We fixed that mistake with LA and hitting up KSM hard. No. regrets. whatsoever.
You are one SCARY bitch.
Thank you. Link to something really scary. Fool.
Bravo!
Reliable sources have given us conclusive information that one Annie McPhee did not only shelter terrorists, but indeed played an active role in preparing terrorist attacks on this great nation, by providing said terrorists not only with intelligence, but also with materials for constructing IEDs and dirty bombs. We do sincerely believe that the information we were provided with is true. Annie McPhee will be subjected to advanced interrogation methods, producing the evidence necessary to prove we were right all along.
But Seth, it’s supposed to be fun as hell for the torturer. Surely you wouldn’t want to deprive people of fun?!?!
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Serioulsy, the first time I heard about waterboarding, I’m going WTF?!?! And everyone bitched about the tactics the Vietnamese used, what do you call this?
I call this nowhere near the tactics of breaking and re-breaking limbs, breaking backs, pulling limbs out of their sockets, etc.
Interrogation is not supposed to be pleasant. Why don’t we get the docs declassified and see the results whether or not they did any good, in the 3 cases of waterboarding that were performed, after all other methods of interrogation failed.
And by the way, what would you do to save your family from the threat of a horrible death? What are they worth to you?
Waterboarding is in some ways far worse than breaking limbs. But they did all that, too. Are you proud of your country for that?
There is never a good reason to torture. It doesn’t work, and it degrades us. Even if torture were guaranteed to save myself and my family, there is no way I could do it, even if I wanted to, which I wouldn’t. I would rather die with my humanity intact than live as a torturer.
I would hope that my family would have the integrity to say they would rather die than to be saved by torture. I know I would.
I agree with you, there is no good reason to torture. A human is a human. Period. When did American lives become more valuable than those of others?
And for those who wonder, I don’t say the words blithely. I’ve thought about it.
When did American lives become more valuable than those of others? When they decided our lives were worth squat and the only proper fate for us was to die in oil-soaked wreckage and fire unless we accepted their god, and were willing to give their own lives to achieve that end.
Didn’t like the Crusades? Didn’t like the inquisition? You shouldn’t like the muslim jihad, either.
So because I’m anti-torture, Im pro-Jihad? Nice argument, that. You seem to be confused about something–torture is an interrogation technique (and a right poor one), not a punishment. And even if it was, we’re bound to the Geneva Convention (ALL of it, not just the convenient bits). THe proper place to decide punishment for those who commited the heinous acts of 9/11 is in a courtroom–NOT in an interrogation room in Gitmo.
And while I don’t approve of what the prisoners may or may not have done, I ALSO believe in this thing called the Geneva Convention and the in the Constitution (that annoying little piece of paper Bush tried to mangle). And while the Constitution may not specifically apply to prisoners of war, the Geneva Convention DOES.
NOW, Do you have a REAL argument, or are you just going to throw rah rah patriotism around some more?
You have to ask?
Geneva convention doesn’t apply to terrorists. I’m not really sure what the issue is. I’m all for treating people humanely, but there is no sense in trying to apply a convention that doesn’t protect who you’re trying to protect.
Froo: if you look at our constitution, you will find no reference to “terrorists”
That’s because they are no more than garden variety bullies, thugs, murderers, and those who enable same.
To claim some exceptional category that these ***holes belong to actually makes them MORE powerful, not less. To treat them as more dangerous than, say, Al Capone, makes them seem more powerful to all the stupid, oppressed, underclass muslim teenagers of the world. Arresting them, trying them, and putting them in prison for the rest of their lives demonstrates to future terrorists that they are no better than pimps, drug dealers, and Ponzi Scheme leaders of the world. Being a martyr is attractive to a young man who can’t get laid; being a criminal, not so much. (personal experience here. I always wanted to grow up to be the Roger Young made famous by Robert Heinlein)
{http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodger_Wilton_Young}
You’re making my point for me. You don’t fall under the Constitution if you’re not an American citizen. And, if you’re not wearing a uniform, belong to an army, or have a country to which you cry allegiance, the Geneva Convention does not apply. These guys are in complete limbo. And while we shouldn’t treat them like shit, neither should we treat them like citizens and let them fall under our courts. I’m not a lawyer, but even I know that if these guys weren’t Mirandized at the time of capture, we can’t prosecute them under our laws. We have to find something better, or different.
I can speak about the Miranda. You don’t Miradize a suspect at the time of arrest. Or, you don’t HAVE to. The time when Miranda is required is custodial interrogation. The subject is both being asked questions beyond vital statistics (name/age/DOB/etc), AND is not free to leave of their own volition. If both conditions are not met, no Miranda is required.
Your wrong MLD. You DO Mirandize a suspect at the time of arrest. You MUST Mirandize a suspect at the time of arrest unless you are a Federal agent arresting a member of the U.S. Military at which point you would read them thier Article 32 rights. I work the the county Sheriff’s Dept for the record.
Sorry, Froo, but you’re wrong, wrong, wrong.
We *do* have methods for prosecuting international criminals. They work tolerably well. Most of the world will help us do it. When you invent some magical category of person who is exempt from ordinary prosecution, you damage your credibility and make that person seem much more powerful. Poor Muslims the world over start saying to each other, “See? Just become a terrorist; they’re so powerful the Americans totally abandon their constitution to get to you! Isn’t that much better than a life of wiping Saudi prince’s behinds?”
Yes, THAT’S what Islamofascists think – how on earth did you get into their heads so well?
LINK – tell me how in the hell these people are thinking such thoughts when THIS is what they come out with? Huh?
By the way, it’s not shown in this video but this woman does this act in front of a live audience full of tiny boys, no more than 3 – 5 years old. Yeah, that’s their KIDS’ programming. Deep thoughts indeed.
Yeah, I saw that a few years ago, when John Stewart and Crooks and Liars covered it.
(I can’t believe I’m going to treat Annie as if her vitriol might allow her to be reasonable, but here goes)
The reason Hamas has to publish crap like that is that NOT ALL MUSLIMS AGREE WITH THEIR TERRORISM AND MURDER!
There are Muslims out there who haven’t joined the Intafada (sp?) against Israel, don’t necessarily hate the West, and believe that violence against innocent people is wrong. They are, in fact, the majority of the billion Muslims on the planet.
You cannot frighten them into not joining the terrorists.
You CAN drive them into the arms of the terrorists by killing and torturing innocent Muslims.
You cannot stop them through violence, unless you set up some suspicious looking showers and start sending them in by the trainload. (Yeah, I know, “Paging Dr. Godwin”)
It would do wonders for our conflict if the neutral Muslims of the world believe the USA is a powerful symbol of all that is good and right in the world, instead of a scary set of crusaders who will kick in your door and cart off the family in the middle of the night, never to be released.
Irrelevant, Mark. ALL jihadist terrorists agree with it, and unfortunately there have been 13 THOUSAND terrorist attacks by muslims SO FAR. That is your threat, and that is the threat we are dealing with. That a majority of Muslims (in question, not assumed) might not agree with it is irrelevant at this point. It has to be stopped, with as firm a hand as is required.
But take heart – now that Obama’s weakened national security to this degree maybe next time it WILL be us hit and not them, eh? The last 7 years will mean nothing when LA or Chicago lays in ruins and all the little jihadists are vindicated.
By the way, **I** was radicalized on 9/11 – so go figure. I don’t give a dam* how many Muslims get “radicalized” – better that they fear us and won’t attack as they have for 8 years or so. But now it isn’t going to be that way anymore, is it? Don’t come b*tching to me when it’s YOUR city next time as it was mine last time.
So you would probably be in favor of killing all muslims, right? If we boil your hatefilled little rantings down to their essence? Just shove them all into railcars and ship them off to a camp to implement some final solution? Or do you have some magical way of telling the Good Muslims from the Bad Muslims?
Yes, of course. Just randomly slaughter Muslims in the streets LOL. I do it all the time – I’m writing this from Maximum Security Prison (oops – I mean from a favored position in Dick Cheney’s Executive Assassination Ring, but that’s in an undisclosed lair in a volcano underground!) Yes, kill all the Muslims, that’s what we should do!
Deliberately obtuse.
Anniee that is at least the third time you have used that video. Why don’t you understand yet that it is an American video, edited and subtitled for humour?
I’ve never seen these programmes, so ok… It’s just that there are a lot of parts that are basically powerpoint and don’t realistcally seem like a TV show. This video, at least, seems to be a joke, even if the actual programme isn’t.
