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No, Bin Laden's Death Does NOT Justify Torture
There's a new meme widely circulating today claiming that torture was
okay after all, because it helped us locate and kill Bin Laden. See this, this, this and this.
As ABC News notes:
The
revelation that intelligence gleaned from the CIA's so-called black
sites helped kill bin Laden was seen as vindication for many
intelligence officials who have been repeatedly investigated and
criticized for their involvement in a program that involved the harshest
interrogation methods in U.S. history.
"We got beat up for it,
but those efforts led to this great day," said Marty Martin, a retired
CIA officer who for years led the hunt for bin Laden.
But as ABC notes in the next paragraph:
Mohammed did not reveal the names while being subjected to the
simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials
said. He identified them many months later under standard
interrogation, they said, leaving it once again up for debate as to
whether the harsh technique was a valuable tool or an unnecessarily
violent tactic.
Reuters points out:
But
the possibility that detainees who at some point were subjected to
physical coercion later gave up information leading to bin Laden's
discovery is sparking discussion among intelligence experts as to
whether he could have been found without them.
"It
will reignite a debate that hasn't gone away about the morality and
ethicacy of certain techniques," said Richard Haas, president of the
Council on Foreign Relations.
In reality, top interrogation experts (both conservative and liberal) agree that torture is an ineffective interrogation method which leads to false, unusable information:
- One of the Military's Top Interrogators Says Torture Cost Hundreds 'If Not Thousands' Of American Lives
Moreover, the type of torture used since 9/11 was a special type of torture specifically aimed at creating false confessions:
- One
of the Main Sources for the 9/11 Commission Report was Tortured
Until He Agreed to Sign a Confession that He Was NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO
READ
- 9/11
Mastermind: "During ... My Interrogation I Gave A Lot Of False
Information In Order To Satisfy What I Believed The Interrogators
Wished To Hear"
And see this.
Moreover, as I noted yesterday, we didn't need to torture anyone to catch Bin Laden:
According
to the U.S. Senate - Bin Laden was "within the grasp" of the U.S.
military in Afghanistan in December 2001, but that then-secretary of
defense Rumsfeld refused to provide the soldiers necessary to capture him.
This is not news: it was disclosed in 2005 by the CIA field commander for the area in Afghanistan where Bin Laden was holed up.
In addition, French soldiers allegedly say that they easily could have captured or killed Bin Laden in Afghanistan, but that the American commanders stopped them.
***
A retired Colonel and Fox News military analyst said that the U.S. could have killed Bin Laden in 2007, but didn't:
We
know, with a 70 percent level of certainty — which is huge in the
world of intelligence — that in August of 2007, bin Laden was in a
convoy headed south from Tora Bora. We had his butt, on camera, on
satellite. We were listening to his conversations. We had the world’s
best hunters/killers — Seal Team 6 [Note: this is the exact same team
that is credited with killing Bin Laden yesterday] — nearby. We had
the world class Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) coordinating
with the CIA and other agencies. We had unmanned drones overhead with
missiles on their wings; we had the best Air Force on the planet,
begging to drop one on the terrorist. We had him in our sights; we had
done it ....Unbelievably, and in my opinion, criminally, we did not
kill Usama bin Laden.Indeed, a United States Congressman claims that the Bush administration intentionally let Bin Laden escape in order to justify the Iraq war.
Moreover, as I've previously noted, capturing Bin Laden and taking down Al Qaeda was never the real priority:
American historian, investigative journalist and policy analyst Gareth Porter writes in the Asia Times:
Three
weeks after the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, former US defense
secretary Donald Rumsfeld established an official military objective
of not only removing the Saddam Hussein regime by force but
overturning the regime in Iran, as well as in Syria and four other
countries in the Middle East, according to a document quoted
extensively in then-under secretary of defense for policy Douglas
Feith's recently published account of the Iraq war decisions. Feith's
account further indicates that this aggressive aim of remaking the map
of the Middle East by military force and the threat of force was
supported explicitly by the country's top military leaders.Feith's book, War and Decision, released last month, provides excerpts of the paper Rumsfeld sent to President George W Bush on September 30, 2001, calling for the administration to focus not on taking down Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network but on the aim of establishing "new regimes" in a series of states...
