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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 -
deep rooted love of the USA and the CIA...not that Pearl was not a son of Jesus...I'm sure the Romans/Jewish surrogates loved their martyrs too...like the russians their children. (Or so the song says).
We are getting old you and I, George. We fought these battles for years on usenet during the reign of Prince Georgie. I am still surprised how an an old conservative like you continually maintains his integrity with our constitution. Good on you, brother.
Bin Laden is the most precious asset of a US president... again.
No, george, you're wrong.
You, along with a lot of other people I've read in my life, seem to be unable to distinguish between the words: Some, None, and All.
SOMEtimes, torture is not only an option, it is the only one.
So, Torture is not only justified SOME times, but is highly effective.
Once we rid ourselves of this ALL or NONE mentality, many things become possible, even the bountiful benefits of Torture.
the line for lobodomy's forms to the right
And the line for Language correction forms to the left of the Lobotomy line.
You'd make a good torturer. Look into it.
I bet I could get you to admit you have sucked 100 big cocks if I got to torture your ass for about 24 hours....would that be true? I don't know...maybe not?
But would it be "effective" at getting you to talk about your cock-sucking experiences? Oh..you betcha!
Your point that torture is effective is so easioy dismantled that it is ridiculous.
Honestly...the biggest problem I have with torture is that it lowers us down to the level of some real wonderful regimes of the past and present (North Korea, China, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union...etc, etc, etc. Is that the "moral high ground"?
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...and the Chinese, Russians, or whoever will just have to say...."we will have NO right to complain about it. Afterall, George Bush, Cheney, the CIA, the justice dept and even Obungo said...what we have done is not torture...so that must mean it will be O.K to do it to U.S. service members?
This is a slippery slope we have headed down...and will ONLY lead to worse problems going forward. We cannot, as a nation claim to have a superior code of ethics...and then act like the laws of decency do not apply to us...because our enemys do not adhere to them.
so you don't think there is a way to discern between admitting to something to stop the torture vs. telling the truth?
Really? I think you are very naive.
Congratulations. You too have made the top ten list for future torturers in our recruiting campaign.
Please call us at 1800-go fuck yourself.
+1776
"Once we rid ourselves of this ALL or NONE mentality, many things become possible, even the bountiful benefits of Torture."
Frisco bitchez!
The seeming endlessness of this preposterous Bin Laden story is starting to feel like torture.
This whole "we got him" story reeks like one gargantuan, steaming , mile high pile of bullshit.
Hey man...
You need to get on board with the team on come on in for the "final victory"
Or maybe you didn't you get the memo?
Obungo said t's "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED"....
USA....USA....USA....USA....USA....
What a fucking farce....hahahaha
I cannot tell a lie: waterboarding is not torture, George. Our own special forces guys are subjected to it for training. Now, having to listen to the Red Hot Chili Peppers blaring for hours at a time, well, there you've got a point. 1 minute of that shit and I'm ready to suck a 9mm myself.
PD is right. Waterboarding works. More, please.
you be next on keel haul list of listless water skiing knaves...You missed the ski jump platform you ass ...you've landed yourself deep into the woodwork...digging you out is going to be a true "blow" torch job!
Yes, Waterboarding IS Torture
Sure thing GW. Cite obama and holder. LOL. Libs.
The only thing that justifies torture, in my mind, GW, are your articles and thought processes.............
++
1. You are correct. Everyone who is not a seal or green beret gives in quickly. As a comedian once said "dick gregory?" If I was being tortured, I'd tell em stuff I don't even know.
2. The threat of a european nuclear revenge attack is ominous. Is this perhaps a reason that OBL was permitted to live under what must have been surveillance in pakistan?
3. There are techniques of determing someones lying that are not torture, for instance using MRI. Could they have been used?
I love the old pirate/buccaneer word for extensive water boarding: keel hauling.
Most likely candidates for this : P Wolfo, D Rumsteak, Dikk Che Nee, Dubbya.
Oh! for the good old jolly roger days! Yo, ho ho...
President Obama & Attorney General Eric Holder also say that Ben, Timmay, Lloyd, Jamie, Warren, et al haven't committed any crimes. Any politician is an utterly fallable source in a debate about what constitutes torture, they are expressing a view which suits their political objectives.
I see dumb people. They're everywhere. And they don't know that they're dumb!
Next up: "Everything that doesn't kill you isn't torture."
I'm making a point malek.
If the military shopped at the finest San Fran shops for latex and gags would you still consider it immoral and/or illegal to use them as "torture" devices?
+++++
just dumb, you're being too kind
"If we had really wanted to get Bin Laden, we would have gotten him in 2001..."
Maj. Gen. Elfatih Erwa, Minister of State for Defense in Sudan, offered Bin Hidin on a silver platter to Clinton in 1996.