And yeah, you can’t judge everyone by this video even if it is real…
Done some looking about… Pioneers of Tomorrow is a propagandised kids’ programme… but the “how will he die?” would appear to be crap…
I’m a little late, but…
“You don’t fall under the Constitution if you’re not an American citizen.”
WHAT??? Where did you get that idea? How about a little Constitution for ya: from Article 3, Section 2 (regarding judicial power): “The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority … between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.”
Also, notice that the 5th Amendment uses the word “person,” NOT “citizen.” Also, Amendment 14 says “No State shall … deny to any *person* within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
Now, if you can find judicial precedent to support your statement, I’m happy to look at it. But what you have said there is that a foreign person in the United States legally has no protection under the Constitution. I pray that you are hideously wrong as you appear, and I pray that you rethink your un-American position.
You’re a fool, AC. This is just ONE sets of clips from that show; I’ve seen dozens. There are also talk shows wherein moms teach one another that sending their sons to be suicide bombers IS actually “loving” them because it’s putting Allah and their salvation first. Then there are the leaders screaming about how they use the old, the crippled, and the children as human shields in order to put the rest of the world in an untenable position, and how proud they are of this tactic. And when they show the audience full of children listening to this woman and her preaching, as she has the little boys put on the checked Arafat scarves and tells them to repeat after her about killing Jews, and THEY DO – no, don’t even go there. You can seek the evidence for yourself; this stuff is sometimes scrubbed from the net but too much of it has gotten through to even try passing it off as a JOKE. That’s disgusting, really. We are not dealing with normal, thinking people in this case, people who think in any way like you or I (or at least *I*) do. This is a barbaric society with barbaric values and if you can’t grasp that, well then ptooey – tough. Half the country disagrees with you at the very least, and frankly most of Israel. I happen to NOT want Israel to continue to be attacked by these scum, much less our own people. If you don’t care about preventing it, others of us DO.
By the way, for almost endless examples of Palestinian children’s and other programming, you might want to check out the Jawa report. Then come back and keep denying what is so obviously in front of your face.
Admit it, Anniee, you don’t know WHAT those shows are actually saying, because you don’t speak the language they were broadcast in. All you know are the subtitles that other people, with questionable motives, have written for these shows. You believe because you want to believe.
It almost seems as though you really WANT there to be people that you are allowed to hate, like you have all this hatred inside that you don’t feel cool about having, so you need someone to be the sub-human you can unleash it on without feeling guilty.
Feel free to correct me if I’ve misjudged you.
Remember, kids, that good and evil are just illusions — dangerous abstractions rooted in the dark days before the advent of moral relativism. Anyone who comes to believe in them is, by definition, radicalized.
When I said that I was called a dangerous, deluded ideologue. But of course, it’s completely true. Only people who have no idea of the applicability of the Geneva convention, the rules of engagement, etc. think otherwise and keep invoking that which doesn’t APPLY.
It’s all in the delivery.
Delivery was the same that time. No go. You’re not Shakespeare.
The words may be the same, but the fact that you’ve alienated over the last few months instead of attempting to form relationships makes the delivery completely different. Sorry chum.
Wow, froo, that really changes my mind and makes a difference. Not.
I never for a second thought it would. I was just making a comment. There is no point in me trying to sway you one way or the other, as your mind is made up. Que sera sera.
After all, Annie just doesn’t care about the opinions of anyone who doesn’t agree with her. We can all just die, and the sooner the better.
Why did I just get Mr. Garrison’s voice in my head? “You go to hell! You go to hell and you die!!!!!”
DAMMIT!!!!!!!
Now that’s stuck in my head. Thanks froo. ;P
To As the Crow Flies above (since I cant reply to that directly) re Mirandizing: I was taught differntly by my criminal justice professor, a former VT State Trooper. I’ll make sure to ask him about it.
You’re awesome.
Oh, WTFosaur I hope that was to me
I stand corrected.
I bow to slowboat407 – short, sweet, and devastating. Thank you!!!
Having our buildings bombed by hijackers degrades us. Having war declared on us by a bunch of barbarians degrades us. Preventing the attacks doesn’t.
being attacked isn’t being degraded. the means with which one defends or attacks degrades.
your argument sounds like you followed the “ends justify the means” – to hell with the process as long as you benefit in the end.
someone called you a dangerous, deluded idealogue for a reason: you’re half baked ideas are thrown around with such fervor and hate you’re likely to convince someone who hasn’t been paying close attention to what’s going on in the world that you’re right and, if that’s the case, you’re going to create a swelling of american extermists that are just as bad as the muslim ones. I have a co-worker just like you, you mock others and deny it when they say you’re all about the genocide of muslims, but judging from the way you talk, i think it’s more accurate than you let on.
Wow, you’re a hard-left extremist f*cktard, aren’t you? (That’s rhetorical.)
You know, when you sling insults like this, all I hear is, “I’ve got nothing.” It’s like you are flat out admitting you can’t refute anything. Look, I’m not asking you to change your beliefs. You go right on believing that people are… whatever you call them in anger.
Just don’t SAY it! It undermines your credibility. Learn how to work effectively for what you believe in. That means turning the other cheek sometimes and being the bigger person.
You are a smart woman. You don’t need to resort to insults.
Now for something completely different…
“There is still good in you, I can sense it!”
“Annie Smash Libtard!!!”
Do you remember what I dick I was when I first showed up here, and how long it took you guys to convince me not to be?
Convince you? What a ridiculous lie! I did no such thing. Others maybe but not me!
I don’t think DWN was here yet, I believe you predate him.
In reply to something that dumb? That’s all the effort I’m willing to make, Seth. I appreciate what you’re saying but in this case, no. You generally merit some effort to answer, and I will make the effort when you actually make a proposal. This person did nothing of the sort – just a lot of poo-flinging sophistry about how evil I am LOL
This is the difference between people like Seth and I and people like you: we believe people are essentially honest, have intellectual integrity, and would value being exposed to information that might correct inaccurate ideas they have, because that’s the way we are.
You, on the other hand, believe people are essentially stupid, ignorant, violent, and liars, because that’s the way you are.
Classical example of projection.
I dont’ think she thinks that everyone is essentially stupid, ignorant, violent, and liars, Mark. Just everyone who disagrees with her.
Mark, seriously. When someone presents a factual debate, that’s one thing.
Now tell me HONESTLY how you would reply to this nonsense: Mark, you’re (sic) half baked (sic) ideas are thrown around with such fervor and hate you’re likely to convince someone who hasn’t been paying close attention to what’s going on in the world that you’re right and, if that’s the case, you’re going to create a swelling of anti-american extermists that are just as bad as the Christian extremist ones.
I assume you would just ignore it, right? Or make a complimentary reply in return? You’re a hypocrite expecting me to be something even you’re not. Get serious for once.
Actually there is a compliment buried in there – I’m persuasive. Yay! Persuasive enough to create others in my own image who might even go to EXTREMES. Muahahahaha!
Well, of course I’ll ignore it. You plainly don’t understand the use of (sic).
What would convince me you were salvageable would be if you could process what people say to you and respond with respect and an intelligent analysis of where they’re wrong. Instead, you descend into abuse and attempts to make others as fearful as you are. Most of your arguments amount to “Abuse! Non Sequitur! Deliberate misunderstanding and attempt to change the topic! More abuse! YOU HATE AMERICA AND NEED TO DIE!!!!!”
Mark, talk to me when you’re straight. Like in the morning. Ok?
Anniee, I’m not the only one asking you to turn the other cheek.
Seth? You’re not seriously asking me to never reply to long-winded rants on how horrible and evil a person I am, or just plain insults, are you? To just sit there and ignore all of them? Was THAT what you meant? Because that’s a pretty rough thing to ask when you’re not even asking anyone to be civil to me, you know.
I AM asking people to be civil to you. Reply to those rants against you, but respond with love and compassion, not more hatred. Maybe you could explain to me why Jesus advised His followers to turn the other cheek, perhaps I’m just not understanding that bit correctly.
If there was information that would save people and could only be gained through torturing known terrorists, I wouldn’t be able to say no. But it doesn’t work that way. The victims say what the “interrogators” want them to. Under torture you could get me to say 2+2=5. Torture
see 1984…
Good point.
War is Peace.
