I still claim, until proved otherwise, that shooting the condemned through the neck is the most humane way to execute said condemned person.
Not saying that capital punishment should be enforced though. While some deserves it, it's undignified for a civilized society, makes its citizens vindictive and risks the lives of the innocent.
"Batman is only meaningful as an answer to a world which in its basics is chaotic and in the hands of the wrong people, where no justice can be found. I think it's very suitable to our perception of the world's condition today... Batman embodies the will to resist evil" -Frank Miller
"Conan, what's the meaning of life?" "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women!" -Conan the Barbarian
"Well, yeah." -Jason E. Perkins
"If I had a dime for every time Pariah was right about something I'd owe twenty cents." -Ultimate Jaburg53
"Fair enough. I defer to your expertise." -Prometheus
Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge told the AP in an interview, “There’s just no doubt in my mind — under any set of rules — waterboarding is torture.” He added, “I believe, unlike others in the administration, that waterboarding was, is — and will always be — torture. That’s a simple statement.” In a separate interview with The Associated Press on Thursday, the current Homeland Security secretary, Michael Chertoff, refused to say what he thinks of the interrogation technique
I still claim, until proved otherwise, that shooting the condemned through the neck is the most humane way to execute said condemned person.
Uh, would that mean they choke on their own blood or do you want the bullet to explode with such velocity that the blood from their brain is drawn down with the concussion?
Today, the Washington Post revealed the actual contents of a memo from top Dept. of Justice official John Yoo that authorized torture and, basically, said the President is above the law:
Quote:
The Justice Department sent a legal memorandum to the Pentagon in 2003 asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives because the president's ultimate authority as commander in chief overrode such statutes.
The 81-page memo, which was declassified and released publicly yesterday, argues that poking, slapping or shoving detainees would not give rise to criminal liability. The document also appears to defend the use of mind-altering drugs that do not produce "an extreme effect" calculated to "cause a profound disruption of the senses or personality."
Although the existence of the memo has long been known, its contents had not been previously disclosed.
From the ACLU, to whom we all owe thanks and gratitude for having the letter made public:
Quote:
A secret memo authored by the Department of Justice (DOJ) asserting that President Bush has unlimited power to order brutal interrogations to extract information from detainees was declassified today as a result of an American Civil Liberties Union Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The memo, written by John Yoo, then a deputy at the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), was sent to the Defense Department in March 2003.
"Senior officials at the Justice Department gave the Pentagon the green light to torture prisoners," said Amrit Singh, an ACLU staff attorney. "It is outrageous that none of these high-level officials have been brought to task yet for their role in authorizing prisoner abuse."
A similar OLC memo asserting the same kind of unchecked executive authority was sent to the CIA in August 2002. In that now-notorious document, torture was defined so narrowly that it encompassed only those methods that result in pain akin to that associated with "death, organ failure or the permanent impairment of a significant body function."
In many respects, the March 2003 memo released today parrots the advice previously given to the CIA. In other ways, however, the 2003 memo goes even further. For example, it argues — without any qualification — that, during wartime, the president's Commander-in-Chief power overrides the due process guarantee of the Fifth Amendment.
As bad as the Bush administration is and has been, it's actually quite stunning to see in writing the disregard for the Constitution. The ACLU has posted a pdf of the memo here.
As you can imagine, there is already an enormous amount of commentary online from some of those really great minds who have followed this issue closely. Glenn Greenwald titles his analysis "John Yoo's War Crimes."Christy Hardin Smith writes:
Quote:
As I'm reading through the Yoo memorandum, I have to keep pausing to clear my head or get up and walk for a while. It's going to be a long day with a pot of tea, and I've already got a pounding headache from my first skim through. Thus far, I'm reading it as "might makes right." Oy.
Marcy Wheeler invites us to participate in the "The “John Yoo, Let’s Pretend We’re Lawyers” Game" and find a reference to the case that determined Presidential powers during wartime, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer. That case actually limited the power of the president.
Currently, Mr. Yoo is teaching law at UC Berkeley. How does one teach law when one doesn't think the Constitution matters? Just asking.
