Home | Community | Message Board


This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.


Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Unfolding Nature Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order

Jump to first unread post Pages: 1 | 2 |  [ show all ]
alan dershowitzs' torture warrants revisited... *DELETED*
    #11601843 -

Post deleted by Annapurna1

Reason for deletion: none



--------------------


"anchor blocks counteract the process of pontiprobation..while omalean globes regulize the pressure"...

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: alan dershowitzs' torture warrants revisited... [Re: Annapurna1]
    #11602744 -

I'm very uncomfortable with toprture. It feels weird that people are trying to pressure AMerica to accept the torture of people.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: alan dershowitzs' torture warrants revisited... [Re: lines]
    #11603142 -

I think it is ridiculous to think that torture does not bear real verifiable intel. If only torture does so and not other forms of interrogation then tell me why there are so many cases of innocents claiming to have committed crimes they played no part in? Why are there so many people claiming they gave false confessions and written statements when they were under no physical duress and there were no threats of torture given by law enforcement? Why was Obama so willing to release data on the incidents where "aggressive interrogation" techniques were used but he would not release data on how much verifiable quality intelligence was extracted?

As far as I am concerned (as well as is much of the American public) if you live by the sword, and choose to take the lives of innocent women and children then accept the consequences, bitch. I think it is a joke that our navy seals are being brought up on charges due to the fact a terrorist filed a complaint stating they gave him a fat lip. And our government attempts to go through with it! I would gladly remove all the terrorists skin from their body's in a slow improvised debridement procedure through the use of a cheese grater.

I would gladly start my own grandmother on fire if I knew she were to be responsible for a future act of terrorism where hundreds of innocents could potentially be killed.

Tell me where anyone has been snatched off the streets, deemed a terrorist by the government, and then tortured. Hell, with all the transparency promised by the Obama admin. and its anti-torture stance, how could any of this happen? Well if they are tortured at least they will get free health care that I pay for to aid in the healing process.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: alan dershowitzs' torture warrants revisited... [Re: Annapurna1]
    #11604064 -

people will say anything to prevent horrendous personal pain.

Torture is not an accurate way to get information.

It's like the Witch trials of old.  Where they put people "to the question" accusing them of being a witch.  They falsely believed that faith in god would protect you if you were innocent.  In reality,  "god-fearing" people would say anything to prevent being tortured.


Now we are supposed to believe that the admission of the 9/11 plotters they tortured for months or years in Guantanamo are legit?

I would like to believe it,  but i cannot.


--------------------
http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: alan dershowitzs' torture warrants revisited... [Re: Shins]
    #11604122 -

torture is absolutely useless as a means of obtaining information..as i said several times in the thread post...however..the threat of torture may still serve as a deterrent.. provided that there is a reasonably tough standard of probable cause to be determined by a judge...nevertheless..i would still strongly object to such a policy.. but tragically..the american ppl feel differently...

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: alan dershowitzs' torture warrants revisited... [Re: Therian]
    #11604676 -

Therian said:
I think it is ridiculous to think that torture does not bear real verifiable intel. If only torture does so and not other forms of interrogation :blah::blah::blah:



trying to argue with you is like trying to argue with a dining-room table.. and if i had a choice it would be the dining-room table hands down...in any case..if the intel is "verifiable"..then torture was never necessary in the first place..except for a few petty sadists.. whose total IQs still dont add up to that of a dining-room table...

Edited by Annapurna1 (12/07/09 05:49 PM)

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: alan dershowitzs' torture warrants revisited... [Re: Therian]
    #11605239 -

Quote:
I think it is ridiculous to think that torture does not bear real verifiable intel.



That's a nice opinion.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: alan dershowitzs' torture warrants revisited... [Re: Redstorm]
    #11606284 -

Quote:
torture is absolutely useless as a means of obtaining information..as i said several times in the thread



Really, so tell me genius on what conjecture do you base this opinion? Have you ever worked for the CIA? Have you ever worked for military intelligence? Have you ever been privy to what you call torture and consequently used your astute powers of observation to deem these confessions false? Have you ever even served in the military?  Just because your presumptuous self proclamations say it to be so, doesn't make it so.

Yes people will say anything to avoid personal pain, they will also say anything to gain pleasure, to avoid incarceration, to procure monetary gain, to get laid, gain an advancement in their vocation, or to even legitimize their skewed, self serving positions on something they know nothing about.


