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The American Public Supports Torture … Because They Don’t Know THIS
New polls show that – even after the Senate torture report showed that torture is unnecessary and doesn’t work – Americans still think torture is necessary and works.
Why?
Because they still don’t know the truth … because the mainstream media has hidden it from them. Specifically, Americans still believe that torture works to produce helpful intelligence that helps keep us safe.
Americans wouldn’t support torture if they knew the following facts, proven beyond any doubt:
- All of the top interrogation experts say that torture does NOT produce actionable intelligence … even in a “ticking time bomb” scenario
- Torture doesn’t reduce terrorism. In fact, the opposite is true: it simply creates new terrorists and terrorist groups, including ISIS
- Most of those tortured were completely innocent of any crime. Children were tortured, too
- The specific type of torture used by the U.S. is famous for producing FALSE evidence
- People have known for thousands of years that torture – stripped of the torturer’s lies – is really just a way to create fear … i.e. a form of terrorism. Indeed, America’s recently-leaked criteria for putting people on the terror watchlist says torture is terror (page 47-48):
***
- While the mainstream media gives overwhelming coverage to pro-torture guests, those people have a very strong incentive to lie. Specifically, virtually all of them are war criminals under international and U.S. law who are afraid of being prosecuted for their creation and approval of the torture program. Indeed, many are calling for their prosecution, and a former top Air Force interrogator 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.
- The Nazis used the same “Enhanced Interrogation” techniques the U.S. did … and even CALLED IT the same thing
- The Founding Fathers were strongly opposed to torture … and enshrined a torture ban in the Constitution
- This is not the first time America tortured. Americans tortured Filipinos over a hundred years ago as a way to terrorize the population into submission. CIA torture in Vietnam was so severe that most prisoners died during torture; and the torture was so horrific that those who didn't die during torture usually killed themselves soon after. Americans also taught the leaders of other countries how to torture
- The detainees held up as “poster boy” justifications for torture actually prove the opposite
(Note: Other polls reach very different conclusions about Americans' acceptance of torture.)
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Particularly important since the ZWO New Bolsheviks are running the world today.
Did you even read this.......Torture doesn't produce any information that finds or stops terrorists.....in fact it creats them.....so when 'these' kids and your kids get killed by terrorists....you can thank the US and CIA for creatiing more of them.
If the US didn't spend the last few decades bombing, killing in the Middle East, formenting wars and regeim changes...there would be 100th of the number of terrorists that we have now....the USA is one big terrorist making machine.
Some people are such racists cunts they just want torture to get those not like them. But fear not...it all comes back to you...and because you are not like somebody else they will rip your arse out too.
yes but did you note that no one that did the techniques are included in the report and there is strong evidence that the information that was not recieved assisted in killing OBL...
Hmmmmmmm
The report is based on a false premise and is B.S. in every respect!
140 + mostly children slaughtered in their school by animals and we are bothered by pretending to drown these beasts and even keeping them alive by feeding them through the colon.
Americans know that the Democrat report was unreliable. Practically no one at CIA was interviewed for report.
Only Geo Wash would believe that the dedicated Jihadist would give up information in exchange for promises of tea and sweet cakes. The Jihadis are more interested in the virgin boys promised by the mullahs.
Thousands of years of interrogation history are wrong? The SCORES of American interrogation experts I quote are wrong?
Former Navy Judge Advocate General Admiral John Hutson also said of the torture program:
Then he doesn't know effective torture technique. His ignorance shouldn't be grounds to authenticate with an unimpeachable source.
Yeah, you and Dick on the same page, be proud
There are legions more on the same page than are he and I.
George would be one of the first to give in to even the intimation of torture and so would you.
There are legions more on the same page than are he and I.
George would be one of the first to give in to even the intimation of torture and so would you.
death and the maiden, by roman polanski, starring ben kingsley and sigorney weaver.