Look, whomod, you do realize that lawyers often disagree about how to interpret cases, right? That, in fact, is why we have judges.
So the mere fact that the ACLU, which has their own legal philosophy, disagrees with someone in the Justice Department is not, itself, dispositive of anything other than a dispute on an unsettled area of law.
The fact of the matter, as discussed a number of times in the past, is that there is a legitimate question as to the powers of a president during a military action and, especially, as against a foreign combatant. You can disagree with the Bush administration if you want, that's your right, but the fact a liberal special interest group shares your view is no more dispositive than if, say, the NRA agrees with me on gun control.
Why do you have a picture of the Declaration of Independence when your point is about Constitutional law?
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
Originally Posted By: Friendly Neighborhood Ray-man
Originally Posted By: whomod
But seriously, we're skirting war crimes trials territory and you guys are more concerned about the political cartoons I post?
welcome to the rkmbs.
Indeed.
"Batman is only meaningful as an answer to a world which in its basics is chaotic and in the hands of the wrong people, where no justice can be found. I think it's very suitable to our perception of the world's condition today... Batman embodies the will to resist evil" -Frank Miller
"Conan, what's the meaning of life?" "To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women!" -Conan the Barbarian
"Well, yeah." -Jason E. Perkins
"If I had a dime for every time Pariah was right about something I'd owe twenty cents." -Ultimate Jaburg53
"Fair enough. I defer to your expertise." -Prometheus
Senate Report: CIA Lied Repeatedly About Its Interrogation Program
By Margaret Hartmann
For years the CIA has been feuding with the Senate Intelligence Committee over its report on Bush-era "enhanced interrogation techniques" and now we know why. While the 6,300-page report remains classified, on Monday U.S. officials described its contents in detail to the Washington Post. The report concludes that the CIA routinely misled members of Congress and the public by suggesting detainees gave up key information due to the use of those brutal techniques, when they had actually talked before the interrogation. "The CIA described [its program] repeatedly both to the Department of Justice and eventually to Congress as getting unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence that helped disrupt terrorist plots and save thousands of lives," said one U.S. official. "Was that actually true? The answer is no." ...
CIA misled on interrogation program, Senate report says
By Greg Miller, Adam Goldman and Ellen Nakashima, Published: March 31 E-mail the writers
A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the CIA misled the government and the public about aspects of its brutal interrogation program for years — concealing details about the severity of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in fact surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques.
The report, built around detailed chronologies of dozens of CIA detainees, documents a long-standing pattern of unsubstantiated claims as agency officials sought permission to use — and later tried to defend — excruciating interrogation methods that yielded little, if any, significant intelligence, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed the document.
“The CIA described [its program] repeatedly both to the Department of Justice and eventually to Congress as getting unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence that helped disrupt terrorist plots and save thousands of lives,” said one U.S. official briefed on the report. “Was that actually true? The answer is no.”
Current and former U.S. officials who described the report spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue and because the document remains classified. The 6,300-page report includes what officials described as damning new disclosures about a sprawling network of secret detention facilities, or “black sites,” that was dismantled by President Obama in 2009.
Classified files reviewed by committee investigators reveal internal divisions over the interrogation program, officials said, including one case in which CIA employees left the agency’s secret prison in Thailand after becoming disturbed by the brutal measures being employed there. The report also cites cases in which officials at CIA headquarters demanded the continued use of harsh interrogation techniques even after analysts were convinced that prisoners had no more information to give.
The report describes previously undisclosed cases of abuse, including the alleged repeated dunking of a terrorism suspect in tanks of ice water at a detention site in Afghanistan — a method that bore similarities to waterboarding but never appeared on any Justice Department- approved list of techniques.
U.S. officials said the committee refrained from assigning motives to CIA officials whose actions or statements were scrutinized. The report also does not recommend new administrative punishment or further criminal inquiry into a program that the Justice Department has investigated repeatedly. Still, the document is almost certain to reignite an unresolved public debate over a period that many regard as the most controversial in CIA history.
A spokesman for the CIA said the agency had not yet seen a final version of the report and was, therefore, unable to comment.
