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CIA Lied Over Brutal Interrogations
mrspoonsi sends this news from the BBC:
The CIA carried out "brutal" interrogations of terror suspects in the years after the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., a U.S. Senate report has said. The summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee report said the CIA misled Americans on the effectiveness of "enhanced interrogation." The interrogation was poorly managed and unreliable, the report said. President Obama has previously said that in his view the techniques amounted to torture. The Senate committee's report runs to more than 6,000 pages, drawing on huge quantities of evidence, but it remains classified and only a 480-page summary (PDF) is being released. Publication had been delayed amid disagreements in Washington over what should be made public.
CIA Director John Brennan has posted a response.
No shit.
Is anybody going to jail?
How about Bush, is this enough to put Bush in jail?
Yet, despite common ground with some of the findings of the Committee’s Study, we part ways with the Committee on some key points. Our review indicates that interrogations of detainees on whom EITs were used did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives. The intelligence gained from the program was critical to our understanding of al-Qa’ida and continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day.
Just when will the CIA get off its high horse of believing that this program, in its former form, or any newer form, produces value for the American citizen or state as a whole? They need to stop defending this indefensible stance that it's okay as long as the CIA is in charge of capturing, detaining, violating rights, and denying everything it does or has ever done.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
I prefer this memo:
http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2007/05/-versch-auml-rfte-vernehmung/228158/
Part of being the "good guys" means NOT being the "bad guys".
More people die in traffic accidents EVERY YEAR than the "terrorists" have ever killed here. So why give up a morally superior position to "fight" people who pose almost no threat to anyone outside their own countries?
Queue all the posts of "Why are you surprised! of course they were doing this!"
No, you should be surprised. Suspecting and Knowing are 2 different things. Get mad, do something. Don't use your arrogance as an excuse for apathy.
I think the most enlightening part of the report was this:
The torture of prisoners at times was so extreme that some C.I.A. personnel tried to put a halt to the techniques, but were told by senior agency officials to continue the interrogation sessions.
The Senate report quotes a series of August 2002 cables from a C.I.A. facility in Thailand, where the agency’s first prisoner was held. Within days of the Justice Department’s approval to begin waterboarding the prisoner, Abu Zubaydah, the sessions became so extreme that some C.I.A. officers were “to the point of tears and choking up,” and several said they would elect to be transferred out of the facility if the brutal interrogations continued.
That gave me some hope for the world. At least some stood up and said "No" and likely ended their careers over it. I doubt we'll ever know who those people were, but if any of you read this, my hats off to you. You're the real Hero's of this war.
Even if torturing prisoners was "effective," who cares? If something is immoral, good results will never make it moral.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
"I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence. I know that victims of torture will offer intentionally misleading information if they think their captors will believe it. I know they will say whatever they think their torturers want them to say if they believe it will stop their suffering. Most of all, I know the use of torture compromises that which most distinguishes us from our enemies, our belief that all people, even captured enemies, possess basic human rights, which are protected by international conventions the U.S. not only joined, but for the most part authored."
From a Republican even.
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
No comments needed.
Who doesn't pay? Those responsible for such atrocities. We increasingly live in a society where a few - IE military and intelligence brass, the rich, the police, and corporations and individuals with the money to play the game can do nearly anything with impunity.
This meets the definition of tyranny - arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power - and we live it every day, but most do not see it. The question is, is the natural state of being for humans - people abusing their power over others, or can it be changed and transcended?
Silence is a state of mime.
I mean, really.
Our nation spent a decade running a network of torture prisons, including Abu Grahib and Guantanamo bay, where cathartic biblical justice was and still is the prescription. Most of these prisoners cant be tried, and cant be released, for reasons that cant be told to the public. The actual details, while speculated for years by the public in quiet shame, were not only far worse than we could imagine but deliberately and baselessly shrouded in secrecy from the public. our intelligence agency actually lied to the govenment it was created to protect.
We can hardly keep our government open and when it is, its operation is ostensibly predicated on blanket covert surveillance against its own citizens. If anyone challenges it, we just lock them away forever and insist they are traitors. Our police operate entirely above the law, routinely executing unarmed citizens and exist in posession of several million dollars in military grade hardware from machine guns to tanks. the only thing "exceptional" about american exceptionalism these days is that we maintain the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet, and yet still havent managed to usher in the apocalypse despite a very public report on the sheer bumbling incompetence of the military divisions assigned to operate and maintain these weapons. The most devastating part about this as a foreigner, ill presume, is that a country of this level of dysfunction, porverty and animocity still controls such a disproportionate level of wealth, power, and influence.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I might too, but that doesn't make us right.