Quote:
That's a nice opinion.


Prove me incorrect.

A few petty sadists? The only thing a few petty sadists did was deform that vagina, if that is what it is, in your avatar. I didn't realize labia could fit in a meat grinder.

Why is it that when Cheney wanted transcripts of what Khalid sheik Mohammad stated in his interrogation were not released. Obviously some of it was beneficial. Why would Cheney do so if it did not prove that legitimate intel was not derived from the aforementioned interrogations with the suspect?

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: alan dershowitzs' torture warrants revisited... [Re: Annapurna1]
    #11606316 -

Quote:
i wish to make it perfectly clear that i do not support the use of torture under any circumstances (except..of course..for those jack bauer scenarios that never happen in real life)...



Never happen in real life? What were the September 11, 2001 attacks if not an actual "Jack Bauer scenario" that happened in real life? What about the Mumbai massacre? Did that not occur in real life?

Quote:
im under the impression that most americans seem to favour dick cheneys' no-holds-barred..police-state approach..



The usual Annapurna complete bullshit fantasy. Seriously, Anna, what color is the sky in your world? Cheney's approach was quite obviously far from no-holds-barred and far from a police state approach.

Quote:
ach.. where the govt can simply declare you to be a terrorist at the drop of a hat..



But they can't. And they don't. Again, I would really REALLY like to know the color of the sky in your little world.

Quote:
however..the use of torture as a means of obtaining intelligence information has been universally discredited...



Actually, no, it hasn't been. In fact, it has been shown -repeatedly - to be effective in the gathering of information which was withheld prior to such methods as waterboarding, which you insist upon calling torture. So you are caught between a rock and a hard place (not that the contradiction bothers YOU, of course) in that waterboarding is well-documented to be a successful interrogation technique, yet you insist that torture doesn't work. Since we now know waterboarding does work, the laws of logic allow two and only two possibilities -

1) Torture works

or

2) Waterboarding (and a host of other techniques you insist upon calling "torture") isn't torture

Note that there is no third option here. It is an either-or choice. Which one do you want to go with?


Quote:
...and this is doubly true amidst revelations that bu$hco was in fact copying the chinese method of using torture to obtain false confessions for political purposes (NYTIMES)..



Another patented Annapurna1 wild-assed total bullshit claim substantiated by exactly nothing.

Quote:
so the purpose of torture is not to obtain any intelligence information...



Again, pure and unadulterated Annapurna-brand bullshit unsubstantiated by anything other than her own fever swamp paranoid delusions.





Phred


--------------------

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: alan dershowitzs' torture warrants revisited... [Re: Therian]
    #11607282 -

Quote:
Prove me incorrect.



That's not how it works, sweetheart. You make a claim, you back it up.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: alan dershowitzs' torture warrants revisited... [Re: Phred]
    #11607318 -

Phred said:
Quote:
i wish to make it perfectly clear that i do not support the use of torture under any circumstances (except..of course..for those jack bauer scenarios that never happen in real life)...



Never happen in real life? What were the September 11, 2001 attacks if not an actual "Jack Bauer scenario" that happened in real life? What about the Mumbai massacre? Did that not occur in real life?




and in neither case did the favourite jack bauer "ticking bomb" argument of torture apologists apply...

Quote:
Quote:
im under the impression that most americans seem to favour dick cheneys' no-holds-barred..police-state approach..



The usual Annapurna complete bullshit fantasy. Seriously, Anna, what color is the sky in your world? Cheney's approach was quite obviously far from no-holds-barred and far from a police state approach.

Quote:
ach.. where the govt can simply declare you to be a terrorist at the drop of a hat..



But they can't. And they don't. Again, I would really REALLY like to know the color of the sky in your little world.




:rotfl: what planet do you live on??...sheezus...

Quote:
Quote:
however..the use of torture as a means of obtaining intelligence information has been universally discredited...



