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UN Officials Demand Prosecutions for US Torture

I'm not playing a silly game. I asked you a serious question.



Show me how the so called "enhanced interrogation techniques" did not inflict psychological or physical harm on the subjects.



Do you seriously want to put forward the notion that you can put a person in an enclosed box just big enough for them to fit in for days, in which they have to urine and pass stool on themselves and have little or no sensory input, and not inflict psychological harm on the subject? Please.

Just like you cannot show that they did inflict harm the fact that these terrorists are still alive and wandering around GITMO says they aren't in too bad of shape. Love liberals like you who have no idea what it means to watch your friends beheaded or blown up for just being in the wrong place at the right time. I trust our military to keep my family safe and to do whatever is necessary to do so. Couldn't care less about your feelings of sympathy for these animals.
 
Just like you cannot show that they did inflict harm the fact that these terrorists are still alive and wandering around GITMO says they aren't in too bad of shape.

There are many women who have been raped who are alive and wandering around. That does not mean that there was no psychological or physical harm done to them.

Love liberals like you who have no idea what it means to watch your friends beheaded or blown up for just being in the wrong place at the right time. I trust our military to keep my family safe and to do whatever is necessary to do so. Couldn't care less about your feelings of sympathy for these animals.

This isn't about being a "love liberal" or being sympathetic to those who have been tortured. It's about realizing that torture produces information that has a tendency to be unreliable.
 
There are many women who have been raped who are alive and wandering around. That does not mean that there was no psychological or physical harm done to them.



This isn't about being a "love liberal" or being sympathetic to those who have been tortured. It's about realizing that torture produces information that has a tendency to be unreliable.

Right, enhanced interrogation and rape are equivalent. Wow. I am sure Khalid Sheikh Mohammed appreciates your support as do the families almost 3000 Americans killed on 9/11. I am sure that Bin Laden however doesn't agree that the enhanced interrogations didn't work.
 
US citizens can and have been detained, held indefinitely without charges or a trial, and denied access to a lawyer.

American detainees at Guantanamo Bay - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

José Padilla (prisoner) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A US Citizen Tortured Abroad by the FBI? -- 5 Cases of Extreme US Govt. Inhumanity in the Obama Era | Alternet

Judge Finds Courts Cannot Protect US Citizens Tortured by US Government Officials Abroad | The Dissenter

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/opinion/getting-away-with-torture.html?_r=0




As for the few bad apples argument...

With regards to Abu Ghraib, Amnesty Internation published the findings in a report and the Associated Press broke the news story.

"The administration of George W. Bush attempted to portray the abuses as isolated incidents, not indicative of general U.S. policy. This was contradicted by humanitarian organizations such as the Red Cross, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch. After multiple investigations, they stated that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were NOT isolated but were part of a wider pattern of torture and brutal treatment at American overseas detention centers, including those in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. There was evidence that authorization for the torture had come from high up in the military hierarchy, with allegations being made that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had authorized some of the actions."


Some of people charged for the abuses at Abu Ghraib also said orders came from the top of government.

"In 2006, a criminal complaint was filed against Donald Rumsfeld by eight former soldiers and intelligence operatives, including Janis Karpinski, who had been in charge of Abu Ghraib prison until early 2004, and former army counterintelligence special agent David DeBatto. Among other things, the complaint stated that Rumsfeld both knew of and authorized enhanced interrogation techniques that he knew to be illegal under international law."

"On May 7, 2004, Pierre Krähenbühl, Operations Director for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), stated that inspection visits made by the ICRC to detention centers run by the U.S. and its allies showed that acts of prisoner abuse were not isolated acts, but were part of a "pattern and a broad system." He went on to say that some of the incidents they had observed were "tantamount to torture"."

Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Furthermore, every report on torture disagrees with your opinion that these are simply bad apples. All the reports suggest that torture is an board pattern at overseas US detention centers, US citizens have been detained and indefinately held, and innocent people have died in custody.

This should be a concern to all US citizens.


Some of these things I would have to consider the source, such as the claim that US citizens were not only detained but tortured in the manner you speak of. As to the Abu Ghraib episodes, people were prosecuted for these acts as far as I know. So, lumping them together as some sort of sanctioned treatment is rather dishonest if you ask me. I think that some reporting these supposed acts do so for the shocking nature of them, and speak of possible isolated incidents by bad actors as if they are/were daily occurrences. All this supposed documentation of the nature that you outline depends largely on the source of the allegation.
 
It is YOU, sir, who declares the conventional meanings of the word "torture" to be irrelevant. Not I, but YOU.

Judging from the way you would like to define the actions of those practicing it, you would like me to believe, for example, that rape is not really rape as long as some government agent declares it to be "enhanced interrogation". Sophistry sir, nothing but sophistry.