Freedom is Slavery (more aptly stated as Slavery is Freedom).
Ignorance is Strength.
Igloo also has a point. The one being tortured will say what the torturer wants him/her to say, *whether or not that is actually true*. It may be the case that torture actually may lead to deaths of MORE innocents, not fewer, because of false information.
Where were those WMDs again? Oh yeah… the man in the bunker at an “undisclosed location” knows all.
2 + 2 = 5: Cheney’s “Fuzzy Math.”
From Abu Zubaydah:
“I was put on what looked like a hospital bed, and strapped down very tightly with belts. A black cloth was then placed over my face and the interrogators used a mineral water bottle to pour water on the cloth so that I could not breathe. After a few minutes the cloth was removed and the bed was rotated into an upright position. The pressure of the straps on my wounds caused severe pain. I vomited. The bed was then again lowered to a horizontal position and the same torture carried out with the black cloth over my face and water poured on from a bottle. On this occasion my head was in a more backward, downwards position and the water was poured on for a longer time. I struggled without success to breathe. I thought I was going to die. I lost control of my urine. Since then I still lose control of my urine when under stress”.
I wish my college buddy Dan-O was still here to piss on himself when under stress. But he’s dead, and this fu(ker was involved.
That is all.
Can you provide more info on Dan-O? What are the cicumstances that this guy was involved in your friends death?
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BTW, sorry about your friend.. seriously sorry.
9/11. Bad stuff, Eddie. People can whine all they want at me about how innocent this dude is, but I’m still gonna guess he’d have chosen 5 years of waterboarding over burning to death.
I’ve asked this before and never got a reasonable answer, so I’ll try again.
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Why is it when McCain was running for president did he cop abuse for ’singing like a bird’ when he was being tortured? It wasn’t just a few sessions either, but years worth.
Because he had the wrong initial in front of his state name.
Yeah because of the liberal media, right?
No, because he’s a wishy washy dumbass who can’t define himself in terms of what he actually believes in.
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And because of Gore.
….That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Some, yes, but not a lot.
I pretty much blame Gore for everything. It’s my reason for living.
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As far as McCain goes, he’s a wishy washy dumbass because he sticks his finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing before he makes a decision. He’s spent his career “reaching across the aisle” and placating the other side, only to realize that wouldn’t win him the presidency with the Conservatives. Hence Sarah Palin. He did her a gross disservice, and they both went down because he was seen for the pandering little pseudo-con he is. He needs to go ahead and change the letter in front of his name and be done with it.
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And yes, the media makes a big deal out of what will sell. Including making a case that the person who sings like a bird is deserving of being looked down upon. When it becomes expedient to portray the abused as noble saints who never did a bad thing to anyone, then the media goes that way. It’s whatever sells the most.
Hey, what’s wrong with Gore (hehehe). What party would McCain join? The batshit crazy one? He did. It’s called the republican party. OH ZING.
Besides, most media praised McCain as a war hero. I didn’t hear that much about him confessing. Mostly it was “McCain is a battlehero and Obama is a basket-weaving pansy!”
You don’t zing your own comments, goober
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I think McCain would do just fine in the party of Lieberman. They can wash each other’s shriveled junk every night before bed.
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Most of what I heard about McCain was how he crashed 7 planes, confessed during torture, and graduated at the bottom of his class after being greased in by daddy’s money and influence. Not exactly the most flattering of stuff, but then, I’ve never been a fan of the guy.
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Does Obama weave baskets? I’d love to see a pansy basket that he has woven…..
OMG MY EYES!!!!! BRAIN BLEACH STAT!!
*whimpers at the “shriveled junk” comment*
I hate you right now, froo.
*sucks thumb*
heheheheheeeeeee *has an ebil*
Perhaps I should add more fuel to the fire by saying that I, personally, don’t want Cheney’s “gun” going off in my face, thank you very much.
I’m not sure how Cheney’s “gun” has anything to do with Lieberman and McCain’s shriveled junk, but to each his own.
Well, I was bringing the convo back to the lol, but you have clearly outgrossed me this round.
*takes bat and ball and goes home*
Hrmph.
*chases Jane screaming “MCCAIN’S SHRIVELED JUNK!!!!”*
*is chased into facebook and leaves her opinion there, on froo’s wall*
Although, to be fair it was the duel mental image of him AND Lieberman AND their shower sessions that put me over the edge.
I don’t like McCain either and I don’t think Obama is a basket-weaving pansy. And now self-zinging isn’t allowed/aloud? Yes, I mean to include that.
‘kay, First off, let me cop to being too drunk to parse whatever y’all have said.
Second, until the 2004 election, McCain used to be an example of everything that was GOOD in the Republican party. That picture of him hugging Bush in front of a crowd, looking like Bush’s Sub, is an excellent “One picture is worth a thousand words” encapsulation of where he went wrong.
That is all.
PM, I’ve NEVER liked McCain; the guy was always a hothead but with squishy politics. Or Colin Powell, who never seemed to stand for anything except for sound military operations (which is to his credit of course.) Now Powell tells us we need even SQUISHIER candidates to “win” and he went for Obama – all McCain has to do is switch the letter in front of his name and call his wife a c*** a few more times and he’ll be a solid Dim. Heh; once Fred Thompson was out of the race I wouldn’t even LISTEN to a word about the election until Palin was announced.
The death metal is just cruel, unusual and unnecessary.
There’s a persistent misconception that EITs were used to develop the case for OIF. That’s simply not true. (Nor did we ever seriously push the argument that Saddam was supply Al Qaeda — the public evidence shows that Saddam was rebuffed during their brief meetings — but that’s another misconception, and another discussion.)
Without further declassification, however, we know that KSM sang about the Library Tower and Pacific hijacking plots after being waterboarded. (Well, his story is that Mohammad came to him that night and told him it was cool to snitch, so I guess you could argue that waterboarding sucks at extracting intelligence but excels at making religious icons visit Cuba.)
Okay, that’s funneh
No, we know for a fact that torture was used to develop the case for the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq. And KSM sang during regular interrogation, he was talking before the torture started. It set things back by months, and the original interrogators (trained in useful, workable police interrogation techniques) were brought back in.
What’s your source for that? (Other than Lawrence Wilkerson. I’m skeptical that he had the depth of access he says he had, and even so, I haven’t seen him arguing that any of the results made it in there, just that it was a goal of the interrogators.)
Riiiiight, because Colin Powell’s chief of staff is SO disreputable. It’s amazing how quickly you will turn on one of your own for going off message.
I take it Wilkerson is your source, then. So what about my second point (that he’s saying it was a goal, not that any evidence actually made it into the case)? Or do you have a different source?
Don’t be ridiculous, nobody can confirm what made it into those reports. Yet. But oh, my! How much fun it will be when they are made public. Because he DID state that it was a goal, didn’t he? And you knew that, too, but because those classified reports aren’t public, YET, you can still make the claim that the matter has not been proven. It will be.
Link – Powell’s unclassified speech to the UN. I’m not sure what classified reports you’re accusing me of hiding behind, but if EIT intelligence didn’t make it into this speech, how important could it have been?
So, in other words, you’re utterly incapable of participating in even a civil discussion. (At least Seth, to his credit, mostly stayed away from personal attacks before disappearing.)
As long as we’re off topic — do you have any redeeming value as a human being, at all? You’re a morally vacuous coward who can’t even unequivocally condemn torture. You lie when it’s easier than trying to prove your point. You troll, you screech, and you whine.
But, on the other hand, your uber-important senior management job is flexible enough to let you take time off to follow me around on here like a puppy with diarrhea, so you’ve got that going for you, which is nice.
Damn. Harsh. I think someone needs a nap.
Just pointing out the obvious so there’s no double standard.
Oh… have any redeeming value as a human being, at all?
So instead of taking the high road of the “civil discussion,” you’ve decided to go to personal attacks as well? Hypocrite much?
And PM has participated in a number of discussions that haven’t resulted in personal attacks. I think you just bring that out in people.
And yes, you do have a double standard, which just also happens to be obvious.
Eric, get past the knee-jerk reaction and actually *read the thread*. Seth and I were having a civil discussion (again, did you read it? Do you disagree? Why the quotes, then?) when PM showed up to troll — not even trolling on topic, but some completely unrelated thing. That doesn’t count as participation, yes?
