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Senate panel releases scathing report on CIA interrogation...

All the report does is "make it official" that the US government tortured. Like Obama noted a few years back, "we tortured some folks".

It is some measure of vindication for those like me, frequently described by others as "tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorists". That is, it shows that the conspiracies were not imaginary, but very real.

Given Abu Ghraib and human conditions, understanding it was happening was not exactly rocket science, but it is nice that the government would "officially" acknowledge what we were talking about.

Well, if partisan, hackish reports are what you are looking for out of government, then I can understand why you cheer this broken demo party...This wasn't a unified report that was released, it was a one sided pile of steaming dung.
 
Well, if partisan, hackish reports are what you are looking for out of government, then I can understand why you cheer this broken demo party...This wasn't a unified report that was released, it was a one sided pile of steaming dung.


I'm not cheering the demo party, I'm just happy that my friggin' tax dollars were spent wisely, for once.

And, I'm so embarrassed by the Republican Party, which I am technically still registered as, that soon I will go down and change my Party Affiliation at the voting office.
 
I'm not cheering the demo party, I'm just happy that my friggin' tax dollars were spent wisely, for once.

And, I'm so embarrassed by the Republican Party, which I am technically still registered as, that soon I will go down and change my Party Affiliation at the voting office.

Well good for you...One small step toward honesty Henry...No really...Tell me, what about the 1.1 Trillion dollars, and funding totally of Obamacare, and the illegal Amnesty was "wisely spent"? Are you kidding here?
 
Well good for you...One small step toward honesty Henry...No really...Tell me, what about the 1.1 Trillion dollars, and funding totally of Obamacare, and the illegal Amnesty was "wisely spent"? Are you kidding here?

No, I am a fan of the "line item veto". :lol:

I am able to separate issues, to study and judge them individually.

That is, I have opposed Obamacare since its inception, and I'm hugely disappointed in the "conservative" Roberts Court for having given it birth.

How 'bout you?
 
No, I am a fan of the "line item veto". :lol:

I am able to separate issues, to study and judge them individually.

That is, I have opposed Obamacare since its inception, and I'm hugely disappointed in the "conservative" Roberts Court for having given it birth.

How 'bout you?

Absolutely Henry...But line item won't be used on this crap...You think Obama will line out Obamacare? Really?
 
Absolutely Henry...But line item won't be used on this crap...You think Obama will line out Obamacare? Really?

Line item veto, as to how I personally consider issues--one at a time.

My point was that you seemed to suggest that I supported Obamacare because I am happy that my tax dollars were for once spent properly in preparing the report.

I don't support Obamacare and never have.
 
No, I am a fan of the "line item veto". :lol:

I am able to separate issues, to study and judge them individually.

That is, I have opposed Obamacare since its inception, and I'm hugely disappointed in the "conservative" Roberts Court for having given it birth.

How 'bout you?

That is a dangerous idea. It simply gives the POTUS (actually the party that holds that office) the ability to require a supermajority for the other party to get anything done. Imagine an immigration reform "bipartisan compromise" that has both amnesty and E-verify, which passes by a narrow margin, and later the POTUS simply "lines out" the E-verify portion requiring a supermajority to override that veto. ;)
 
Good points 78640.
 
The "183 times" quote was but one inaccuracy...The entire op-ed attempt at journalism is just proof that we don't have an objective press, and people like you buy into the propaganda.

When various journalists have volunteered to get taped getting the waterboard, we count that as ONE because not one that I've seen has lasted more than a few seconds, and I've seen no one have that repeated. It's the same way the 183 was counted.

How should it be counted? Let's say you're on the receiving end, the water was poured over your face, you're unable to breath, ingest a bunch of water, choke, gag, vomit, before they quit pouring, and then they let you rest for a few minutes before doing it again. It would make a helluva lot of difference whether that "application" happened once that day or 40 times. Apparently, the right wing apologists want to count 1 "application" and 40 as equivalent, and just count it as one "waterboard." Which number better reflects what happened? One or 40? If it was you, I can promise it's 40.

BTW, the report is extensively documented with hundreds or thousands of footnotes. Every important statement is supported by an original document. It's legitimate journalism to quote from that kind of document - that's what journalists DO. And as many have pointed out, I've seen almost no allegations that any facts cited in the report are false. And if they're false, then the underlying documents contemporaneously prepared by CIA or other officials and cited in the report were false.
 
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As per the report I posted earlier KSM was waterboarded in 5 sessions. The only reason to break down each one of those sessions and count every single instance that water was poured within that session is to demonize the interrogators, and blow up what really went on in the wake of 9/11. Especially now, this far out from that time, where people forget the emotion of losing 3,000 people, and the fear that everyone felt in the days after.

As someone already pointed out either here, or in another of the rehash threads, we as American's bitched that the CIA didn't catch this attack, then when WE turned them loose to make sure that it never happened again, WE bitch that they went too far...So your making sure that we never get the type of intel that has kept America from another mass attack, and helped in locating, and killing OBL...That's just great....So, the next attack, the blood is on liberal panty waste's hands.

Now it's official that KSM wasn't the only one, and that waterboarding wasn't the only form of sharpened interrogation that took place, so we know now that our government, the one that is supposed to stick up for human rights and stand for freedom and limited government and yadayadayada actually suborned tor.. I mean sharpened interrogation of prisoners.

What we don't know is that said torture actually produced any useful information.

