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Director Brennan: CIA Won't Waterboard Again, Even If Ordered By Future President (msnbc.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MSNBC: CIA Director John Brennan told NBC News in an exclusive interview that his agency will not engage in harsh "enhanced interrogation" practices, including waterboarding, which critics call torture -- even if ordered to by a future president. "I will not agree to carry out some of these tactics and techniques I've heard bandied about because this institution needs to endure," Brennan said. The CIA used waterboarding and other techniques on terrorist suspects after the 9/11 attacks. But in January 2009, President Obama banned the practices in his first few days in office with an executive order. When asked specifically about waterboarding Brennan could not have been clearer. "Absolutely, I would not agree to having any CIA officer carrying out waterboarding again," he said. Donald Trump is a staunch supporter of torture, saying he would bring back waterboarding and "a hell of a lot worse" to retrieve information from potential terrorists. Ted Cruz says he would "not bring [waterboarding] back in any sort of widespread use" by rank and file soldiers and agents, but as President he would "use whatever enhanced interrogation methods to keep this country safe."
If Brennen refuses an order from a Republican president, however repugnant, he's out the door. There will be any number of qualified sadists that would be happy to torture people, in the name of freedom, for the US government.
at least they're talking about it.
Yeah, that's the problem. With torture there is nothing to discuss. A humane person and a civil society would never consider it.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
In Iraq 1 war the Iraqi army surrendered because they knew they would be treated decently, Bush and his cronies with the last Iraq war changed everything, the message was now clear to the enemies, if we capture you we will torture you.
so now your enemies will torture the living fuck out of your soldiers and they can say quite honestly "well the Americans did it and they didn't get reprimanded, so now we do it, except we are worse"
the whole point of the laws of war was that prisoners on both sides would be treated decently, if the enemy did it you could say with dignity "we dont do that" and haul them in front of the warcrimes with the knowledge that you were better than that.
Bush and his chums threw it all away and today he still sits as free man sipping whiskey and rye, smiling with his millions of dollars and Americans are perfectly fine with that.
If you are caught in battle now, be afraid, very afraid.
Later heard mumbling under his breath, contractors and extraordinary rendition are just fine.
Who cares what the CIA does when each bloody branch of government can run its own intelligence services essentially duplicating the other. You don't think that mercenaries, branches of the military, or even off the books intelligences agencies won't continue to water board?
One agency not water boarding, what hilarity.
If this isn't a "thing that matters", I don't know what is.
You're talking about a potential rift of current governmental process in the most powerful nation on the planet. There are also those in the military who are saying they would refuse blatantly immoral orders, such as "killing the families of terrorists".
If large chunks of both the military and civilian governmental agencies start refusing orders, the implications of that will reverberate in ways I don't think anyone can predict. Best case, somehow it ends up smoothed over. Worst case, it becomes a civil war. Most likely, somewhere in the middle, with unforeseeable consequences that could spread well outside the bounds of the US itself.
Because you told the world when you did it before right?
I'd torture them until they'll tell me whatever lies they think will make me stop, regardless of whether they actually know anything at all.
My family would be dead and I'd have wasted precious time chasing down dead-ends, but I'd feel good having acted out my vengeance.
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Apparently the CIA has learned a lesson, though probably not the one you think. I doubt they now believe that torture is inhumane and lowers us to the level of those we fight against. What they learned is that torture is completely ineffective at yielding usable intelligence. Prisoners will say anything to make it stop, including making stuff up. Since the made up stuff is exactly what the torturer expects to hear, they often give it more credibility than any actual intelligence that is obtained.
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There is a kernel of truth in what you say - the US should live up to a HIGHER standard. Our founding documents say this country exists for the purpose of justice, freedom, and liberty.
That said, are you thinking that Al Quaeda was following the laws of war until after 9/11, that hijacking civilian airliners and crashing them into skyscrapers is okay? To claim that Al Quaeda won't follow the laws of war because the US may not have is of course a bit silly.
It "matters", but Slashdot should not be the venue to discuss it!
If you want to get all riled up about political matters that are unrelated to science/tech/computing, then go to Huffington Post, or Drudge Report, or Gawker, one of the many other sites out there that cater to such matters.
Leave Slashdot for stories and discussion that are specific to science/tech/computing.
