“We Did Some Things Contrary To Our Values”
Obama said today:
We tortured some folks ….
We did some things that were contrary to our values.
What does this mean? What is the big picture?
Initially, we applaud Obama admitting to this unsavory chapter in U.S. history. The government has denied for years that the U.S. tortures, even though we in the alternative media exposed the torture 10 years ago.
And it wasn’t just “some folks” we tortured. The torture was widespread and systemic.
And it wasn’t just bad guys who were tortured:
- The commander of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Janis Karpinski, estimates that 90% of detainees in the prison were innocent
- The number two man at the State Department under Colin Powell, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, says that many of those being held at Guantanamo Bay were innocent, and that top Bush administration officials knew that they were innocent
- U.S. military files show that many Guantánamo prisoners were held on the flimsiest grounds such as wearing a Casio watch, being a prisoner in a Taliban jail, driving cabs in certain geographic regions, or being Al Jazeera reporters
- Manystate that those tortured were mainly innocent farmers, villagers, or those against whom neighbors held a grudge. Indeed, people received a nice cash reward from the U.S. government for turning people in as “suspected terrorists” (and see this movie)
Torture INTERFERES With Our Ability to Fight Terrorism, Obtain Intelligence Information and protect National Security
We’ve repeatedly noted that virtually all of the top interrogation experts – both conservatives and liberals (except for those trying to escape war crimes prosecution) – say that torture doesn’t work:
- Army Field Manual 34-52 Chapter 1 says:
“Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.”
- The C.I.A.’s 1963 interrogation manual stated:
Intense pain is quite likely to produce false confessions, concocted as a means of escaping from distress. A time-consuming delay results, while investigation is conducted and the admissions are proven untrue. During this respite the interrogatee can pull himself together. He may even use the time to think up new, more complex ‘admissions’ that take still longer to disprove.
- According to the Washington Post, the CIA’s top spy – Michael Sulick, head of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service – said that the spy agency has seen no fall-off in intelligence since waterboarding was banned by the Obama administration. “I don’t think we’ve suffered at all from an intelligence standpoint.”
- The CIA’s own Inspector General wrote that waterboarding was not “efficacious” in producing information
- A 30-year veteran of CIA’s operations directorate who rose to the most senior managerial ranks (Milton Bearden) says (as quoted by senior CIA agent and Presidential briefer Ray McGovern):
It is irresponsible for any administration not to tell a credible story that would convince critics at home and abroad that this torture has served some useful purpose.
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The old hands overwhelmingly believe that torture doesn’t work ….
- A former high-level CIA officer (Philip Giraldi) states:
Many governments that have routinely tortured to obtain information have abandoned the practice when they discovered that other approaches actually worked better for extracting information. Israel prohibited torturing Palestinian terrorist suspects in 1999. Even the German Gestapo stopped torturing French resistance captives when it determined that treating prisoners well actually produced more and better intelligence.
- Another former high-level CIA official (Bob Baer) says:
And torture — I just don’t think it really works … you don’t get the truth. What happens when you torture people is, they figure out what you want to hear and they tell you.
- Michael Scheuer, formerly a senior CIA official in the Counter-Terrorism Center, says:
“I personally think that any information gotten through extreme methods of torture would probably be pretty useless because it would be someone telling you what you wanted to hear.”
- A retired C.I.A. officer who oversaw the interrogation of a high-level detainee in 2002 (Glenn L. Carle) says:
[Coercive techniques] didn’t provide useful, meaningful, trustworthy information…Everyone was deeply concerned and most felt it was un-American and did not work.”
- A former top Air Force interrogator who led the team that tracked down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has conducted hundreds of interrogations of high ranking Al Qaida members and supervising more than one thousand, and wrote a book called How to Break a Terrorist writes:
As the senior interrogator in Iraq for a task force charged with hunting down Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the former Al Qaida leader and mass murderer, I listened time and time again to captured foreign fighters cite the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as their main reason for coming to Iraq to fight. Consider that 90 percent of the suicide bombers in Iraq are these foreign fighters and you can easily conclude that we have lost hundreds, if not thousands, of American lives because of our policy of torture and abuse. But that’s only the past.Somewhere in the world there are other young Muslims who have joined Al Qaida because we tortured and abused prisoners. These men will certainly carry out future attacks against Americans, either in Iraq, Afghanistan, or possibly even here. And that’s not to mention numerous other Muslims who support Al Qaida, either financially or in other ways, because they are outraged that the United States tortured and abused Muslim prisoners.
In addition, torture and abuse has made us less safe because detainees are less likely to cooperate during interrogations if they don’t trust us. I know from having conducted hundreds of interrogations of high ranking Al Qaida members and supervising more than one thousand, that when a captured Al Qaida member sees us live up to our stated principles they are more willing to negotiate and cooperate with us. When we torture or abuse them, it hardens their resolve and reaffirms why they picked up arms.
He also says:
[Torture is] extremely ineffective, and it’s counter-productive to what we’re trying to accomplish.When we torture somebody, it hardens their resolve … The information that you get is unreliable. … And even if you do get reliable information, you’re able to stop a terrorist attack, al Qaeda’s then going to use the fact that we torture people to recruit new members.
And he repeats:
I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.
And:
They don’t want to talk about the long term consequences that cost the lives of Americans…. The way the U.S. treated its prisoners “was al-Qaeda’s number-one recruiting tool and brought in thousands of foreign fighters who killed American soldiers.
- The FBI interrogators who actually interviewed some of the 9/11 suspects say torture didn’t work
- Another FBI interrogator of 9/11 suspects said:
I was in the middle of this, and it’s not true that these [aggressive] techniques were effective
- A third former FBI interrogator — who interrogated Al Qaeda suspects — says categorically that torture does not help collect intelligence. On the other hand he says that torture actually turns people into terrorists
- A declassified FBI e-mail dated May 10, 2004, regarding interrogation at Guantanamo states “[we] explained to [the Department of Defense], FBI has been successful for many years obtaining confessions via non-confrontational interviewing techniques.” (see also this)
- The FBI warned military interrogators in 2003 that enhanced interrogation techniques are “of questionable effectiveness” and cited a “lack of evidence of [enhanced techniques’] success.
- “When long-time FBI director Mueller was asked whether any attacks on America been disrupted thanks to intelligence obtained through “enhanced techniques”, he responded “I don’t believe that has been the case.”
- The Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously found that torture doesn’t work, stating:
The administration’s policies concerning [torture] and the resulting controversies damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.
- The military agency which actually provided advice on harsh interrogation techniques for use against terrorism suspects warned the Pentagon in 2002 that those techniques would produce “unreliable information.”
- General Petraeus says that torture is unnecessary
- Retired 4-star General Barry McCaffrey – who Schwarzkopf called he hero of Desert Storm – agrees
- The number 2 terrorism expert for the State Department says torture doesn’t work, and just creates more terrorists.
