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Citizen Eavesdrops On Former NSA Director Michael Hayden's Phone Call
McGruber writes "The Washington Post has the news that former head of the NSA Michael Hayden took a call while on the Acela train between D.C. and Boston. Hayden was talking to a journalist 'on background', which means the reporter is not allowed to cite Hayden by name. Unfortunately for Hayden, another train passenger overhead the call and live-tweeted it. 'Mattzie continued to livetweet Hayden’s conversations slamming the Obama administration, all the while insisting that he be referred to only on background. The conversation also seemed to touch on Hayden’s time as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency under President George W. Bush as well. "Hayden was bragging about rendition and black sites a minute ago," Mattzie wrote. Hayden has in the past defended the use of waterboarding against detainees held in various sites around the world, and dismissed torture as a "legal term."'"
That's basically what I came to expect from Bush officials like him. I sometimes forget how bad things were.
Isn't it entirely reasonable for Hayden to have grown a sense of arrogant impunity almost large enough to have its own event horizon?
To have had his career, and walked away scot-free and with a chest full of medals, if that doesn't tell you that you are untouchable, you clearly fail at empiricism...
You know, if you're a former security official sitting on a train discussing this kind of stuff in the clear -- rude has ceased to apply.
It's not about privacy and politeness -- it's about being an epic asshole discussing things you shouldn't be discussing on a train with other people listening.
And if you're someone who has called torture 'a legal term', you should probably be subjected to it yourself. People who sit behind desks and play semantic games about what constitutes torture are just thugs with official badges.
In fact, those people could be called war criminals in some contexts.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
His approval of waterboarding is specific to a context. It is done to enemies of his government, generally ones who are not themselves aristocrats.
He is vehemently opposed to government officials being waterboarded (his for sure, and probably rival governments as well). He would consider that an egregious offence against propriety to do such a thing.
Waterboarding him will not change his position one bit. He knows it is horrible, and that is exactly what he likes about it. That is also why he thinks it is appropriate for them but not us.
If he was suddenly stripped of power, permanently, and put in a position where he might be randomly water boarded by the authority above him, you can bet your bottom dollar he would advocate against it. But THAT will never happen, so his position will never change.
Are we not allowed to think all of those are terrible, or do you just take exception to people thinking torture is a special kind of evil on par with rape?
The latter - The GP stated as much bluntly - "whatever else is true, at least we're not fucking torturing people".
Y'know, maybe Barry O has managed to drag the intelligence community kicking and screaming up to 17th century level morality. I don't believe it, but okay, lets accept the possibility.
We still know that he has killed American citizens without a trial. We know that we still have people detained without a trial (and I can't decide if this counts as worse or not, we still have people detained whom a trial exonerated but we don't dare let them go!). We know that we have political dissidents, including domestic, foreign-but-Western, and foreign-and-Arab, all hiding out with known human rights abusers rather than risk falling into American custody.
So yeah, "at least we don't torture" strikes me as a pretty damned weak statement.
Terrifying someone's mind into complying with interrogation is orders of magnitude better than, say, ripping out fingernails, branding with hot irons, or other things that permanently damage and cripple the subject, don't you think?
"Doing X is better than doing Y" is not a justification for doing X.
Ignorance is a choice
I see what you're saying, and I understand, and I agree that, objectively speaking, being waterboarded is probably 'better' than being, say, branded with hot irons.
The problem is, being tortured doesn't get people to speak truth. It gets people to speak whatever will make the hurting stop. It's not a means of information extraction. There are FAR more effective and safe ways of extracting information.
No, torture is proving a point. And it's not a point that any decent person/group should be making.
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