But I think your “you bring that out in people” defense sums it up pretty clearly. After all, if you don’t agree with someone, that means they’re a second-class citizen, right? So you can flame away with impunity because they’re wrong, right? And you call me a hypocrite…
I see PM asking “why do you ask?” What’s the big deal? Besides, it’s a public forum. He can jump in anywhere he wants. Just like I can (and usually do). Just like you can (and usually do). Whether you like it or not, you have to put up with PM. And I didn’t see him do anything exceptionally antagonizing. Certainly nothing worth your knee-jerk reaction. And I didn’t click the links, so I’m not informed enough to decide how credible Seth’s source is. I just thought maybe YOU needed to chill a bit, that’s all. When you go off like that, any chance of a “civil discussion” is gone. And that’s why it’s in quotes. Because you don’t discuss things civilly. You discuss things like you’ve got a bone to pick over everything.
So you’re not looking at it in context, you’re just jumping in. Fair enough.
Dhoti, as you have been here long enough for people to assess your character, there is a larger context. You provide that larger context through your continued incivility. I know it seems unfair that people judge you based on your actions, but that’s life.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We have established motivation (going into Iraq) and method (torture) and shown that the time frame matches up: torture was performed, false evidence was presented, and Iraq was invaded based on this false evidence.
Have we proven anything beyond a reasonable doubt at this point? No. But we have enough evidence to call for a COMPLETE investigation resulting in possible criminal charges.
I’m pretty sure that we will have the evidence necessary to prosecute someone in the Bush administration successfully. I wonder who they will choose as the fall guy?
Actually we do have some evidence that torture was used in an attempt to build post hoc justification for the invasion. The government tortured al-Libi to obtain his statements that Saddam had been providing aid to al-Qaida. Those statements were utterly false, bullshit he made up to make the torture stop because that’s what they were asking him about.
Obviously around here, Seth, you’re judged far more on your opinions than you are on your behavior. After all, I must have showed you some of that “continued incivility” here on this thread, right? I even brushed off your personal attacks as a sign of good faith. But no, I kept disagreeing with you, so I guess that’s just not considered to be civil.
I think the phrase “practice what you preach” is appropriate here — if, as you say, you are just trying to help.
Dhoti, I admit it and apologize when I’ve been a jerk. I’ve never seen you say ’sorry’ once.
slan, wasn’t he in Egyptian custody at that time? And unfortunately, yes, we know that they torture — no EITs, no quotes around it, the real stuff. (Didn’t seem to stop Clinton from using extraordinary rendition, though.)
Meaning what, Seth? That you’re miffed I haven’t seen your point of view and apologized for wasting your time arguing otherwise?
Meaning you have never apologized for the many times you’ve attacked me and everyone else here without provocation, called us names, denigrated us, and acted as if your unproven assumptions were superior to our evidence.
I misspoke above and had a nesting error below. You’re right: The US rendered al-Libi to Egypt, and the Egyptians got what the US wanted to hear out of him.
Dhoti, you need to attack IDEAS, not PEOPLE. You attack ideas with evidence that contradicts them. Contrary to your conception of me, I am a natural mapper. Meaning, I can’t possibly stop revising my map of reality as new evidence comes in. I am open minded by nature, in fact, it is impossible for me to be closed minded.
You could convince me that everything you believe is useful and accurate. You just haven’t provided enough evidence to prove anything except that you are angry. I understand, so am I. I think we both think things seem unfair in our society, we just have different ideas as to why.
Without provocation? Hardly. The personal attacks fly freely around here — and there’s no problem with that, it can be part of the fun — but don’t act as though mine are unjustified but yours are.
And again, my “unproven assumptions”? Your “evidence”? You’re just assuming you’re right and denigrating (sound familiar?) anything that disagrees. Like I said before, you’re not debating, you’re pointing loudly.
Fair enough, slan. But without evidence that we were explicitly doing it ourselves — or more extradited subjects revealing that we were effectively “outsourcing” the work — I don’t think that forms a pattern. Who know what the Egyptians were even asking him at that point?
I’ve apologized for my personal attacks before, and I will do so again here: I am sorry for calling you names. I am sorry for attacking you.
You almost never provide any kind of evidence to back up your claims, while other people here do. That is why I say your claims are unproven. That is what debate is: providing evidence to back up your claims.
Sure I do — it just gets called invalid because it says the wrong thing. (Redefining “evidence” like that is actually a clever semantic trick, and regardless of the context, I have to respect a clever trick.)
No, by evidence I don’t mean more unsourced assertions on your part, I mean links to sources that actually back up what you are saying.
What, exactly, are you expecting? If someone makes a point — let’s say they provide a link, too — am I not allowed to ask a question about it? Do I have to find a link where someone else asked the same question about the original link? Not only does that seem highly unlikely, but then we’d just be repeating an existing discussion, and what’s the point in that?
Honestly, I don’t see how a question is somehow being labeled as an unsourced accusation.
Sorry kiddo, you have officially bored me to tears with semantic games, and shown that you will never, ever admit you’ve done anything wrong. Buh-bye. I’m going to pretend like you don’t exist until I hear an apology out of you.
Seth, if you’re only going to talk to me to derail or insult — and despite numerous opportunities that seems to be what always happens — then that’s actually a benefit to both of us. Good riddance.
Ah dhoti, if it weren’t you I could have sworn that was a comment directed at me lol. Eric-in-STL you know dam well harsh is the lay of the land here and Dhoti seldom strikes back in kind. I think it was about time.
Why
are you concerned over my source ?
You
say you haven’t seen him arguing that any of the results made it in there ?
Not specifically with KSM, but with several other high-value cases, the FBI interrogator who handled debriefing before the CIA’s ham-fisted contractors came and pissed in the soup testified before Congress the other week. Ali Soufan utterly blew the case for torture out of the water – he got better information by offering sugar free cookies to a diabetic than the Company goons got with torture. [LINK]
The question was whether EITs were being used specifically to make the case for the war in Iraq. Your link and comment are completely irrelevant — did you mean to post this on the other thread below?
I see you’ve forgotten how the conversation went. I said:
“And KSM sang during regular interrogation, he was talking before the torture started. It set things back by months, and the original interrogators (trained in useful, workable police interrogation techniques) were brought back in.”
You responded. Slan agat provided evidence to back up THAT part of my claim. Not specifically about KSM, but about regular interrogation methods working better than torture. Do you have any evidence that torture works better then regular interrogation?
Ah, I see — slan responded to the wrong comment, so I misinterpreted his response.
Even so, we never got that far. I asked for you to back up your first claim, “we know for a fact that torture was used to develop the case for the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq”. You accused me of being political and hiding behind something and we never settled it. If it never happened, the question of whether something that didn’t happen would have been effective is just academic, isn’t it?
Are you denying we used torture, or just that we used torture to build the case for Iraq? Because we did use torture, and therefore the question of whether it is useful is highly relevant.
“Because we did use torture”
Again, prove it. You keep assuming it’s true and jumping on to the next point. So no, it’s not relevant, until you prove we used it for that purpose.
Are you denying that we used torture? Let’s clear up that point before we move on.
Look, we both know the whole “are waterboarding and EITs torture?” question is a moral and legal black hole that’s going to derail this whole thread if we don’t agree 100%. Which we don’t. But I’m not going to tell you what I actually think because I don’t want to go down that road.
In any event, it doesn’t actually matter. I’m fine using the word “torture” to mean your definition, even if it might not fit mine.
No, this is crucial. The point is a moral one first of all, everything else is a side note. Waterboarding is torture, the other techniques we’ve used including rape, attack dogs, stress positions, sleep deprivation, beatings, and others are all torture. The specific combination of these techniques into a hellish whole, going on for years, with hundreds and hundreds of incidents, is torture. Prolonged, agonizing, debilitating torture that psychologically destroys a person. It is wrong, do you deny that?
I think you’re making my point for me. After all, I’m letting you use the word as you like to facilitate the discussion — how is that not good enough?
So is it your assertion that the US handed al-Libi over to the Egyptians in complete and blissful ignorance, and the Egyptians just happened to beat the snot out of him until he said exactly what Dick Cheney wanted to hear, whereupon they just happened to stop? Are you seriously going to assert there was no complicity there? No collusion? Have you been screened for mind-altering drugs?
Stay classy, slan.
No, I’m saying the plural of “anecdote” is not “government-sponsored rendition program”.