It is one of the total failures of journalism that they keep acting like the jury is out on whether waterboarding is torture. It is torture by the definition of multiple US courts -- ones that successfully prosecuted Japanese soldiers for torture in the 40s precisely for waterboarding. It is a long-standing precedent that waterboarding is very much torture in the eyes of the US court system. The promulgation of this phony sense of ambiguity is a lie perpetrated by the media for the benefit of the neocon establishment.
which critics call torture
stop. stop this. Waterboarding is by an overwhelming concensus a formal example of torture. the united states has in the past engaged in torture, full stop. it still engages in torture to this day at Guantanamo Bay without independent oversight and enjoys freedom from media coverage. In this regard the US is no different than north korea and iran.
even if ordered to by a future president.
but there was no formal order from the bush administration. the bush team crafted a doctrine by which terrorism became "enhanced interrogation" and through this clever violation of the geneva convention the techniques described in the CIA's handbooks stopped being torture entirely. You technically never tortured anyone before, and refuse to do so now.
President Obama banned the practices in his first few days in office with an executive order.
Its hard to put on the Nobel prize when youre the leader of a nation that runs a secret torture prison. Obama made a concerted effort to close this prison, but largely failed when congress and senate majorities handed him a non-stop shit storm shutting down the government twice and attempting to repeal healthcare reform more than 45 times.
Donald Trump is a staunch supporter of torture
And Martha Stewarts dog died in a propane explosion. Neither of these considerations is relevant to the topic. the point is Brennan is making a clever distraction from the actual problem. The united states under the Bush doctrine legally authorized torture by changing the definition of the word and then unanimously arguing theirs was a legally consistent and correct one. The judge that wrote the defense of this argument was later promoted in the administration in what was largely seen as a quid pro quo move by leadership.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Refusing, rather than carrying out with some enthusiasm and taking pictures, such orders would be a bit of a change in practice; but in the noble land of theory; hasn't it always been the case that military agents are supposed to refuse to carry out unlawful orders(with the obvious practical limits imposed by the fact that most soldiers have access to legal opinion only to the extent that somebody told a JAG to write up a terse summary of the rules of engagement)?
My (admittedly layman's) understanding was that while actually having the issue come up is considered a bad sign(since something has obviously gone badly wrong on the executive or legislative side if the military is being issued unlawful orders); but that while disobeying lawful orders is somewhere between 'disciplinary problem' and 'coup d'etat', depending on how many people are involved and whether they are brought into line internally or not; it is no more a desired outcome for the military to execute an unlawful order than it is for the judiciary to rule according to an unconstitutional law; or the executive to act without legislatively granted authority.
The only real change here is that we have an actually-high-ranked-spook not weaseling around and claiming that waterboarding is just the sort of practical-joking fun that we all did when we joined a frat.
Journalists seem to love acting like the jury is out on just about everything, because you should present BOTH sides of an argument even when one side is utterly batshit insane.
Sometimes, arguments only have one side.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Actually, as I understand it, there ARE no Civil Service job protections in the Intelligence Community. So you can be canned at any time for any reason.
Not that they DO, from things I've heard, but they legally CAN. . .
Tell that to the US courts who have deemed waterboarding to be torture for decades. We know it doesn't work, yet some people (yourself included) are willing to overlook that for some good ol' fashioned vengeance, regardless of the demonstrable harm it causes the US.
You suck at being a human being.
How about you just skip the articles that don't intrest you? Information is like bandwidth; it is always there but not always utilized. I appreciate the job the editors do, even if I don't click on every submission.
I think it is even worse than that⦠"WE won't water board anymore⦠Because we are having other people do it for us now"
If someone had my family in a direct harm situation, then I shouldn't be the one put in charge of the interrogation.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
Torture was already deemed illegal by the Geneva Convention. And yet, here we are again. It's probably not the President that will encourage water boarding again, it's probably their lawyer who convinces the leadership at the time that water boarding does not constitute torture and is as such perfectly legal. ... Not that this EVER happens.
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
There are some traditions. Certain instruments of government are considered more independent of the Presidential administration than others, and thus the terms of their directors are intentionally not supposed to coincide with the Presidential terms.
I think that CIA, NASA, Federal Reserve, and FBI are in that category. Cabinet secretaries are, naturally, appointed by the President directly.
With respect to the current issue: CIA will not torture. But a contractor, or an agency of another government, will.
That means that it is not secret.
References:
Hillary Clinton's apologists (she knows better than telling her own lies).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I think it is even worse than that⦠"WE won't water board anymore⦠Because we are having other people do it for us now"
I wonder if they'll make the torturers train their replacements...Will there ne no end to outsourcing?!