***
General
Wesley Clark, who commanded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
bombing campaign in the Kosovo war, recalls in his 2003 book Winning Modern Wars
being told by a friend in the Pentagon in November 2001 that the list
of states that Rumsfeld and deputy secretary of defense Paul
Wolfowitz wanted to take down included Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, Sudan
and Somalia [and Lebanon].***
When
this writer asked Feith . . . which of the six regimes on the Clark
list were included in the Rumsfeld paper, he replied, "All of them."
[Note: Clark subsequently confirmed this in a videotaped public speech]***
The
Defense Department guidance document made it clear that US military
aims in regard to those states would go well beyond any ties to
terrorism. The document said the Defense Department would also seek to
isolate and weaken those states and to "disrupt, damage or destroy"
their military capacities - not necessarily limited to weapons of mass
destruction (WMD).Indeed, the goal seems to have more to do with being a superpower (i.e. an empire) than stopping terrorism.
As Porter writes:
***
A senior officer on the Joint Staff told State Department counter-terrorism director Sheehan he had heard terrorist strikes characterized more than once by colleagues as a "small price to pay for being a superpower".
If we had really wanted to get Bin Laden, we would have gotten him in 2001 (indeed, the Taliban offered to turn him over), or 2007.
But
we had "more important" things to do. Specifically, U.S. foreign
policy was focused on regime change in Iraq, Libya and elsewhere, and in
strategic interests not directly related to terrorism.
Postscript: Experts say that torture is unnecessary even to prevent "ticking time bombs" from exploding (see this, this and this). Indeed, a top expert says that torture would fail in a real 'ticking time-bomb' situation.
And, yes ... waterboarding is torture:
- President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, Malcolm Nance (an advisor on terrorism to the US departments of Homeland Security, Special Operations and Intelligence), Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples
(the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency) and many other
interrogation experts and high-level politicians say that waterboarding
is torture
- The United States has always considered waterboarding to be a crime of torture, including when the Japanese did it in WWII (and see this)
- Everyone claiming waterboarding is not torture has changed their tune as soon as they were exposed to even a small dose of it themselves. See this, this and this
But it wasn't just waterboarding:
- Major General Antonio Taguba: Photos Show Sodomy, Rape and Sexual Assault With Wire and Various Blunt Instruments
- "The Sexual Humiliation Of Iraqi Prisoners…Was Not An Invention Of Maverick Guards, But Part Of A SYSTEM Of Ill-Treatment And Degradation"
- advertisements -
To officially admit to using water boarding to obtain information, to do it without shame,and to then refer to the technic as "enhanced interrogation" pretty much says it all.
Where are the International Human rights tribunals? I guess they are not "money and power" blind.Now we know by self admission who is Public Enemy #1. We also know that this enemy is getting progressively more aggressive and dearing. it does not act as a human being, but rather has a machine like mind, a corporate mind.
There is a was a teenager in Cambodia. He had six months of formal schooling before being conscripted as a foot soldier in the Khmer Rouge. In one year he rose from foot soldier to general, in a regime where being a loyal agrarian serf perhaps extended the lease on your life. He was captured by the Vietnamese, interrogated and provided his captors some bad intel. Events broke in his favor and he was asked to lead the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia. Hun Sen is currently strongman PM for life of Cambodia, and an equal head-of-government in the eyes of the UN. Ironically, he and former Khmer Rouge general Chea Sim, now president of Cambodia, are hosting the UN show trials of some of their former compatriots. Unfortunately, International Human Rights is largely a joke, except when used a tool of those who practice statecraft to further their ambitions.