- Former Navy Judge Advocate General Admiral John Hutson says:
Fundamentally, those kinds of techniques are ineffective. If the goal is to gain actionable intelligence, and it is, and if that’s important, and it is, then we have to use the techniques that are most effective. Torture is the technique of choice of the lazy, stupid and pseudo-tough.
He also says:
Another objection is that torture doesn’t work. All the literature and experts say that if we really want usable information, we should go exactly the opposite way and try to gain the trust and confidence of the prisoners.
- Army Colonel Stuart Herrington – a military intelligence specialist who interrogated generals under the command of Saddam Hussein and evaluated US detention operations at Guantánamo – notesthat the process of obtaining information is hampered, not helped, by practices such as “slapping someone in the face and stripping them naked”. Herrington and other former US military interrogators say:
We know from experience that it is very difficult to elicit information from a detainee who has been abused. The abuse often only strengthens their resolve and makes it that much harder for an interrogator to find a way to elicit useful information.
- Major General Thomas Romig, former Army JAG, said:
If you torture somebody, they’ll tell you anything. I don’t know anybody that is good at interrogation, has done it a lot, that will say that that’s an effective means of getting information. … So I don’t think it’s effective.
- Brigadier General David R. Irvine, retired Army Reserve strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner interrogation and military law for 18 years with the Sixth Army Intelligence School, says torture doesn’t work
- The first head of the Department of Homeland Security – Tom Ridge – says we were wrong to torture.
- The former British intelligence chairman says that waterboarding didn’t stop terror plots.
- A spokesman for the National Security Council (Tommy Vietor) says:
The bottom line is this: If we had some kind of smoking-gun intelligence from waterboarding in 2003, we would have taken out Osama bin Laden in 2003.
- The Marines weren’t keen on torture, either
- As Vanity Fair reports:
In researching this article, I spoke to numerous counterterrorist officials from agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. Their conclusion is unanimous: not only have coercive methods failed to generate significant and actionable intelligence, they have also caused the squandering of resources on a massive scale through false leads, chimerical plots, and unnecessary safety alerts…Here, they say, far from exposing a deadly plot, all torture did was lead to more torture of his supposed accomplices while also providing some misleading “information” that boosted the administration’s argument for invading Iraq.
- Neuroscientists have found that torture physically and chemically interferes with the prisoner’s ability to tell the truth
- An Army psychologist – Major Paul Burney, Army’s Behavior Science Consulting Team psychologist – said (page 78 & 83):
was stressed to me time and time again that psychological investigations have proven that harsh interrogations do not work. At best it will get you information that a prisoner thinks you want to hear to make the interrogation stop, but that information is strongly likely to be false.
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Interrogation techniques that rely on physical or adverse consequences are likely to garner inaccurate information and create an increased level of resistance…There is no evidence that the level of fear or discomfort evoked by a given technique has any consistent correlation to the volume or quality of information obtained.
- An expert on resisting torture – Terrence Russell, JPRA’s manager for research and development and a SERE specialist – said (page 209):
History has shown us that physical pressures are not effective for compelling an individual to give information or to do something’ and are not effective for gaining accurate, actionable intelligence.
Indeed, it has been known for hundreds of years that torture doesn’t work:
- In the ancient Far East, torture was used as a way to intimidate the population into obedience (rather than a method for gaining information)
- As a former CIA analyst notes:
During the Inquisition there were many confessed witches, and many others were named by those tortured as other witches. Unsurprisingly, when these new claimed witches were tortured, they also confessed. Confirmation of some statement made under torture, when that confirmation is extracted by another case of torture, is invalid information and cannot be trusted.
- Top American World War 2 interrogators got more information using chess or Ping-Pong instead of torture than those who use torture are getting today
- The head of Britain’s wartime interrogation center in London said:
“Violence is taboo. Not only does it produce answers to please, but it lowers the standard of information.”
- The national security adviser to Vice President George H.W. Bush (Donald P. Gregg) wrote:
During wartime service with the CIA in Vietnam from 1970 to 1972, I was in charge of intelligence operations in the 10 provinces surrounding Saigon. One of my tasks was to prevent rocket attacks on Saigon’s port.Keeping Saigon safe required human intelligence, most often from captured prisoners. I had a running debate about how North Vietnamese prisoners should be treated with the South Vietnamese colonel who conducted interrogations. This colonel routinely tortured prisoners, producing a flood of information, much of it totally false. I argued for better treatment and pressed for key prisoners to be turned over to the CIA, where humane interrogation methods were the rule – and more accurate intelligence was the result.
The colonel finally relented and turned over a battered prisoner to me, saying, “This man knows a lot, but he will not talk to me.”
We treated the prisoner’s wounds, reunited him with his family, and allowed him to make his first visit to Saigon. Surprised by the city’s affluence, he said he would tell us anything we asked. The result was a flood of actionable intelligence that allowed us to disrupt planned operations, including rocket attacks against Saigon.
Admittedly, it would be hard to make a story from nearly 40 years ago into a definitive case study. But there is a useful reminder here. The key to successful interrogation is for the interrogator – even as he controls the situation – to recognize a prisoner’s humanity, to understand his culture, background and language. Torture makes this impossible.
There’s a sad twist here. Cheney forgets that the Bush administration followed this approach with some success. A high-value prisoner subjected to patient interrogation by an Arabic-speaking FBI agent yielded highly useful information, including the final word on Iraq’s weapons programs.
His name was Saddam Hussein.
- Top interrogators got information from a high-level Al Qaeda suspects through building rapport, even if they hated the person they were interrogating by treating them as human
Senator John McCain explains, based upon his own years of torture:
I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners sometimes produces good intelligence but often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear — true or false — if he believes it will relieve his suffering. Often, information provided to stop the torture is deliberately misleading.
According to the experts, 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, no … it did NOT help get Bin Laden).
In fact, torture reduces our national security:
- The head of all U.S. intelligence said:
“The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world,” [Director of National Intelligence Dennis] Blair said in the statement. “The damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.”
- One of the top military interrogators said that torture by Americans of innocent Iraqis is the main reason that foreign fighters started fighting against Americans in Iraq in the first place (and see this).
- Former counter-terrorism czar Richard A. Clarke says that America’s indefinite detention without trial and abuse of prisoners is a leading Al Qaeda recruiting tool
- A former FBI interrogator — who interrogated Al Qaeda suspects — says categorically that torture actually turns people into terrorists
- A 30-year veteran of CIA’s operations directorate who rose to the most senior managerial ranks, says:
Torture creates more terrorists and fosters more acts of terror than it could possibly neutralize.
- A former US Air Force interrogator said that torture just creates more terrorists
- A former U.S. interrogator and counterintelligence agent, and Afghanistan veteran said, “Torture puts our troops in danger, torture makes our troops less safe, torture creates terrorists. It’s used so widely as a propaganda tool now in Afghanistan. All too often, detainees have pamphlets on them, depicting what happened at Guantanamo.”
- The Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously stated:
“The administration’s policies concerning [torture] and the resulting controversies … strengthened the hand of our enemies.”