Human cruelty to others is sadly one of the hallmarks of our species, since Cain and Abel.
The divorce rate is an indicator. Power simply amplifies the capacity to injure others.
I don't understand what the divorce rate has to do with torture. If a woman has been spit on, pushed around, and told everything she does has no value does it make her a torturer when she divorces her husband? Money is power. A woman can't leave her husband if she has no money so she endures the infractions until she can support herself. So who is torturing who? I am confused by this remark. Divorce is an unhappy event no matter who instigates it but sometimes it must happen if a person wants to regain some self respect. If the children are grown and a person has tried their best to make it work isn't self respect a permissable reason for divorce? Will it injure the husband- perhaps but what about all the times he injured her? I have never equated divorce with torture but perhaps it can be seen that way- the vows do say for better or worse, in sickness or health. If you have time please explain your comment further.
Power is the capacity to injure others.
#CIASAVEDLIVES, and tuNed up some muzz filth, much to your consternation.
Hmmm ... sounds familiar ...
The November 3, 2005 issue of the New York Review of Books quoted three officers, two of them non-commissioned, stationed with the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Mercury in Iraq.
The American People are tortured every day and for eternity by the Federal Reserve!
I see jumper cables and a chair with a hole cut in the bottom and I'm giving up your grandma before I cross the threshold.
Just sayin'.
shovelhead, after you give them the truth, do you think they stop? How do they know it's the truth? And if it is, and you are complicit, does it just stop there or do you have more information? Where's grandpa? You don't know? I don't believe you.
For the bomb in the stadium, when does it go off? where is it? If you believed enough that what you were doing was 'right' in some way it would take a lot of torture to get the 'truth' out. So why not start of with some lies, then a bit of truth, then lie. Hell at some point maybe you or the torturer have no idea what is truth or not so they keep going. Maybe you don't really know the truth, or maybe your next door neighbour was mad about your dog shitting on his lawn, so he gave you up and there is no bomb.
They don't want Grannie, they want you to suffer.
Just your luck, SH, it's my grandma that's working the jumper cables.
Zzzzzz
Are you still on the torture kick? Our government agencies, and likely most around the world, have been torturing people for information since long before any of us were born. Maybe not waterboarding, but solitary confinement, sleep and food deprivation, psyops, you name it. John Doe #2 fucking died while being tortured for information after the OKC bombing and his brother had to sue every fucking agency and demand FOIA docs to prove it because the 'authorities' LIED about it.
You sound like you think this stuff is new or was invented by Dickless Cheney - IT ISN'T and WASN'T. We've been lied to for a LONG time, and when they tell lies enough they become facts in some peoples minds.
The people in this country don't pay attention to anything that rocks their world in the least bit. We tortured some people? I still have my I-crap, check. My teevee still works, check. DWTS is still on, check. I can gawk at Kim K's ass all day, check. Conclusion - keep on torturing because it hasn't harmed me in any way.
Sad to say, but that's what we've degenerated in to. We kill 1400 babies everyday in the name of choice, we drone innocent people thousands of miles away, cops choke to death guys selling loosies and we can't agrre that that is wrong. We plot and scheme 'regime changes' all over the world which leads to wars and deaths, and NOBODY cares so long as their world remains static.
I don't know what the answer is, but unfortunately people don't want to know the truth if it's inconvenient, and pushing it in their face tends to make them dig in and reinforce what they believe to be 'truth'.
Plus, aren't polls done to make public opinion, not record opinion? So these polls saying most people agree with it could all be lies too, attempts to shape opinions. Or, maybe we've become a nation of self centered, spoiled willingly ignorant asshole consumers that don't give a rats ass about anything that doesn't impact their daily routine.
I don't know what the answer is, but unfortunately people don't want to know the truth if it's inconvenient, and pushing it in their face tends to make them dig in and reinforce what they believe to be 'truth'.
d_m
Great write up.
I'll tell you what the answer is going to end up being.
