CIA interrogation probe steams those on right and left

Wednesday 26th August, 10:31 AM JST

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TheQuestion at 11:04 PM JST - 26th August

The US says it is fighting for democracy and the rule of law. So breaking not only international law as well as US law surely weakens every attempt to persuade. Torturing your enemies leads to bad intelligence (people will say anything to stop torture) and risks your own troops being tortured if they are captured. Torture does not make sense and is never justifiable.

Morals are nice, intel is better. And as to tortureing leading to bad information I would counter and say that if the CIA is doing its job (wich I think they are) they will have insured that the terrorists know full well that if they feed the U.S with corrupt intelligence than they will be treated even worse. Plus, our troops were and are being tortured anyway, and not for intelligence but for sport. They would have tortured and executed our people whether or not we had taken prisoners.
netrek at 11:21 PM JST - 26th August

This is absurd. Why not give Osama a post in your cabinet Obama you freaking MORON! I predict a major terrorist attack against US during Obama's 4 years in office. He will not get re-elected, thank God! Obama and Holder are traitors and should be tried for treason!
Alphaape at 11:22 PM JST - 26th August

How can anyone not find it morally reprehensible to say an innocent persons life only has the value that their nationality, religion, or ethnicity assigns value to that life. Yes, completely innocent people were sent to Gitmo. They were as young as 14 years old.

goodDonkey, good point, make sure you include the Taliban, who have gone on reacord to say that none believers are infidels and should be killed or taxed a special tax. The methods saved lives. The people who they did it on had bad intentions on the US and others. If this were simply a case of a criminal murderer (even though I would be glad if it is done to them) I realize that under our justice system they have the right not to face such tactics. But these are people captured in war, and frankly I don't give a darn if a little threats were made to them. Ask that to the guys on the videos that the Taliban has released showing their beheadings (like the reporter for the Wall Street Journal), or the other people who just happen to be non believer or believers in their religion but whom these people have said they need to die in the name of Jihad so that some guy can go in their midst and blow himself up along with them.
Taka313 at 12:18 AM JST - 27th August

Skip,

It doesn't matter what the site is when it has the video of him saying it.

Nothing like a Cheney article to get the left all wee wee'd up I'd say.

Trolling now Sail? Geez.

Taka
sfjp330 at 02:32 AM JST - 27th August

Restoring the nation's moral staure must be a top priority, and that includes affirming that there are consequences for authorizing illegal practices. If it turns out that no laws were broken, then the investigation will vindicate officials, and that is equally important. None of this will help Obama move his domestic agenda, but it's the right thing to do.
IvanCoughalot at 07:11 AM JST - 27th August

"...violated the rule and intent of the Constitution of the United States, and put our troops in greater danger of being tortured themselves"

Cheney did no such thing.

To use a debating technique on a kind of par with the above, Did too.

Times one million, no come backs.

How about backing your view up with some evidence, instead of monosyllabic reflex asininity?
Sarge at 09:54 PM JST - 27th August

IvanCoughalot - ( cough, cough ) - How about proving that former Vice President Cheney violated the rule and intent of the Constitution of the United States and put our troops in greater danger of being tortured to death instead of saying something as lame as "To use a debating technique on a a kind of par with the above, Did too."?

Nah...
seijichuudo9sha at 03:15 AM JST - 28th August

Brave ACLU lawyers have clandestinely photographed CIA employees involved in the interrogation of so called terrorists and showed the photos of them and their family members to AlQaida detainees housed against their will in Guantanomo Bay. This is undoubtedly a factor in the probe.My feeling is the president and his attorney general want to level the playing field.Oh and yes, this is completely different from how cheney outed Valerie Plame.
USARonin at 03:32 AM JST - 28th August

Seiji, it doesn't look like President Obama is closing Guantanamo.

In fact, he plans to send more to Palau, Bermuda and a third place I can't remember. I know the British government is miffed that he didn't consult them first about Bermuda.

-Cheney and Plame? That was a completely affair. Her husband boasted drunkenly at many parties and affairs that his wife was a 'CIA agent'. This same husband complained about Cheney or whoever 'outting' his wife. What a joke. The husband bragged about this constantly to anyone who'd listen long before the bidness you bring up.
IvanCoughalot at 10:36 AM JST - 28th August

How about proving that former Vice President Cheney violated the rule and intent of the Constitution of the United States and put our troops in greater danger of being tortured to death

As you will.

If you fabricate the reason for a war, then send young men and women to fight in it, you put them in greater danger.

You start a war of aggression, you defy international law. Don't bother spouting the usual claptrap about "winsome sons" and "running Iraq into the ground from his many palaces" here. There was no case for that war. It was based on a pack of lies. Just because a country is ruled by a Bad Man is not sufficient case to invade it. Sending men and women to fight there for no good reason made it more likely they would be killed, maimed, and yes, tortured to death.

You send soldiers into action ill-equipped, you endanger both their lives and the ultimate success of the mission.

You legitimise torture as a means to an end (you'll no doubt have something to say about "people who would kill you and your family without hesitation" here), you legitimise it for the people you're fighting against and radicalise a whole generation, making it vastly more likely that your methods will be used against you and your troops will be tortured to death.

Q.E.D.

Now you prove the Constitution was upheld by Bush/Cheney. You know, that "Goddamned piece of paper".
goodDonkey at 11:55 PM JST - 28th August

USARonin said:

-Cheney and Plame? That was a completely affair [sic]. Her husband boasted drunkenly at many parties and affairs that his wife was a 'CIA agent'.

HILIARIOUS stuff !!!!

Which party were you at? Or you can just give us the name of the person who heard this at a party. Hey Ronin, "Everybody knows he said it." Hey Ronin - "He said it all the time."