Current and former agency officials, however, have privately described the study as marred by factual errors and misguided conclusions. Last month, in an indication of the level of tension between the CIA and the committee, each side accused the other of possible criminal violations in accessing each other’s computer systems during the course of the probe.
The Senate Intelligence Committee is expected to vote Thursday to send an executive summary of the report to Obama for declassification. U.S. officials said it could be months before that section, which contains roughly 20 conclusions and spans about 400 pages, is released to the public.
The report’s release also could resurrect a long-standing feud between the CIA and the FBI, where many officials were dismayed by the agency’s use of methods that Obama and others later labeled torture.
CIA veterans have expressed concern that the report reflects FBI biases. One of its principal authors is a former FBI analyst, and the panel relied in part on bureau documents as well as notes from former FBI agent Ali Soufan. Soufan was the first to interrogate Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, the suspected al-Qaeda operative better known as Abu Zubaida, after his capture in Pakistan in 2002 and has condemned the CIA for waterboarding a prisoner he considered cooperative.
The Senate report is by far the most comprehensive account to date of a highly classified program that was established within months of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, a time of widespread concern that an additional wave of terrorist plots had already been set in motion.
‘Damaging’ misstatements
Several officials who have read the document said some of its most troubling sections deal not with detainee abuse but with discrepancies between the statements of senior CIA officials in Washington and the details revealed in the written communications of lower-level employees directly involved.
Officials said millions of records make clear that the CIA’s ability to obtain the most valuable intelligence against al-Qaeda — including tips that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011 — had little, if anything, to do with “enhanced interrogation techniques.” ...
So to sum things up, the CIA lied and was using torture far beyond water boarding and also lied about how they actually got their useful information. They falsely gave credit to the torture when they had actually gotten it from regular techniques.
Senate Panel Votes to Reveal Report on C.I.A. Interrogations
By DAVID S. JOACHIMAPRIL 3, 2014
WASHINGTON — The public will soon get its first look at a voluminous report on the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation practices during the George W. Bush administration, after the Senate Intelligence Committee voted on Thursday to declassify key sections of it.
“The report exposes brutality that stands in stark contrast to our values as a nation,” Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat of California and the chairwoman of the committee, said in a written statement after the vote.
It continued, “This is not what Americans do.”
The committee voted to declassify the report’s executive summary and conclusions — more than 500 of its 6,200 pages. The next step is President Obama’s approval. Mr. Obama, who opposed the C.I.A. program as a presidential candidate and discontinued it once he took office in 2009, has said he wants the findings of the report made public. Continue reading the main story Related Coverage
Senator Susan Collins, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, supports declassifying a report on the C.I.A. Senators Clear Path for Release of Detention Report on C.I.A.APRIL 2, 2014
The White House would not say how long it would take the administration to review the report for sensitive national security disclosures, but a spokeswoman said the process, which will include a review by the C.I.A., would be expedited.
“We urge the committee to complete the report and send it to us, so that we can declassify the findings and the American people can understand what happened in the past, and that can help guide us as we move forward,” said Caitlin Hayden, the spokeswoman for the National Security Council. “We’ll do that as expeditiously as we can.”
People who have read the report, written by the Senate committee, say it offers the most detailed look to date on the C.I.A.’s brutal methods of interrogating terrorism suspects in the years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. It concludes that the spy agency repeatedly misled Congress, the White House and the public about the benefits of the program, under which more than 100 detainees were interrogated. ...
Jon Stewart rips Rumsfeld and Cheney: ‘Look how f*cking proud’ they are to avoid discussing torture By Arturo Garcia Tuesday, April 8, 2014 0:59 EDT
Daily Show host Jon Stewart observed on Monday that, as the Senate moves closer to declassifying a report trashing the Central Intelligence Agency’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques, the political figures behind it — including former Vice-President Dick Cheney — were resurfacing in the public eye.
“He’s like the Wilford Brimley of torture,” Stewart said of Cheney, before launching into an impression of Cheney doing a Brimley-like ad for waterboarding, gruffly calling it, “The right thing to do.”
