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He means Saddam Hussein and the Taliban were innocent. Come on!
Iraq and Afghanistan were "innocent"? :shock:
He means Saddam Hussein and the Taliban were innocent. Come on!
Possibly, however it would have to be more evidence than one, or two ex interrogators that the liberal left is touting as some sort of 'told you so' example.
No I don't think that ignorance is the totality of the situation here, and neither is some sort of, as you put it 'testosterone fueled' need for vengeance. It is the realization that after some thirty plus years, maybe more of ignoring the problem of the jihadist war waged on the US and western civilization as a whole by Muslim thugs that hold a 7th century vision of dominance want not to negotiate with us as a people for peace, but rather want to dominate our culture and force us into submission, or kill us. If you don't understand that precept of the Koran, and where radicals are using it to fuel hatred within their own culture, and project that hatred outward into manifestations of attacks, and death around the world aimed at western civilizations, then sir, it is you with your eyes and ears plugged so as not to see.
What you show me here with the video is exactly what the liberal left that often seems to side with our enemies more often than not in this country, and that is to hold up one example of someone with inside knowledge of operations, and extrapolate that to a one size fits all scenario. Then taking that lone voice and speaking for the intel community as a whole. It is disingenuous, and dangerous as a tactic, and harkens back to a time where America thought themselves invincible to outside attack due to our power, and the set up of our country being a fortress country.
In short, I view this struggle as one where conventional scenarios of war, and peace are useless in the outcomes of normalized culture, fore the enemy we fight bears no flag, but has many nation allies either through willingness, or forced submission. It is an ideological threat that is at least 10 times more dangerous than that of any of the conventional wars we have ever fought where an enemy could surrender and sign a treaty. This enemy wants no treaty, no talks, no quarter. Only submission, and death.
So you can believe all you want that we are our own worst enemy, and that you can somehow reason with a true enemy that bases their war on total destruction of western culture through any means necessary, and be content to watch your country, and way of life disappear only to be told in stories to future generations, I for one do not accept that. Be careful my friend whom you bed with in the ideal of destroying western civilization, you may be the first 'useful dupe' they come after.
VetVoice:: Petraeus Against Torture, For Closing GitmoGeneral David Petraeus said this past weekend that President Obama's decision to close down Gitmo and end harsh interrogation techniques would benefit the United States in the broader war on terror.General Petraeus goes on to say that he believes we need to stay within the Geneva Convention, and that closing Gitmo "sends an important message to the world, as does the commitment of the United States to observe the Geneva Convention when it comes to the treatment of detainees."
GOP were Against Torture Before Being For It - Reagan and Newt | coonsey's Blog[FONT="]I'd like to remind Americans, especially those that are in favor of torturing prisoners, that if former President Ronald Reagan or Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich are heroes of yours, that they both were against torturing and inhuman abusive acts. Newt was against it before he was for it.
[/FONT] [FONT="]From President Reagan's signing statement ratifying the UN Convention on Torture from 1984:[/FONT]
[FONT="]"The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention. It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and [/FONT][FONT="]other inhuman treatment or punishment[/FONT][FONT="]. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called 'universal jurisdiction.' Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution."[/FONT]
Malcolm Nance Challenges Torture Proponent Thiessen Back in late April, Scott Horton interviewed Malcolm Nance. Nance, a former SERE"Waterboarding is Torture... Period," is superb, and Nance later testified to Congress on torture and SERE training. instructor, has a new book out on Al Qaeda and the Middle East. His October 2007 piece, Meanwhile, Marc Thiessen, a former speechwriter for Bush and Rumsfeld, is one of the most odious and prominent of torture apologists/proponents. Here's Horton's question and Nance's response on Thiessen:
You previously served as a master instructor in the SERE program, in which pilots were prepared, among other things, to endure waterboarding. The SERE training program, we later learned, was reverse engineered to produce “enhanced interrogation techniques” for the CIA. Recently a White House speechwriter named Marc Thiessen has played a vocal role in the campaign that the Cheneys have launched to justify the use of waterboarding. He insists that it absolutely is not torture, and he insists that it’s different from the technique used by the Khmer Rouge. Does Thiessen know what he’s talking about?
I spent twenty years in intelligence and four years in the SERE program waterboarding people before I ever opened my mouth on the subject. Marc Thiessen is a fool of the highest magnitude if he thinks he knows anything about waterboarding. His claims are based not on first-hand experience but on a classified briefing from people with an agenda of justifying what was done. That makes Thiessen into a court stenographer for war criminals rather than a person with any real claim of expertise. As for his claim about the relationship between Pol Pot–era waterboarding and what we have done derived from the SERE program, he’s wrong.Remember, our goal was to prepare pilots for the techniques they might face if they fell into the hands of our enemies. I was waterboarded on arrival at SERE, and then as a senior staffer, I performed the technique or supervised it through hundreds of evolutions.
Thiessen’s central purpose is apparently to glorify the most extreme practices used by the CIA in the Bush era and to argue that each of these practices, including waterboarding, is vitally necessary to our national security–even though no president used them before, and it seems that President Bush himself halted many of these practices over Cheney’s objection. We have prosecuted and convicted men for using these techniques in the past, and we were right to do so.