If we don't end up tearing each other apart in this Country which would be the best of all possible scenarios based on everything you just said, Russia, China and Iran will be doing the honors for us in finishing whatever outcome our military decides to start with them. I'm being insulting but it's true that you would have to be either the most developmentally arrested soldier, sailor, airmen or marine to volunteer for the armed forces 7 years ago, or 52 cards short of a full deck just on what we've witnessed in the last 7 years alone. Kissinger was right. They truly are the "dumbest of animals"!
As I said in a post yesterday. Why prolong the misery to the rest of the World this Country alone inflicts? If the U.S. collectively had the will to obey the laws they know their elected leaders are violating in their names for decades nobody else would pick up the next last war and run with it -not even the "tail that wags us"
The "buck" stops here in the U.S.A.
Polls are media tools to manipulate. If you learned to not trust the media, why still trust the media's polls? Polls are like Bernays arranging for some fashionable women to be photographed smoking cigarettes and soon most American women take up smoking. "If a million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing."
The opinion of the stupid, trained in our schools, nurtured in front of the tube, believing in their leaders, and trusting in their media is worthless.
"I don't know what the answer is..." --dexter_morgan
George Carlin said that by becoming a "spectator" he was able to keep his sanity while continuing to penetrate the darkness of geopolitical reality. Over the last few decades of his life he learned to "pull away" from having a stake in the outcome, knowing that there is no happy ending to this epoch of the human story. Keep engaged and learn as much as you can, he might suggest, but "don't really give a fuck." American citizenship is a front row ticket to the freak show, as he liked to say, so a cold, black humor can have an armoring effect. You might label that as defeatist, but better that than quixotic.
+100) the american people support torture, not because its moral, and not because it works, because they can sit their obese ass in a barkalounger and vote for it, you see because they can (see Clinton on Monica and Bush on Iraq, because we can......)
More precisely, 100% are AGAINST torture
if THEY believe they are the ones to be tortured.
If OTHERS are to be tortured (or killed, or whatever), most "USA Americans" don't care.
For most, a callous indifference engendered by narcissistic and deluded individualism.
Torture DOES work. Just because someone types something on the Interweb saying it doesn't work, isn't proof of anything.
Tell us you wouldn't talk if you possessed a secret that would expose an atom bomb to be set off at a Saints game, you are a Saints fan, and your child is being used by the torturer, to 'torture' you.
That torture doesn't work is a total lie, and you buy it.
Another lie is that Capital Punishment doesn't work either. Total bullshit. The killing of Charles Manson would have worked effectively on so many levels it boggles the mind that some people have the audacity to keep up with the propaganda that it doesn't work. I wish I had money it has taken to keep him and thousands of others alive who should have long ago been rendered extinct.
What's working? We've been at this for 25 years now.
I don't give a fuck if it works or not--fact is the bureaucracy is a COMPLETE FAILURE run by a bunch of douchebags that are pissed off that someone fucked up their day. I'll bet these assholes couldn't quantify what it means for these methods to "work". It's safe to say government is incapable of defining what works in every other scenario; they aren't going to be able to define it here either.
What I do know is this--the fucking wars are still going on. The enemy is as vicious than it's ever been. How's that working for the torturers?
Ask what it means for these methods to "work" and they'll piece together a bunch of obtuse bullshit that argues in circles. Or, they'll provide hypotheticals without substantiation, hiding "evidence" behind a cloak of "national security". I've seen so goddamn many govt dog-and-pony shows where failures are spun with powerpoint presentations to actually look like successes. I'll bet 90% of govt endeavors fail outright, but their own documentation would indicate a 95% success rate and pin failures on contractors or 'the weather'.
I seriously doubt anyone in the toxic torture bureaucracy asked the question "is this protecting the sovereignty of individuals somewhere?" They didn't, because these entities dont give a shit about individuals.
It's about protecting sovereignty of the state, and executing the will of those running the state, for any reason these sociopaths see fit.