I know the long nesting threads can get hard to follow, but KSM was brought up. You remember KSM, right? The guy we caught because bin Laden’s bodyguard was in FBI custody and Ali Soufan gave him diabetic cookies to persuade him to talk.
Read that again, man. Rapport building caught KSM in the first place.
Same guy with the cookies handed Jose Padilla over, too.
But since you asked specifically about the case for war, let’s talk about Ibn al-Shaikh al Libi, whom the US government sent by extraordinary rendition to Egypt to be tortured, and who gave a completely, utterly bullshit story about how Saddam was giving al-Qaeda chemicals and training. He made up the story out of whole cloth to stop the torture – because that’s what he was being asked for – and recanted it when the pain stopped. [LINK]
I misspoke, the US captured al-Libi and farmed the job of beating on him out to the Egyptians. So in his case it’s conspiracy to torture, not torture directly.
It is nevertheless true that the Egyptians wrung from him the answers the US government asked for.
It’s true he produced an answer we thought was useful — but not that the US Government sent him over there for answers to that question. There’s an important difference.
It’s just as plausible that the Egyptians tortured him for their own reasons — maybe without even asking questions, just because they pull that kind of sh!t on prisoners over there — and he thought that would make them stop.
Fortunately, I believe we will have a full investigation and then these questions will be answered once and for all. Until all the evidence is out, we are all just speculating. But fortunately, we live in a country of laws and justice, and I believe the truth will soon be out in the open and the people who committed the crimes punished.
Sorry if I sound completely stupid and everybody already knows the answer to this but, if Americans are supposed to stay away from Cuba or something… How come there’s an American prison there?
I don’t understand it… is there some loophole or other?
I gather that we are occupying some territory on the island of Cuba. It was used as an excuse for not granting to the detainees any of the rights that they would have been entitled to on US soil. All of which sounds pretty dubious in plain English…
what i find interesting is the twisting that is done to claim that gitmo isn’t under us jurisdiction. i will give that the physical soil is cuban, but if an american soldier commits a crime there, he would be under us jurisdiction not only as a us citizen, and member of the military, but also because any crime commited happened on land leased to the us for our use and benefit, much like embassies are micro us territories in foreign lands. lots of future legal arguments can develop out of this regarding international soverenty
Correction, the men and women who serve in the armed forces are covered by the Uniform Code of Military Justice, not the regular laws of the US.
here’s a simplified explanation:
{http://www.historyofcuba.com/history/funfacts/guantan.htm}
basically it is a treaty that goes back to the spanish-american war giving us the use of guantanamo bay because we defeated the spaniards and removed cuba from their control….
Ah, thank you…
I’m not
sure I understand you fully.
:y) Please go on.
What effective teqniques would that be? Asking nicely? Or perhaps feeding and pampering them for a few days. And yes, they wil tell you what you wnat to hear, at first. Which is why you ahve people who are trained to figure out what is true and what is not. Its called “Inteligence” for a reason.
“Good cop, bad cop” works really well, which is the reason it has been used for eons. The person questioned starts to identify with the the cop who seems sympathetic, and ends up slipping/confessing to him or her.
EIT were only used AFTER conventional methods failed, on the couple of hard cases who we KNEW had information on imprending attacks. My god, this is really pretty cut and dry, why do you people just REFUSE to understand reality?
Liar. [LINK]
What a bureaucratic shocker — this guy gets his detainee taken away by someone outside his agency, sees it as a slight, so of course he slams the new guy.
Look, I know you’re eager to throw the “L” word at somebody who contradicts your narrative, but could you go through the trouble of reading your “proof” first?
I did. Apparently you didn’t.
Want more? Try the Air Force interrogator who found Zarqawi. Who, again, got good actionable information using humane, FBI-sanctioned methods before the CIA came in and fu(ked it all up. [LINK]
Can you quote where, exactly, he says that? All I see is him saying he thinks he was successful with Zarqawi, then saying that he thinks other techniques are less effective. There’s no mention of the CIA at all, and certainly no mention of taking his prisoner away. (Are you confusing your two links?)
There’s also no mention of the FBI at all — the guy talks about techniques from an Army field manual and that he learned as an unspecified “criminal investigator”. (Probably military; he sounds career, and if he had been involved in civilian law enforcement, he probably would have mentioned it.)
I think I see the point you’re trying to make, but you really have to work on defending it clearly.
Let me clarify the point we are making here: Torture is ineffective. Trained, expert interrogators who have seen it in use say this. Historical evidence shows this. Psychological studies show this. Every piece of evidence we have shows that TORTURE does not work.
Do you have any evidence that TORTURE works?
Yes, Los Angeles is still standing.
Except you are right – it didn’t take torture to keep LA standing; I was just for the sake of brevity accepting your false terms.
I thought that was proof my anti-Martian Invader charm was working?!?
Darn, I’m just so confused.
[LINK]
This has all been dealt with before in a WW2 camp run by MI5, Bad Nenndorf.
Sorry, this was to back up Seth’s point. It’s not a response to Seth’s question…
The Army Field Manual techniques Alexander was talking about are essentially the same techniques used by the FBI and other reputable investigative and law enforcement agencies. And while it is possible that I am importing some details from other interviews with Alexander, the essentials are there and at this point you are being obtuse and intellectually dishonest.
One more link and I’m done with you.
I notice you’re attacking me rather than responding to my questions. If you’re trying to convince me, that’s not really the way to do it.
No, slan is providing evidence and you are not. Once again.
I’ve figured out your strategy. You act like an ass so people will be mean to you and then you can dismiss what they say without providing any evidence of your own. Very clever debating technique.
Although most people call that style ‘trolling’ and not ‘debating.’
You also pick one small part of a person’s point to critique, attempt to get the conversation off on a tangent about that one point, claim the person’s entire argument was refuted because you disputed that one point, and then claim they are going offtopic when they try to bring the conversation back to where it was originally.
No, I ask questions. I didn’t realize that was such a horrible offense. (Then again, neither did Socrates, so I guess there’s historical precedent.)
Seth, scroll up and look long and hard at how you’re trying to derail our earlier discussion before you accuse me of going off on tangents. I’m trying — probably unsuccessfully — to get that one back *on* topic.
You do not just ask questions, you assert things without proof. When you ask questions, they are answered and you get angry and lash out because you don’t like the answers.
Go back and reread my original point about torture.
Not at all like how you get angry when I explicitly refuse to take your bait. (Like above. But if we’re going to have that argument up there, why repeat it here?)
I’m not getting angry today, I’m in a good mood. I’ve been in bad moods before, but I admit it, apologize, and try to do better.
Are you even capable of admitting you’ve been angry and attacked other people without provocation and claimed that the fact that they held certain beliefs made them sub human, moronic, or idiotic? Are you capable of apologizing for that? I have.
Interesting that you ignore my real question but go after me here in the meta-thread. And again, if you’re going to define disagreement with you as unacceptable behavior — well, too bad.
Slan agat doesn’t know what he’s talking about, obviously – hasn’t even read the declassified documents LOL. Dhoti, what are we gonna do with these moonbats?
I think, if we keep throwing reason in their faces long enough, they’ll take their toys and go home. (See elsewhere in this thread where Seth promises to shun me, Dwight Schrute-style. I think it’s the most mature thing he can do, actually.)
And I can’t wait for the “OMG sock puppets are talking to themselves!!!!!1!” followups, lol.
Haha! You stink like FEET!
I guess that makes us a matched pair.
There is no way in hell the two of you are the same person.
Dropping the sock puppet canard is a fairly dramatic move. Based on your past history, I’ll assume it’s meant as some sort of insult to me.
Aw, it thinks it’s all about it.
Wrong, froo, it very obviously WAS an insult to Dhoti. But I’ve tried to comment here now 3 times to say I have a crush on Dhoti and it keeps eating my posts, so who knows if this one will show up.
It could have been a compliment to you as opposed to a slam on Dhoti. Interesting the way perspective changes things, eh?
It was both, froo. A compliment to me at Dhoti’s expense. But since Seth has directly complimented me several times and I doubt he wishes to keep doing that ad nauseum, I figured a tad more of the other. See, I can keep more than one perspective straight in my head at a time.
No, Froo, I think it’s a zero-sum game no matter how you interpret it.
Anniee, the feeling is mutual — I’m really impressed how you can communicate with the regulars when they’re being civil yet put them in their place when they’re not. (And kudos on the sidetracked liberal hunting permit thread — I browsed through that during a lull earlier today and that took some serious balls.) I can learn much from you.