- Two professors of political science have demonstrated that torture increases, rather than decreases, terrorism
- General Petraeus said that torture hurts our national security
- The reporter who broke Iran-Contra and other stories says that torture actually helped Al Qaeda, by giving false leads to the U.S. which diverted its military, intelligence and economic resources into wild goose chases
- Raw Story says that torture might have resulted in false terror alerts
- Hundreds of other experts have said the same things
U.S. Officials Launched a Systematic Program of Torture Using Specialized Techniques Which Produce False Confessions … to Justify the Iraq War
Not only did Bush, Cheney and other top government officials lie about us into the Iraq war by making a false linkage between Iraq and 9/11, but they carried out a systematic program of torture in order to intentionally create false evidence of that allegation.
Indeed, the entire purpose behind the U.S. torture program was to obtain false confessions.
And the torture techniques used were Communist techniques specifically designed to produce false confessions.
Senator Levin, in commenting on a Senate Armed Services Committee report on torture in 2009, dropped the following bombshell:
With last week’s release of the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) opinions, it is now widely known that Bush administration officials distorted Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape “SERE” training – a legitimate program used by the military to train our troops to resist abusive enemy interrogations – by authorizing abusive techniques from SERE for use in detainee interrogations. Those decisions conveyed the message that abusive treatment was appropriate for detainees in U.S. custody. They were also an affront to the values articulated by General Petraeus.
In SERE training, U.S. troops are briefly exposed, in a highly controlled setting, to abusive interrogation techniques used by enemies that refuse to follow the Geneva Conventions. The techniques are based on tactics used by Chinese Communists against American soldiers during the Korean War for the purpose of eliciting false confessions for propaganda purposes. Techniques used in SERE training include stripping trainees of their clothing, placing them in stress positions, putting hoods over their heads, subjecting them to face and body slaps, depriving them of sleep, throwing them up against a wall, confining them in a small box, treating them like animals, subjecting them to loud music and flashing lights, and exposing them to extreme temperatures. Until recently, the Navy SERE school also used waterboarding. The purpose of the SERE program is to provide U.S. troops who might be captured a taste of the treatment they might face so that they might have a better chance of surviving captivity and resisting abusive and coercive interrogations.
Senator Levin then documents that SERE techniques were deployed as part of an official policy on detainees, and that SERE instructors helped to implement the interrogation programs. He noted:
The senior Army SERE psychologist warned in 2002 against using SERE training techniques during interrogations in an email to personnel at Guantanamo Bay, because:
[T]he use of physical pressures brings with it a large number of potential negative side effects… When individuals are gradually exposed to increasing levels of discomfort, it is more common for them to resist harder… If individuals are put under enough discomfort, i.e. pain, they will eventually do whatever it takes to stop the pain. This will increase the amount of information they tell the interrogator, but it does not mean the information is accurate. In fact, it usually decreases the reliability of the information because the person will say whatever he believes will stop the pain… Bottom line: the likelihood that the use of physical pressures will increase the delivery of accurate information from a detainee is very low. The likelihood that the use of physical pressures will increase the level of resistance in a detainee is very high… (p. 53).
McClatchy filled in some of the details:
Former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration…
For most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there.”
It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released Justice Department document…
When people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people to push harder,” he continued.”Cheney’s and Rumsfeld’s people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn’t any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam . . .
A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under “pressure” to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.
“While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq,” Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. “The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.”
“I think it’s obvious that the administration was scrambling then to try to find a connection, a link (between al Qaida and Iraq),” [Senator] Levin said in a conference call with reporters. “They made out links where they didn’t exist.”
Levin recalled Cheney’s assertions that a senior Iraqi intelligence officer had met Mohammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, in the Czech Republic capital of Prague just months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The FBI and CIA found that no such meeting occurred.
In other words, top Bush administration officials not only knowingly lied about a non-existent connection between Al Qaida and Iraq, but they pushed and insisted that interrogators use special torture methods aimed at extracting false confessions to attempt to create such a false linkage.
The Washington Post reported the same year:
Despite what you’ve seen on TV, torture is really only good at one thing: eliciting false confessions. Indeed, Bush-era torture techniques, we now know, were cold-bloodedly modeled after methods used by Chinese Communists to extract confessions from captured U.S. servicemen that they could then use for propaganda during the Korean War.
So as shocking as the latest revelation in a new Senate Armed Services Committee report may be, it actually makes sense — in a nauseating way. The White House started pushing the use of torture not when faced with a “ticking time bomb” scenario from terrorists, but when officials in 2002 were desperately casting about for ways to tie Iraq to the 9/11 attacks — in order to strengthen their public case for invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 at all.
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Gordon Trowbridge writes for the Detroit News: “Senior Bush administration officials pushed for the use of abusive interrogations of terrorism detainees in part to seek evidence to justify the invasion of Iraq, according to newly declassified information discovered in a congressional probe.
Indeed, one of the two senior instructors from the Air Force team which taught U.S. servicemen how to resist torture by foreign governments when used to extract false confessions has blown the whistle on the true purpose behind the U.S. torture program.
As Truth Out reported:
Jessen’s notes were provided to Truthout by retired Air Force Capt. Michael Kearns, a “master” SERE instructor and decorated veteran who has previously held high-ranking positions within the Air Force Headquarters Staff and Department of Defense (DoD).
Kearns and his boss, Roger Aldrich, the head of the Air Force Intelligence’s Special Survial Training Program (SSTP), based out of Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington, hired Jessen in May 1989. Kearns, who was head of operations at SSTP and trained thousands of service members, said Jessen was brought into the program due to an increase in the number of new SERE courses being taught and “the fact that it required psychological expertise on hand in a full-time basis.”
Jessen, then the chief of Psychology Service at the US Air Force Survival School, immediately started to work directly with Kearns on “a new course for special mission units (SMUs), which had as its goal individual resistance to terrorist exploitation.”
The course, known as SV-91, was developed for the Survival Evasion Resistance Escape (SERE) branch of the US Air Force Intelligence Agency, which acted as the Executive Agent Action Office for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Jessen’s notes formed the basis for one part of SV-91, “Psychological Aspects of Detention.”
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Kearns was one of only two officers within DoD qualified to teach all three SERE-related courses within SSTP on a worldwide basis, according to a copy of a 1989 letter written Aldrich, who nominated him officer of the year.
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The Jessen notes clearly state the totality of what was being reverse-engineered – not just ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ but an entire program of exploitation of prisoners using torture as a central pillar,” he said. “What I think is important to note, as an ex-SERE Resistance to Interrogation instructor, is the focus of Jessen’s instruction. It is exploitation, not specifically interrogation. And this is not a picayune issue, because if one were to ‘reverse-engineer’ a course on resistance to exploitation then what one would get is a plan to exploit prisoners, not interrogate them. The CIA/DoD torture program appears to have the same goals as the terrorist organizations or enemy governments for which SV-91 and other SERE courses were created to defend against: the full exploitation of the prisoner in his intelligence, propaganda, or other needs held by the detaining power, such as the recruitment of informers and double agents. Those aspects of the US detainee program have not generally been discussed as part of the torture story in the American press.”