As the state fails to achieve it's obtuse 'goals', it'll convince itself that it hasn't been torturing enough, or correctly, or the right people. So it'll step it up--and still fail. But they'll find the few instances that make the practice look successful and put them in a bullshit powerpoint.
All these efforts to make war precise and surgical are to clean it up and make it more politically correct for prime time. Why? Because these efforts FAIL--so govt wants to reduce the adverse impacts of the failures, spin it to look successful, and keep trying to make it work, in the vain hope that it will, so it can poltically benefit from it. This is a horrible and irreversible trend--if war isn't an awful, bloody mess that adversely affects everyone in a huge way--the state is not compelled to stop it (which they haven't).
A pernicious down side to this, one that sinks empires, is the govt develops methods that are fatally invasive, it desensitizes the people that perform them, and it polishes the sophistry used to legitimize the practice. Good luck rooting this out of the $100 trillion bureaucratic machine that is adept at hiding everything from itself, let alone the citizenry.
It won't be long before they label those critical of govt as 'seccessionists', and therefore non-citizens, and start using the techniques as standard procedure on the domestic population. All because the methods 'work'.
Hi GW:
You and I had a dialogue about this last week and I feared the poll result you now lament above.
Another ZH'er put it very well I thought. This ZH'er said that the framing of the question is the key issue in setting public opinion, not the torture per se. I think he/she meant that the Elites control the debate and can manipulate people into accepting things they know to be morally wrong by framing false choices/dichotomies.
I think this ZH'er and I agreed that a foreign policy avoiding entanglements, focused on self defense and liberty, would avoid the occasion of having to make the terrible choice of torture in the first place. If things have deteriorated to the point that you face the "need" to torture, you've probably screwed up already.
So the politicos talked about torture. But they never talk about all our foreign policy screw-ups leading up to it. We make stupid, immoral decisions and then end up torturing people to cover up all the stupidity that came before. It would be farcical if it weren't a moral, political and financial tragedy.
YOU say "stupidity", I say "on purpose". Wonderful job done by those who run the theater to mask strategy as "gee, we/they/someone is so stupid.
RATM - Killing in the Name with Lyrics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxk3c_SbWMg
Hopefully the uncensored version (@werkatm)
They only know what they are told to believe.
No G.W.
"The American Public Support Torture" because they most importantly don't know, don't care or don't want to know this or this and that extracting "lies" through false confession during torture from the innocent is a means to secure an excuse for what never happened in order to achieve our strategic self-interests in other parts of the World!
Until the majority of Americans face the reality that every U.S. President and member of Congress will continue to perpetuate the lie that we were attacked by 19 Arab nationals in lower Manhattan and Washington D.C. on September 11, 2001 the justification for torture will be legitimized without end!
We have the tacit endorsement and full authorization by Congress and the President that prove that point without any doubts in the promotion of Patriot Act(s) I and II and the NDAA which broadened the President's unilateral powers limiting the other two branches of government completely and that the use torture, rendition and murder are necessary tools of Executive discretion in times of war whenever and wherever he/she sees fit to use it even though they continue to swear an oath and allegiance to the U.S. Constitution without any official ratification of existing Amendment(s) going on 14 years to enforce these "emergency powers".
Guess we will find out soon enough if the "I can't breathe" movement moves beyond the brutality of it's own domestic police forces and finally takes a look at what our military on behalf of it's government has been doing to the rest of the World based on a single set of event(s) we still haven't been told the truth about by our government 13 years later.
Look, folks... if some towel-head is accused of terrorism, it's only because he's guilty. There's no such thing as a brown-skinned non-English speaker who isn't a terrorist, right? Because the whole world is jealous of American freedoms... right? Plus our god could kick their gods' asses. So make like House Bolton and flay the bastards for sheer entertainment, what's the problem with that? The only moral question is whether torture should be televised... but hey, we've been broadcasting the Letterman Show for years already... and have you watched the Jets this year?