Stewart also showed footage of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld from Errol Morris’ documentary The Unknown Known in which Rumsfeld parries a question about memos related to torture, blames the memos entirely on the Justice Department, then congratulates himself for, in his mind, stumping the questioner.
“Look how f*cking proud he is of having put a lot of different words in between ‘Bush administration’ and ‘torture,’ while not, in any explicit way, changing the meaning of those words or refuting the charge,” Stewart said, pointing to a picture of a smiling Rumsfeld. “But as long as you’re happy, I’m happy. And I assume that is happiness, and not his teeth trying desperately to escape his face.”
But while Cheney and Rumsfeld were engaged in defending their “twisted legacy,” their boss, then-President George W. Bush, was unveiling his private artwork collection, which seemed to be centered around the theme of, “Other people I knew who ran countries.”
“He is a somewhat confounding dude,” Stewart said of Bush.
Watch Stewart’s commentary, as posted online on Monday, below:
Washington (CNN) -- The CIA's harsh interrogations of terrorist detainees during the Bush era didn't work, were more brutal than previously revealed and delivered no "ticking time bomb" information that prevented an attack, according to an explosive Senate report released Tuesday.
The majority report issued by the Senate Intelligence Committee is a damning condemnation of the tactics -- branded by critics as torture -- the George W. Bush administration deployed in the fear-laden days after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The techniques, according to the report, were "deeply flawed," poorly managed and often resulted in "fabricated" information.
The long-delayed study, distilled from more than six million CIA documents, also says the agency consistently misled Congress and the Bush White House about the harsh methods it used and the results it obtained from interrogating al Qaeda suspects.
The report is reigniting the partisan divide over combating terrorism that dominated Washington a decade ago. Democrats argue the tactics conflict with American values while leading members of the Bush administration insist they were vital to preventing another attack.
It contains grisly details of detainees held in secret overseas facilities being subjected to near drowning, or waterboarding, driven to delirium by days of sleep deprivation, threatened with mock executions and threats that their relatives would be sexually abused.
The central claim of the report is that the controversial CIA methods did not produce information necessary to save lives that was not already available from other means. That is important because supporters of the program have always said that it was vital to obtaining actionable intelligence from detainees that could not be extracted through conventional interrogations.
CIA Director John Brennan strongly disagreed with the finding.
"Our review indicates that interrogations of detainees (subject to enhanced interrogation) did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives," he said. "The intelligence gained from the program was critical to our understanding of al Qaeda continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day."
Brennan said the agency had learned from its mistakes, but refuted the idea that it systematically misled top officials about its tactics and results. Obama: 'We tortured some folks' Hagel: We're 'prepared' for report release Former CIA: Program was 'mismanaged' Shines a light on a dark chapter for CIA Bush refutes CIA torture report
But President Barack Obama said in a statement the report reinforced his view that the harsh interrogation methods "were not only inconsistent with our values as a nation, they did not serve our broader counterterrorism efforts or our national security interests."
"I think overall, the men and women at the CIA do a really tough job and they do it really well," Obama said later Tuesday in an interview with Telemundo. "But in the aftermath of 9/11, in the midst of a national trauma, and uncertainty as to whether these attacks were gonna repeat themselves, what's clear is that the CIA set up something very fast without a lot of forethought to what the ramifications might be."
The Senate report also reveals new information that former president George W. Bush was not briefed by any CIA officer on the extent of the interrogations until April 2006.
When he finally was told, Bush expressed discomfort about the "image of a detainee, chained to the ceiling, clothed in a diaper, and forced to go to the bathroom on himself," according to the report, a declassified 525 page summary of a still-confidential 6,000 page document. ...
WASHINGTON — Months before the operation that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, the Central Intelligence Agency secretly prepared a public-relations plan that would stress that information gathered from its disputed interrogation program had played a critical role in the hunt. Starting the day after the raid, agency officials in classified briefings made that point to Congress.