I see.
Terrorizing is bad.
So obviously the solution is more terrorizing.
Torture is useless as an intelligence tool. It is also counterproductive for any reason other than a "sense of vengeance".
Sure, it satisfies that, but then you lose the moral high ground. And that shit is actually important.
As a Brit living in Australia, two of the world's most ardent allies of the USA , I say this: America, you stink. When a friend tells you you stink you'd better wise up and do something about it. Your actions are CAUSING the terrorism that you are seeking so vainly to suppress. The more you oppress, the more people turn against you. I know you have a bit of a thick skull and your thinking processes are limited (as a country, we understand you have trouble walking and chewing gum, but that's OK, intellectual disability we can accept and sympathise with - we are similarly afflicted, truth be told). It's the actions we have a problem with. But now even your friends and allies can see the terrorists' point of view, and have done for some time. Wake up, fix your stupid foreign policies and you know, maybe THAT will sort out terrorism. It's win-win.
We constantly try to convince ourselves and the world that we're supposed to be some sort of role model after which all others should strive to emulate.
.my point.
:|
Time and time again, the evidence tends to show that we can actually be much worse than those countries we love to demonize.
Can you imagine what would happen if another country ( pick one ) started a program like the one we run for snatching up Americans ( or American Allies ) suspected of ties to $scarylabel ?
Perhaps building their own version of Guantanamo and holding them indefinitely without charges, trial or even notification to anyone they were being held at all ?
Everyone here knows exactly what the reaction would be. Drone strikes, commando raids, hell we might even send a Battle Group or three and park them off your coast. Regime change, invasion, air strikes, sanctions, excuse for new war toys testing, etc. etc.
As long as the country in question isn't a major power of course. We love to send in the troops to countries that cannot possibly defend themselves from our mighty war machine. Not so much into the countries that can. See any Russian or Chinese detainees in that lovely detention camp of ours ? Yeah . .
Ever see a bully pick on someone who could kick their ass ? Me either.
Wonder how our war-nuts would handle it if $evil_country started snatching our worldwide intelligence agents ( or just Americans and their Allies at random ) and subjecting them to the same tortu. . . . er. . . . enhanced interrogation techniques that we use. Would be hilarious to hear what insanity would spew forth from our Government about how . . . how . . . EVIL such a thing is. How DARE they do that to an American ?! Resolutions !! Declarations !!! OMGTEHHORROR !! ( Fox News would just implode I think )
To the rest of the world, I would like to apologize for the arrogance, hypocrisy and illogical ideology of our "elected" government. If you have any ideas on how to fix it, we're all ears.
Except that doesn't work, because people being tortured will say anything to make it stop. At no point when they change their stories can you be certain they're now telling the truth. Even if their stories suddenly match, it could be a complete fluke, or as a result of the interrogator asking leading questions. Torture is useless.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
They didn't have fun, to be sure, but brutal it wasn't.
Your ability to think of something more horrific does not mean it was not brutal. All you proved is that there are even more horrible things that can be done but that does not in any way mitigate or excuse needlessly harsh treatment of another human being. Just because you don't leave a mark doesn't mean it isn't torture and certainly doesn't make it right.
Generally fighting fire with water or other fire retardants is the preferred method.
It is in the very nature of evil that it "gets results". The entire point of morality is that there are things you will not do even if they are in your interest.
As an American citizen, I do not in any way approve of the use of torture. I am willing to accept the higher risk of death by terrorism, assuming the risk even is higher, in return for the country behaving in a moral fashion. I am willing to trade my safety for doing what is right. No torture, no indefinite detention, no extra-judicial killings.
If I knew a legal way to stop the US from using torture, I would.
We have become the things we always claimed that we opposed in the world.
The uselessness of torture as an interrogation tool was conclusively described about 400 years ago in "Cautio criminalis" by Friedrich Spee von Langenfeld. You are free to ignore 400 years of knowledge though. But then you are just ignorant.
This was 100% politics and had little to do with much else. Why else release such inflammatory information AGAIN?
...
The really sad part though is that it is highly possible that the release of this report will cost Americans their lives. The world is a dangerous place, but it's stupid to poke the enemy or hand them such a public relations win as this will be. We will be lectured by Iran and North Korea for human rights abuses and you can bet ISIS will be happy to use this to recruit/conscript more help.
(sarcasm)Oh Yea! That's great.. (/sarcasm)
The really sad part is that people get so caught up in petty politics that they can't see that torturing people is immoral and ineffective and that maybe we should consider not fucking torturing people and hold ourselves to a higher standard than "other people are worse than us."
