Should the Report on Torture Be Released Publicly?

eohrnberger said:

So no deaths then?

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MMC said:

Yeah and I don't think Washington's thoughts included.....what is a terrorist.

The report is out.

http://www.debatepolitics.com/break...port-cia-interrogation-11.html#post1064072084

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annata said:

the stress positions were egregious -at least enough so the tapes were destroyed.

Enhanced interrogation techniques - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

what I'm wondering is if we got anything out of this in terms of Intel -there are conflicting reports as this is now a partisan "issue"

I read one of the detainees , or black prisoners gave up the idea that bin Laden used a courier, and that was instrumental in finding and killing him.
I've heard references to "thwarting plots", but nothing concrete.

If I had to bottom line it all, i'd say it was worth it if we saved other's lives - the other question is would there have been other means to do so.

The CIA hacking into the Senate computers provided by the CIA at the Hart office building is just as bad a Constitutional "crime" ( abuse)
in terms of /separation of powers/oversight.

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First, its claim that the CIA’s interrogation program was ineffective in producing intelligence that helped us disrupt, capture, or kill terrorists is just not accurate. The program was invaluable in three critical ways:

• It led to the capture of senior al Qaeda operatives, thereby removing them from the battlefield.
• It led to the disruption of terrorist plots and prevented mass casualty attacks, saving American and Allied lives.
• It added enormously to what we knew about al Qaeda as an organization and therefore informed our approaches on how best to attack, thwart and degrade it.

A powerful example of the interrogation program’s importance is the information obtained from Abu Zubaydah, a senior al Qaeda operative, and from Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, known as KSM, the 9/11 mastermind. We are convinced that both would not have talked absent the interrogation program.

Information provided by Zubaydah through the interrogation program led to the capture in 2002 of KSM associate and post-9/11 plotter Ramzi Bin al-Shibh. Information from both Zubaydah and al-Shibh led us to KSM. KSM then led us to Riduan Isamuddin, aka Hambali, East Asia’s chief al Qaeda ally and the perpetrator of the 2002 Bali bombing in Indonesia—in which more than 200 people perished.

The removal of these senior al Qaeda operatives saved thousands of lives because it ended their plotting. KSM, alone, was working on multiple plots when he was captured.

Here’s an example of how the interrogation program actually worked to disrupt terrorist plotting. Without revealing to KSM that Hambali had been captured, we asked him who might take over in the event that Hambali was no longer around. KSM pointed to Hambali’s brother Rusman Gunawan. We then found Gunawan, and information from him resulted in the takedown of a 17-member Southeast Asian cell that Gunawan had recruited for a “second wave,” 9/11-style attack on the U.S. West Coast, in all likelihood using aircraft again to attack buildings. Had that attack occurred, the nightmare of 9/11 would have been repeated.

Once they had become compliant due to the interrogation program, both Abu Zubaydah and KSM turned out to be invaluable sources on the al Qaeda organization. We went back to them multiple times to gain insight into the group. More than one quarter of the nearly 1,700 footnotes in the highly regarded 9/11 Commission Report in 2004 and a significant share of the intelligence in the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on al Qaeda came from detainees in the program, in particular Zubaydah and KSM.

The majority on the Senate Intelligence Committee further claims that the takedown of bin Laden was not facilitated by information from the interrogation program. They are wrong. There is no doubt that information provided by the totality of detainees in CIA custody, those who were subjected to interrogation and those who were not, was essential to bringing bin Laden to justice. The CIA never would have focused on the individual who turned out to be bin Laden’s personal courier without the detention and interrogation program.

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eohrnberger said:

I believe that much of that is still held in secret due to national security. However, we do have this:

Ex-CIA Directors: Interrogations Saved Lives - WSJ

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The country and the CIA would have benefited from a more balanced study of these programs and a corresponding set of recommendations. The committee’s report is not that study. It offers not a single recommendation.

Our view on this is shared by the CIA and the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Republican minority, both of which are releasing rebuttals to the majority’s report. Both critiques are clear-eyed, fact-based assessments that challenge the majority’s contentions in a nonpartisan way

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Glen Contrarian said:

That, and in the modern day, thanks to cell phones, modern media, the internet, and modern explosives, a handful of men can bring a city to its knees, because they can do more damage than a battalion could have done in the 1800's. The very nature of war is changing - gone are the days when massed armies moved from point to point. Gone are the days of great battles in the countryside.

Everyone who thinks that a man must wear a uniform in order to be a soldier is living in the past. That time is gone.