So many parties, it should be simple to come up with some names of people who heard this. I'll be waiting.

I heard the same bullshit over and over. I guess when the Republicans got busted so many times for dishonoring America they just started lying to get out of messes. I heard so many smears by the Republicans on Valerie Plame. What I did not hear was the CIA, under the Bush Administration, confirm one damn lie that these gutless wonders were circulating to smear her name.

It takes a real lowlife to out a CIA undercover agent just because you can't stand that you were exposed by her husband for lying about WMD; specifically both manufacturing, distributing and further promulgating lies about yellow cake.

It went down like this:

1.) Joe Wilson exposed the lies about Iraq getting yellow cake to build a nuclear weapon.

2.) Cheney outed Plame.

3.) Cheney's underlings got sacrificed because Cheney got caught.

4.) The Conservative Machine put out lies saying others outied Plame not Cheney who really did

5.) The Conservative Machine put out lies concerning Valerie Plame's job - saying she was unimportant.

6.) The conservatives got caught again lying.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/17/60minutes/main3378089.shtml

Now Cheney has been caught telling the CIA to withhold information which is clearly illegal as I posted the law on another thread.

Cheney is now whining about a probe that may expose his corruption.
goodDonkey at 12:02 AM JST - 29th August

Alphaape said:

goodDonkey, good point, make sure you include the Taliban, who have gone on reacord to say that none believers are infidels and should be killed or taxed a special tax.

I do not vote for nor do I live in a Taliban territory. I am an American. When my government kills it kills it my name whether I like it or not. When my government does good it does good in your name whether you like it or not.

You choose to stoop to their level I do not.

The methods saved lives.

If so, prove it!

I'll listen to agents who actually worked in the field all their lives. I already posted a former CIA Director's statement here are more.

Former FBI agent Ali Soufan also indicated that the harsh interrogation techniques may actually have hindered the collection of intelligence, causing a high-value prisoner to stop cooperating - during congressional hearings.

For all the bullshit that has been espoused why not listen to an actual expert, William Egan Colby, who died before our most recent Bush was ever elected president. That would be former CIA Director, William E. Colby.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkanFveaCn0

High-profile retired CIA officers like Bob Baer, Frank Anderson, and Vincent Cannistraro spoke out in November of 2005 about their opposition to torture on practical grounds (Cannistraro said that detainees will "say virtually anything to end their torment"). Burton L. Gerber, a decorated Moscow station chief who retired in 1995 after 39 years with the CIA, surprised some when he said he opposes torture "because it corrupts the society that tolerates it." "The reason I believe that torture corrupts the torturers and society," Gerber says, "is that a standard is changed, and that new standard that's acceptable is less than what our nation should stand for. I think the standards in something like this are crucial to the identity of America as a free and just society."

From 1972 to 1975, Frank Snepp was the CIA's top interrogator in Saigon, where he choreographed elaborate, protracted sessions with Nguyen Van Tai and, at one point, seven other senior Vietcong captives. To the question of whether torture or abusive behavior by interrogators is justified, Snepp's answer is unequivocally no. And the fact that this point isn't understood at the agency today, Snepp says, is a sign of serious problems.

I actually to not want any CIA agents prosecuted; this was forced on them by the executive branch.
goodDonkey at 12:04 AM JST - 29th August

I loved this guys take on torture so I posted it seperate:

Merle L. Pribbenow, a 27-year veteran of the agency's clandestine Directorate of Operations. Writing in Studies in Intelligence, the CIA's in-house journal, Pribbenow recalled that an old college friend had recently expressed his belief that "the terrorist threat to America was so grave that any methods, including torture, should be used to obtain the information we need." The friend was vexed that Pribbenow's former colleagues "had not been able to 'crack' these prisoners." Pribbenow sought an answer by revisiting the arcane case of Nguyen Van Tai, the highest-ranking Vietcong prisoner captured and interrogated by both South Vietnamese and American forces during the Vietnam War. Re-examining in detail the techniques used by the South Vietnamese (protracted torture that included electric shocks; beatings; various forms of water torture; stress positions; food, water, and sleep deprivation) and by the Americans (rapport-building and no violence), Pribbenow reached a stark conclusion: "While the South Vietnamese use of torture did result (eventually) in Tai's admission of his true identity, it did not provide any other usable information," he wrote. In the end, he said, "it was the skillful questions and psychological ploys of the Americans, and not any physical infliction of pain, that produced the only useful (albeit limited) information that Tai ever provided." But perhaps most noteworthy was Pribbenow's conclusion: "This brings me back to my college classmate's question. The answer I gave him -- one in which I firmly believe -- is that we, as Americans, must not let our methods betray our goals," he said. "There is nothing wrong with a little psychological intimidation, verbal threats, bright lights and tight handcuffs, and not giving a prisoner a soft drink and a Big Mac every time he asks for them. There are limits, however, beyond which we cannot and should not go if we are to continue to call ourselves Americans. America is as much an ideal as a place, and physical torture of the kind used by the Vietnamese (North as well as South) has no place in it."
goodDonkey at 04:11 AM JST - 29th August

USARonin posted the results of a search engine search. However none of the results had one single person stating they heard Joe Wilson claim what USARonin said Joe Wilson said. Not One! You will have to do better than that when trying to spread conservative propaganda on JT.

I am just asking for one person at the "many parties" as you claim on the "cocktail circuit" as you claim, before that is the date we have confirmed that Cheney outed Plame.

Just one person to support your claim. A simple request!
USARonin at 04:57 AM JST - 29th August

GD, of course representatives of foreign powers took note of the clown who outed his wife as a member of the American intelligence community well before 'Novak'.

Do you imagine otherwise?

Why are you obsessed and so enraged on this and other topics? You'll do yourself an injury in the real world if you haven't already. I'd bet you have.