DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum More Waterboarding: Disbarments and CIA worried about restrictions ..

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But sometimes you take this PC crap to far

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Everyone knows the libs ( far left ) hate America and her military.

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Where have you been, man? Please come back to the political threads more often.

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Now lay some more big word and superior thinking on me.

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Superior to what you've typed?

The sky is blue.

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My prob stems from the fact that we prosecuted other nations military members as war criminals for doing this to our soldiers---but when we do it to our enemies its suddenly alright.

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If you are scared then you are guilty.

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Just pointing out that while 9/11 was heinous---we have done much more heinous things and contrary to what you believe, just b/c someone does something horrid to you, it doesn't give you a blank check to inflict unnecessary evils upon them.

Your argument has become 9/11.

"well, 9/11"

"Its OK cuz 3,000 or so people died in 9/11"

"Jesus died for our sins, and the people who died in 9/11 died for our right to waterboard and carpet bomb the middle east; thanks to them--its justified now!!!"

3,000 people die in unfortunate ways everyday---its tragic.

But IMO, we shouldn't be torturing people, ever.

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Understanding of one's beliefs can be misinterpreted when sharing thoughts in text. Face to face conversation can lend itself to understanding, but........

"SHOULD waterboard ANYBODY"......"slightest chance"......."some intel"

equals?.....

"If information gained prevented a single attack, even indirectly, then the techniques in question were necessary."

or hopefully more clearly

"prevented a single attack"...."necessary".

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"Waterboarding or torturing HUNDREDS OR THOUSANDS of people"

Perhaps you are making a general statement, but if the entire reply is aimed at my single sentence then your opinion is irresponsibly misguided. I stated no such thing.

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Does anyone here know that "a lot" of the detainees wish Americans no ill?

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Let me ask you Tyler. Where would you draw the line on torture if it might save someone you really care about? Like a Son , Daughter, Mom ,Dad, sister , Brother?Phil and his lackeys didn't really answer me except to wonder if I knew what PC ment. Lets have a straight answer. Not what some brainwashed Professor tells you to think. I'm guessing you and these other superior thinkers would be digging under their fingernails with a nitting needle.

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The rhetoric gets nuttier and more obtuse by the year.

"Do you think it's alright to murder?"

"No."

"What if someone was holding a gun to your child's head and you had a clear shot. Surely you would commit murder, right?"

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Tyler I would be all for stopping the waterboarding, if we could just lock the terrorists up, and throw then into the general prison population.

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Let me ask you Tyler. Where would you draw the line on torture if it might save someone you really care about? Like a Son , Daughter, Mom ,Dad, sister , Brother?Phil and his lackeys didn't really answer me except to wonder if I knew what PC ment. Lets have a straight answer. Not what some brainwashed Professor tells you to think. I'm guessing you and these other superior thinkers would be digging under their fingernails with a nitting needle.

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The rhetoric gets nuttier and more obtuse by the year.

"Do you think it's alright to murder?"

"No."

"What if someone was holding a gun to your child's head and you had a clear shot. Surely you would commit murder, right?"

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...drivel that's neither here nor there.

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...drivel that's neither here nor there.

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That's what the entire 'what if they knew where your family was being held' scenario is...an obtuse and sensationalized example not rooted in reality that only serves to obscure and warp the debate.

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I do have an inherent trust in the way our Government conducted anti-terrorist operations to date.

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.....So I don't care all that much. And I am not going to let a bunch of fear-mongering persuade me that waterboarding people is right.

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Show me another country that spends more money helping other countries. Show me another country that the world likes better than the u.s. when times get rough for them. Show me another country that is hated more than the u.s. (hated for the above reasons, mind you).

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Do you actually believe that people dislike the United States government because they help people too much?

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Show me another country that spends more money helping other countries. Show me another country that the world likes better than the u.s. when times get rough for them. Show me another country that is hated more than the u.s. (hated for the above reasons, mind you).

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Do you actually believe that people dislike the United States government because they help people too much?

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How many countries dislike the U.S. anyway....

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...drivel that's neither here nor there.

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That's what the entire 'what if they knew where your family was being held' scenario is...an obtuse and sensationalized example not rooted in reality that only serves to obscure and warp the debate.

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Is that your answer Phil? Let me see if I got this right. Its OK to torture if it might save your kid, but if it might save my kid or a bunch of people you don't know then you are for taking the High Road as in no torture. And this example is Obtuse and sensationalized. Gotcha!!!! Didn't we already learn that torture saved many lifes, American lives, thats what I care about.

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Didn't we already learn that torture saved many lifes, American lives, thats what I care about.

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Didn't we already learn that torture saved many lifes, American lives, thats what I care about.

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No...we didn't.

In fact, as more and more reports become declassified and more involved in the process begin to talk, we're finding that we've gleaned far more useful information from simply talking than we have by torturing.

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Didn't we already learn that torture saved many lifes, American lives, thats what I care about.

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No...we didn't.

In fact, as more and more reports become declassified and more involved in the process begin to talk, we're finding that we've gleaned far more useful information from simply talking than we have by torturing.