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Jessen wrote that cooperation is the “end goal” of the detainer, who wants the detainee “to see that [the detainer] has ‘total’ control of you because you are completely dependent on him, and thus you must comply with his wishes. Therefore, it is absolutely inevitable that you must cooperate with him in some way (propaganda, special favors, confession, etc.).”
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Kearns said, based on what he has read in declassified government documents and news reports about the role SERE played in the Bush administration’s torture program, Jessen clearly “reverse-engineered” his lesson plan and used resistance methods to abuse “war on terror” detainees.
So we have the two main Air Force insiders concerning the genesis of the torture program confirming – with original notes – that the whole purpose of the torture program was to extract false confessions.
And false confessions were, in fact, extracted.
For example:
- A humanitarian aid worker said: torture only stopped when I pretended I was in Al Qaeda
- Under torture, Libyan Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi falsely claimed there was a link between Saddam Hussein, al-Qaida and WMD
- President Bush mentioned Abu Zubaydah as a success story, where torture saved lives. Zubaydah was suspected of being a high-ranking al-Qaida leader. Bush administration officials claimed Zubaydah told them that al-Qaida had links with Saddam Hussein. He also claimed there was a plot to attack Washington with a “dirty bomb”. Both claims are now recognized to be false, even by the CIA, which also admits he was never a member of al-Qaida.
- 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
- The so-called 9/11 mastermind said: “During … my interrogation I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear” (the self-confessed 9/11 “mastermind” falsely confessed to crimes he didn’t commit)
And the 9/11 Commission Report was largely based on a third-hand account of what tortured detainees said, with two of the three parties in the communication being government employees. And the government went to great lengths to obstruct justice and hide unflattering facts from the Commission.
Torture Has Been Recognized As Terrorism for Thousands of Years
Moreover, torture has been recognize for thousands of years as a form of terrorism. Indeed, America’s newly-leaked criteria for putting people on the terror watchlist says torture is terror (page 47-48):
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Torture Is a War Crime … Which Can STILL Be Prosecuted
Many argue that the statute of limitations on Bush and Cheney’s crimes of torture have all run … so it is too late to prosecute them.
However, the United States War Crimes Act of 1996, a federal statute set forth at 18 U.S.C. § 2441, makes it a federal crime for any U.S. national, whether military or civilian, to violate the Geneva Convention by engaging in murder, torture, or inhuman treatment.
The statute applies not only to those who carry out the acts, but also to those who ORDER IT, know about it, or fail to take steps to stop it. The statute applies to everyone, no matter how high and mighty.
18 U.S.C. § 2441 has no statute of limitations, which means that a war crimes complaint can be filed at any time.
The penalty may be life imprisonment or — if a single prisoner dies due to torture — death. Given that there are numerous, documented cases of prisoners being tortured to death by U.S. soldiers in both Iraq and Afghanistan, that means that the death penalty would be appropriate for anyone found guilty of carrying out, ordering, or sanctioning such conduct.
Here’s a brief round-up showing that prisoners were injured – and killed – due to U.S. torture:
Waterboarding IS Torture
Not Just Waterboarding
Children, Too
People Died While Being Tortured
The ACLU wrote in 2005:
The American Civil Liberties Union today made public an analysis of new and previously released autopsy and death reports of detainees held in U.S. facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, many of whom died while being interrogated. The documents show that detainees were hooded, gagged, strangled, beaten with blunt objects, subjected to sleep deprivation and to hot and cold environmental conditions.
“There is no question that U.S. interrogations have resulted in deaths,” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. “High-ranking officials who knew about the torture and sat on their hands and those who created and endorsed these policies must be held accountable.
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The documents released today include 44 autopsies and death reports as well as a summary of autopsy reports of individuals apprehended in Iraq and Afghanistan. The documents show that detainees died during or after interrogations by Navy Seals, Military Intelligence and “OGA” (Other Governmental Agency) — a term, according to the ACLU, that is commonly used to refer to the CIA.
According to the documents, 21 of the 44 deaths were homicides. Eight of the homicides appear to have resulted from abusive techniques used on detainees, in some instances, by the CIA, Navy Seals and Military Intelligence personnel. The autopsy reports list deaths by “strangulation,” “asphyxiation” and “blunt force injuries.” An overwhelming majority of the so-called “natural deaths” were attributed to “Arteriosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease.”
While newspapers have recently reported deaths of detainees in CIA custody, today’s documents show that the problem is pervasive, involving Navy Seals and Military Intelligence too.
Spiegel reported in 2009:
At least two men died during imprisonment. One of them, a 22-year-old taxi driver named Dilawar, was suspended by his hands from the ceiling for four days, during which US military personnel repeatedly beat his legs. Dilawar died on Dec. 10, 2002. In the autopsy report, a military doctor wrote that the tissue on his legs had basically been “pulpified.” As it happens, his interrogators had already known — and later testified — that there was no evidence against Dilawar …
And see this. And it is now clear that the CIA covered up murders at Guantanamo.
The Military Commissions Act of 2006 limited the applicability of the War Crimes Act, but still made the following unlawful: torture, cruel or inhumane treatment, murder, mutilation or maiming, intentionally causing serious bodily harm, rape, sexual assault or abuse.
The Nuremberg Tribunal which convicted and sentenced Nazis leaders to death conceived of wars of aggression – i.e. wars not launched in self-defense – defined the following as “crimes against peace”, or war crimes:
- (i) Planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances;
- (ii) Participation in a common plan or conspiracy for the accomplishment of any of the acts mentioned under (i)
The Tribunal considered wars of aggression to be the ultimate war crime, which encompassed all other crimes:
To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.
Judgment of October 1, 1946, International Military Tribunal Judgment and Sentence, 22 IMTTRIALS, supra note 7, at 498, reprinted in 41 AM. J. INT’LL. 172, 186 (1947).
Given that Iraq had no connection with 9/11 and possessed no weapons of mass destruction, the Iraq war was a crime of aggression and – under the standards by which Nazi leaders were convicted by the Nuremberg Tribunal – the American leaders who lied us into that war are guilty of war crimes.
Benjamin Ferencz, a former chief prosecutor for the Nuremberg Trials, declared:
A prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity — that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation.
The Chief Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court – Luis Moreno-Ocampo – told the Sunday Telegraph in 2007:
That he would be willing to launch an inquiry and could envisage a scenario in which the Prime Minister and American President George W Bush could one day face charges at The Hague. Luis Moreno-Ocampo urged Arab countries, particularly Iraq, to sign up to the court to enable allegations against the West to be pursued.
As a Japan Times Op/Ed noted in 2009:
In January 2003, a group of American law professors warned President George W. Bush that he and senior officials of his government could be prosecuted for war crimes if their military tactics violated international humanitarian law.
Eminent legal scholars such as former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clarke and Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law and a professor of law Lawrence Velvel have since stated that high-level Bush administration officials did commit war crimes in relation to the Iraq war.