Capitalization of the whole word is a very persuasive argument in your book, Sir? That would certainly correspond nicely to your understanding of language and Newspeak.
 
Boo, I agree with you, I wouldn't do a damn thing to get information out of a terrorists who had information about a plan to harm your family. Do you realize how stupid that is? It is very easy for people like you who have never had a family member threatened or probably never served to have the opinions you do but you are far from an expert and far from anyone with credibility when it comes to getting information from animals who aren't part of the Geneva Convention or any other civilized leadership position.

That post shows a lot of ignorance, I never argued do nothing, I argue do something that works. All the literature on torture says it doesn't work. And we have verifiable evidence of intel we got and used that was false, and that is undisputed. You can't offer anything as undisputed and verifiable.

And torturing innocent people is also not going to help anyone's family. In fact, all of this likely puts them more at risk. It is not human nature to ignore these wrongs. Some will join the fight against us just to avenge those wrongs. And I speak of people who would not have done so without it.

This type of excuse you make above for evil doesn't hold up. It doesn't excuse torture. As for expertise, there are plenty who side with me.

Here are a couple:

Moreover, Zimbardo told LiveScience that torture is not an effective way to gather intelligence. Compared with police settings, in which detectives build social rapport and often get confessions without physical force, secret interrogation squads can alienate prisoners and elicit unreliable information, he said.

(For example, a Libyan detainee linked to al-Qaida falsely revealed under torture that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — a key reason for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Allen said.)

Study: U.S. Torture Techniques Unethical, Ineffective

As early as the third century A.D., the great Roman Jurist Ulpian noted that information obtained through torture was not to be trusted because some people are “so susceptible to pain that they will tell any lie rather than suffer it” (Peters, 1996). This warning about the unreliability of information extracted through the use of torture has echoed across the centuries. As one CIA operative who participated in torture during the Vietnam War put it, “We had people who were willing to confess to anything if we would just stop torturing them” (Andersen, 2004, p. 3). Indeed, the Army Field Manual explains that strategically useful information is best obtained from prisoners who are treated humanely, and that information obtained through torture has produced faulty intelligence (Leahy, 2005).

(snip)

Although torture does not produce reliable information, it may persist because it satisfies psychological needs in times of stress. Specifically, it counters a sense of desperation, reassures interrogators that they are in control, and bestows a feeling of empowerment, at least in the enclosed world of the interrogation room (Carlsmith & Sood, 2009). As one scholar put it, “Even though torture is not, on balance, effective or rational, it persists through its deep psychological appeal, to the powerful and the powerless alike, in times of crisis” (McCoy, 2006, p. 207).

http://www.cgu.edu/pdffiles/sbos/costanzo_effects_of_interrogation.pdf
 
Where is your evidence for that? I don't believe anyone offered credible testimony to anyone in Congress that the water technique approved for use by U.S. interrogators differed significantly from the technique used on U.S. servicemen in SERE training. The technique approved for interrogators was described in detail in government documents, and I have read them. It strictly limited how long a single administration could last--about 15-20 seconds--how many there could be in any one session, how many sessions there could be in any one day, etc. The subject's feet had to be kept higher than his head to make drowning impossible, and a doctor had to be in the room throughout the procedure.

I did not know there were people so unaware. I wouldn't leap into a discussion if I knew nothing about it. However, this will explain a few of the differences rather well:

SERE Training and Torture



What of it? Where is your evidence that "waterboarding" as done by Japanese war criminals was anything like the technique approved for use by U.S. interrogators? Next you'll be trying to tell us the bird bath in someone's garden is just like Lake Michigan, because they are both "bodies of water."

Drowning is drowning. I'm sorry, but you can't pretend there is a significant difference.


The report you love so well is a collection of lies designed to slander this country.

TGhis comment is just nonsense and not worthy from anyone in a debate.



That is exactly why all of the enhanced interrogation techniques approved for use by U.S. interrogators were designed not to violate either section 2340 of the U.S. Code or any other applicable U.S. laws against torture. And after painstaking, detailed legal analysis, the Justice Dept.'s Office of Legal Counsel determined that they did not violate any of those laws.

And they were wrong. Very wrong.


You can prattle that slander against the United States until you are blue in the face, and it will not make it one bit less false.

Nice effort to divert, but I'm arguing against torture so real American's aren't harmed in the future due to this illegal and immoral effort by one administration.
 
I wouldn't leap into a discussion if I knew nothing about it.

The fact you've chosen to post here says otherwise.


I don't give a damn what Alex Knapp, whatever sort of leftist dolt he is, thinks about this subject.