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BS

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From my experience – and I speak as someone who has personally interrogated many terrorists and elicited important actionable intelligence– I strongly believe that it is a mistake to use what has become known as the "enhanced interrogation techniques," a position shared by many professional operatives, including the CIA officers who were present at the initial phases of the Abu Zubaydah interrogation.

These techniques, from an operational perspective, are ineffective, slow and unreliable, and as a result harmful to our efforts to defeat al Qaeda. (This is aside from the important additional considerations that they are un-American and harmful to our reputation and cause.)
My interest in speaking about this issue is not to advocate the prosecution of anyone. People were given misinformation, half-truths, and false claims of successes; and reluctant intelligence officers were given instructions and assurances from higher authorities. Examining a past we cannot change is only worthwhile when it helps guide us towards claiming a better future that is yet within our reach.

And my focus is on the future. I wish to do my part to ensure that we never again use these harmful, slow, ineffective, and unreliable techniques instead of the tried, tested, and successful ones – the ones that are also in sync with our values and moral character. Only by doing this will we defeat the terrorists as effectively and quickly as possible.

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There are many examples of successful interrogations of terrorists that have taken place before and after 9/11. Many of them are classified, but one that is already public and mirrors the other cases, is the interrogation of al Qaeda terrorist Nasser Ahmad Nasser al-Bahri, known as Abu Jandal. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, together with my partner Special Agent Robert McFadden, a first-class intelligence operative from the Naval Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), (which, from my experience, is one of the classiest agencies I encountered in the intelligence community), I interrogated Abu Jandal.
Through our interrogation, which was done completely by the book (including advising him of his rights), we obtained a treasure trove of highly significant actionable intelligence. For example, Abu Jandal gave us extensive information on Osama Bin Laden's terror network, structure, leadership, membership, security details, facilities, family, communication methods, travels, training, ammunitions, and weaponry, including a breakdown of what machine guns, rifles, rocket launchers, and anti-tank missiles they used. He also provided explicit details of the 9/11plot operatives, and identified many terrorists who we later successfully apprehended.

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A major problem is that it is ineffective. Al Qaeda terrorists are trained to resist torture. As shocking as these techniques are to us, the al Qaeda training prepares them for much worse – the torture they would expect to receive if caught by dictatorships for example.

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A second major problem with this technique is that evidence gained from it is unreliable. There is no way to know whether the detainee is being truthful, or just speaking to either mitigate his discomfort or to deliberately provide false information. As the interrogator isn't an expert on the detainee or the subject matter, nor has he spent time going over the details of the case, the interrogator cannot easily know if the detainee is telling the truth. This unfortunately has happened and we have had problems ranging from agents chasing false leads to the disastrous case of Ibn Sheikh al-Libby who gave false information on Iraq, al Qaeda, and WMD.

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Another disastrous consequence of the use of the harsh techniques was that it reintroduced the "Chinese Wall" between the CIA and FBI – similar to the wall that prevented us from working together to stop 9/11. In addition, the FBI and the CIA officers on the ground during the Abu Zubaydah interrogation were working together closely and effectively, until the contractors' interferences. Because we in the FBI would not be a part of the harsh techniques, the agents who knew the most about the terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An FBI colleague of mine, for example, who had tracked KSM and knew more about him than anyone in the government, was not allowed to speak to him.

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A few days after we started questioning Abu Zubaydah, the CTC interrogation team finally arrived from DC with a contractor who was instructing them on how they should conduct the interrogations, and we were removed. Immediately, on the instructions of the contractor, harsh techniques were introduced, starting with nudity. (The harsher techniques mentioned in the memos were not introduced or even discussed at this point.)

The new techniques did not produce results as Abu Zubaydah shut down and stopped talking. At that time nudity and low-level sleep deprivation (between 24 and 48 hours) was being used. After a few days of getting no information, and after repeated inquiries from DC asking why all of sudden no information was being transmitted (when before there had been a steady stream), we again were given control of the interrogation.

We then returned to using the Informed Interrogation Approach. Within a few hours, Abu Zubaydah again started talking and gave us important actionable intelligence.

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As you can see from this timeline, many of the claims made in the memos about the success of the enhanced techniques are inaccurate. For example, it is untrue to claim Abu Zubaydah wasn't cooperating before August 1, 2002. The truth is that we got actionable intelligence from him in the first hour of interrogating him.

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The same goes for KSM's involvement in 9/11: That was discovered in April 2002, while waterboarding was not introduced until almost three months later. It speaks volumes that the quoted instances of harsh interrogation methods being a success are false.

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It was a mistake to abandon it in favor of harsh interrogation methods that are harmful, shameful, slower, unreliable, ineffective, and play directly into the enemy's handbook. It was a mistake to abandon an approach that was working and naively replace it with an untested method. It was a mistake to abandon an approach that is based on the cumulative wisdom and successful tradition of our military, intelligence, and law enforcement community, in favor of techniques advocated by contractors with no relevant experience.

The mistake was so costly precisely because the situation was, and remains, too risky to allow someone to experiment with amateurish, Hollywood style interrogation methods- that in reality- taints sources, risks outcomes, ignores the end game, and diminishes our moral high ground in a battle that is impossible to win without first capturing the hearts and minds around the world. It was one of the worst and most harmful decisions made in our efforts against al Qaeda.

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