Torture is – of course – a violation of the Geneva Conventions, which make it illegal to inflict mental or physical torture or inhuman treatment. It is clearly-established that waterboarding is torture. The torture was, in fact, systematic, and included widespread sexual humiliation, murder and other unambiguous forms of torture.
Velvel and many other legal experts say that the torture which was carried out after 9/11 is a war crime.
Colin Powell’s former chief of staff stated that Dick Cheney is guilty of war crimes for overseeing torture policies.
Matthew Alexander – a former top Air Force interrogator who led the team that tracked down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi – notes that government officials knew they are vulnerable for war crime prosecution:
They have, from the beginning, been trying to prevent an investigation into war crimes.
A Malaysian war crimes commission also found Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and five administration attorneys guilty of war crimes (although but the commission has no power to enforce its judgment).
Postscript: Torture is also apparently continuing under Obama. See this and this.
Everything is fair in love and war. I have never thought America was restrained by any rules any more than any other country.
amused by those claiming Obama lies about everything but has finally told one truth. is that logical? isn't it more consistent to regard this statement as just another lie?
Part of propaganda is telling the truth. At least half the time.
Previously it was easier for Presidents to lie. Their lies would be safe (or unchallenged) for decades or more. The last few Liars-in-Chief have had a much shorter period of credibility -- years, months, days or hours.
Any writer quoting Senators Levin and McCain lose credibility...sorry GW...
Did you interview the 5 jihadists that were exchanged for the turncoat Bowe Bergdahl? They want to come back and do some damage...GW, give them your address...maybe you can have a reasonable talk with those rag heads.
George, I'm not seeing what I'd hope you'd discuss, namely, WHY did Obama come out and say we tortured? I don't think it was to win applause; I believe it's a poison pill. The Speaker was granted authority to sue the President and there's increasing chattering the press of impeachment. I'm seeing the torture line as a not-too-subtle threat against Republicans in general and former administration NeoCons in particular - come after me and you'll find your ass at the Hague.
Sure, sure. The guy is about to be impeached, but would conserve enough power to carry out judicial cases related to torture.
Obama is your typical 'american' president. His job is to provide a distorted mirror to the 'american' middle class so they do not see themselves as they are.
The "it is not our american value" trick was performed a large number of times by Obama.
On this site, there is a lot of harping over centralization, top to bottom stuff, praising decentralization and spontaneous bottom to top stuff.
Acts of torture, in many cases, were decentralized, spontaneously coming from the bottom of the military. They were acts by the 'american' middle class, they did not need to receive orders to answer to their impulses.
Okienomics I'm seeing the torture line as a not-too-subtle threat against Republicans in general and former administration NeoCons in particular - come after me and you'll find your ass at the Hague.
----
I haven't seen a conservative in decades. Not even Reagan was a conservative in my book.
Thanks GW. I have read some of this work in the past and am glad for the reminder of out government's insistent hypocrisy when it comes to human rights, and I don't mean this in a smart aleck way... I abslutely believe that it does not make truthful confessions very likely. I woud like to know the answer to the old question...who benefits? Why spend all this time and money trying to extract information in these horrible ways when it is well accepted that it is not worthwle? I mean, aside form the obvious sickos, who benefiits... do governments want peaople to be afraid thinking some will tell the ruth out of fear? Is there a benefit to having the U.S. citizens beleive that our government is willing to do what is necessary? Would be curious about rationale over and above the obvious "our government is a bunch of sickos" I suspect very little of this stuff goes on by 'accident" or just because there is a lack of oversight. Just don't know how to get at the answers.
Cheney: A One-Man Band For Torture
Maybe someone in the world with clout will go to the Hague and demand that an Interpol warrant be issued for Dick Cheney for human Rights abuses. Let him sit in the dock and have all the shit brought up for the world to see. If the USSA refuses to extradite him then any individual wanted by the USSA for any crime shall have that arrest warrant invalidated.
Read _The Dark Side_ by Jane Mayer to get an idea of what Jessen and Mitchell were doing to prisoners. Z/H is a cheap whitewash apologist
piece compared to _The Dark Side_. Z/H does not even mention Mitchell's name or a special character in the lot called 'Dr. Happy'.
Please Z/H tell the reader who 'Dr. Happy' is and tell them the true story and not something invented for the Internet.
Can you give us an executive summary of what Jessen and Mitchell were doing to prisoners, who Dr. Happy is, etc.
"AZ," an informed source said of Zubayda, "was talking a lot." The FBI agents believed they were getting "phenominal" information. In a matter of days, a CIA team arrived and took over, freezing out the FBI.
The apparent leader of the CIA team was a former military psychologist named James Mitchell, whom the intelligence agency had hired on a contract. Oddly, given the Agency's own dearth of experience in the area of interrogating Islamic extremists, he had no background in the Middle East or in Islamic terrorism. He spoke no Arabic and he knew next to nothing about the Muslim religion. Hwas himself a devout Morman. But others present said he seemed to think he had all the answers about how to deal with Zubayda. Mitchell announced that the suspect had to be treated "like a dog in a cage," informed sources said."He said it was like an experiment, when you apply electric shocks to a caged dog, after a while, he's so diminished, he can't resist." The FBI agents, with their traditions of working within the U.S. criminal legal framework, were appalled. They argued that Zubayda was not a dog, he was a human being. Mitchell, according to the informed sources, retorted, "Science is science." Horrified, the agents demanded to know if he had ever read anything about the Middle East. Had he ever worked with Islamic extremists? They reported back to their bosses at the FBI that the psychologist had admitted he hadn't but had argued that it made no difference.
According to the version of events that circulated through the FBI, what happened next was that Zubayda completely shut down. After ten to fifteen days, the FBI agents had to be brought back in, at which point he began talking again. But FBI sources claimed, they were once again expelled on orders from Washington, because President Bush had chosen the CIA as lead agency. Mitchell then reappeared. By then, as a source described him, he was "desperate." He announced that the interrogators needed to get tougher. The FBI agents, according to one version of events, were so appalled they urged top FBI officials to have Mitchell arrested.
Fearful that they would be implicated, and adamantly opposed to what Mitchell proposed doing, the FBI agents picked up and left."
James Mitchell and John Bruce Jessen reverse engineered SERE
together as a team. They borrowed from Dr. Martin E.P. Seligman's
previous work on "learned helplessness" where Dr. Seligman tortured dogs for an experiment that built his career in Experimental Psychology. Previous to the torture being initiated Dr. Seligman held a meeting at his home where the CIA psychologists
and FBI interrogators met for a discussion paper on "Learned Helplessness" delivered by Dr. Seligman. Dr. Seligman then won a sole sourced contract from the Government of the USA for approximately 30 million [not sure of the exact amount] to train American Military Soldiers how to avoid getting depressed and subject to "Learned Helplessness" in war. The University of Penn, through Seligman won the contract and all the USA soldiers are trained at UofP on how to stay "happy" on the battlefield and at war. The good <sarc> doctor was nicknamed "Dr. Happy" by American soldiers that were _forced_ to participate in Dr. Seligman's brainwashing course at UofP.