Oh, and froo, if you want to make an “it” insult stick, you really need to work on your sentence structure. That one just comes across as bad 4chan grammar.
But stay classy, hon.
I like that you feel the need to lecture me. Please, keep doing it. It makes you feel powerful and teaches us all a valuable lesson.
Happy to return the favor. It’s funny how you get out what you put in, huh?
(And that’s one to grow on…)
Aw, cute. It can’t see itself in a mirror.
4Chan – snerk. A boygirlcrushthingie! Yay! Thank you, Dhoti, I really appreciate what you said
It didn’t take any guts really…well a little. Just a little.
Nope. Not an insult at all. You are just obviously different people with different writing styles, opinions and values. You happen to agree about certain things, but no one who has read what you have to say could confuse the two of you.
But I knew you would take it that way.
Anniee has more wannabe righteous indignation while Dhoti has more of a superiority complex. Both have issues with reading their own words in relation to others and thus are effectivelly immune to criticism as that would require them to self evaluate.
Though I do see common streams when Anniee believes anybody arguing with her cannot possibly have a thread of truth. Dhoti just does it constantly. Anniee uses othering to invalidate the emotions and intelligence of others by saying it is all just text without realizing that she is just text as well. Dhoti simply doesn’t care what other people think and believes he has to beat a point in.
While Anniee’s othering and self blindness is aggravating, I find her the more intelligent of the pair as she will actually calm down and have a discussion. Dhoti will simply be abusive and then when he gets abuse backs, focuses on it for the rest of the conversation without ever realizing or recanting to the effect of starting the whole fight.
The joy of this analysis is that both will pounce on it with equal and predictable fervor.
DWN, that was a really good analysis of their respective character and style. I agree 100%.
Careful, commie boy, or we’ll get called socks.
HAH! I smell toe jam
This isn’t an insult towards you or anything, but there is a delicious irony in the typo of “Intelligence.”
I hate that the far leftist nuts bitch about waterboarding War is just that war and waterboarding is the nicest thing we can do to these terrorist let me first say do you thik terrorist give a rats arse about us well tell that to daniel pearl when they CUT HIS FRIGGIN HEAD OF WITH A DULL BLADE WHILE HE WAS ALIVE !! WAKE UP PEOPLE we are way to relaxed and I cant stand bush but he did keep us safe lets see what ol barrack has in store for us* shakes head in disgust* trust me other countrys at War have done far worse just ask Senator John mccain
You are so right!! Flying two planes into the trade towers wasn’t that bad either, right?
More people die from the flu every year than have ever been killed by terrorism on American soil. Common sense says we should spend more money on flu prevention than we do on preventing terrorism, it would save more lives.
May I just say I have a respect for you that I have for few, Seth? Out of curiosity, have you read deBeckers books or Glassner’s Culture of Fear?
I’ve read Culture of Fear, but I don’t know of deBecker. Can you point me to a title?
The two that I really like by Gavin de Becker are Gift of Fear (essentially, listening to your intuition) and Fear Less, which incorporates a lot of the Gift of Fear, but also delves into post-9/11 life.
There was another I just read on the same topic, but for the life of me can’t remember the title
A (probably biased) report by a humanitarian group this week counts 300,000 people per year killed by problems associated with global warming, and predicts that number to quadruple by 2020.
Extremely biased, I’m sure.
Woman, what are you doing not getting Wanged on a Friday night?!? Go collect some deposits in your favorite place!!!
(wrings hands shyly)
Umm, btw, if you’re not too busy…
I’m at work. I can’t get wanged up here without risking a lawsuit. When I get home, OTOH…………..
-
Oh, who am I kidding, I’m too damn tired to wang free!! I’ll just have to settle for some gentle head and go to sleep
(*spasms blissfully and falls asleep*)
And if I dare ask for a tickle in return (a back tickle to help me sleep), I get 9 seconds worth before the tickling stops and he’s snoring. *sigh* Sometimes it sucks to be female and good at something…………
Crap, make that little
a 
I always get those mixed up.
Because, you know,
A) that was totally the same guys they waterboarded. Wait, no… but they were like, their pals right? Wait…
B) Shit. Someone killed some innocent Americans. Our response will be merciless! What? America killed like 200,000 innocent men, women and children between Hiroshima and Nagasaki? And what happened at Dresden, again? And why won’t America’s CIA talk about Jim Jones? Right, because America are the good guys. They’re not terrorists themselves… dey dun have them funny towels on dey heads.
A few CIA agents interviewed anonymously said they got more usable information from having lunch with the suspects than torturing them.
That sounds totally credible and reliable.
it’s counter intuitive, but plausible. You’d be amazed what you can get if you treat someone like a human being.
Can you link where you got that from? I do believe you, I’m just interested in reading report/article/whatever
Not the CIA guys, but FBI agent Ali Soufan, who debriefed detainees before the Company’s contractors came in and fouled things up. [LINK]
Thanks, I’d read about it a couple of weeks ago and couldn’t remember where.
And further, here’s the testimony of the Air Force interrogator who nailed Zarqawi using FBI-approved humane methods before the CIA took over and made a hash of things. [LINK]
You may be interested to know that we won our independence from Great Britain partly because George Washington ordered his troops to treat captured prisoners of war better than captured soldiers in Europe were ever treated.
(eyes the level of rum in the bottle)
Holy cow, did I kill another bottle of rum this week?!?
But, where’s the rum?
(points to the Great White Telephone, Upon Which I Hope Not To Call Ralph Tomorrow)
I last saw it there. It’s color has changed…
You ever see the Spanish Inquisition sketch by Monty Python? ‘Bring in the Comfy Chair! and the fluffy pillow!’
I loved that one!
Cardinal Fang: “THE COMFY CHAIR?!” *shocked expression*
Cardinal Ximinez: “You will sit in the comfy chair until lunchtime, with only a cup of coffee at eleven! Confess, woman. Confess! Confess! Confess!”
Cardinal Fang: “I CONFESS!”
Cake or death?
And yet they’re still both illegal! How about that!
Waterboard – been there, done that…got a snotty nose. Big deal.
I think you’re confused either with surfboarding or being a douchebag. Not sure which.
I <3 this response.
I bow in IMC’s direction.
I’m flattered, and I like the new acronym nickname.
No, DS – it was called SERE School (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) that I had to go through as part of being a Navy Airborne Electronic Warfare Officer. Waterboard, stress positioning, sleep deprivation, food deprivation…the whole spectrum. Waterboard causes 2 hours of snotty nose, stress positioning causes you to ache like a bad cardio workout, sleep deprivation makes you sleepy and food deprivation makes you hungry – big deal. I speak from experience rather than with my head in a very dark place like you. When you grow up and can actually speak of things you KNOW then post again.
will your consider the difference between undergoing this or other hardening techniques voluntarily and undergoing these same techniques by an enemy, with the added topping of coming form a culture that sees execution as a normal response to even the most simple things? furthermore, having this done as part of your survival training, you know the person pouring the water will stop, and before you are seriously distressed, a prisoner of war doesn’t have that security of knowing the torture will stop.
high five,
thanks, etc.
I’m just guessing that your superiors put you through this training because it’s what it’s expected the *enemy* might do. That is, you were tested according to what might happen to you if you were captured by enemy forces who DON’T follow the Geneva Convention.
So obviously if the enemy does it, that means it’s morally acceptable? That’s Old Testament, but that kind of justice leaves you blind as well as your enemy. You might also realize that you are putting yourself in the same position morally as your enemy (who is no doubt also trained in the enemy’s version of SERE tactics).
As long as you’re clear that you have no more moral standing than them, I’ll consider your experience as an asset (the methods DO NOT WORK), instead of as a liability (i.e., do it to others because it was done unto you).
“I’m just guessing that your superiors put you through this training because it’s what it’s expected the *enemy* might do.”
More accurately, it’s what the Chinese did to captured GIs during the Korea conflict. It’s how they got so many captured servicemen to record statements calling the USA a criminal nation, and so forth.
Hmmmm.
On the one hand, we have the word of numerous credible sources who have undergone waterboarding with witnesses present and given immediate reactions – who unanimously state it isn’t simulated drowning, it’s actual drowning, and absolutely torture.
On the other, we have one anonymous poster, Texan, Civil War fancier, with a political agenda, waving his dick around.
Let me think for a moment before I decide whether to call bullshit.