Life has these twists and turns...especially when the big countries put their thick ugly fingers in the pie of small fragile countries like Cambodia. It was a quiet sweet place in 1969 until HK started his private side show there and sucked it deep into the Viet quagmire. What followed was a nightmare for the Khmer stage managed by a rabid USA determined not to lose in SVN. When that happened all hell broke loose in Cambodia, with the rabid back lash of local commie agrarian ROuge crowd. Two million dead and it took the Viets to clean out these scum bags. So its the irony of life to be swept into the tsunami of the colonial wars of nations like France and USA which unfolded on three small countries who asked for nothing except the end of colonial rule... C'est une putain de vie!
And a huge, wobbly, fat filled, obscene behind... now totally exposed, as full of debt...deep and deadly kind of shit...that no one will want to clear up in the near future...all charitable bets will then be off and it'll be a 'face à face' between the Oligarchy and the people ...unless they be truly sheeple down to the depths of their brave, american hearts...as on this side of the pond as the EU will not be exempt from having to empty those heavy asses full of hubris and "I'm so rich it makes me want to itch and then emigrate to HK or Sing Singapore"...
This board is one giant embarassment. You - especially the traitor GW -should be ashamed. How many of you lost loved ones on 9/11? How many of you live in NY? The conspiracy theories are so idiotic it is hard to even comment on them. GW - you are an absolute disgrace.
a story about the alamo, a little while later
The Civil War almost started at the Alamo
the Civil War officially started, at the Alamo on Feb. 16, 1861.
On that day, when Major General David Twiggs, commanding officer of the Federal Department of Texas, arrived by wagon at his office in the long barracks adjacent to the Alamo, he was confronted by a committee headed by Samuel Maverick who demanded that Twiggs surrender all Federal troops, garrisons and supplies on Texas soil to the State of Texas. Maverick and his committee were backed up by a force of about 1,000 Texas militiamen commanded by Col. Ben McCulloch. Fewer than 200 U.S. Army soldiers were stationed at the Alamo that day and they were mostly Quartermaster non-combatant troop. So, Twiggs did surrender that day - almost two months before the South fired its cannons at Fort Sumter - but history does not accord this event prominence because the entire surrender took place without a single shot being fired and no blood being shed. There is a very special irony of Twiggs' surrender: later that very same day, Federal lieutenant colonel Robert E. Lee (who at that time was the commanding officer of the 2nd U.S. Cavalry at Fort Mason in Mason, Texas) rode into San Antonio. Lee was on his way back to Washington, D.C., where he declined President Lincoln's offer to assume command of all Federal Army forces.
so you guys see. we texicans have a history of telling the blue bellies to shove it. its in our blood. we need to do it again. we want paul to come home and be our governor but he won't do it. his masonic business is inside the beltway. so be it. his chinese made rope is waiting with his name on it, along with many other ready made hangman nooses, in storage for now, for the time when they will be needed. thank you , thank you every much......
are you davy Crockett's son or sam Houston's?...Can't tell from out here...your avatar is not crystal clear.
Stop torturing us with your anti-torture rants.... Then again, maybe you're right...
Maybe we shouldn't have wasted the eco-precious water on three terrorists 8 years ago with medically supervised (fake) waterboarding. Maybe we should have just killed them. No prisoners. No gitmo. No trials. No more wasted money warehousing CO2 emitting terrorists. And no more wrecking the planet with those messy fossil fuels taking the long, convoluted, way chasing terrorists around the globe.
The military should get carbon credits for each terrorist they eliminate instead of taking them prisoner. Thanks George.
Torture is NECESSARY even if to make the enemy uncomfortable with the thought of capture. It can be effective and it can be profitable in human costs. Not many who make war for a living have any trouble breaking a few (or lots of) eggs to make a cake.
Dont be so wimpy and squemish, war IS hell
yes war is hell and so may i ask you why we are fighting these unconstitutional wars?