All of this could have been avoided.
This makes more interesting reading
http://www.thedailybell.com/2217/WikiLeaks-Nuclear-Bomb-Story-Preceded-O...
ok , say they killed bin laden in 2001, for whatever reason, i don't know. but let's just say they could have. would this have eliminated the wars in iraq and afghanistan? i highly doubt it. the war plans for those two wars had been drawn up many years before they ever happened and 911 was just the excuse they needed to start them. after ten years, one might say, well will the troops who are fighting these wars maybe decide it is time to go home ? who knows. i doubt that too. after all they are all volunteers and do this because they volunteered to do it, a far cry from draftees.......
First the story was "Osama did it."
Then the story was "he's unfindable and
he taunts us from his hidden cave."
Now the story is "We got him!" and Obama
called in the strike personally.
Why they are playing this card now is
open to question.
Could it have something to do with the
badly botched birth certificate forgery?
In the meantime, the mostly untold
9/11 story. One you probably haven't
heard.
It's hair raising in its implications and
100% nailed down accurate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9uB64ghcq8&feature=related
Core Of Corruption, Volume 1
In The Shadows
{Full Film}
israeli mossad along with certain traitors in our own government did 911 and then tried to make it look like arabs did it, so that we would go attack their enemies in this world and do all the fighting and dying for them. fools we are and fools we have been. this is not hte first time this has happened. this happened in the civil war for sure and world war 1 and world war 2 for sure because both of those wars had to do with destroying white western european culture which is their enemy and also for the creation of the terrorist state of israel which is the only true terrorist state in existence in this world , since the jews invented terrorism. a nice slice of truth for this thread and i haven't even had my coffee yet. people had better wake up and soon to just who the true enemy of white people is, and you can call me a racist if you want, the term is silly at best , and anyone with half a brain must understand what all of this nonsense is truely all about and exactly what the bottom line is about all of this.
Getting late and your down in the thread...but if this is addressed to me...
There is nothing...I repeat nothing...valuable enough in Afghanistan to expend one American life unless the threat was from there...that is why we went there.
Now we're done...come home.
For whatever reason we went to Iraq...to kill a dictator who had been an ally and then went rouge attacking other allies and killing his own people, that too is over...we got no preferential oil treatment (red fucking herring alert)...nothing...its over come home.
Whatever murdering asshole who does not respect the rule of law of any nation that we stuffed into a box with creepy crawly (non-lethal) bugs...or kept awake at night by playing loud music...or poured water over a wet towel draped across their face...or turned the damned thermostat down to chill them out...
Does not equate...
to slicing Iraqi kids faces off with piano wire (as AQ in Iraq did)...does not equate to stuffing Iraqi kids into ovens and then placing them in front of their parents to secure their allegiance to AQ in Iraq...does not equate to using sarin & mustard gas on civilians...does not equate to those terminally evil bastard sons of Saddam having their own rape & torture chambers in their homes...et fucking cetera...
So yeah...we don't need to be the peace keeper of the whole damn world...but our people are far from being the evil in it...and I'm sick and tired of being accused of evil by extension by idiots who wouldn't know evil if it bit em in the ass.
SeeYa HPD
yes but bush himself said that hussein had nothing to do with 911. we had 40,000 men in the former russian republics waiting for the order to attack in afghanistan, and this was before 911. so the war plans for iraq and afghanistan were already on the table. we have been lied to time and time again. for 911 we were lied to in order to justify ad hominem attacks in this world on people who had nothing to do with 911 or anything else. when you see what happens, why in the hell would any arab attack the united states, knowing full well what would happen to them? it makes no sense. no one in their right mind would poke a stick in the eye of this beast and expect to be left alone. no sir, i am afraid i wholeheartedly disagree with your analysis and hope that one day you will change your mnd on it. frankly i see no hope in that ever happening, but those are the breaks. i can say one thing however. one day soon, you will have to make a determination of whose side you really are on and you will have to make that choice perhaps quickly. bush said, you are either with us or you are with the terrorist. these governments and these banks , to me, are the terrorist. so, one day the american insurgent while stopping you at some roadblock somewhere , will pull you out of your car and they will aim ak47's at your head and ask you the simple question. are you with us or are you with the terrorist.......believe me, it has got to happen. it must happen. it will happen. the crooked ways must be made straight again. the color gray will disappear into the ether of the horrible past and in the anarchy of the coming days, perhaps, if its God's will, a new american republic will be forged by those who remember somewhere in the deep recesses of their mind , stories about days long gone by and remember their insurgent traditions and their celtic ways....... queen to rook 3 , check........
"and hope that one day you will change your mnd on it. frankly i see no hope in that ever happening, but those are the breaks. i can say one thing however. one day soon, you will have to make a determination of whose side you really are on and you will have to make that choice perhaps quickly."