Later on he says no one in his class cooperated. That leads me to believe one of two things:
A. Waterboarding is obviously not an effective interrogation technique.
OR
B. He was not waterboarded to the severity that we waterboard prisoners.
Combined with the fallacy of anecdotal evidence posted by anonymous strangers on the internet I’d have to say there are several holes in his logic.
Jesse Ventura, while training to be in the unit that preceded the SEALs, was put through SERE, and he claims those techniques are the worst thing he’s ever been through. He says *everybody* broke, and pretty darn quickly, too.
He also says (I love this) “Let me waterboard Cheney for an hour and I’ll have him confessing the Sharon Tate murders.”
irrelevant. The imminent attack on LA was not a past murder, but a confirmed planned attack with all the attendant proof that it was going to take place. We learned the details of the plan and stopped it, just as we stopped one of the London – America flights that was to be attacked. That’s not the same as getting someone to confess something they didn’t do; that is gathering solid information on impending attacks. I can’t believe you are denying the difference; you don’t strike me as being retarded.
Though I will say, Ventura’s statement is telling – they broke down and told what they knew, eh? Yes, that’s exactly what we’ve been saying. It worked.
Thought you might be interested to see this. [LINK]
It’s about Bad Nenndorf: an MI5 run camp that had aims similar to Guantanamo but was run by a man who opposed torture. There are a lot of parallels between 1947 and now…
Nice link AC.
They don’t break down and tell what they know. They break down and say whatever they think the interrogator wants to hear. Big difference.
Not in this case. With EIT (not torture) they broke down and gave information on a confirmed, impending attack on LA. Big, huge difference.
You keep making this claim. WTH are you talking about? Please provide us a link.
Tell your little b*tch to release the documents. It’s all there, moron.
What :-j about your own little bitch to release the documents ?
@anniemcphee
Senator Carl Levin has seen these documents, and he begs to differ.
Like I give a dam* what Carl effing LEVIN says LOL. Obama started this shindig, let him put his money where his mouth is. By the way, Cheney’s seen them too, and they’ve all said exactly what he said they would. Duh.
The CIA is declining to release these documents, not the new administration. Get your facts straight you hateful, evil person. (grumblegrumblenodifferentthantheislamofascistsshehatesgrumblegruble)
That’s odd, Mark, because I could have sworn that I didn’t raise my children to be suicide bombers, use them as human shields, or fly planes into any building. I didn’t realize posting on a message board is tantamount to terrorism! Go figure!
“I’ll have Dick Cheney confessing to the Sharon Tate murders.” Yeah, it works real good. ::eyeroll::
What attack on LA are you referring to?
So, in answer to IMC’s statement, you both have been waterboarded and are a douche bag. Go figure.
Jesse Ventura, who is no marshmallow, went through SERE as well and says it’s torture, no question.
Well the law disagrees with him. How unfortunate.
It’s amazing how many interrogation experts there are here to know that torture does not work. Or were you all tortured at some point in time for information. Curious isn’t it?
Torture is effective for getting confessions, which is not the same thing as getting information.
Not an interrogation expert, but I did have a friend go through Navy pilot training. He told us about the evasion/interrogation experience that they all go through–in his experience, under what is now called EIT, you WILL say anything you think the interrogators want to hear. And this was from a pretty intelligent (Ivy league physics major) and macho-type dude.
Your pal was a weak sister. No one in my class back in 1974 cooperated.
Since my pal went through the process 12 or 13 years after you did, I wouldn’t assume that the experience was exactly the same. Processes and policies do change in just about every institution in existence, after all.
Well, clearly MadDog here would’ve broken free from the torturers, and snapped all their necks then shot up every single one of his captors. By himself. Without a weapon. Rambo style.
With his penis made of Jackassium, the loudest metal known to man, woman, or beast.
or maybe we’ve read information from reports FROM interrogation/torture experts?
Well, FBI interrogators claim to get better results with cigarettes and sugar free cookies. I hope to Goddess they know something about questioning unwilling subjects!
I like the comments about humanity. I especially love the irony about “dying with humanity.” Apparently if you’re willing to let your entire family die to preserve your ego, it makes you a humanitarian. Love it.
You’re just missing the “nuance” musiCat85. It’s all about “nuance” these days.
In a few months, waterboarding will get “nuanced” and be just fine. I mean after all, those neocon thugs were using bottled water and not recycling the empties. How gauche can they get? We’re using filtered tap water, unionized splashers and buying carbon credits to offset the impact of the water heater now, so it’s no problemo.
So let me see if I’ve gathered all of the collected wisdom from the interrogation, medical and psychological experts at a humor site.
Splashing water on the faces of three known terrorists is really scary, so much so that said terrorists would say nothing, or lie, or provide useful information, or piss their pants.
Said terrorists, after being subjected to a few dozen splashes each, are still in operable possession of all of their bodily appendages.
If we are willing to blindly accept the word of a known terrorist, one of three said terrorists now claims to have fear based continence issues. What we don’t know, but have reasonable cause to suspect, is that said pants-wetter may well have had an irrational fear of fresh water on his face before his visit to Gitmo.
We have a former Veep who most certainly saw the documents in un-redacted form tell us that they contain proof that the interrogations were effective, and said documents haven’t been released to disprove his claim, but we should believe that Gomer’s unnamed friend, heard from an unnamed source, that said documents conclusively prove that not one bit of usable information was obtained as a result of splashing some water on the faces of three bathing-phobic miscreants.
Does that pretty much summarize the watersports portion of the thread up to this point?
…I heard that making naked pyramids is fun, though…
Two words: Wesson Oil
Something tells me said neocon learned said rant at one of those teabager parties.
Yes waterboarding, sleep deprivation, stress positions etc are nothing to worry about unless you’re a mentally feeble arab.
What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger etc.
Imagine what you’d be like after seven years of it. You’d be like the terminator or sumfin!
Ya gotta love the neocons that lap up the word of a 5-deferment chickenhawk over a guy who was tortured for over 5 years as a prisoner od war.
Yes, everyone who isn’t hard left or who believes in stopping terrorism with as firm a hand as needed must be a “neocon.” You an antisemite too? Neo-con carries anti-Semitic overtones, you know.
Your Anti-semitism comment just reminded that this has all been done before.
It was on the other side of the Atlantic and it was Nazis instead of terrorists then… but there was the same controversy over torture and the same conclusion that you are better off without it. [LINK]
Which makes it a good thing we didn’t torture anyone, doesn’t it?
Just read the link, please…
most interesting, thanks for posting link
Very interesting link, thank you AC! I wish there were more teens like you in our schools over here!
That depends. Was the homework due today, or next week? I can’t say I was overly found of turning my homework in myself. It took a couple of semesters in college before I buckled down and realized that regardless of how stupid I may think the assignment is, I still need to do it. I did always love a great class discussion, even when I was in middle school.
Please cite some references (even laughable ones) that claim the interrogation period lasted for five/seven years.
Even the total loons haven’t tried to sell that one yet.
So boney, this guy who was tortured for “over 5 years” has seen the classified documents, and we’re supposed to believe him over a two-term Veep? That’s the statement you’re trying to make.
Logic FAIL.
What a maroon.
He was talking about McCain, arsewipe.
A maroon?
I don’t like maroon, (school colours) can I be a purple?
So long as you’re happy to share. And I brought macaroons!
That’s ok, you had purple first… I’ll be blue, like most of my gravatar…
Can I be a Red? Maybe Simmons or Grif?
“Once we have used the Grifcannon to breach their outer perimiter…”
Torture will happen regardless. I would prefer to suffer from waterboarding the fingernail removal.
Did you watch the beheading videos? See, because I’ll take hundreds of waterboarding sessions over the few minutes that it took to behead the second or third guy that was shown online at ogrish. He was screaming long after his head was off; it was the most horrifying thing I’ve ever seen in my life. We have nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing.
Sqwirk – SOLITARY? The f*ckers are out there playing volleyball and getting served better meals than you’d get in the hospital. Get SERIOUS.
Did you see the videos of American air power killing dozens of Afghani civilians at a wedding party? Which is worse, beheading retail or being blown up wholesale?
The “wedding party” cover story has been conclusively shot down every time it’s been offered. Are you bringing it up now because you haven’t seen (or have ignored) that information, or are you deliberately lying because it sounds better?
No, no it hasn’t Dhoti. Please find us a reputable source for your outrageous claims.