I though we had all this down pat. WE dealt with terrorist religious fanatic suicide bombers before..............they were called "kamikazis"!!! And we flew over and killed everyone we could til they gave up. Any questions??
the analogy doesn't hold up. the japanese wanted to surrender but we wouldn't let them because they wanted to extend the war as long as possible in order to try out their latest jewish toy , the atomic bomb, on the japanese people. the kamakazi attacks were purpetrated on us, because we were attacking the japanese homeland and because young japanese minds full of mush were told that they would go to heaven while dying this way in the defense of their country. many of them bought into it and died for it. there never ever has been one terrorist attack by arabs on this country , not now , not ever. now i would not blame them one bit if they did do it. i mean we can look back over the last hundred years and see how we have screwed the arabs over time and time again and so we are guilty as charged. but the arabs did not do 911, nor did they do oklahoma city, nor did they do the 1993 wtc bombing either. so if they didn't do it, then who did? hmmm?
George---Waterboarding was directly responsible for Bin Laden's death. That's a fact, regardless of how you sanctimonious liberals whine about it. The deaths of thousands of Americans have now been avenged. Radical Islam eats shit.
Time to bring the troops home.
Smokey(Jim)Quinn* ... commenting under another alias ... using his usual MO ... obscene epitaphs as is usual for him, when in his confused and deeply Bi-polar state.
Just another 9-11MORON ... nothing rational.
Get some help Quinn. You are really losing it.
* #577733
do you really honestly believe all of that elephant grey bullshit? right off the news wire from the neocon fox network , si? that is all i heard yesterday on the networks while listening to the enemy as he spread his propaganda. well if it wasn't for waterboarding we never would have found him. first off sir, the whole thing probably never happened. were you there? did you see this happen? did anyone see it happen? who saw it happen? this whole thing was one big production for the sheep. and so many stupid dumb amerkans sucked right in on it and did a little dance for the owners like they always do, as if on cue. i want to dance with them but this is not what i have in mind.
About 20% of the Amerikan Public can use and understand logically valid reasoning, GW...
The rest think the world is a John Wayne movie and cheer when the Duke shoots the Indians regardless of the facts... or whether the movie was reality...
Our fellow citizens have been conditioned and propagandized this way...
Forget the Osama bin Laden side show and get back to reality of the imploding economy, imploding dollar, TBTF Wall Street criminal corruption, and the ejection of Barry Soetoro...
Emanuel Goldstein is dead... Long live Emanuel Goldstein for more repression and looting...
For those on the crusade against torture, why not put the spotlight on all torture taking place in the world to at least put the US actions in context? China the rising star who many point at as being superior to the US is one of the most prolific users of torture in modern history. Whatever the US has done pales in comparison to the Chinese. China executes more people than any nation in the world and routinely uses electric shocks, beatings, sleep deprivation etc. to force confessions on it's own civilians. While I disagree with the use of torture as it goes against America's values, don't make believe that the US is some barbarian in a sea of moral and ethical utopia. For those who wish to read about Chinese torture:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/02/AR200512...
May I suggest reading the book The Interrogator by Hans Scharff. Scharff was a Luftwaffe interrogator in WWII, and after the war made mosaics for Disneyland among others. Scharff says torture doesn't work, but simply getting a prisoner to talk about anything eventually gets results. Command of the prisoners language is critical and he wonders how some interrogators during the Viet Nam war had no language skills. Some of the pilots Scharff interrogated contributed to his book. One of the U.S. Pilots stated, "I knew Scharff got information out of me, but I don't know what". Among Scharffs skills was simply taking a prisoner into town for a few beers and a chat about nothing. He treated his prisoners with the utmost respect and humanity. In fact, when he emigrated from Germany to the United States, it was his former prisoners who sponsored his entry into the U.S. and subsequent citizenship. Great book.
thanks for brining some sense to the discussion. I will look up the book. I'm not a fan of pulling finger nails out for fun or to see how much discomfort we could inflict before someone passes out anyway......but I resent the implication that ALL prisoners need to be given an attorney, especially ones picked up on the battle field, and further that nothing good comes from keeping people locked up. I wonder about holes in the Bin Laden story but feel that however they got the info, it helps show terrorist we can and will act.....its the only thing they respond to. Maybe 30 yrs from now they will have political office like Sinn Fein and legitamize, but for now, a response is needed that they respect.