But in page after page of previously classified evidence, the Senate Intelligence Committee report on C.I.A. torture, released Tuesday, rejects the notion that torturing detainees contributed to finding Bin Laden — a conclusion that was also strongly implied in “Zero Dark Thirty,” the popular 2012 movie about the hunt for the Qaeda leader. Continue reading the main story Related Coverage
George J. Tenet, left, was director of the Central Intelligence Agency when the brutal tactics began. The report said he misled President George W. Bush. Panel Faults C.I.A. Over Brutality and Deceit in Terrorism InterrogationsDEC. 9, 2014 Report Portrays a Broken C.I.A. Devoted to a Failed ApproachDEC. 9, 2014 President George W. Bush meeting with his war council in the Situation Room in March 2003. Bush Team Approved C.I.A. Tactics, but Was Kept in Dark on Details, Report SaysDEC. 9, 2014 Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, explaining the decision to report on C.I.A. tactics. For Dianne Feinstein, Torture Report’s Release Is a Signal MomentDEC. 9, 2014 Senator Saxby Chambliss and five other Republicans released a dissent to the main report. After Senate Report’s Release, Political Divide About C.I.A. Torture RemainsDEC. 9, 2014
“The vast majority of the intelligence” about the Qaeda courier who led the agency to Bin Laden “was originally acquired from sources unrelated to the C.I.A.'s detention and interrogation program, and the most accurate information acquired from a C.I.A. detainee was provided prior to the C.I.A. subjecting the detainee to the C.I.A.'s enhanced interrogation techniques,” the Senate report said. Continue reading the main story Document: The Senate Committee’s Report on the C.I.A.’s Use of Torture
It added that most of “the documents, statements and testimony” from the C.I.A. regarding a connection between the torture of detainees and the Bin Laden hunt were “inaccurate and incongruent with C.I.A. records.”
On Tuesday, the C.I.A. disputed the committee’s portrayal that it had been misleading and disingenuous about the role of that program in the hunt for Bin Laden.
The crucial breakthrough in the hunt was the identification of the courier, known as Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, who was the terrorist leader’s link to the outside world from his secret compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. His significance gradually came into sharper focus. Continue reading the main story Graphic: 7 Key Points From the C.I.A. Torture Report
But the Senate report shows that the C.I.A. was already actively collecting information about him earlier than was previously known and long before it had obtained any intelligence about him from detainees in its custody.
The United States had started wiretapping a phone number associated with Mr. Kuwaiti by late 2001, and as early as 2002, the C.I.A. had obtained from other sources — including reports from allies based on detainees in their custody — the courier’s alias and the fact that he was one of Bin Laden’s few close associates and “traveled frequently” to meet with him. It also had data on his age, physical appearance and family connections, as well as a recording of his voice — all of which proved crucial to finding him.
It was in 2004 that the C.I.A. came to realize that it should focus on finding Mr. Kuwaiti as part of the hunt for Bin Laden, after it interrogated a Qaeda operative, Hassan Ghul, who had been captured in Iraqi Kurdistan. The report concludes that Mr. Ghul provided “the most accurate” intelligence that the agency produced about Mr. Kuwaiti’s role and ties to Bin Laden. Photo The Senate Intelligence Committee report discredits the notion that the C.I.A. would not have found Osama bin Laden if it had not tortured detainees. Credit Associated Press
But the report emphasizes that Mr. Ghul provided all the important information about the courier before he was subjected to any torture techniques and spoke freely to his interrogators. During that two-day period in January 2004, it said, the C.I.A. produced 21 intelligence reports from Mr. Ghul, who one officer said “sang like a tweetie bird.” Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story
“He opened up right away and was cooperative from the outset,” the officer added.
In those initial interrogations, Mr. Ghul portrayed Mr. Kuwaiti as Bin Laden’s “closest assistant” and said he was always with him, identifying him as a likely courier who ran messages between Bin Laden and other leaders of Al Qaeda. He listed him as one of three people most likely to be with Bin Laden, who he speculated was living in a house in Pakistan, with Mr. Kuwaiti handling his needs. Continue reading the main story Graphic: Does Torture Work? The C.I.A.’s Claims and What the Committee Found
Nevertheless, the C.I.A. then decided to torture Mr. Ghul to see if he would say more. He was transferred to a “black site” prison, where he was shaved, placed in a “hanging” stress position, and subjected to 59 hours of sleep deprivation, after which he began hallucinating; his back and abdomen began spasming; his arms, legs and feet began experiencing “mild paralysis”; and he began having “premature” heart beats. During and after that treatment, he provided “no actionable threat information” that resulted in the capture of any leaders of Al Qaeda, the report said. ...