Link – the Guardian, repeating the facts but sticking to the Taliban line — is that “reputable” enough for you? (I doubt it is, because I’m posting it, but please, try to refute it.)
Um, yeah… but that article doesn’t actually provide any conclusive proof that the wedding story was a fake…….
Yeah. If a denial is the same as proof, the jails would be awfully empty.
It’s the salesman that makes all the difference. You know, that personal touch.
RETAIL? Those men and women were beheaded ONE BY ONE in the most greusome way imaginable. To reduce it to these terms – well you obviously didn’t watch any of them, did you? Too sympathetic to the poor muslim plight, I take it. Maybe you are retarded after all; never mind.
You haven’t answered the question: which is worse, killing people one by one with a dull knife, or killing dozens from the air?
Hint: if you weren’t so into your snuff films, you would know the value of one life is equal to one life.
I’m sure Jesus would agree.
He’s not saying it wasn’t gruesome, he’s making a point about the horrors of the retail industry.
Right?
It certainly sometimes feels like you’re being beheaded by a dull knife. Slowly.
Yes, one by one would be an example of retail killing. Killing in large groups would be wholesale. Use your brain here, the metaphor isn’t hard to follow.
I think one by one is more of a custom jobbie than straight retail.
I did not mention anything about be headings. And since beheading was a common way to die a couple century’s ago, a few more couldn’t hurt.
Lethal injection is the same in that they both kill you. They just immobilize you before killing you though.
Well… if you don’t count solitary confinement extending over years interspersed with weeks or in some cases months of waterboarding, sleep deprivation etc as torture then, no, noone has been tortured “over five years”.
As we all know most of us would get through this without any long lasting psychological damage by gritting our teeth and thinking manly thoughts.
Still, gotta admit it beats being decapitated.
i’m curious what sort of demoralization results they would have gotten if instead of physical torture, they doped the prisoners, posed them with barely dressed anglo-type females (or males) with empty wine bottles, and bongs, and the like, then threatened to release the images over the net to show that they were turncoats that had already received their virgins
Then we’d have been accused of doing another Abu Ghraib, since that’s largely what happened there. Don’t you get it yet? Blame AMERICA – first, last, and always.
Chris Titus said it best when he related American “torture” tactics to nothing worse than a bad Fraternity Hazing.
Anyways, studies have shown that phychological torture works better than physical torture and no torture at all and that is what the US does primarily anyways.
Sorry again everybody for a repost.
This is from the report filed by Major General Antonio Taguba. He has gone further in the last week and said the photos from Abu Ghraib include one of an American soldier raping an Iraqi female, and a US translator raping a 16 year old boy:
6. (S) I find that the intentional abuse of detainees by military police personnel included the following acts:
1. (S) Punching, slapping, and kicking detainees;
jumping on their naked feet;
2. (S) Videotaping and photographing naked male and
female detainees;
3. (S) Forcibly arranging detainees in various
sexually explicit positions for photographing;
4. (S) Forcing detainees to remove their clothing and
keeping them naked for several days at a time;
5. (S) Forcing naked male detainees to wear women’s
underwear;
6. (S) Forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate
themselves while being photographed and videotaped;
7. (S) Arranging naked male detainees in a pile and
then jumping on them;
8. (S) Positioning a naked detainee on a MRE Box,
with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his
sfingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture;
9. (S) Writing “I am a Rapest” (sic) on the leg of a
detainee alleged to have forcibly raped a 15-year old
fellow detainee, and then photographing him naked;
10. (S) Placing a dog chain or strap around a naked
detainee’s neck and having a female Soldier pose for a
picture;
11. (S) A male MP guard having sex with a female
detainee;
12. (S) Using military working dogs (without muzzles)
to intimidate and frighten detainees, and in at least
one case biting and severely injuring a detainee;
13. (S) Taking photographs of dead Iraqi detainees.
(ANNEXES 26 and 26)
You know Abu Ghraib wasn’t Guantanamo, right? And Ghraib was universally condemned by Bush, Cheney, et al? You’re really selective in what you know aren’t you?
Thank you for pointing that out! PM apparently believes that a one-off crime at Bagram (for which the guilty soldier was condemned and court martialed) somehow means we’re doing the same as SOP in Gitmo.
…’I used to have chest pains, palpitations, shortness of breath, neck pains, irregular heartbeats, excessive sweating, and attacks…until I had a defibrillator implanted so’s I could tell my heart to STFU!!!’…
People who advocate torture are disgusting. People who lie about it (what’s a little splashy splashy between friends) are even worse. You’re not winning, people just stop arguing with you after a while because they have to go throw up.
Nobody here is advocating torture.
Tantrum-like repetition of the lie that what happened at Gitmo is torture is, well, tantrum-like. Please grow up.
I realize that for most anybody here under 50 years old, having to settle for instant coffee instead of their preferred triple-mocha half-caff latte qualifies as a life-altering trauma, but just because something is unpleasant doesn’t make it torture.
Repeating the word torture over and over doesn’t make it torture either.
I spent three hours in a “stress position” today. You want to call it torture, I call it cleaning the gutters (or eavestrough if you prefer).
Take a 6′3″ adult male with 54″ shoulders, confine him to a 22″ wide space for four hours while applying pressure to his lower thighs in a method know to cause disability and death. Repeat 4-6 times per week. Is this stress positioning or “torture” in your book? Out in the real world, we call it flying cross country in coach.
Out here in the real world, outside of mom’s basement, many of us frequently have to endure unpleasant and uncomfortable situations, without whining that it’s torture.
Do you really think that three of the top jihadis got to the top without spending many sleepless nights (aka sleep deprivation) crouched behind a rock (aka stress position, exposure to bugs) waiting to kill infidels? Do you really think dehydration and hypothermia while hiding out in Bora Bora weren’t at least as unpleasant as waterboarding?
Yes, we had to make them uncomfortable to get them to rat out their fellow jihadis, and uncomfortable to a jihadi is way beyond your idea of uncomfortable.
They weren’t tortured, no matter how many times you stomp your feet and say torture. Grow up, get a clue.
Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you for posting this!
I just gave my dog a flea bath. He’s shaking his a** off; he’s totally traumatized. Yet, the fleas were bad for him. He won’t even take a treat, he’s so upset. Yet, it had to be done. ZOMB I WATERBOARDED MY OWN DOG!
LOL
He’s going to think I don’t obey the constitution and get all radicalized!
LOL
“Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.”
Just so’s we’re all clear.
Yes!
Be steadfast and immovable in your convictions, buddy. You’re going to have to if you’re going to survive. I think we’re gonna see a rough next few years…
Yes beheading is infinitely worse. Islamic extremists and terrorists are disgusting.
That’s WHY the US government shouldn’t have been supporting groups like that (and other disgusting regimes) for decades.
*sigh*
This is sad.
Frankly, I am to the point that I am TOO conservative to be a republican, but oh!
God help us if ANYONE disagrees with a democrat or any other left wing, greenie, or any other left-leaning syndicate. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean that they’re NOT out to get you. Remember that, next time you tell some one that they’re just paranoid about his big, overbearing government. But back to the point. Democrats have a free pass to walk all over, insult, and otherwise degrade anyone that they disagree with. This is a case of it. So, whatever. Keep on doing what you do, little left-wing asses. I’ll laugh when Obama causes this nation to fall apart. Enjoy your IMAGINARY shares in GM, and enjoy your TRILLIONS of dollars in debt. Obama will make sure to dig that hole a little bit deeper for us, the taxpayers.
Nice to meet you, fellow hate-mongering bigot
You know what I mean. I daresay you’re going to get slammed hard for this one, true as it is.
Also, there are doctors on call at waterboardings, to ensure that the person in questioned does not die. I do not see the point in this poster. A point-blank shotgun blast to the face would kill you. Again, no one dies in waterboarding. Zip, nada, goose-egg. And that was an accident on Cheney’s part. Admittedly, he could have been more observant, but God! Throw ‘im a bone, people! He didn’t mean to.
great analogy. something that kills you vs something that scares you.
maybe we should stop torturing. that way, just our enemies will use torture and gain intelligence. also, we can give away our methods of torture so that in the event that we do wish to use it, our enemies can be prepared for that as well.
epic fail.
lol. glad to see there are some sane peeps in the state.
I’d rather going hunting with Dick Cheney than ride in a car driven by Ted Kennedy.