Actually, no, it hasn't been. In fact, it has been shown -repeatedly - to be effective in the gathering of information which was withheld prior to such methods as waterboarding, which you insist upon calling torture. So you are caught between a rock and a hard place (not that the contradiction bothers YOU, of course) in that waterboarding is well-documented to be a successful interrogation technique, yet you insist that torture doesn't work. Since we now know waterboarding does work, the laws of logic allow two and only two possibilities -

1) Torture works

or

2) Waterboarding (and a host of other techniques you insist upon calling "torture") isn't torture

Note that there is no third option here. It is an either-or choice. Which one do you want to go with?




torture works alright..like a charm.. if your trying to obtain intelligence information to show that saddam hussein was behind 9/11...but i should also point out that the binary absolute choice is the hallmark of cheneyite apologists...

Quote:
Quote:
...and this is doubly true amidst revelations that bu$hco was in fact copying the chinese method of using torture to obtain false confessions for political purposes (NYTIMES)..



Another patented Annapurna1 wild-assed total bullshit claim substantiated by exactly nothing.




because you conveniently removed the substantiation..below ..

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/02detain.html


in any case..the topic of the thread is whether the threat of torture may be useful as a deterrent when backed by the legal probity of a court order.. and not the (in)effectiveness of torture as a means of gaining accurate information...not surprisingly..however..you have again chosen to get caught up in name-calling instead...


--------------------


"anchor blocks counteract the process of pontiprobation..while omalean globes regulize the pressure"...

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: alan dershowitzs' torture warrants revisited... [Re: Annapurna1]
    #11607576 -

Quote:
and in neither case did the favourite jack bauer "ticking bomb" argument of torture apologists apply..



Only in that Moussaoui wasn't subjected to harsh interrogation methods, and that there were no co-conspirators in custody at the time of the Mumbai attacks. So what? Your contention was that "Jack Bauer scenarios" don't occur in real life. Plainly they do.

Quote:
what planet do you live on??...sheezus...



So you can't substantiate your paranoid ramblings? Didn't think so.

Quote:
torture works alright..like a charm..



So why did you spew your usual bullshit earlier about it not working? You may not agree with some applications of what you insist on describing as "torture", but even you cannot deny it does produce the required information. This is so well-documented by now that it just makes you look like a colossal idiot to pretend otherwise. Your choice, of course.

Quote:
because you conveniently removed the substantiation..below ..

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/02detain.html



You don't even bother to read your own links, do you? Please cut and paste for the audience the parts of that article which substantiate your bullshit claim that "bu$hco was in fact copying the chinese method of using torture to obtain false confessions for political purposes".

Quote:
in any case..the topic of the thread is whether the threat of torture may be useful as a deterrent when backed by the legal probity of a court order.. and not the (in)effectiveness of torture as a means of gaining accurate information...not surprisingly..however..you have again chosen to get caught up in name-calling instead...



If you didn't spend three quarters of your time writing a demonstrably delusional preamble to your cut and paste of the article about Dershowitz's proposal, I wouldn't have to highlight your paranoid ramblings. Next time cut to the chase.

All Dershowitz is saying is that since any responsible official placed in such a position is going to do what it takes to get the required information, it makes sense to put in place a legal process to cover that guy's ass. There is nothing more sinister to it than that, despite what the voices in your head are telling you.




Phred


--------------------

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: alan dershowitzs' torture warrants revisited... [Re: Annapurna1]
    #11609241 -

There is no evidence whatsoever to support any assertion that torture never produces accurate intel.  Confessions for political purposes are not intel.  It is true that I can probably get you to confess to anything.  But it is not true that useful, verifiable intel cannot be harvested using torture.  One has nothing to do with the other.  False equivalence.


--------------------

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: alan dershowitzs' torture warrants revisited... [Re: zappaisgod]
    #11609613 -

Quote:
But it is not true that useful, verifiable intel cannot be harvested using torture.  One has nothing to do with the other.  False equivalence.



i never drew such an equivalence..so dont try to put it into my mouth...

for the last time ..the topic of the thread is whether or not the threat of torture can be a deterrent to terrorism when backed up by a court order.. which in turn requires a cogent probable cause.. not the (in)effectiveness of torture as a means of gaining information...and i wont answer any further posts that pertain to the latter...

but suppose that torture does occasionally wring out the truth...if this information is "verifiable" by some other means..then it was never necessary to torture in the first place...furthermore..it is impossible to distinguish whether the victim is telling the truth vs simply what the torturer wants to hear..which means that the information is generally unreliable...finally..whatever (mis)information obtained under torture that is made public is necessarily for political purposes..which basically makes it worthless...

nevertheless..the threat of torture may still serve as a deterrent..when backed by sufficient legal probity...