NOTE: Every Psychologist in the Western world is outraged at the American Psychological Association [APA] for not sanctioning Dr. Seligman for his part in the USA Torture Programme and all in the domain of Psychology [myself included] want Dr. Seligman sanctioned for "crimes against humanity". Jessen, Mitchell, and Seligman are the most disgraceful Psychologists that the USA has ever produced and everyone involved in Experimental Psycology throught the entire world wants these three disgraceful slimebuckets kicked the fuck out of Psychology and their license
revoked. Ethical Psychologists DO NOT PARTICIPATE in TORTURE
and our protocols for conducting research with human beings [Clinical Psychology] strictly condemn such behaviour and deem it to be unprofessional in the extreme. In brief, there three "Psychologists" single handedly destroyed the reputation of the APA and American Experimental Psychology proper. Dr. Seligman is one that I hold particularly responsible because he was APA President
at the time of the talks he gave at his home with CIA, FBI, and other Security 'professionals' in attendance. If Z/H knew how fucking pissed off everyone in Experiment Psychology is about Seligman's involvement in this torture regime you would be outraged even more. PLEASE READ _The Dark Side_ by Jane Mayer to get the inside story.
Of course TORTURE WORKS!
The purpose of torture is not to obtain information, but to instill an atmosphere of fear.
Bread and circuses are not enough. They need to have a big stick ready to hit anyone at any time, and if they hit people for no reason it's much much scarier than if there's rhyme or reason for it.
Maintaining social order requires that the people be kept in a state of fear.
This is terrorism, plain and simple.
What happens to a dog if it's beaten for no reason? It often becomes a vicious animal that bites people for no apparent reason.
Same thing is happening to people.
The 'american' world order must be maintained.
In times like these, when you run a business of extorting the weak, farming the poor, the extorter and the farmer cant afford that the extorted, the farmed forget their position.
It reminds of a thread on this site featuring an 'american' indo european police officer beating up an 'american' negro woman. The deed was to sell that expression of a solid 'american' social order as an omen for a revolution to come.
The reverse, that is an 'american' negro cop beating up an 'american' indo european woman, maybe. But here, it was the usual pattern that exhibited the strength of the US social order.
On an even more practical sense, it is clearly working as designed and desired by TPTB:
a) they needed suicide bombers willing to help TPTB destabilize Iraq (terrorism designed to inflame sectarian divisions of Sunni vs. Shia), lest the civilian insurection become truly insurmountable
b) so they torture people and then endoctrinate them into extremism and introduce them into military cults (al qaeda), such that the victims end up wholeheartedly believing they are striking back against Zionism/NWO, when in fact they are just killing civilians in terror attacks that are orchestrated by TPTB to achieve their desired 'destabilization'.
Everyone now knows that al qaeda is a fake creation of the CIA/etc. and that terrorism is basically all false flags, so hence it's not surprising that TPTB ALSO take care of torturing enough people in their jails (with all the right jail mates) to keep their poor deluded mercenary ranks full...
Clearly, not everyone is going to react to torture the way some do, so quite a few people need to be tortured just to produce one 'usable' suicide-bomber... TPTB are pure evil.
TPTB?
Torture acts were committed by 'american' middle class. They did not wait for orders.
Actually, if somebody wanted to rein in the 'american' middle class impulse, they would be immediately exposed as having not the power to do so.
Very few Americans are aware of just how evil this country is. At least Hitler and Stalin had the honesty that the recent regimes here have all lacked. Jimmy Carter was the most recent president with honesty and decency. And it's only because of that decency that I was allowed to serve this country at a high level. But that's all over now, because I'd rather go to prison than serve this evil empire.
When I was 17 years old it was very easy for me to decide that I'd rather go to prison than risk being drafted to serve the same military that recalled the two USAF fighters sent to defend the U.S.S. Liberty from the almost two-hour-long air and sea attack on it by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War.
Until Jimmy Carter issued blanket pardon for all Viet Nam War draft resisters, it was risking a 5-year federal felony to knowingly and willingly fail to register for the draft upon eighteenth birthday.
On my first PSQ for a Q there was a question on the form, still there of course, which said something like if you're male and born after a certain date enter Selective Service # if known. If none, explain.
They ended up interrogating me for hours with a tape recorder running asking about all sorts of other matters but they never mentioned me being a draft resister. And they never denied me clearance.
Things are different today. I'll bet any amount, giving that answer to the Obama regime on an SF-86 would raise all sorts of red flags for being a potential security risk.
Anyone know different?
Lots of 'americans' are fully aware. They are the cogs, wheels, heart, souls, brain of the 'american' society.
If only you would've left out the part about the "honesty of Hitler and Stalin". Hitler was anything but honest as evidence for the heavy reliance and need of a master propagandist like Goebells. Honesty needs no propaganda nor spin.
Obama is a Criminal CIA asset.....just like Criminal G.H .Bush (Poppy Bush). A creation of the Criminal CFR. Placed into the position to make it appear that U.S..citizens have some of control of the leaders they choose. The truth is much scarier than we care to ever imagine.
Torture is not limited to any political ideology. A competent interrogator can produce any desired statement, audio and/or video recording in a short period of time. Other that short term tactical intelligence, no one in the intel chain of command is interested in the truth, only producing a "source" of information that reinforces the current political agenda.
Unfortunately, there are vast numbers of incompetent interrogators and staff who are nothing more than government sanctioned sadists. They can not be trusted in operational roles and are shuttled off to garrison positions with little oversight.
Parasites upon humanity. Many seem to end up in civilian law enforcement and cost their employers significant sums in legal fees, awards, or settlements which are borne by the taxpayers in the end.
ROFL - one sure sign is the drunkard in civilian clothes, harassing an attractive bartender with his badge displayed and weapon visible, bragging about his "military service". Funny as shit.
George Washington: what a masterly, voluminous essay on the topic. Your social life might even be worse than mine, which is saying alot, according to my spouse.
Anyways, thanks.
Anyone who has done a cursory study, examination of interogation techniques know that 'honey' interrogation techiques produces unvarnished information, torture is much more inefficient-peope wil,l say anything which makes the exercise worthless.
In the 'torturer' technique the interrogator is the enemy, hating despising the 'victim'. The talented interlocutor gets to know his interviewee, liking him, understanding him, relating to him. In this fashion he finds out how best to harvest true information from his subject. A 'honey trap'-some beautiful women might open him up; maybe just frindship, getting trust may work.
oudinot, thanks ...
And - yes - my social life has suffered since I started writing.
In the post-Constitutional age we have entered, nothing matters. Prepare accordingly.
I am thinking that Timothy Leary was working on a number of interesting pharmaceuticals in his day, and if any agents(drugs) used in interrogation are attributable to him or others I believe that psychedics or some such drug is the preferred way to get info from prisoners.....Hello Ahmed this is Allah tell me what you have done so that you can collect your virgins
Does that make Timothy Leary a war criminal too?
