Study of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program released
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Sir Saladin
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They aren't making outrageous claims with nothing to back it up and we've known about the enhanced torturing for years now anyway.
The fact that they use torture, sure. That is nothing new. The rest of the findings? Not so much. Even if half the things they claim in Wellen's link are true, then the methodology is seriously is flawed. Have you read both the majority and minority reports? But even then, I wouldn't trust any info on ongoing operations whatever conclusions it supports.
Sir Saladin
Count
I've only made it about halfway through the minority report so far. 
not really, but Cheney didn't read it either before he started doing his raging Burgess Meredith as The Penguin routine. I don't see how forced rectal feeding is any more shocking than the rest of what they did so I don't think they would make that up and I remember many of the lies as they happened so a lot of the shocking revelations aren't really news.
not really, but Cheney didn't read it either before he started doing his raging Burgess Meredith as The Penguin routine. I don't see how forced rectal feeding is any more shocking than the rest of what they did so I don't think they would make that up and I remember many of the lies as they happened so a lot of the shocking revelations aren't really news.
And apparently it is a historic method of torture...though phased out by most nations in the late 19th century due to finding that feeding someone through their anus isn't very effective.
Better be some arrests over this, at this rate the US isn't really making the 'War on Terror' look good or even grey in moral scope.
Better be some arrests over this, at this rate the US isn't really making the 'War on Terror' look good or even grey in moral scope.
Sir Saladin
Count
Saying that they were being lied to is kind of a weak excuse when what they were being told should have been horrible enough to cause some kind of action to stop it. As if drowning someone isn't so bad if you only do it once a day and twice on Sundays, or whatever the official bull**** was.
I've read the 19-page executive summary - haven't had time to read the whole thing yet - but that's well disturbing enough. What's wrong with the methodology that the committee used? Unless I'm mistaken, this study is based on CIA's internal documents and interviews with CIA employees.kurczak 说:
This:
Astonishingly, the SSCI Majority staff interviewed no CIA officers responsible for establishing, implementing, or evaluating the program’s effectiveness. Let us repeat, no one at the CIA was interviewed.
This was a time we had solid evidence that al Qaida was planning a second wave of attacks against the U.S.; we had certain knowledge that bin Laden had met with Pakistani nuclear scientists and wanted nuclear weapons; we had reports that nuclear weapons were being smuggled into New York City; and we had hard evidence that al Qaida was trying to manufacture anthrax. It felt like a "ticking time bomb" every single day.
In fact, the program led to the capture of senior al Qaida leaders, including helping to find Usama bin Ladin, and resulted in operations that led to the disruption of terrorist plots that saved thousands of American and allied lives.
All of this should be "easily" verifiable, so either the Comittee did a really bad job or the people behind the site are lying. (Or the site is a hoax). Of course, none of it matters if you are opposed to torture under any circumstances on principle. But I'm not, so it matters to me.
Astonishingly, the SSCI Majority staff interviewed no CIA officers responsible for establishing, implementing, or evaluating the program’s effectiveness. Let us repeat, no one at the CIA was interviewed.
This was a time we had solid evidence that al Qaida was planning a second wave of attacks against the U.S.; we had certain knowledge that bin Laden had met with Pakistani nuclear scientists and wanted nuclear weapons; we had reports that nuclear weapons were being smuggled into New York City; and we had hard evidence that al Qaida was trying to manufacture anthrax. It felt like a "ticking time bomb" every single day.
In fact, the program led to the capture of senior al Qaida leaders, including helping to find Usama bin Ladin, and resulted in operations that led to the disruption of terrorist plots that saved thousands of American and allied lives.
All of this should be "easily" verifiable, so either the Comittee did a really bad job or the people behind the site are lying. (Or the site is a hoax). Of course, none of it matters if you are opposed to torture under any circumstances on principle. But I'm not, so it matters to me.