I might be more inclined to believe that, M E M, if it wasn't a partisan Democrats-only Senate report, that DIDN'T EVEN INTERVIEW >>>ANY<<< of the CIA leadership or CIA interrogators who actually can attest to what happened, and how effective these "enhanced interrogations" were in getting useful information.
The Democrats who released this report are far-left idealogues who were just pounded into the dirt by the American voters, Democrat Senators releasing this report in a lame-duck session weeks before they are removed office, and lose what little power they have left. The partisan-Democrat report is clearly politically motivated, and it is deceitfully produced to sell a narrative, not to investigate or report the true facts.
The report is based on the CIA's own internal documents. The intel used to get Bin Laden was pretorture. That's according to the CIA's own internal documents.
The report is based on the CIA's own internal documents. The intel used to get Bin Laden was pretorture. That's according to the CIA's own internal documents.
That's like trying to say The Wizard of Oz movie is based on everyday life in Kansas.
There's a big jump-off point from the facts, and an obscene amount of selective omission. As I said, Senate Democrats did not interview one CIA official or field agent. It's a Soviet-style report, where Democrats began with a foregone conclusion, and then carefully reverse-engineered the investigation, to get the conclusion they wanted, while carefully avoiding any sources that would provide them with objective contradictory facts.
I don't think there is a big jump off from the facts as it concerns Bin Laden. The intel was gotten before we used torture. That's what the CIA's own records show and the report meticulously references them. On the other hand the CIA will vaguely admit to mistakes but can't remember them. Nor did they want any report about it public. They destroyed some of their own records, spied on the committee and now nobody can remember and is shocked that something like anal hydration (rape) was used. Facts seem to be in short supply when it comes to their defense.
There are plenty of CIA operatives and officials who say otherwise, that "enhanced interrogation" yielded vital information that led to finding and taking out Bin Ladin.
And every account I've seen says that waterboarding and enhanced interrogation was used on exactly three Al Qaida prisoners, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammad. THREE! So all the hoopla is about nothing, it's not like every Islamic prisoner is given that treatment. At the height of license, it was still very selectively used.
And the enhanced interrogation uses mild things like sleep deprivation and waterboarding, which in fact are intimidation techniques, not actual torture. They're psychological breakdown measures, and can't be compared to using electricity applied to the jaw or testicles (as has been done to U.S. POW's by our enemies) or breaking bones (which has been done to U.S. POW's) or ripping out fingernails (as has been done to U.S. POW's). In fact, we aren't doing any more to prisoners with waterboarding and sleep deprivation than we subject U.S. Marines to in basic training, as preparation for what they will endure if captured.
And up until the Democrat/Left revealed these techniques, we never needed to torture prisoners. Al Qaida prisoners talked because they didn't know what they were facing in interrogation, and were compelled to disclose because of what MIGHT be done to them, the unknown threat, rather than what was actually done to them. But now these prisoners basically have the manual on what they will be subjected to (again: Thank you, treasonous Democrats!) and no longer have fear of being interrogated. Democrats and the liberal media have handed them our playbook.
In all the interviews I've seen of CIA, they have to jump through a lot of legal hoops, and briefed congress Democrats 30 times during the period in question. It is Democrats, not the CIA who are lying. On the occasions where agents crossed the line, it was their own agents, not external investigators, who reported the violations. The CIA burned records to protect the identity and confidentiality of their agents and informants, to protect them from being outed for political reasons at a later date by Democrats. Exactly what is occurring right now, By Sen. Diane Feinstein and other Senate Democrats!
