quote: Then-Attorney General Ashcroft was troubled by the discussions. He agreed with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics and had repeatedly advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources said.
According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."
quote:Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.
So besides the waterboarding, is there anything here that is debateable as "torture"?
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quote:Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.
So besides the waterboarding, is there anything here that is debateable as "torture"?
You would not count keeping someone awake for 3 or 4 days to be torture?
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The point is that many of the practices violate our international treaties, regardless of how you feel about the torture.
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People definitely die of sleep deprivation, I won't deny that. People die of a lot of things. I imagine some of the things they had to work out were how much is effective vs. how much is just cruel.
Anyway, it seemed like there wasn't really that much new information in the article, besides reminding people that Rice should not be Vice President.
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quote:Originally posted by pooka: [QB] People definitely die of sleep deprivation, I won't deny that. People die of a lot of things. I imagine some of the things they had to work out were how much is effective vs. how much is just cruel.
Yes. We call those people who work that stuff out to be professional interregators.
And they pretty much to a person say that none of it is good at getting accurate inforamtion.
However, if you are trying to get a subject like Curveball to "confess" that Iraq has a million WMDs and facilities for making them, then I think the evidence shows that torture does indeed work.
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I have yet to hear any professional speak out in favor of the administration's decisions with regard to torture.
From the Washington Post:
"By contrast, it is easy to find experienced U.S. officers who argue precisely the opposite. Meet, for example, retired Air Force Col. John Rothrock, who, as a young captain, headed a combat interrogation team in Vietnam. More than once he was faced with a ticking time-bomb scenario: a captured Vietcong guerrilla who knew of plans to kill Americans. What was done in such cases was "not nice," he says. "But we did not physically abuse them." Rothrock used psychology, the shock of capture and of the unexpected. Once, he let a prisoner see a wounded comrade die. Yet -- as he remembers saying to the "desperate and honorable officers" who wanted him to move faster -- "if I take a Bunsen burner to the guy's genitals, he's going to tell you just about anything," which would be pointless. Rothrock, who is no squishy liberal, says that he doesn't know "any professional intelligence officers of my generation who would think this is a good idea."
Or listen to Army Col. Stuart Herrington, a military intelligence specialist who conducted interrogations in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq during Desert Storm, and who was sent by the Pentagon in 2003 -- long before Abu Ghraib -- to assess interrogations in Iraq. Aside from its immorality and its illegality, says Herrington, torture is simply "not a good way to get information." In his experience, nine out of 10 people can be persuaded to talk with no "stress methods" at all, let alone cruel and unusual ones. Asked whether that would be true of religiously motivated fanatics, he says that the "batting average" might be lower: "perhaps six out of ten." And if you beat up the remaining four? "They'll just tell you anything to get you to stop."
But I conceed it's possible that their opinion isn't universal. If you can cite any counter-examples, go for it.
However, I think the accuracy of the Curveball "intel" and it's uses for promoting the war are pretty much beyond question.
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AFAIK, Curveball wasn't tortured. He was just a liar. And then the Bush administration lied about his lies.
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quote:Originally posted by Morbo: AFAIK, Curveball wasn't tortured. He was just a liar. And then the Bush administration lied about his lies.
Oh hell. Yeah, I think you are right. I mixed him up with this guy:
"The problem, Suskind said, was that in this case waterboarding served the purpose it had originally, when used by dictatorial regimes interested only in eliciting a confession, but not in the veracity of the confession. Zubaydah started to talk, but much of what he said was just an attempt to make the harsh treatment stop. "In the case of Zubaydah," Suskind said, "when it comes to some of the harsh interrogation tactics he was put through, what occurred then was that he started to talk. He said, as people will, anything to make the pain stop. And we essentially followed every word and various uniformed public servants of the United States went running all over the country to various places that Zubaydah said were targets, and were not.
"Ultimately, we tortured an insane man and ran screaming at every word he uttered ..."
But of course, thanks to the Bush adminstration, who would be willing to say they are 100% Curveball wasn't tortured?
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Rice would never be VP. Forgetting for a moment that she has categorically denied that she would be, she's a TREASURE trove of possible attack ads. 9/11 happened while she was NSA, and there are dozens of quotes fron that time of her making wishy washy excuses on why they were caught so flat footed. The ads write themselves. She ads nothing to the ticket, in fact she might detract from it. But after reading the article I agree.
McCain needs to add executive and domestic policy experience to the ticket, which will almost certainly mean a governor, but we'll see, maybe not.
Anywho, I guess my response to the article as a whole is: "So?" Is it news that the Bush Administration is contemptable and breaks laws like Michael Phelps breaks swimming records? (I've been reading a lot of Olympics news lately, sue me). Is this surprising? Is it shocking?
I think nationally we're at the point where we just can't wait until it's over. He has nine or ten months left in office, and we're hoping to ride it out with as little damage done as possible. He'll never get punished for any of this, nor will any of his associated and deputies, other perhaps than having their political careers crushed in many ways via that association. I'm a little desensitized to the news that Bush and his cronies flagrantly broke laws and casually, cruelly tortured people for what may or may not have been any intel at all. It's all just par for the course with this president.
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