TGhis comment is just nonsense and not worthy from anyone in a debate.

I stand behind every word of my comment, and whether you consider it "worthy" does not interest me.

Nice effort to divert, but I'm arguing against torture so real American's aren't harmed in the future due to this illegal and immoral effort by one administration.

I doubt that.
 
I don't give a damn what Alex Knapp, whatever sort of leftist dolt he is, thinks about this subject.

I never thought you did care about facts.


I stand behind every word of my comment, and whether you consider it "worthy" does not interest me.

That's how ignorance persists.
 
Nobody, other than you, denies the CIA designed the techniques.
:2rofll: Stop telling untruths and making false arguments.
No one denied any such thing.
But you sure have made false claims and absurd connections.


and it doesn't even look like you're attempting to address my actual posts.
:doh Said the person being untruthful.
So typical for you.
Your post was fully shredded, all they way down to your false presentation of source material.


because I am done conversing with you.
You are done because you have been caught being dishonest. Not only in presentation, but in what you claim of others.
Which is the norm for you.

Good riddance to your absurdly illogical and dishonest argumentation.


With regards to Abu Ghraib, Amnesty Internation published the findings in a report and the Associated Press broke the news story.
Amnesty International?
iLOL
:lamo:2rofll::lamo
That is hilarious.
 
Last edited:
Such is not the case here. Waterboarding, stress positions, and sleep deprivation are all torture
The Justice Department did not say that in regards to the EIT methods.
And as such, there will be no prosecutions.
 
Right, enhanced interrogation and rape are equivalent. Wow.

Torture and rape are not necessarily the same thing, although rape can be a form of torture. The point is that you cannot say that just because there are terrorists who have been tortured who are alive and walking around, that means that they have not had any physical or psychological harm inflicted on them. Please keep track of the conversation.

I am sure Khalid Sheikh Mohammed appreciates your support as do the families almost 3000 Americans killed on 9/11.

I don't support that individual so your claim is absurd.

I am sure that Bin Laden however doesn't agree that the enhanced interrogations didn't work.

So you talk to him? Interesting.
 
That post shows a lot of ignorance, I never argued do nothing, I argue do something that works. All the literature on torture says it doesn't work. And we have verifiable evidence of intel we got and used that was false, and that is undisputed. You can't offer anything as undisputed and verifiable.

And torturing innocent people is also not going to help anyone's family. In fact, all of this likely puts them more at risk. It is not human nature to ignore these wrongs. Some will join the fight against us just to avenge those wrongs. And I speak of people who would not have done so without it.

This type of excuse you make above for evil doesn't hold up. It doesn't excuse torture. As for expertise, there are plenty who side with me.

Here are a couple:

Moreover, Zimbardo told LiveScience that torture is not an effective way to gather intelligence. Compared with police settings, in which detectives build social rapport and often get confessions without physical force, secret interrogation squads can alienate prisoners and elicit unreliable information, he said.

(For example, a Libyan detainee linked to al-Qaida falsely revealed under torture that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — a key reason for the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Allen said.)

Study: U.S. Torture Techniques Unethical, Ineffective

As early as the third century A.D., the great Roman Jurist Ulpian noted that information obtained through torture was not to be trusted because some people are “so susceptible to pain that they will tell any lie rather than suffer it” (Peters, 1996). This warning about the unreliability of information extracted through the use of torture has echoed across the centuries. As one CIA operative who participated in torture during the Vietnam War put it, “We had people who were willing to confess to anything if we would just stop torturing them” (Andersen, 2004, p. 3). Indeed, the Army Field Manual explains that strategically useful information is best obtained from prisoners who are treated humanely, and that information obtained through torture has produced faulty intelligence (Leahy, 2005).

(snip)

Although torture does not produce reliable information, it may persist because it satisfies psychological needs in times of stress. Specifically, it counters a sense of desperation, reassures interrogators that they are in control, and bestows a feeling of empowerment, at least in the enclosed world of the interrogation room (Carlsmith & Sood, 2009). As one scholar put it, “Even though torture is not, on balance, effective or rational, it persists through its deep psychological appeal, to the powerful and the powerless alike, in times of crisis” (McCoy, 2006, p. 207).

http://www.cgu.edu/pdffiles/sbos/costanzo_effects_of_interrogation.pdf

Look, suggest you get this post published in the fiction category. You post opinions as fact and ignore that this report didn't interview key leaders who authorized enhanced interrogation so you have no idea what you are talking about or if in this case enhanced interrogation worked. You call waterboarding torture and I disagree as would Bin Laden today as that is how he was captured and killed.
 
Torture and rape are not necessarily the same thing, although rape can be a form of torture. The point is that you cannot say that just because there are terrorists who have been tortured who are alive and walking around, that means that they have not had any physical or psychological harm inflicted on them. Please keep track of the conversation.