I look forward to the day when IRS auditors can torture you to find out how much you've been cheating the government. It's so much more efficient than plowing through boxes of receipts. Giving government agents the power to torture citizens to get vital information is a terrific idea. Funny nobody thought of it before Bill Clinton and the George W. Bush started renditioning suspects to Saudi Arabia and Egypt for heightened interrogation.
A TOTALLY ridiculous stretch of imagination. It doesnt work that way.
Somebody please torture this clown for his punishment
Torture = BAD!
Double Tap to Skull = GOOD!
3,000 civilians dead on 9/11 = "murder and terrorism"
200-300,000 civilians dead in Iraq = "collateral damage"
It starts with waterboarding terrorists and it ends with torture and murder of those who disagree with 'the state', peacefully or otherwise.
Don't forget Hitler used the threat of terrorism in Germany to provide him with the tools required for total control of the population through fear and intimidation.
I still can't understand why it took more than 10 years for the worlds only superpower to locate a man who they trained!
I mean it's not like Osama wasn't using all the moves taught by the CIA in the first place is it. This whole man hunt was a total sham from the towers coming down to the fake death yesterday.
Just remember - the blowouts on the towers - that's not a bomb or fire - that is a controlled demolition.
The rest is just scenery to confuse the stupid and to 'write history' with later.
Tyler, here is the official military report of the burial at sea off the coast of Pakistan on board the Carl Vinson.
http://militarytimes.com/news/2011/05/military-bin-laden-burial-050211w/
Didn't your reports indicate the Vinson was in the Mediterranean? Did it cross back through the Suez while I wasn't watching?
anyone worked out there'd be alot more peace in the world and alot less havoc, murder and mayhem if we'd topped the sociopathic murderous scum in our Western leadership than the leader of this little Arab outfit?
..there's an idea, anyone up for a whip round to topple our terrorist organisations in Washington, Westminster, the UN and Jerusalem???
Good survey, GW, about how Rumsfeld took his marching orders from... DOUG FEITH, the guy General Franks called "THE STUPIDEST MAN ON EARTH"!! http://www.slate.com/id/2100899/
(see my earlier comment/reply.)
But like any other idiot dauphin, Feith was backed up by the Royal Court - in this case, of the israel war lobby, and all its BILLIONS upon trillions of dollars stolen from American taxpayers over the past couple of decades. (by Rubinomics
"license to swindle" "Deregulation" & the Fed looting American savings with inflationary Bernake bucks.)
( JPM was, and is, a 100 year front for the rothschilds... as were/are the Fed, GS, Lehman, Solomon, etc. The Fed DROVE AMERICA STRAIGHT INTO THE DEPRESSION in 1929 (by CONTRACTING the money supply, when an expansion was needed).
Ironically, today they are driving America into the ditch using the OPPOSITE financial sabotage tactic: printing TOO much money, which is leading to, if not Weimar inflation just yet, then soaring worldwide food prices & stagflation as we speak.
Ding-ding-ding! We have a winna!
What is torture?
Is "bread and water only" torture?
Is isolation torture?
Is sleep deprivation, torture?
Are harsh words, torture?
Is using fear as a tool, acceptable?
Inflicting massive physical damage is obvious, but where do we draw the pych ops line, if health is not threatened?
Complicated issue.
the inquisition had a nice, simple way when they put "ze question" to you : lightning rod, up from your bum out of your mouth, then asked you if you saw the light of <god> shining into your soul...If you still didn't you went to the stake to be grilled as pork chop.
ps- silvers back up 3.5% on the overnight
Democrat Jamie Gorelnick - primary responsibility for 9/11 and mortgage meltdown.
She made tens of millions like Rahm setting up the mtg meltdown at Fannie and Freddie with the CRA lawsuit muslim.
