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Osama Bin Laden is dead

No, they are calling it "waterboarding", which is what it is.

Which is torture and not merely an enhanced interrorgation technique.


There's that torturous path again. KSM would have spilled his guts weeks earlier if he had to put up with this convoluted highway to nowhere.

he did not give this information, and frankly we have very little beyond confessions, which torture is good for, to show he gave us anything. Only the claim that he did.

What law did they break? They were advised at the time that waterboarding was legal, as well it should be.

And of course it was justified by the subsequent killing of Dustbin Laden. Where is the problem?

They were wrong, and rather dishonest. We've been through that, but torture is against the law, and waterboarding has always been torture. you might tell those US soliders we court martialed during the VN war it's not torture. They were told otherwise.
 
What law did they break? They were advised at the time that waterboarding was legal, as well it should be.
They received advice about some very specific things. What was cleared was apparently quite different than what happened. The CIA asked the DoJ to look into some behavior of some of the people involved.
I think that at one point in the IG report it was noted that the differences were so large that comparisons between what was cleared and what actually happened were described as "irrelevant."

As I noted earlier, I haven't run any OCR on the report yet, so it's kind of tedious to search through it still.
The IG report goes into detail should you be interested.




footnote 26

According to the Chief, Medical Services, OMS was neither consulted nor involved in the initial analysis of the risk and benefits of EITs, nor provided with the OTS report cited in the OLC opinion. In retrospect, based on the OLC extracts of the OTS eport, OMS contends that the reported sophistication of the preliminary EIT review was exaggerated, at least as it related to the waterboard, and the power of this EIT was appreciably overstated in the report. Furthermore, OMS, contends that the expertise of the SERE psychologists/interrogators on the waterboard was probably misrepresented at the time, as the SERE waterboard experience is so different from the subsequent Agency usage as to make it almost irrelevant. Consequently, according to OMS, there was no a priori reason to believe that applying the waterboard with the frequency and intensity with which it was used by the psychologist/interrogators was either efficacious or medically safe.​
 
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Nope. Attacking someone's credentials is not ad hominem.

Dismissing credentials on a personal whim certainly is. Everyone involved has the "credentials". Your claiming otherwise does not make it so.

In fact you're using an example of someone who was not directly involved against those who were. That makes no sense whatsoever.
 
my first post in this thread, wapo, august 29, 2009

but that's not exactly how the sources say it went down

ksm offered the courier's nom de guerre NOT under eit's but only AFTER "his spirit was broken" by the extremely rough treatment he was subjected to, somewhere in east europe, in the month after his capture

the "avowed and truculent enemy of the united states," after the eit's, underwent a "transformation," a "reversal"

he "cooperated, and to an extraordinary extent," he became the cia's "preeminent source on al qaeda"

it is true beyond ksm the intelligence chain involved many sources, years of time, hundreds of legs, thousands of miles

and outside of ksm and al libi, also waterboarded, no further eit's were used on the road to ubl in my sources

but a puzzle as complex as the way ksm was found, without its "preeminent source...."

it's clear that ksm and al libi played central roles in rooting out the lead

more couldn't really be said, but no less either

read the 4 links above, wapo, abc, telegraph and reuters

Most of the articles written later say the opposite. It seemed odd that the CIA Inspector General would make such a comment, as he would have known what was later reported.

Surveillance, Not Waterboarding, Led to bin Laden
By Spencer Ackerman May 3, 2011


The torture program established by the CIA appears to have played a minor role, at most, in the intelligence effort that eventually lead to Osama bin Laden’s death. From the evidence released so far, electronic surveillance and old-fashioned intel methods were far more important.

Check out the timeline presented by an Obama administration official on Sunday. The trail starts with al-Qaida detainees captured in the early days of the war on terrorism, when the Bush administration authorized the CIA to use abusive methods like waterboarding to extract information. Detainees identified a courier for bin Laden as a “protégé” of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and a “trusted assistant” of former al-Qaida #3 Abu Faraj al-Libbi. And they gave up the courier’s nom de guerre.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in 2003, with al-Libbi following suit in 2005. A U.S. official tells the Associated Press reports that Mohammed gave up the courier’s nom de guerre, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, while in one of the CIA’s brutal “black site” prisons. As Marcy Wheeler notes, that’s not the same thing as saying the 183 waterboarding sessions Mohammed received led interrogators to the nom de guerre. But let’s be charitable to them and presume it did. According to the Washington Post, al-Libbi confirmed the alias as well.

From what we know so far, that’s about all waterboarding yielded for the hunt for al-Kuwaiti.