This suggests to me that, while he may cite Thomas Aquinas, Thiessen has no sense of honor and no moral compass. I give him credit for his loyalty to the Cheneys, but he’s blind to their errors in judgment. The use of waterboarding and other torture techniques was a powerful recruitment tool for Al Qaeda; it spawned thousands of would-be suicide bombers. Thiessen claims that we gained “intelligence” by using these torture techniques. But this shows that he knows nothing about the intelligence process or how our enemy grows and sustains itself.
Thousands of American POWs died and suffered resisting torture practices that we have always called the tools of the enemy. The SERE program was designed to help them grapple with this inhumanity and retain their dignity in the face of it. Now Thiessen and his boss want us to embrace the tactics we used in that program–taken from the Russians, the Communist Chinese, the North Koreans, the North Vietnamese, the Khmer Rouge–as our own. He claims that these techniques are unpleasant but have no long-term physical or mental impact. Really? I challenge him to put up or shut up. I offer to put him through just one hour of the CIA enhanced interrogation techniques that were authorized in the Bush Administration’s OLC memos–including the CIA-approved variant of waterboarding. If at the end he still believes this is not torture, I’ll respect his viewpoint. But not until then. By the way, I can assure you that, within that hour, I’ll secure Thiessen’s written admission that waterboarding is torture and that his book is a pack of falsehoods. He’ll give me any statement I want in order to end the torture.
He means Saddam Hussein and the Taliban were innocent. Come on!
"Stupid stances" like yours are how Bush & Cheeney convinced this country to invade an innocent country! Torturing Al Libby produced lies. Those lies were believed, actually "used" in spite of warnings from the Brits they were lies.
"Stupid stances" like yours produced dozens of wild goose chases from the lies torture produced from KSM wasting FBI and CIA resources and time that could have better been used running down true intel.
Show me where torture produced any actionable information. Links would be appreciated.
You'll note no one has come back here with any kind of evidence that KSM actually prevented any attack on LA, from torture induced intel. Because it didn't happen.
compared to the murderous US troops of course. :roll:
Show me what Hussein did to the US to give us a legitimate reason to invade Iraq. :coffeepap
No, torture being an effective method did not get us into Iraq. They made a stupid mistake with Al Libby by not clarifying there source.
No. I'm looking at all the times it has not worked. I'm looking to the professional experts who do this stuff for a living who say torture doesn't work.Again, no. You are looking at the time torture did not work because source's where not carefully clarified enough.
Prove it.I can wager it has worked far more than it has failed.
I never said torture doesn't produce results. I said it doesn't produce actionable, true information. A person being tortured will certainly reach his breaking point and say something. If he has something on subject to say he may say that. However, if the torture continues and he has nothing else to offer on the subject, or if he never had anything to offer, what will he do then? He will say anything that will get the torture to stop. How do his torturers know what it true and what is not? They don't. So, the torture continues and the lies continue to spew. This is what happened with KSM. He gave them so much bull**** they didn't know what was factual. Is this really so hard for you to understand? :roll:
You say this as if KSM (I assume that's who you're yapping about) gave up intel that saved anyone's life or prevented an attack. Got any proof?Do you think you would know about it anyway? Hardly something the CIA sings about. Also, what would have happened if we never waterboarded this guy? How many people would have died because we didn't know anything?
Well, except for one thing. Ask any American POW during the Korean War if touchless torture is no big deal. Because the fact is that touchless torture was successful in doing to American soldiers, including officers, what it succeeded in doing to Khalid Sheik Mohammed. The touchless torture employed by the North Korean communists so messed up the minds of American servicemen that they ended up zombie-like and confessing to all sorts of evil crimes, including waging biological warfare, against the communists.
Do you have anything to add to this post besides lamely posting only 2 links? Can you explain how these links validate an act of war?
I easily could throw your childish “FAIL” back at you but, that would be giving you too much credit. You would have to actually “begin” before you could achieve a “FAIL”.
That's right. Torture being an ineffective method did.
No. I'm looking at all the times it has not worked. I'm looking to the professional experts who do this stuff for a living who say torture doesn't work.
Prove it.
I never said torture doesn't produce results. I said it doesn't produce actionable, true information. A person being tortured will certainly reach his breaking point and say something. If he has something on subject to say he may say that. However, if the torture continues and he has nothing else to offer on the subject, or if he never had anything to offer, what will he do then? He will say anything that will get the torture to stop. How do his torturers know what it true and what is not? They don't. So, the torture continues and the lies continue to spew. This is what happened with KSM. He gave them so much bull**** they didn't know what was factual. Is this really so hard for you to understand? :roll:
You say this as if KSM (I assume that's who you're yapping about) gave up intel that saved anyone's life or prevented an attack. Got any proof?
By the by, your own article makes my point.
My posts clearly show several reasons for the invasion of your precious saddam and iraq.
I certainly don't want to read into what your anemic posting of 2 lone links means. Can you link those 2 links to taking our country to war or not?