She is a Dem like you GW - so F**k off GW. Your posts are tedious.
rahm emanuel, and his boss(es), bob rubin & larry summers, are "DINOs" - "Democrats IN NAME ONLY." they are actually RADICAL RIGHT-WING warmongering, financial swindling, treasury looting, social safety-net gutting, outsource-US-jobs-to-China Neo-Cons. You are correct in your assessment (that the mortgage meltdown bore some "Democrat" responsibility - BOB RUBIN, LARRY SUMMERS, RAHM EMANUEL, and the Schumer, DiFi crowd!), but, sorry, the 9-11 TREASON was PURE Cheney-bushCo.
(Anyways, there is NO difference between the bush-cheney Neo-Cons,
http://newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm
http://newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm
and the obumer so-called "Democrat" Neo-Cons -
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/obamajews.html
they BOTH answer to netanyahu and the israel war lobby crazies
Indeed, HAT TIP TO George Washington, for so well illustrating that bizzaro-man Rumsfeld (and his boss, cheney) were READING FROM THE Doug Feith NEO-CON (netanyahu commissioned & written war lobby) playbook in his excellent article -
(brief timeline here)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfowitz_Doctrine http://work.colum.edu/~amiller/wolfowitz1992.htm
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article1438.htm
(the above 2 historical documents lead directly to the so called "Project for a New AMERICAN Century," the same sites for "Bush's Neo-Cons" I link above; which, given PNAC's Likudnik/Netanyahu/Israel originations, SHOULD be called the "Project for a New ISRAEL DOMINATED century." )
Great job of describing "Our" leadership. As for torture, we executed Imperial Japanese Army officers for waterboarding our POW after the war.
Torture Is Not a Partisan Issue . . . George Washington - Who Was Neither a Democrat or Republican - Forbid All Torture
Is Nobel Peace Prize Winner Obama More Brutal than Bush?
" Is Nobel Peace Prize Winner Obama More Brutal than Bush?"
sorry to quwibble, GW, but you're asking the wrong question. The question you need to ask, to get to the heart of the problem, is,
Never, never just write "torture" because it has been made (by the Neo-Con media heads who use officialeze bureaucrat-speak to confuse readers & the public) into a meaningless, fuzzball noun/verb... instead, use the term
GESTAPO TORTURE,
to FORCE the writers, 'academics,' 'intellectuals,' & war-lobby supporters who embrace this Gestapo tactic to explain why it is "OK" for them, but NOT for the WWII German or Japanese (or post-WWII Communist) armies...
(ans: because they can get away with DEHUMANIZING "terrorists," even though the American revolution was very much an anti-royalist revolution, and we are now, today - the treacherous Neo-Con war lobby & their big finance backers - helping several royalist regimes quash any popular or democratic rights.)
Torture is justified because it facilitated the murder of an alleged terrorist? This is psychotically evil. That it plays in Peoria says nothing good about what's left of America.
Very well and concisely stated.
The sad fact is, however, that too many Dumbericans remain willfully blinded by the flags wrapped around their heads and over their eyes to ever even question the grossly unethical, warmongering neocon foreign policy honed to perfection by the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld regime --- and seamlessly carried over into the Obamao regime as well.
George, I always enjoy your write ups. On occasion I disagree. This time I ask a question. What type of action becomes proper, related to how many lives. One on one—nada. Patty cake. One thousand to one is another question.
So lets say you skin someone alive and save 1000 lives. Is that correct? What if the skinning does not save anyone? Is that correct? What is the value of one life or one thousand lives? What about a President or General that sends fighters into the most hellish of torture battles of weapons and weather. Whats you gonna do to them George? Remember this is with intent, premeditated.
It is conflicted George, all of it. There are jobs to get done regardless of the cost. The ethics of war, like religion, is similar to politics, unethical.
Onlooker, my post isn't about ethics ... it is about EFFECTIVENESS. Please read this:
Forget Morality, Humanity or Legality: Torture DOESN'T WORK
ETHICS is the argument against torture.
Every time I hear someone regurgitate the line "torture doesn't work" I wonder what their take is on "women can't have orgasms."
It is necessary to define EXACTLY what constitutes torture.