The senior administration official told reporters on Sunday that “for years, we were unable to identify his true name or his location.” It took until “four years ago” — 2007, then — for intelligence officials to learn al-Kuwaiti’s real name. By then, President Bush had ceased waterboarding and shuttered the black sites, moving the detainees within them, including Mohammed and al-Libbi, to Guantanamo Bay. In a Monday interview, Donald Rumsfeld said “normal” interrogation techniques were used at Gitmo on those detainees.

Surveillance, Not Waterboarding, Led to bin Laden | Danger Room | Wired.com
 
They received advice about some very specific things. What was cleared was apparently quite different than what happened. The CIA asked the DoJ to look into some behavior of some of the people involved.
I think that at one point in the IG report it was noted that the differences were so large that comparisons between what was cleared and what actually happened were described as "irrelevant."

As I noted earlier, I haven't run any OCR on the report yet, so it's kind of tedious to search through it still.
The IG report goes into detail should you be interested.




footnote 26

According to the Chief, Medical Services, OMS was neither consulted nor involved in the initial analysis of the risk and benefits of EITs, nor provided with the OTS report cited in the OLC opinion. In retrospect, based on the OLC extracts of the OTS eport, OMS contends that the reported sophistication of the preliminary EIT review was exaggerated, at least as it related to the waterboard, and the power of this EIT was appreciably overstated in the report. Furthermore, OMS, contends that the expertise of the SERE psychologists/interrogators on the waterboard was probably misrepresented at the time, as the SERE waterboard experience is so different from the subsequent Agency usage as to make it almost irrelevant. Consequently, according to OMS, there was no a priori reason to believe that applying the waterboard with the frequency and intensity with which it was used by the psychologist/interrogators was either efficacious or medically safe.​

Well I hope the law rules that the CIA can waterboard terrorists in order to protect the American people. If they cant it puts them at a huge disadvantage in the WOT, and the terrorists know it. In fact KSM's attitude was quite relaxed when he first underwent interrogation, claiming he wanted a lawyer before he answered any questions.

The US has to make a decision whether it is serious in this WOT or not and what sort of value they would place on American lives versus that of the terrorists.
 
I never said that is wasn't unpleasant....I said it causes no physical harm, therefore it's not torture.

Oh, and your opinion is supposed to override the opinion of experts and the law?

The United States has enacted statutes prohibiting torture[/B] and cruel or inhuman treatment. It is these statutes which make waterboarding illegal.[22] The four principal statutes which Congress has adopted to implement the provisions of the foregoing treaties are the Torture Act,[23] the War Crimes Act,[24],and the laws entitled “Prohibition on Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of Persons Under Custody or Control of the United States Government”[25] and “Additional Prohibition on Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.”[26] The first two statutes are criminal laws while the latter two statutes extend civil rights to any person in the custody of the United States anywhere in the world.

Waterboarding is Illegal - Washington University Law Review
 
Most of the articles written later say the opposite. It seemed odd that the CIA Inspector General would make such a comment, as he would have known what was later reported.

Surveillance, Not Waterboarding, Led to bin Laden
By Spencer Ackerman May 3, 2011


The torture program established by the CIA appears to have played a minor role, at most, in the intelligence effort that eventually lead to Osama bin Laden’s death. From the evidence released so far, electronic surveillance and old-fashioned intel methods were far more important.

Check out the timeline presented by an Obama administration official on Sunday. The trail starts with al-Qaida detainees captured in the early days of the war on terrorism, when the Bush administration authorized the CIA to use abusive methods like waterboarding to extract information. Detainees identified a courier for bin Laden as a “protégé” of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and a “trusted assistant” of former al-Qaida #3 Abu Faraj al-Libbi. And they gave up the courier’s nom de guerre.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was captured in Pakistan in 2003, with al-Libbi following suit in 2005. A U.S. official tells the Associated Press reports that Mohammed gave up the courier’s nom de guerre, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, while in one of the CIA’s brutal “black site” prisons. As Marcy Wheeler notes, that’s not the same thing as saying the 183 waterboarding sessions Mohammed received led interrogators to the nom de guerre. But let’s be charitable to them and presume it did. According to the Washington Post, al-Libbi confirmed the alias as well.

From what we know so far, that’s about all waterboarding yielded for the hunt for al-Kuwaiti.


The senior administration official told reporters on Sunday that “for years, we were unable to identify his true name or his location.” It took until “four years ago” — 2007, then — for intelligence officials to learn al-Kuwaiti’s real name. By then, President Bush had ceased waterboarding and shuttered the black sites, moving the detainees within them, including Mohammed and al-Libbi, to Guantanamo Bay. In a Monday interview, Donald Rumsfeld said “normal” interrogation techniques were used at Gitmo on those detainees.