Now this is all great information for the Bush bashers to come back out of the closet and bang the drums and I got no problem with that. I never voted for the man and I did vote for Obama once in the spirit of full disclosure. However, the critics of the Bush administration need to speak just as loudly against the current administration and , in light of this "revelation" do not lose sight of the ACTIONS by focusing on the ACTORS. In other words, Bush's wrongs are still just as wrong when Obama does them. Hated GITMO back then should still be hated GITMO now. Hated Patriot Act under Bush should still be hated Patriot Act under Obama. Dont' be fooled by the current magic act. You know the one where this administration and his complicit media minions present some shiny, distracting event, Bergdahl, "stop hatin'", "we tortured some folks", for example, that entices you take your eye off of the events that are occuring in the moment.
This tactic, in my opinion, has been Obama's go to move from day one. Only it seems that its being used daily instead of once in awhile suggesting to me that a lot of shit is going wrong in the moment that the administration and complicit media is doing their damnedest to get the public to ignore. Hence I predict there will be many more shiny lures fed to the public in the next 2 years. Don't let your hatred of one ACTOR (Bush/Cheney) blind you from the ACTIONS of the current ACTOR. Wrong is wrong no matter the doer.
Airplanes disappearing in thin air, Berdahl, Ebola, thousands of unaccompanied minor immigrants, Gaza, secret Senate documents "accidentally" emailed by someone in White House to AP reporter, casual and folksy presidential admissions of wrong doing by past administrations. You name it and we are getting it. What's real and what's scripted? Hard to determine the validity of any" news" story, many coming off as being written by some Hollywood script writer.
Just be wary of being a large mouth bass, striking at the shinest lure thinking its food only to find the lure is filled with hooks and you are left helpless as you are being reeled in and at the mercy of the intentions of the fisherman.
Now,
First I can't imagine any official, CIA, FBI or other human would go on record and say torture is effective. Not saying they are wrong about the effectiveness of torture but in reality and for public consumption there is only 1 right answer.
Secondly, as the Obama mystic and ship sinks I believe more conveniently timed admissions of wrongdoing and secrets by past administration will be confessed in a manner like the US has never seen before. Obama will prove to be the most transparent administration as he proclaimed to be only the transparency will be, not of his own tenure but that of his predecessor. The worse the current headlines get for his administration the more we will find out what happened around 9/11.
Also, to get a man to talk, and tell the absolute truth you do not need torture. Only 1 choice, either speak or lose the Johnson. No man will risk his Johnson to protect anyone else, or even risk with a lie that would not be believed. I would think even more so for men that believing they will be rewarded with 72 virgins in an after life.
Lastly, there should never be a need for apprehension of human assets for questioning to learn what they know. With the NSA capabilities wouldn't only make sense that they know all they need to know by just zeroing in on the intended target.
Your transparent claim that torture (especially given the "right" method) can be effective is wrong.
Your allegation that no "human" claims "on the record" that torture is effective is untrue.
Generalizing your projected fear of emasculation as a basis for improving upon torture interrogations is self-deluded fantasy.
You seem to have focused on the Red-Blue politicking of the issue
and missed the important reasons for actually denouncing torture.
On second thought, after reading my post again I clearly state "wrong is wrong no matter the doer". Not sure how that comment could be miscontrued as missing the point on torture. How can that be interpreted as "focusing on Red-Blue politicking".
Perhaps you need to read for understanding instead of being ready to attack based on a lack of understanding of what you read. My allegations of no one going on record that torture is effective pertains to the environment of today. Please interview any government official for public record, not anonymously today, and I contend you will get 100% agreement that torture is wrong and not effective. It is politically expedient to do so. No other answer is acceptible in public opinion, by the media, nor by the average citizen.
I also contend that there is not a single man alive that would say they do not fear castration and would never choose to have their member cut off for any reason. Not sure how you come up with "self-deluded fantasy".
You are the one missing the points and being fairly obtuse in the process.
The reason it was "transparent and seemingly lost on you is that I was using hyperbole. Perhaps badly and inept but I assure you that was my intention while merely stating a fact that if I were threatened with the cutting off of my Johnson I would "sing like a canary" with zero reluctance. I freely admit I am cowardly in that fashion. Now was that the wrong place to insert hyperbole, probably? Mea Culpa.
I in fact implore, or at least tried to and again apparently failed miserably as far as you are concerned to put Red-Blue politicking totally out of the equation and focus on the ACTIONS as opposed to the ACTORS and or their political affiliation. Again, obviously I failed miserably. 0 fer 2.
Finally I was trying to point out that all of the folks that went on public record that George Washington (very admirably, and with painstaking attention to detail as is his nature and much to his credit) provided evidence, as it pertained to their own feelings concerning torture, the morality, the effectiveness, or lack thereof, had no choice but to go on record as being against and morally opposed to the use of torture.
All may be telling the absolute truth and speaking from the heart but I suggest, even if they had feelings to the contrary, no official would be stupid enough to say otherwise. Each one of those people got to where they were by being intelligent politically and also self serving and I submit that not a single person would have anything to gain and in fact much to lose, had a single one given even a hint of support for the use or effectivness of torture. I'm no genius to figure that out its just pure and simple use of common sense and shouldn't even need to be pointed out quite frankly. Again that doesn't mean they are lying but it also doesn't mean a damned thing really. There is only one right answer. Anyone can see that. I just point out the fact that there is only one right answer to give and they gave it regardless as to what any of them had done or said in private moments.
Not the first time I've had a swing and a miss on my messaging and I promise it won't be the last.
For the record I don't agree with torture, death penalty or killing or hurting humans for any reason. Especially revenge. I always put myself in the other persons shoes and think, "what if that were me and I was innocent?" Not to mention that If I lost a loved one, I could kill a hundred guys and it wouldn't bring back the one I lost or change what is inside of me. Punishment sure, but state sponsored revenge/maiming/killing won't change my personal situation one bit. I'd hate for someone to believe I am so transparent yet still be so misunderstood.
Those Bush twins look ripe for a spanking.
I wonder how it is anyone in that cartel is still breathing, let alone walking.
Libtard self-flagellation..... they love it.... masochists... ALL
Everyone knows that the best way to handle the enemy is to wound them and then leave them on the battlefield ....
then the enemy infrastructure has to use resources and infrastructure to mend them...
WHERE IS THE LIBTARD OUTRAGE FOR TORTURE AND BEHEADINGS AND MASS MURDER PERPETRATED BY THE JIHADIS..... those cuddly little sweet things we so misunderstand....and malign...
The FBI gave us 9-11-01 BY REFUSING TO DETAIN THE TWO TERRORISTS IT WAS GIVEN INTEL ON BY A PAID INFORMANT WHO TOLD HIS HANDLER THEY WERE GOING TO FLY PLANES INTO BUILDINGS.... FBI DID NOTHING
The FBI gave us the Boston Marathon bombing..... having been told 3 times that the two bros were terrorists who intended to commit a terorist act by Russian and Saudi Intel..