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
And up until the Democrat/Left revealed these techniques, we never needed to torture prisoners. Al Qaida prisoners talked because they didn't know what they were facing in interrogation, and were compelled to disclose because of what MIGHT be done to them, the unknown threat, rather than what was actually done to them. But now these prisoners basically have the manual on what they will be subjected to (again: Thank you, treasonous Democrats!) and no longer have fear of being interrogated. Democrats and the liberal media have handed them our playbook. ...
I'm not sure how it's rational to blame democrats in that way. The torture had to have started before it was exposed. Trying to argue that it started because dems exposed it just doesn't make sense.
And again the report details what information the CIA had before resorting to torture. Yes they claim they got vital information but when you actually examine what they got it turns out they got some repeat information they already knew. On top of that they discount the misinformation that resulted from their torture and any wasted time following dead ends.
It's rational because Democrats are the ones releasing the information, endangering our CIA agents, their informants, our soldiers and U.S. citizens worldwide!
The "enhanced interrogations" were ended completely about 7 years ago, so it serves no purpose at this point to expose what happened, except for Democrat political posturing. And even the Democrats in the Senate and House intelligence committees, for years have been leaking our greatest secrets to the New York Times and other sources. You have a very selective interpretation of what the CIA says about information obtained from enhanced interrogation (and again, there was a total of THREE interrogated that way under Bush, and even those three very selectively, based on the fact they were anticipating another imminent attack, and therefore a greater urgency to get information quickly.
In the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and his courier, that led to killing Bin Ladin, they did get information from enhanced interrogation that allowed them to finally locate and assassinate him. I've seen interviews with Col. Tony Schaffer and Jose Rodriguez, to name just two I can think of offhand.
AGAIN: the Senate Democrats in releasing their report NEVER spoke to ANY actual CIA agents who were involved in enhanced interrogation, to insure they could deceitfully spin the interrogations in the selective context they wanted. Vs. the reality of what actually happened. I have not seen one CIA agent say the interrogations were not effective.
These are the same Democrats who wanted to de-fund our troops on the battlefield in Iraq, who (Sen Dick Durbin) called our troops comparable to "Nazi storm troopers, Siviet gulags and the Pol Pot regime" (and then retracted and apologized for the remark, and a week later denied he even said it and was "misinterpreted".) The same Democrats who prematurely pulled all our troops out of Iraq in 2011, and lost all the gains made there. The same Democrats who, despite the example in Iraq, are about to do the same in Afghanistan. The same Democrats who leaked all the details of the Bin Ladin raid and endangered Seal Team 6 for their own political gain, to the point that Defense Secretary Robert Gates told them to "Shut the fuck up!" The same Democrats who betrayed Israel and leaked in advance their plans to do air raids on Iran nuclear facilities from airfields in Azerbaijan, forcing Israel to abandon the raids. The same Democrats that have refused to do anything to prevent Iran from obtaining nukes. The same Democrats that have collapsed U.S. influence in the Mid East, and have betrayed our allies with released intelligence that countries like Saudi Arabia now do raids on Libya without informing the U.S. in advance.
Over the last 7 years, it is hard to think of an example where Democrat actions have not alienated our allies, while giving dangerous concessions to countries like Iran, Russia and China, while receiving nothing in return. It is not lightly that I use the word "treasonous" to describe Democrats. Their first impulse is to give away any U.S. diplomatic and military advantage, trash those who risk their lives to defend us, and hold the U.S. at every turn to a standard they don't hold any other nations to.
That's not even getting into Democrats' push for open borders and amnesty, and their literally applauding in the White House garden for a Mexican president who attacked U.S. immigration policy as "racist" (ignoring of course, how brutally Mexico treats its own illegals, and how humanely the U.S. treats Mexican illegals. The Democrats undermine and endanger U.S. national security, in virtually every way possible.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
There's also the issue that under Bill Clinton, we frequently sent Islamic terror prisoners to countries like Saudi Arabia to be (NOT "enhanced interrogation"!) actually tortured!
But the Democrat narrative is that "Bush is evil" and the source of all abuses, and therefore these facts are selectively omitted from the selective narrative.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
So according to the CIA's own record, they avoided briefing Colin Powell because they were afraid he would blow his stack but you thnk they told Pelosi everything?