Well, no, there's not much chance of me changing my mind my friend.
I'm of the opinion that government is not inherently evil...its just that those who stay inside it for long become inherently incompetent & corruptible.
I think of it like a drunk behind the wheel of a car careening from one side of the road to the next (that is, from one crisis to the next in an attempt to correct the last crisis they should have not have created in the first place).
Its populated, mostly, by ordinary people tasked to do extraordinary things by morons at the top.
When you combine morons at the top and the innate human weakness of greed and power lust (that all humans have) you get what you get...in my opinion, there is no skin color or religion that is not suseptable in this regard...just look at Barry who came in as a socialist...LOL.
As for insurgent roadblocks/checkpoints...they would have been formed by people seeking conformity...a system...a way of doing things...and they would have leadership, which is governance.
So when you point your AK at me, I'll be the one with the knowing grin and a twinkle in my...so don't shoot me! ;-)
oh i see. so if we just voted in the right people everything would be hunky dorey. i get it.
you forget one thing.
rothschild said, i care not who is king as long as i control the money.
therefore the system is broken and cannot be fixed.
you do not understand this i am afraid. you are not facing reality. you must face it. remember your heritage. its stars and bars time pal..........
"you do not understand this i am afraid. you are not facing reality. you must face it. remember your heritage. its stars and bars time pal..."
I understand it perfectly.
The first rule is, do everything on your own terms.
The second rule is, if your opponent is in the process of destroying himself, step aside.
The third rule is, "I have never, on the field of battle, sent you where I was unwilling to go myself; nor would I advise to go a course which I myself was unwilling to pursue." NBF.
Wear those bullshit junks with pride, buddy.
I do BigD ;-)
They will not debate the morality/legality of one side of the issue lest it piss off the cheering section from which they spring.
So, S&M good, cold room/wet towel bad.
They will not debate the morality/legality of Obama using the actual intel derived from "torture" to order the OBL strike. It led us to his couriers.
Do I support a policy of state sponsered terrorism and/or torture?...of course not.
Could I personally use a lesser variant of it if I felt the situation required it?
How could I not? How could I let my own morality become the mechanism of my own defeat? Especially toward one who has shown no moral hesitation whatsoever to kill, torture & maim another and absolutely revel in it.
That is the nub of it...and a question that only the individual can answer for themselves. But they will not peer into the recesses of their own minds...its dark & scary in there, much safer to stand to the side and moralize on the actions of others...LOL.
And no, I'm pretty sure I'm not a mad dog sadist...I think ;-)
++
But they didn't have the results of the torture until the other morning. It was from one of the terrorists who'd been held in Gitmo for 10 years. Finally they got him to talk.
The End Justifies The Means.
Especially when you can't close the prison.
What????
Bin Laden was at that same mansion for the 10 years that guy was held at Gitmo????
Wow!
Obie was the honored guest of the Paky military, the jihad boys who created the Taliban in a bid to make Afghan their vassal state. That project continues.
"But they didn't have the results of the torture until the other morning. It was from one of the terrorists who'd been held in Gitmo for 10 years.
I'm still tryin to figger out how S&M, assorted bondage, erotic suffocation etc. can be so wide spread (pun?) in San Francisco that the Examiner only notices what happens elsewhere...one of the mysteries of the universe ;-)
Hey dipshit, learn the difference between consensual and nonconsensual activities. For your own sake and the sake of the women in your life, I hope you already have a general grasp of that.
Clever boy, did I mention wowen?...so now you will name one woman who was "tortured" by the military.
Crickets.
Perhaps you prefer men. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
I was pointing out that if you are unclear on the distinction between consensual and nonconsensual sex, you are looking at doing some hard time in the pokey. What part of "lack of consent" is so hard to get? Unless you're just a neocon troll!
"Perhaps you prefer men."
Perhaps you prefer goats...and there is something very wrong with that.
"I was pointing out that if you are unclear on the distinction between consensual and nonconsensual sex, you are looking at doing some hard time in the pokey."
I was pointing out that the government allows the sale of torture devices with the expectation that they will, in fact, be used as designed and then some of the very people who undoubtedly use them look on in mock horror when they are used by governments themselves.
So in your world, all that is required for torture to not be torture, is consent?
Excellent...LOL!
"Unless you're just a neocon troll!"
The final slur of a chick with a dick swinging a cat-o-nine tails at nothing but air...not very effective, here or in the boudoir.
Oh yeah, and talk about noticing what happens elsewhere, dontcha just love the UFO column in the Examiner?
It's a running series?...or a one off?
I'm in Fla., so I don't pay much attention until that states public sector retirement system threatens to take down the entire ponzi system as we now know it ;-)