Equally important, within the context of INTERROGATION (as opposed to retribution, dissuasion, or any of the other traditional uses for torture) it is also critical to DEFINE THE GOAL. Extracting false confessions is often a goal of interrogation. John McCain is a glowing example of the SUCCESS of torture in military interrogation- he probably had no actionable intelligence by the time he signed his confession, but actionable intelligence that was not goal at that point. When the GOAL of an interrogation is a confession, unjust outcomes can just as easily occur without "torture." Think of the number of false confessions extracted by law enforcement in the US, they exceed the number the extracted by counter-terrorism and military officials.
It is comforting to believe that if the US does not employ torture, that its soldiers will be LESS likely to be victims of torture in future conflicts, but history does not support this. But even the theoretical efficacy cannot be measured without a specific opponent. If two States, signatories to the Hague and Geneva conventions, with professional highly trained soldiers, and strong ETHICS against torture, face off in war, then the argument carries weight. Fighting a stateless enemy, which does not value human life, even that of its own soldiers and expecting them to play by the Marquess of Queensberry rules in a death-match is naive. However, military history is replete with examples of torture being used to successfully achieve goals, some the more colorfully barbaric being the campaigns of Genghis Khan and Vlad the Implaer's repulsion of Mehmed's advances in 1462.
Sexual assault by an officer of the State can be recognized as State sponsored torture under international law. The TSA's torture of American travelers has not stopped a single act of attempted terrorism on US flights, and is supported by many politicians who otherwise decry the use of torture. However, when foreign intelligence agencies pass along the results of "interrogations" which lead to the prevention of specific plots, the US is more than happy to receive the information, and there is no outcry from those same politicians who oppose torture.
Torture is wrong, but not because it cannot be an effective tool in certain circumstances in skilled hands. Torture is wrong because it is contradictory to American values. To argue that torture is wrong because it is ineffective opens the door to the question- What happens if someone perfects the skill and torture can be reliably used to extract information?
Your analysis here is strong and concise. Have an imaginary cold one on me -- +1!
+3.14
<<<< Also, the next time (and there will be a next time) that we fight a REAL war...and there are large amounts of American POW's...they WILL face the same kind of treatment... >>>>
The NEXT TIME???? Geez, such naivete. How old are you and do you know anything that has happened in the world pre 1980?
Suggest you do some research on how US POWs were treated in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. Oh, wait! I'm assuming you CAN read and your literary interests go beyond comic books.
Torture is indeed unjustified.
A bullet to the head is much more appropriate...and economical:
http://elderofziyon.blogspot.com/2011/05/must-see-iraqi-tv-memri.html
Lets bring back Dick "Chainsaw" Cheney for a comment.
Read this article carefully. Look at how much emphasis the predators-that-be in the government of the USSA put on punishing "the top guy" in the "terrorist pyramid".
Let this point not be forgotten. This means the scumbags most responsible for approving torture, and for civilian casualties in bogus military adventures (Iraq, Afganistan, Packistan, Libya, etc) are those at the top of the pyramid.
If this or any other country ever gets out from under predator domination, those big-shot terrorists, from Bush to Cheney to Rumsfeld to Obama must be tried and punished for torture, treason, crimes against humanity, and endless other transgressions.
BTW, did I read correctly that they hid the physical evidence they killed Osama? Smells like yet another scam to me. Either it wasn't Osama, or Osama was killed long ago and they just decided to take advantage for PR reasons.
I hereby <UNJUNK> you. Nice piece of logic...
Empires who torture are no fucking good and I don't buy this OBL story. They gave this gift to Obama in his worst hour and now the hoople heads are waving the flag again and chanting "USA". He's been saved as a Ace in the whole for the most desperate times and they needed to play this card before it's shelf life expired.
+5... Accurate Analysis
Now, roll out some paid George Washington University students with crisp, brand new Amerikan flags to wave Sunday night in front of the White House...a la color revolution "crowds"... On command chanters...
The news cameras out numbered the "spontaneous" flag wavers... But you couldn't tell that from the CNN "coverage" could you?
Phony as Real
Are you catching on yet to how phony the event and how phony the media reported response is??? Barry Soetoro needed a change of subject, fast...