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MMC said:

Heya Ikari. :2wave: I don't think to many of the people were even focused on this with all the protests taking place. This is all about going after the CIA which BO and his team has been shining that Bad light down on them ever since Benghazi and the CIA blaming the State Dept. Which State was doing work for BO, and some that they shouldn't have been.

This report could have been dealt with in several ways. Which would give overcite. Without the Public needing to know any specific details. Yet still being told what came from the findings.

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MMC said:

Hence the terminology.....Unlawful combatant/Terrorist.

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Ikari said:

I buy that Obama is using this as political camouflage of sorts, same as all the other Republocrats would. Yet the damage done by secrets of the government far outweighs the potential risk by the populace being made aware of the government's actual actions and desires.

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MMC said:

This damage will affect others outside our own people. It will even affect our intel networks going forward. Put us even more behind the 8 ball now.

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Ikari said:

The 8 ball we're behind isn't terrorist threat. It's government authoritarianism and tyranny. This announcement will likely do nothing for or against that.

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iliveonramen said:

Well the report actually has that information in it. It actually shows that the interrogation techniques were used since 2002...and the President wasn't even informed until 2006. it also states that the CIA actually lied or didn't answer questions specific to the interrogation techniques. When the President did know about it he didn't even tell Powell or Rumsfeld about it. See...that's why this report is useful. When there's no definitive version of events people can completely fabricate things out of no where...like this idea that Congress was informed.

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...Speaker Pelosi said in February that she was "never" told that the CIA was using waterboarding in interrogations. Then in May she changed her story to say she was told, but still claimed it was not quite as early as the CIA said.

On that point she’s contradicted, however, both by a CIA memo and by a Republican former congressman who got the same briefing she did. The current CIA director, a Democrat, says his agency’s story, though not infallible, is "the most thorough information we have."

Prominent Republicans, including former Speaker Gingrich, are saying that Pelosi should step down because of this.

Who’s right? It is clear that Pelosi has contradicted herself, and that she knew as early as 2003 that waterboarding was in use, long before she raised any public or private objection....

Pelosi said unequivocally in February: "I can say flat out, they never told us that these enhancement interrogations were being used." In April, she said that "we were not told" about the program at any briefing.

But a CIA memo released May 6 flatly contradicts those claims, stating that CIA personnel gave Pelosi "a description of the particular EITs [Enhanced Interrogation Techniques] that had been employed." That briefing was in September 2002. Pelosi herself now admits that an aide told her about the interrogation techniques in 2003, but she still maintains that the CIA didn’t tell her in 2002 that waterboarding had been used...

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...In the fall of 2002, while I was chairman of the House intelligence committee, senior members of Congress were briefed on the CIA's "High Value Terrorist Program," including the development of "enhanced interrogation techniques" and what those techniques were. This was not a one-time briefing but an ongoing subject with lots of back and forth between those members and the briefers.

Today, I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as "waterboarding" were never mentioned. It must be hard for most Americans of common sense to imagine how a member of Congress can forget being told about the interrogations of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. In that case, though, perhaps it is not amnesia but political expedience.

Let me be clear. It is my recollection that:

-- The chairs and the ranking minority members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, known as the Gang of Four, were briefed that the CIA was holding and interrogating high-value terrorists.
-- We understood what the CIA was doing.
-- We gave the CIA our bipartisan support.
-- We gave the CIA funding to carry out its activities.
-- On a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda....

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DaveFagan said:

I think the "Torture" is and was reprehensible. When you agree to torture, you are agreeing to have your own soldiers tortured, tit for tat, don't ya' know. It represents the low moral agenda that US policies have become under both Repubs and Dems. We've got a nice CORPORATE gov't that is real people because the SCOTUS says so. Don't live and breathe, don't feel pain, don't choke on smog, don't get cancer, are not limited by human frailities like death, and can be bankrupted to escape/minimize liability. Chaos, death, torture, terror, etc. are just side effects of that CORPORATE mantra; "War is good business, and business is good."

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Glen Contrarian said:

That, and in the modern day, thanks to cell phones, modern media, the internet, and modern explosives, a handful of men can bring a city to its knees, because they can do more damage than a battalion could have done in the 1800's. The very nature of war is changing - gone are the days when massed armies moved from point to point. Gone are the days of great battles in the countryside.

Everyone who thinks that a man must wear a uniform in order to be a soldier is living in the past. That time is gone.

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Risky Thicket said:

Actually, no. The "Leftists" have had the opportunity but threw the opportunity under the bus when Pelosi said "impeachment is off the table". The CIA, among others, operates with almost complete immunity. That concerns me.