Sig Follows: "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- Mark Twain
The healthcare reform plan you cite was passed when Obama's party had a majority in the House and Senate for 2 years, and a fillibuster-proof majority in the Senate for 6 months. In fact that's precisely why the healthcare reform plan was passed with such alacrity - the Democratic party minimized debate to make sure it was pushed through before they could lose that fillibuster-proof majority.
That Obama didn't take advantage of that same window to close Guantanamo tells you either his "concerted effort" was not as concerted as you believe, or the Democratic party was not as enthusiastic about closing the base as you've led yourself to believe. Guantanamo wasn't an issue which suddenly came to the forefront in recent years. Shutting it down was one of Obama's first campaign pledges. You can't really blame the Republican party for his failure to keep that promise when his party was in control for his first 2 years, with literally no way for the Republicans to stop him for 6 months of those 2 years.
So ... what if I suspect YOU have knowledge of an imminent attack? Are you okay with me chopping off your fingers, one joint at a time, until you tell me what you know? Sure, at first you'll protest that you don't know anything about any attack, that you're a loyal citizen, but I know that's a lie. Snip snip snip ... why won't you tell me where the attack is going to take place? I'm running out of fingers, soon I'll have to start on your toes.
And as for "Fighting the enemy with all means necessary is the ONLY way to win a war." -- okay. Let's say you're in charge. Here's a document authorizing bombers to nuke the Middle East, North Korea, Libya, and anywhere else considered to be part of the extended "Axis of Evil" until the ground has all turned into glass. Please sign it. That's guaranteed to kill all our enemies in the regions and nuclear weapons are part of "all means necessary" -- are you okay with ordering the deaths of millions of people, many of whom are innocent, to defeat the enemy? If so, please report to the nearest mental hospital and check yourself in as a psychopath. If not, then we agree that there are lines we should not cross -- now we just need to negotiate where they are.
Since I suspect you're going to bring up Hiroshima and Nagasaki, remember that the US Congress had formally declared war on Japan and Truman specifically instructed the Secretary of War to select military targets for the weapons according to his diary. It was not indiscriminate bombing but carefully planned and targeted attacks.
in the noble land of theory; hasn't it always been the case that military agents are supposed to refuse to carry out unlawful orders
Only since 1946, and then only if you're on the losing side of a war. People on the winning side that disobey orders (lawful or unlawful) get to see first hand what the inside of a military prison looks like.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
You get the Disney version of it in those cases. People you trust administer a very gentle version of it. You volunteer for it as well.
Compare that to getting waterboarded an average of 6 times a day by mask wearing thugs yelling and screaming at you as they take you to the limit of what a crooked doctor will allow.
It is like saying that since people willingly participate in MMA that repeated closed fist beatings cannot be torture.
In short, your logic is tortured.
All your points are decent ones. However most of what we did is so far over the line as to not being debatable. Sleep deprivation, ear splitting loud music while being held in stress positions, making someone sleep on a cold concrete slab until they died of hypothermia, and so much more are all so far beyond the line that we should not be still discussing whether there is any validity to the "might not be torture" point of view.
We tortured a bunch of folks. We have brought our selves down to the level of all the despots and dictators that we vilified for such behavior. We hid it from our citizenry, and punished practically nobody for their part in it. The lack of accountability makes us complicit after the fact, we are harboring war criminals and torturers.
To quote my own post: why should your opinions count if you don't even bother putting a pseudonym behind them?
Trolls gotta troll, I guess.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Ask the many journalists who deliberately had it done to them while writing (or broadcasting) about this very subject.
Sure, let's ask them! Guess what? They say that it is torture.
People who have, by your definition, been "actually tortured" - like McCain - say that waterboarding is torture.
In short, it is obviously torture.
And you're scum for repeatedly defending it here.
And for those of you who do not know, Frank Herbert used a lot of Arabic and Islamic themes in Dune.
Coming full circle ...
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Who said anything about "same exact experiences"? Waterboarding as used in SERE training, or on volunteers who want to see what it's like, is nowhere near as harsh as the real thing.
And, of course, there is a big difference between doing something (no matter what it is) to a volunteer as part of their training, with numerous safeguards in place (including the provision to stop immediately), and doing something to an unwilling victim to force them to divulge information - or, as some presidential candidates have quipped recently, because "they deserved it".