Surveillance, Not Waterboarding, Led to bin Laden | Danger Room | Wired.com

I can't find Spencer Ackerman's name anywhere in the list of CIA officials.

Would you mind sending a link regarding his professional expertise and his CIA involvement?
 
Well I hope the law rules that the CIA can waterboard terrorists in order to protect the American people. If they cant it puts them at a huge disadvantage in the WOT, and the terrorists know it. In fact KSM's attitude was quite relaxed when he first underwent interrogation, claiming he wanted a lawyer before he answered any questions.

The US has to make a decision whether it is serious in this WOT or not and what sort of value they would place on American lives versus that of the terrorists.

The disadvantage would be to waterboard. Largely torture is best for getting confessions, from weven the innocent, but not for information gathering. Torture didn't get us the information. More traditioanl forms of interrogation and work did.
 
From what we know so far, that’s about all waterboarding yielded for the hunt for al-Kuwaiti.

that's pretty much the way it went down, according to all accounts i've come across

except that ksm "cooperated to an extradordinary extent" and became langley's "preeminent source," conducting "terrorist tutorials," only "after his spirit was broken" with very harsh eit's in europe

"ksm was an unparalleled source in deciphering aq's strategic doctrine, key operatives and likely targets, including describing in considerable detail the traits and profiles that aq sought in western operatives and how the terrorist organization might conduct surveillance in the us"

"cross-referencing material from different detainees and leveraging information from one to extract more detail from another, the cia and fbi went on to round up operatives both in the us and abroad "

"detainees in mid 2003 helped us build a list of 70 individuals---many of whom we had never heard of before---that aq deemed suitable for western operations"

"according to the cia summary"

and tho ghul and al libi were not waterboarded, they were eit'd

one of the sources linked above says that al libi was food deprived and stripped naked because he loved to eat and he was personally very modest

it is what it is

and it aint just eit's

the maintenance of gitmo, the detention of suspects, the warrantless wiretapping of phone calls to al kuwaiti...

they all led up to this ASSASSINATION

americans are overwhelmingly grateful to president obama for not dismantling the methods of his predecessor, allowing our agents and soldiers to get ubl
 
that's pretty much the way it went down, according to all accounts i've come across

except that ksm "cooperated to an extradordinary extent" and became langley's "preeminent source," conducting "terrorist tutorials," only "after his spirit was broken" with very harsh eit's in europe

"ksm was an unparalleled source in deciphering aq's strategic doctrine, key operatives and likely targets, including describing in considerable detail the traits and profiles that aq sought in western operatives and how the terrorist organization might conduct surveillance in the us"

"cross-referencing material from different detainees and leveraging information from one to extract more detail from another, the cia and fbi went on to round up operatives both in the us and abroad "

"detainees in mid 2003 helped us build a list of 70 individuals---many of whom we had never heard of before---that aq deemed suitable for western operations"

"according to the cia summary"

and tho ghul and al libi were not waterboarded, they were eit'd

one of the sources linked above says that al libi was food deprived and stripped naked because he loved to eat and he was personally very modest

it is what it is

and it aint just eit's

the maintenance of gitmo, the detention of suspects, the warrantless wiretapping of phone calls to al kuwaiti...

they all led up to this ASSASSINATION

americans are overwhelmingly grateful to president obama for not dismantling the methods of his predecessor, allowing our agents and soldiers to get ubl

I agree with this entire post...all ive read says the same thing
 
The disadvantage would be to waterboard. Largely torture is best for getting confessions, from weven the innocent, but not for information gathering. Torture didn't get us the information. More traditioanl forms of interrogation and work did.

You think we waterboarded him for confessions?
 
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Oh, and your opinion is supposed to override the opinion of experts and the law?

The United States has enacted statutes prohibiting torture[/B] and cruel or inhuman treatment. It is these statutes which make waterboarding illegal.[22] The four principal statutes which Congress has adopted to implement the provisions of the foregoing treaties are the Torture Act,[23] the War Crimes Act,[24],and the laws entitled “Prohibition on Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment of Persons Under Custody or Control of the United States Government”[25] and “Additional Prohibition on Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.”[26] The first two statutes are criminal laws while the latter two statutes extend civil rights to any person in the custody of the United States anywhere in the world.

Waterboarding is Illegal - Washington University Law Review


And the Washington University Law Review has replaced the Supreme Court?