At this point in the political game no matter what is reported to the public about torture - and it won't be much of anything - there will be NO clear line of responsibility for any wrong doing or the authorization or approval or knowledge of any wrong doing. "Mr. Transparency" hasn't been transparent and he isn't going to start now. We have no reason whatsoever to expect a conservative government to be transparent. Indeed, we don't really hear that from conservatives.

What bothers me most is that more and more Americans seem to support incremental fascism.

We have reached a point in America where what we really know about the government is what the government tells us. That should bother every American, though unfortunately it does not. As a result, for all we know, we have a government that creates and supports the idea of a big boogie man that must be dealt with. And to deal with that boogie man Americans must trust the government, who in turn and in bits and pieces tells Americans only what it says Americans need to know. Later the government says, "We need to take away some of your freedom to protect you. Trust us." Later still we are told that more freedom needs to be given up because fighting the boogey man is really hard. "Trust us more, we will keep you safe."

Later yet, the world discovers via WikiLeaks and Julian Assange that maybe Americans shouldn't trust their government. But many Americans are very scared and as Washington cranks up its propaganda machine to use on the American people (now legal, signed into law by Obama, by the way) are told over and over and over and over that Assange is not to be trusted. "His truth hurts America. He is a serial rapist. Trust us, we know. We are keeping you safe." And thus American fascism continue to grow inch by inch, lie by lie, freedoms lost bit by bit. Americans for the most part don't listen to Assange. They've been told not to.

Next we have Snowden reveal to us that the government has unquestionably lied its ass off to the American people. The government has taken liberties where it said it would not. The government has taken liberties where it says it did not. We discover, in fact, that what Snowden bravely exposed is correct. Our government has not been telling us the truth. Our government has lied to us - a lot. Our basic rights have been abused and shattered. Responding to Snowden's revelations the government countered with massive propaganda and even though we know Snowden was correct, the American masses listened to the government's never ending, "But we are spying on you for you. Yes, we made a mistake, but we didn't mean to. We won't do it anymore. Promise. Besides we only do it to protect you from the boogie man we keep telling you about. Trust us". Americans are told to hate Snowden, so Americans hate Snowden. And fascism creeps deeper into America as Americans do what they are told.

What Americans really know about their government is what their government tells them. On a continuum we are either moving closer to the Constitution or further away from it.

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shrubnose said:

The right threw itself under the bus when it decided to abandon American and international principals and engage in the torture of a lot of people, some of whom were guilty of nothing. :roll:

I continue to believe that eventually some of those torturers will pay for their crimes.

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Geoist said:

Yeah, what a bunch of snitches.

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MMC said:

Diane Feinstein and the Democrats are releasing the Torture Report this week, they are saying. They meaning the Demos, Feinstein, and the MS Media.

Foreign governments and U.S. intelligence agencies are predicting that the release of a Senate report examining the use of torture by the CIA will cause "violence and deaths" abroad. BO is backing the release of this report. Since he came out and stated we tortured some folks. Then other countries Intel services stated this will cause more violence and death to take place. This was all reported back to BO. Yet he and the Democrats are all for it.

The Republicans are disputing this report and will come out with their own report. Feinstein said she would go ahead with the release. Even after Kerry asked her to hold off with the timing.

What say ye?

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tacomancer said:

The Government should be as transparent as possible, so yes. If things like this are too sensitive to release, then the government probably shouldnt have done it in the first place, but since they did, we can use accurate info to hold people accountable and discourage future occurrence of bad policy.

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MMC said:

Heya TM. :2wave: Do you think the Democrats should have talked to witnesses to have accurate information first before coming out with a report wherein they were biased and most knew so?

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MMC said:

Heya TM. :2wave: Do you think the Democrats should have talked to witnesses to have accurate information first before coming out with a report wherein they were biased and most knew so?

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MMC said:

Our intel people are when it comes to dealing with those that are seeking to do us harm. As we have been shown under BO and his team.

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tacomancer said:

There is not enough information to say whether this report is biased or not, and if so, how biased. If there is a taint of bias, we need to start releasing internal documents from whatever departments were involved and get the full story, and if a few careers are ruined or people go to jail, then good they shouldnt have been involved in the first place. This is not a political matter to me, this is a human rights matter. I consider that to be far more fundamental than political games.

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MMC said:

So do you think it is wise when conducting an investigation, that one of the steps would be to talk to witnesses? Shouldn't there be a process that is kept to and such rules followed when looking into what you term a human Rights matter? If a report by one group of people is not conducted properly and they refuse to follow such guidelines and format. Would you say they look Biased?

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Ikari said:

Those seeking to do us harm are, by and large, the American government itself. Nothing poses greater threat to our freedom and liberty at present. Not even terrorists.

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