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
terrorists, stop being an idiot. Richard Reid tried to light a shoe bomb and didn't kill anyone, yet let at all of the trouble and hassle EVERYONE who flies has to go through now. It isn't always about death. It's also about our way of life. How much money do you think is being spent to find explosives on persons who fly?
So stop saying "More people are killed by albino left-handed sharks than terrorists because that isn't the point."
No, that's exactly the point. We've completely caved to fear and thrown what little moral standing we had in the world right out the window. We've spent well over a trillion dollars, killed thousands of people directly, tens of thousands indirectly and replaced an evil but fairly contained dictator with a sectarian battlefield. Because we're bad at math and suck at assessing threats. We are a nation cowards, armed to the teeth and afraid of shadows. We are the fucking boogieman.
And before I get shit for it, no I don't think we deserved to be attacked on 9/11 and terrorists are asshats. But that doesn't justify overreacting and it doesn't justify holding people sans due process and torture.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
It's also beside the point.
The people in Guantanamo has not been found guilty of beheadings. Do you really think it's the right thing to torture individuals for something other individuals of the same faith and complexion did at a later date? Can I torture you a little for what Jeffrey Dahmer did?
If anything, torturing prisoners is used as a justification for what's done to hostages by others.
No one has a right to condone inhuman behavior and then act offended when others respond with inhuman behavior. We reap what we sow.
Are there "lawful" enemy combatants and under who's law these ones unlawful?
Yes, there are. I'll explain in a moment. The Law in this case is International Law - the Geneva Convention, among others, is involved here.
And aren't they enemy combatants because a "coalition of forces" invaded their countries?
Yes, that is part of what makes them enemy combatants. The other part is that they chose to shoot at those invaders.
Ok, so some explanation -- there's some rules of war that the countries in power at the time put together. They include things like soldiers needing to wear a uniform with identifying marks for the country (or group in cases where you might not have an officially recognized country) in whose service they are fighting. If two of those powers went to war, they'd follow those rules (in theory), and soldiers of the other side would be lawful enemy combatants (or usually just enemy combatants, contrasted against enemy civilians).
If some of those soldiers stripped off their uniforms and did stuff against those rules, they could be disavowed by the other country -- they were out of uniform and therefore they were unlawful enemy combatants. The special rules regarding the treatment of Prisoners of War wouldn't apply. They could be held after the cessation of hostilities, for example, and could be tried by the country that captured them for their crimes rather than those acts (such as mass-homicide and such) being considered acts of war and therefore somehow perfectly acceptable.
So if these insurgent groups wore a uniform of some sort, and followed a normal command structure, and didn't hide in civilian populations, they could be lawful enemy combatants. They'd also be a lot easier to eliminate, which is why they don't do that. However, because they aren't playing by the Big Powers rules, that means the Big Powers don't technically need to follow those rules either. I still think we should, but that's a separate discussion.
That should hopefully help you understand where the term comes from, and why it gets used in reference to actions like this.
~Anguirel (lit. Living Star-Iron)
QA: The art of telling someone that their baby is ugly without getting punched.
But the blow back undoes any advantage you got. The enemy knows we torture and uses it as a propaganda tool. Ie, the US does a better job of recruiting for Al Qaeda than Al Qaeda does. Also our friends know we torture and then don't want to be around friends so much (not a problem for US because we think "friend" means "does what we ask with no questions"). And it means that all those other countries out there are saying "hey, if US can torture then we can torture too!", or "if US can violate Geneva convention, then we can too!" And when our soldiers get captured, and they will, the enemy will use the same techniques we use or worse.
That's the main reason why so many in politics just wanted to cover all this up. They know it causes problems for the US, but it's ridiculous to pretend it doesn't exist or that anyone eventually freed from Guantanamo is lying when they claim to be tortured. If we don't want blowback from torture then we shouldn't do it.
Remember these are all interrogation methods disallowed by the army. The army knows there would be blowback. But they're ok for the CIA?
Another problem is that the interrogation techniques were not originally designed to get information. They were originally developed to get captured soldiers to admit to false confessions. Then the US used training for our soldiers so that they could attempt to resist such methods. Then ridiculously the CIA adopts those techniques and think that they would work to get useful intelligence. It's BS. If the CIA does know what it is doing then it is not using these enhanced interrogations to get information but for some other motivation (please the boss, please the political base, make it seem like we're doing something, finally have a suitable job for those who flunked the psych exam at Langley, etc).
Now there's this idiotic justification I do hear, not from politicians but the fanboys of one party or the other. That we treat the prisoners better than so many other countries. Dumb. That's like saying you beat your wife less than the neighbor does. Really, do these morons think that the standard of conduct should be "don't be as bad as North Korea"?