We executed few Japanese after the war, but we did execute the ones that waterboarded American POW.
For "Nazi" interrogation methods read The Interrogator by Hans Scharff who was the Luftwaffe's master interrogator during the way. After the war he came to the U.S. and ended up advising US Army on how to interrogate, his rule number one being "Know the language". Did a lot of mosaics for Disneyland. Main way of getting information is simply to get you adversary to talk, talk about anything at all.
Thursday, Jul 15, 2004 11:26 AM CDT
Hersh: Children sodomized at Abu Ghraib, on tapeGeraldine Sealey
After Donald Rumsfeld testified on the Hill about Abu Ghraib in May, there was talk of more photos and video in the Pentagon’s custody more horrific than anything made public so far. “If these are released to the public, obviously it’s going to make matters worse,” Rumsfeld said. Since then, the Washington Post has disclosed some new details and images of abuse at the prison. But if Seymour Hersh is right, it all gets much worse.
Hersh gave a speech last week to the ACLU making the charge that children were sodomized in front of women in the prison, and the Pentagon has tape of it.
[...]
http://www.salon.com/2004/07/15/hersh_7/
Just remember. Most of the people on the street which you pass by on a daily basis support the buttfucking of children.
This is not funny. This is not the kind of behavior that should be trivialized with what you believe to be witty remarks. This is an affront to humanity and if your countrymen have been so conditioned to participate in these depraved acts then I hope you have the guts to throw those at the top into prison. Cheney, Rumsfeld for sure need to go. The idiot Bush maybe- I can't decide just how much the boys let him know. I am disgusted with the level of dialogue concerning this. I am disappointed in several of the regular commenters here. Levity has its place and its not with a subject like this.
You must be walking the streets of Kabul or Tehran.
That could be true in YOUR neighborhood.
Sex offenders tend to stick together.
That is how interrogations were done in Afghanistan.
The CIA would have the soldiers buttfuck the detainees' children in front of them.
So go ahead and support torture shovelhead.
"Sex offenders tend to stick together." --shovelhead
Well, yeah! It's hard to break the commitment once the Confirmation's done. After that, the laying on of hands never ends.
Because Americans have by nature no respect for other people, even their own.
Bunga Bunga- "Because Americans have by nature no respect for other people, even their own."
And why do you suppose this is? What other nation has been sitting in front of one screen or another as long as Americans have? We don't interact with anyone anymore. Who knows their neighbors, their children's friends, hell even their far flung families anymore. Walk down the street- people avoid eye contact. Observe people on a campus- everyone staring into their phones. We are divorced from reality. we don't care. If you smile at someone or nod hello they look at you like you are from Mars. I just don't understand where we think we are headed that we can replace humans with some electronic gadget. Posting on facebook is not interacting with anyone. I give up. No one cares. Robots are on their way and will be sold to you as a must have.
Hush little luxury don't you cry- you'll be a necessity buy and buy, ahould be the American National Anthem. We have traded humanity for technology.
Remember man grows and becomes like that which he thinks about- guard your mind.
Yeah, polls lie, but the truth is many 'Mericans endorse torture. Why should that be a surprise? They endorse the murder of their own babies, like they give a shit about some grown man from the other side of the world accused of terrorism.
Well it is ironic that a "minority" wants to ditch due process.
I mean seriously....this is the country that created the Nuremberg Tribunal. Hanging heads of State using the law is great news not bad.
This is why "assassinating heads of States is illegal.". We have a head of State...we like our head of State...to " take out one of yours" opens up a real Pandoras Box. The President can grant pardons of course.....
My fellow Americans will not want to know anything until they are grasping for understanding on how they ended up in a FEMA camp.
The Constitution has no provision permitting FEMA camps. Easier to enforce the Constitution now, than from behind barbed wire.
Am American, not US subject.