That is news!
 
yes, that IS a not subtle distinction that's completely lost on the sydney crowd

the purpose of waterboarding is NOT to illicit info, but instead it intends to "break the spirit"

which is exactly what the cia's inspector general reported happened to langley's "preeminent source on aq," khalid sheikh muhammad, AS RELEASED BY ERIC HOLDER'S DOJ on the monday preceding august 29, 2009

ubl was ASSASSINATED, aesops

assassination's ok, but wall slamming is not?

fine by me, whatever pleases your piper

but most americans are very grateful to president obama for not dismantling the methodologies he inherited from his predecessor, keeping gitmo, detaining, wiretapping...

despite his best efforts

U-S-A!
 
Well I hope the law rules that the CIA can waterboard terrorists in order to protect the American people.
What I provided was just to point out that what the DoJ signed off on was different than what happened.
If they cant it puts them at a huge disadvantage in the WOT, and the terrorists know it.
I don't think that missing out on a technique of questionable value counts as a "huge" disadvantage.
The US has to make a decision whether it is serious in this WOT or not and what sort of value they would place on American lives versus that of the terrorists.
You think we have been remiss on these points I take it. Waging war for ten years doesn't count? Why do you hate America? ;) j/k j/k
 
Am I the only one reading this report?

and tho ghul and al libi were not waterboarded, they were eit'd
one of the sources linked above says that al libi was food deprived and stripped naked because he loved to eat and he was personally very modest
FYI, those techniques are NOT EITs.

section 63
The DCI Interrogation Guidelines define "standard interrogation techniques" as techniques that do not incorporate significant physical or psychological pressure. These techniques include, but are not limited to, all lawful forms of questioning employed by U.S. law enforcement and military interrogation personnel. Among standard interrogation techniques are the use of isolation, sleep deprivation not to exceed 72 hours, reduced caloric intake (so long as the amount is calculated to maintain the general health of the detainee), deprivation of reading material, use of loud music or white noise (at a decibel level calculated to avoid damage to the detainee's hearing), the use of diapers for limited periods (generally not to exceed 72 hours), [] and moderate psychologicial pressure.​

emphasis added
 
Re: Am I the only one reading this report?

thanks

the sources say libi was stripped and starved in addition to eit's

they say he was not waterboarded

there appears little doubt that DETENTION and GITMO and WIRETAPPING greatly facilitated this GET

as well as eit's---the preeminent source was "transformed," "reversed," in the extremely rough month after his capture, according to the report holder made public on the monday before aug 29

says wapo, leastaways

langley did a lotta legwork, it appears, before our seals took over
 
Was there a firefight? Makes a difference. Still, that would not be equl to our enemy, just closer than i prefer (as I said), and not equal to torture and other more long lasting and invasive efforts.

As for justification, I really haven't commented on that much at all. The conversation has been on two fronts: 1) is he really dead (deathers) and 2) Did torture get the information and is torture justified. I have not entered into the deadly force conversation, if there has even been one, at all.

However, I would say it would depend on what happened. If they went with no other intent than to assisinate hime, then I would agree that is wrong. If they went in to get him and in the course of a firefight killed him, I would have no real problem with that.

They found guns and they found computers and other info. that has proof of other attacks they were planning on us. So I could care less if there was no firefight. They were threats and we took em out.
 
I don't think that missing out on a technique of questionable value counts as a "huge" disadvantage.

Certainly it is. We know that KSM didn't want to cooperate at all before he was waterboarded and in fact assumed he could get a lawyer. And now what high ranking Al Qaeda members has the BHO Administration captured since he took office and what information have they been able to act on? Nothing.


You think we have been remiss on these points I take it. Waging war for ten years doesn't count? Why do you hate America? ;) j/k j/k

As a matter of fact I'm quite prepared to defend America and have frequently done so, especially against your former European Allies.. But America also has to learn to defend itself, and by whatever means necessary.(serious, serious;))
 
When you think about it, bin Laden's burial was kind of like waterboarding. :lol: Obama is a sneaky guy.
 
You think we waterboarded him for confessions?

he did confess to everything ever done. But that is what waterbaording is most effective at. It is not as good at gathering information. And frankly, we've seen no verifiable evidence that he gave us much. In this case we got the carriers name long after waterboarding. Seems factually, those methods work better.
 
They found guns and they found computers and other info. that has proof of other attacks they were planning on us. So I could care less if there was no firefight. They were threats and we took em out.

Would they have got those things without taking them out so to speak? Blood lust is common. Not needed, but common. I prefer rule of law to revenge. All of us, myself included, can step over the line easily. It is good to have rules to live by, that guide us even when we don't want them to.
 
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