Now that the report is out, the only refuge of the "Oh, our government would never do that" folks is to say that the report was produced by Democrats, and is ipso facto flawed, and/or that the end justified the means and kept us safe.

And that's simply a crock.
 
As per the report I posted earlier KSM was waterboarded in 5 sessions.

He was waterboarded in five sessions in a little more than 24 hours. And many other times before and following that day. 15 total sessions.

The only reason to break down each one of those sessions and count every single instance that water was poured within that session is to demonize the interrogators, and blow up what really went on in the wake of 9/11. Especially now, this far out from that time, where people forget the emotion of losing 3,000 people, and the fear that everyone felt in the days after.

No, it's to reflect the extent of what we did.

As someone already pointed out either here, or in another of the rehash threads, we as American's bitched that the CIA didn't catch this attack, then when WE turned them loose to make sure that it never happened again, WE bitch that they went too far...So your making sure that we never get the type of intel that has kept America from another mass attack, and helped in locating, and killing OBL...That's just great....So, the next attack, the blood is on liberal panty waste's hands.

People 'bitched' because the information was available to the various agencies, but because of a lack of information sharing, or people dropping the ball, that information wasn't acted on or pieced together. The problems cited after 9/11 were primarily that the CIA and other people tasked with the job of evaluating intel did a poor job, not that they lacked the information.

And one big part of the debate is whether or not the torture program produced valuable intelligence not available through traditional means. The bulk of the evidence is it did not and what little information might have been obtained was dwarfed by the damage the revelations of our rendition and torture program did to the overall effort.

Lots of quotes from people very involved in fighting terrorism here but this captures it best:

Former Navy Judge Advocate General Admiral John Hutson says:

Fundamentally, those kinds of techniques are ineffective. If the goal is to gain actionable intelligence, and it is, and if that’s important, and it is, then we have to use the techniques that are most effective. Torture is the technique of choice of the lazy, stupid and pseudo-tough.

As perhaps isn't surprising, few of them expressed views opposing torture on moral or ethical grounds, and instead based it on the fact that it doesn't work and when discovered by the enemy does far more harm than the meager gains from any information obtained.

As the senior interrogator in Iraq for a task force charged with hunting down Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, the former Al Qaida leader and mass murderer, I listened time and time again to captured foreign fighters cite the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo as their main reason for coming to Iraq to fight.
...
I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo.


Finally, the blood is on the hands of those who made the policy choices to do certain things, not on those who revealed it.
 
If only, but it seems mostly we're just spending trillions of dollars, 10's of thousands of American lives to support an infinity war that pretty much just makes breeding grounds for groups like ISIS.

:shrug: ISIS didn't breed from US control of the area. ISIS was created due to a vacuum of control that was the result of US withdrawal from the region. Islamist groups are springing up all over Libya for the same reason - "lead from behind" and "do as little as possible" turned out to be really, really, really, ****ty strategy.
 
Article17 of The Geneva Convention says it all. The CIA was in violation.

Those who fight in civilian clothing do not have Geneva protections, as they deliberately choose to place non-combatants in greater danger.
 
So, does that mean they've been perceived as being successful for the past 14 years?

On and off. They plummeted from 06-09, broadly speaking, but recovered and made up lost ground since.
 
I have no opinion about cover, having not read the article. But have you listened to Palin, Santorum, Bachmann, Cruz, King, and Paul?

All I have to say is

button_clinton_030609.jpg



But if you'd like to list off Hillary Clinton's many brilliant accomplishments as SecState which demonstrated the real long-term success of "Smart Power", I'd be happy to read through it.
 
It will require a communal organization of security.

Yeah, I can't help but notice that you didn't answer the question? What good actors are going to step in and fill the security void? Is Germany going to do it? Spain? Japan? Does Australia have that kind of projection capacity? India?
 
Now it's official that KSM wasn't the only one, and that waterboarding wasn't the only form of sharpened interrogation that took place, so we know now that our government, the one that is supposed to stick up for human rights and stand for freedom and limited government and yadayadayada actually suborned tor.. I mean sharpened interrogation of prisoners.

What we don't know is that said torture actually produced any useful information.

Now that the report is out, the only refuge of the "Oh, our government would never do that" folks is to say that the report was produced by Democrats, and is ipso facto flawed, and/or that the end justified the means and kept us safe.

And that's simply a crock.

No, it's a crock. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zpIGr8w85Y
 
Yeah, I can't help but notice that you didn't answer the question? What good actors are going to step in and fill the security void? Is Germany going to do it? Spain? Japan? Does Australia have that kind of projection capacity? India?

It will need to be organized like these things are done domestically. Everyone pitches in and pays for a police force. It will be a bumpy transition. Remember how tough it was getting there in 19th century Germany or our Wild West.
 
Doesn't the Geneva Convention only apply to uniformed combatants? These terrorists are not covered by the Geneva Convention.

I didn't read anything about uniforms just about being at war which we were with Iraq. Read it and see what you think.
 
On and off. They plummeted from 06-09, broadly speaking, but recovered and made up lost ground since.

They gained a lot of ground when they were allowed into Iraq after the American invasion. Even more when we left, and the power vacuum became complete. What are we to conclude from that?
 
They gained a lot of ground when they were allowed into Iraq after the American invasion.

And were utterly wrecked by the successful CT/COIN strategy implemented 2007-2009. The effects weren't limited to Iraq, either, but were regional in nature.

Even more when we left, and the power vacuum became complete. What are we to conclude from that?

Don't leave power vacuums. (coughafghanistancough)
 
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