I don't support that individual so your claim is absurd.



So you talk to him? Interesting.

Where did the information come from that led to the capture and killing of Bin Laden? Why did John Brennan disagree with the report and claim that good intelligence was gained by enhanced interrogation that saved American lives?
 
Guess that conflicts with what former CIA leaders stated so tell me how would the Senate know? You are going to believe what you want to believe normally what is against this country

I didn't write the piece that I posted so I suppose their are other people that don't agree with you. And it's rather narrow minded to say that simply because someone doesn't agree with you they are against this country.
 
I didn't write the piece that I posted so I suppose their are other people that don't agree with you. And it's rather narrow minded to say that simply because someone doesn't agree with you they are against this country.

making a big deal out of this issue certainly doesn't help this country especially when you don't have all the facts and never will have all the facts by cherry picking information and not interviewing people who were in charge. I have no respect for anyone who takes an issue like this that obviously as Brennan said saved American lives and tries to prosecute Americans for doing their job of "providing for the common defense" as the problem seems to be that the real problem comes from within.
 
making a big deal out of this issue certainly doesn't help this country especially when you don't have all the facts and never will have all the facts by cherry picking information and not interviewing people who were in charge. I have no respect for anyone who takes an issue like this that obviously as Brennan said saved American lives and tries to prosecute Americans for doing their job of "providing for the common defense" as the problem seems to be that the real problem comes from within.

It is a big issue because having torture as a routine feature of foreign policy is counterproductive and runs contrary to the type of values the US professes to be about.
 
It is a big issue because having torture as a routine feature of foreign policy is counterproductive and runs contrary to the type of values the US professes to be about.

Tell that to those terrorists who aren't part of any govt. aren't part of the Geneva Convention and beheaded, burned, and flew planes into U.S. buildings killing thousands. You believe saving Americans by means of enhanced interrogation techniques is torture, I believe it is saving lives and providing for the common defense.
 
Tell that to those terrorists who aren't part of any govt. aren't part of the Geneva Convention and beheaded, burned, and flew planes into U.S. buildings killing thousands. You believe saving Americans by means of enhanced interrogation techniques is torture, I believe it is saving lives and providing for the common defense.

Using torture ROUTINELY, as a matter of formalized policy, to get information from subjects, is counterproductive because information obtained from torture has the tendency to be unreliable and in many instances is unnecessary because the information could be obtained in other ways. Over and above that, it is a feature of terrorist organizations to routinely use torture, and is ONE OF THE FEATURES, THOUGH NOT EXCLUSIVE, that makes terrorism unattractive to the civilized mind.
 
Using torture ROUTINELY, as a matter of formalized policy, to get information from subjects, is counterproductive because information obtained from torture has the tendency to be unreliable and in many instances is unnecessary because the information could be obtained in other ways. Over and above that, it is a feature of terrorist organizations to routinely use torture, and is ONE OF THE FEATURES, THOUGH NOT EXCLUSIVE, that makes terrorism unattractive to the civilized mind.

Sorry, but we are always going to disagree. I support doing whatever is necessary to save American lives and do not believe that waterboarding, which is done as part of survival training to our own troops, is torture as it leaves no permanent scars or damage. I further believe the CIA agents that American lives were saved and it is the responsibility of the military to protect and defend this country. If waterboarding did that, outstanding.
 
Sorry, but we are always going to disagree. I support doing whatever is necessary to save American lives and do not believe that waterboarding, which is done as part of survival training to our own troops, is torture as it leaves no permanent scars or damage. I further believe the CIA agents that American lives were saved and it is the responsibility of the military to protect and defend this country. If waterboarding did that, outstanding.

We did more than waterboard people, so that is one point. And again, if we are going to start torturing people, routinely as a matter of policy, that is one of the things that terrorists do.
 
We did more than waterboard people, so that is one point. And again, if we are going to start torturing people, routinely as a matter of policy, that is one of the things that terrorists do.

Your opinion noted but on this issue and the report there is no proven evidence to your point. I am just glad you aren't in position to enforce the Constitution and PROVIDE FOR THE COMMON DEFENSE.
 
Your opinion noted but on this issue and the report there is no proven evidence to your point. I am just glad you aren't in position to enforce the Constitution and PROVIDE FOR THE COMMON DEFENSE.

It is a fact that we did more than waterboard people. It is also a fact that torture has a tendency to produce unreliable information. Again that is not to say that it always produces unreliable information, but rather that it has a tendency to produce unreliable information. There is much to back that up. It is also a fact that terrorists frequently use torture as a matter of routine policy.
 
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