You are taking a handful of accounts it has not worked and using it as the basis of your argument. How many times has normal interrogation failed to reap results? One cannot say "torture works" or "torture does not work". Torture and normal interrogation has a varying degree of success. When somebody is put under immense pain and pressure, the chances of them talking is significantly increased. Your argument that they may say anything to stop the pain is a correct argument, but to then act on that intel without clarifying what has been told is negligence. If he/she is lying, we need to go back to the water boarding room and persist until eventually, and inevitable, they spill the beans.
I am merely making a logical assumption. Considering the nature of torture and its world wide use, can you honestly say that torture is not a quicker way of cracking the man? What makes a terrorist any more likely to tell the truth while being interrogated? These are questions YOU need to answer to effectively disprove torture.
BTW, Will you be linking to US courts convicting US Soldiers of torture for waterboarding anytime soon or are you avoiding this lie of yours hoping it will go away
4th request, or are you conceding you were lying?
So I take it you can't make a case for us going to war based on those 2 lonely links... right?
Where did I say "US soldiers" were convicted of waterboarding?
Playing obtuse now? Please follow the thread back to where you made the claim. Don't try to coward out by suggesting you didn't mean "US soldiers" because if you did, your point would make zero sense. or in your case -2 sense. :thumbs:
Good. Glad that he had the balls to stand up for what's right despite all these extremists out to crucify him for not putting ice cream on Khalid's brownie.
They don't waterboard POWs over there. They behead them. Go spend some time in a Taliban prison, then come back here and ask if we're that bad.So doing the same acts as our enemy will not set us apart.
Good for him. That sure takes bigger balls than you sniping at him here (and no, I'm no Bush fan, but I'm not deranged enough to go after him for something this ridiculous).The man even defended his action
disgusting.
There is nothing logical in your argument but, it is surely an assumption. You obviously know nothing about torture and take the word of only those people who line up with your political leanings.
I do almost all the work that needs to be done on my property. Some things I may have never done before but, if it's something that I can teach myself I'll research it and do it. i.e. falling trees, running a new circuit to the pool filter, adding a garage, building a 16x24 shed, replacing a roof, replacing a main circuit breaker, etc. However, some things take specialized machines, manpower and experience that I cannot learn or do myself so, I hire experts. I needed a new driveway but, did not have access to the machines or the manpower required so, I hired a reputable local company, who came highly recommended. Same when I needed a foundation dug and poured for the garage.
I take the same approach to torture. I listen to the professionals, and people who have actually been tortured, who know much more about this than I do. The only intelligent assumption to make on torture is that a person will say anything to stop the pain. Think about it. If I were twisting your arm almost to the point where your arm was about to break with my boot stepping on your throat, you would tell me anything to get me to stop. Our military are trained how to deal longer with torture but, they are also taught that every man has a breaking point and that all they are asked to do is to hold out as long as they can. If they break and give up information after being tortured it will not be held against them and they will not be considered traitors. Why is this? Because they know that anybody will break, sooner or later. There are no Jack Bauers.
Also, in your argument you assume the tortured has info to give up. What if he doesn't have any and can't convince his captors of this?
These are your beliefs.
Khalid obviously became an asset.
Sorry, but i feel no sympathy towards those vile beasts.
I get your frustration with this war, with this enemy, with their use of religion to fuel their fires. But, nowhere in your eloquent post is anything showing that torture is "effective". Using the right wing rhetoric that "it is only the liberals and the left who are against torture" is disingenuous and an excuse to inflict pain on our enemy. Many Repubs have come out against torture, including the Repubs' god Ronnie Reagan! If you can take your I-hate-anything-left blinders off and look at this issue with a clear mind you just might see that there are very real reasons why professional like Soufan are against torture... it just doesn't work. Our enemies don't come filled with more hate for us than KSM. Yet, Soufan elicited very good intel from him with conversation and intelligence. He didn't have to break his arm or drown him. THAT is how actionable, real intelligence is gotten.
Here are a few links to sites showing Repub leaders who are against torture. Are their eyes and ears plugged too?
VetVoice:: Petraeus Against Torture, For Closing Gitmo
GOP were Against Torture Before Being For It - Reagan and Newt | coonsey's Blog
And from another professional who knows what is torture, what the effects of torture are and how our use of it actually helped Al Qaeda to recruit more terrorists. We in effect, by torturing them, only help our enemy. How does that make any sense?
Before I arrived at SERE, I went to S21 prison in Cambodia. Right next to the Wall of Skulls sits the exact waterboard platform that the SERE program copied for our own use in the training program. [/INDENT]Is Nance, and Reagan!, really more liberal lefties that you're going to ignore simply because they agree with the left's views of torture?
There are hundreds of such sites with intelligent reasons why torture makes no sense. If you can remove your anti-liberal glasses, I am confident you'll see that using torture on our enemies does not help us or our cause at all.
compared to the murderous US troops of course. :roll:
I notice you didn't answer with a specific example.
Oh and a note convictions. Torture really is good at getting confessions. All the litature everyone will confess. They could get you to confess to killing Snata Claus.
These are your beliefs. Interrogation doesn't always work, and the same can be said with torture. To say it never works is ludicrous. Combining the two i believe is effective. Khalid obviously became an asset.
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