Sir Saladin
Count
They used transcripts of interviews and it's not very astonishing. When did Al Qaida ever use anthrax or dirty nuclear bombs? In spite of all the helpful suggestions they just continued with their boring and unimaginative techniques.
Oh right, we tortured that stuff right out of them. It worked and countless innocent lives were saved! **** Yeah!
Oh right, we tortured that stuff right out of them. It worked and countless innocent lives were saved! **** Yeah!
That's the funneh thing about intelligence agencies, they are supposed to prevent stuff not wait for it to happen and then say "oh yeah, we totally knew about that, see, here's the file, pat on the head, please?." From a perspective of (not only) a lay person, there's always tons of what Donald Rumsfeld so charmingly called "unknown unknowns" and a bunch of disinformation and I have my doubts the Committee got anywhere close to "the truth". The saying "if you have ever heard about a successful op, it wasn't successful" is not much of an exaggeration.
Can it be abused by said intelligence? Sure. Do they abuse it? Who knows. Due to the compartmentalization and the analytic circlejerk, it's dubious if even the CIA knows what the CIA is doing, because there is no CIA as a whole, there is no one top guy in a big leather chair pulling the strings. Or maybe there is. 'Cause again who knows.
Can it be abused by said intelligence? Sure. Do they abuse it? Who knows. Due to the compartmentalization and the analytic circlejerk, it's dubious if even the CIA knows what the CIA is doing, because there is no CIA as a whole, there is no one top guy in a big leather chair pulling the strings. Or maybe there is. 'Cause again who knows.
Sir Saladin
Count
kurczak 说:
The funny thing is when they allow something to happen on purpose and then never have to answer for it.
Question -"Why did you stop watching those guys who were learning how to fly commercial jets and were looking so suspicious?"
Answer - "Well ya see, we didn't have enough cooperation going on between the different agencies."
"I guess that certainly explains it. Would torture help? Start torturing."
By the way, being a layman doesn't mean I can't know how rotten Donald Rumsfeld was. I didn't need to sit in on any high level meetings to figure that out.
Increase in cooperation is not mutually exclusive with granting the right to torture.
Rumsfeld may be personally rotten, but there was nothing wrong with his "(un)known (un)knowns" reasoning in itself. I'm not defending everything they did or may have done. I'm just saying that there are many of things we don't know and cannot know, because that's the nature of intelligence work. Therefore jumping to any conclusions about whether or not what they did or may have done was justified is pointless. Unless, again, you're totally opposed to torture on principle in which case...oppose away.
Rumsfeld may be personally rotten, but there was nothing wrong with his "(un)known (un)knowns" reasoning in itself. I'm not defending everything they did or may have done. I'm just saying that there are many of things we don't know and cannot know, because that's the nature of intelligence work. Therefore jumping to any conclusions about whether or not what they did or may have done was justified is pointless. Unless, again, you're totally opposed to torture on principle in which case...oppose away.
Sir Saladin
Count
I'm not opposed to it when it's being done by consenting adults in privacy. I'm not that much of a prude.
Edit: Threatening someone with a gunshot to the kneecap or dunking his head into a barrel of water repeatedly might be the only way to get him to tell you where a bomb or kidnap victim is located but those methods need to be completely forbidden anyway because if you allow that much torture it soon gets completely out of hand. It's like allowing free speech but only if it is speech that doesn't offend anyone.
Edit: Threatening someone with a gunshot to the kneecap or dunking his head into a barrel of water repeatedly might be the only way to get him to tell you where a bomb or kidnap victim is located but those methods need to be completely forbidden anyway because if you allow that much torture it soon gets completely out of hand. It's like allowing free speech but only if it is speech that doesn't offend anyone.
Sir Saladin
Count
Untitled. 说:
Yes. You either have the right to free speech or you don't.
Mage246
Well then I guess we don't, since not all speech is allowed.
Sir Saladin
Count
So what's your point?
Mage246
Making the perfect the enemy of the good. It's a bad analogy.