Your eagerness to torture permeates your comment.
Seek help !
(P.S. There are other explanations as to why the FBI supposedly "did nothing".)
Torture hasn't stopped!
I went to the Department of Motor Vehicles.
When Jefferson wrote that all men were created equal and that they were endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights that among these were life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, he was writing about what we ought to be not what we were. He himself was a slave holder. He had the wisdom to set a standard much higher than what he had personally achieved.
The Declaration and the Constitution set a bench mark, a goal that we were to strive for. Many times we have missed the mark. That is a given, but in the past, when we missed the mark, the country as a whole never embraced those misdeeds. What has changed now is we are codifying our misdeeds with the Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act and our Constitutional free zones. In so doing we have succumbed to the seduction of our baser natures.
The last time we missed the mark this far, we suffered the blood, sweat and tears of civil war. Nothing ever goes over the Devil’s back that at some point does wind up under his belly. Unfortunately, the rain falls on the just and the unjust. The beast has been released. Balance will be restored. Recompense is coming.
Obama, the messiah, has revised confession, penance and absolution. He confesses for Bush's evil, demands Bush penance and and punishment and thereby absolves himself of his own evil. The media is instructing the sheeple in Obama's theology.
Channeling the likes of JFK in using his speech on going to the moon.
"And my hope is that this report reminds us once again that the character of our country has to be measured in part not by what we do when things are easy, but what we do when things are hard"...
Hard to believe the stupid Nate actually used the words from that monumental speech to justify what his adminstration and the previous one has done in the name of the rule of law?!!!
He is the worst we've ever had!
False confessions, false accusations against others, generates animosity and enemies,
violates the US Constitution, violates international law.
Produces an in-house cadre of sadistic torturers
forever paranoid about public scrutiny and possible prosecution,
always motivated to break more laws and norms of decency.
Suppresses free speech, converts critics to yes-men, and stymies correction to bad policies.
Deservedly associated with the worst tyrannies, dictators, injustices, and persecutions.
War crime charges would be a nice start, but considering the predictable "side effects" of these ongoing torture programs (eg anti-US terrorist recrutement) which ACTIVELY HARM THE US they should ALSO be tried for TREASON.
Obama says he always "looks ahead, not back"
so NO prosecution for "past" crimes
(with the exception of whistleblowing, of course)
Yes but we like to torture. It makes us feel good about ourselves.
Plus I seen it work in a movie. I seen it.
It seems that everyone knows that torture does not work to provide the truth. Then why do it? The answer is pretty clearly stated above, because they (the tortured) will tell you what you want to hear.
The US government does not want to hear the truth, they want supporting evidence why they need to invade (insert country name here), because of terrorism and not because our oligarchs want the countries resources.
It is much worse than that. There is no need to torture any one when they can simply manufacture any
evidence they require to support their agenda. They do it because they want to and because they can.
to
"name names" and incriminate people and organizations the torturers want to repress or attack.
GW, here is something else the MSM has also ignored. I've been following this for years (UPC/IVPC/First Wind/Evergreen) and noted the ties to this administration re: stimulus money etc...
Executive of Canadian renewable company pleads guilty in US to money laundering over renewable energy fraud in first Canadian-related renewable energy fraud case
http://www.antimoneylaunderinglaw.com/2014/07/executive-of-canadian-renewable-company-pleads-guilty-in-us-to-money-laundering-over-renewable-credit-energy-fraud.html
Nathan Stoliar, a prominent Australian executive, has pleaded guilty in the US to several criminal charges including money laundering conspiracy, for selling fraudulent renewable energy credits, similar in some ways to carbon credits, from Canada to American companies.
Although the case was not prosecuted in Canada, it is the first Canadian instance of renewable energy fraud and money laundering that has been prosecuted.
According to American law enforcement, a Vancouver company controlled and operated by Stoliar, City Farm Biofuel, claimed to produce biofuel which was sold to a US company that was part of the scheme, Global E Marketing. It used the imports of non-existant biofuel products to generate and sell renewable identification numbers (RINs) to third parties so that the latter could comply with EPA renewable energy requirements. Stoliar’s Vancouver company allegedly made US$37 million from the environmental crime scheme. Stoliar is alleged to have created false records to conceal the production, importation, sale and fraudulent RIN generation and used Canadian bank accounts in Vancouver to launder the proceeds of crime…
...Stoliar was a foreign politically exposed person in the US and in Canada when he set up bank accounts in Vancouver and Nevada for, inter alia, City Farm Biofuel. According to the Australian media, he was a very close associate of Eddie Obeid, a prominent Australian politician who was Minister of Mineral Resources and Minister of Fisheries in Australia. Their close association is substantially detailed in the international media. According to Australian media, Obeid was recently found by an Australian corruption commission to have acted corruptly in relation to his position while a member of Parliament. Stoliar had other close associations and business associations that likewise made him politically exposed in respect of his dealings in Canada and the US.
According to the OECD and FATF, politically exposed persons are higher risk for money laundering and other financial crimes, particularly accepting and paying bribes because they can use their positions of power to influence economic decisions to their benefit, or to the benefit of close associates, and because they have access to facilitate the removal of state assets from states through gatekeepers or other facilitators…
...Growing Financial Crime Concern with Renewable Energy
Financial crime in renewable energy is a growing concern for law enforcement and is expected to explode as more businesses enter the lucrative renewable energy field. Over €15 billion was lost in the EU from financial crimes associated with carbon emissions trades including VAT fraud, money laundering and theft.
Our summary of an Interpol report on financial crime and renewable energy is here. Interpol noted that the lack of regulation and the legal complexity of renewable energy credits are contributors to the increase in financial crimes, particularly in respect of fake carbon and other renewable energy credits.
It is the fifth major biofuel criminal case in the US involving renewable energy. In December 2013, the US Department of Justice disallowed $33 million in renewable fuel credits sold by an Indiana company for biofuel it did not manufacture. Earlier in the year, federal prosecutors in the US charged two other US companies of selling millions of fraudulent renewable certificates.
all smoke and mirrors so the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing, unfortunately innocent people get hurt and killed, but these animals could care less.
It wasn't "communist" torture techniques, GW, it was Inquistorial torture techniques of the Catholic Church during the Papal Inquistion used for the same purpose.
Lets get the historical precedent right in Western Civilization.
Humanity has invented totalitarian ideology in name of CIVILIZATION since Caesar started crucifying the early christians.
And every POWER construct that went hegemonical has used that as a tool.
Only, since WW2 we have now nailed "human rights" to all our universal constitutions thus making the Inquisition a crime in itself.
But our governments never do what is written in stone...BECAUSE WE THE PEOPLE DO NOT CHASTISE THEM FOR BEING A CRIMINAL CABAL.
The fault dear Brutus...
I expect Mr Obama has been taking small amount of Sodium Penthanol. Tune in Next week when you will Here Mr Obama Say " We Know Torture works it is effective, not for obtaining information, but as a recruitment tool for foreign Jihadis. We will continue using it for this purpose. "