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: alan dershowitzs' torture warrants revisited... [Re: Annapurna1]
    #11609981 -

That point was asserted by someone in the thread.  i.e. that it doesn't work.  Which is stupid.  In fact, it was you:

Annapurna1 said:
however..the use of torture as a means of obtaining intelligence information has been universally discredited



Do you think that you can make repeatedly stupid assertions of fact and then have them excused under the guise that they are not what the topic is?

Another one of your lies that will not be excused is this one:

Quote:
and this is doubly true amidst revelations that bu$hco was in fact copying the chinese method of using torture to obtain false confessions for political purposes (NYTIMES).. in this case..to trump up a case for invading iraq...and these are all well-known facts...



A complete lie on your part and one which will not pass.  It also has nothing to do with attempted narrowing of the focus to "deterrent".

Who said anything about torture as a deterrent?  Only the usual deranged misapprehender.  With extra dissembler sauce this time.


--------------------

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: alan dershowitzs' torture warrants revisited... [Re: zappaisgod]
    #11610851 -

if you still think its a lie..then take it up with the authour..below (and your simply removing the link doesnt make it a lie either)...OTOH..i have no reason to believe that hes' lying ..

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/02detain.html

Quote:
China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo
By SCOTT SHANE

Correction Appended

WASHINGTON — The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Some methods were used against a small number of prisoners at Guantánamo before 2005, when Congress banned the use of coercion by the military. The C.I.A. is still authorized by President Bush to use a number of secret “alternative” interrogation methods.

Several Guantánamo documents, including the chart outlining coercive methods, were made public at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing June 17 that examined how such tactics came to be employed.

But committee investigators were not aware of the chart’s source in the half-century-old journal article, a connection pointed out to The New York Times by an independent expert on interrogation who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The 1957 article from which the chart was copied was entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War” and written by Albert D. Biderman, a sociologist then working for the Air Force, who died in 2003. Mr. Biderman had interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities.

Those orchestrated confessions led to allegations that the American prisoners had been “brainwashed,” and provoked the military to revamp its training to give some military personnel a taste of the enemies’ harsh methods to inoculate them against quick capitulation if captured.

In 2002, the training program, known as SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, became a source of interrogation methods both for the C.I.A. and the military. In what critics describe as a remarkable case of historical amnesia, officials who drew on the SERE program appear to have been unaware that it had been created as a result of concern about false confessions by American prisoners.

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said after reviewing the 1957 article that “every American would be shocked” by the origin of the training document.

“What makes this document doubly stunning is that these were techniques to get false confessions,” Mr. Levin said. “People say we need intelligence, and we do. But we don’t need false intelligence.”

A Defense Department spokesman, Lt. Col Patrick Ryder, said he could not comment on the Guantánamo training chart. “I can’t speculate on previous decisions that may have been made prior to current D.O.D. policy on interrogations,” Colonel Ryder said. “I can tell you that current D.O.D. policy is clear — we treat all detainees humanely.”

Mr. Biderman’s 1957 article described “one form of torture” used by the Chinese as forcing American prisoners to stand “for exceedingly long periods,” sometimes in conditions of “extreme cold.” Such passive methods, he wrote, were more common than outright physical violence. Prolonged standing and exposure to cold have both been used by American military and C.I.A. interrogators against terrorist suspects.

The chart also listed other techniques used by the Chinese, including “Semi-Starvation,” “Exploitation of Wounds,” and “Filthy, Infested Surroundings,” and with their effects: “Makes Victim Dependent on Interrogator,” “Weakens Mental and Physical Ability to Resist,” and “Reduces Prisoner to ‘Animal Level’ Concerns.”

The only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title: “Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.”

The documents released last month include an e-mail message from two SERE trainers reporting on a trip to Guantánamo from Dec. 29, 2002, to Jan. 4, 2003. Their purpose, the message said, was to present to interrogators “the theory and application of the physical pressures utilized during our training.”

The sessions included “an in-depth class on Biderman’s Principles,” the message said, referring to the chart from Mr. Biderman’s 1957 article. Versions of the same chart, often identified as “Biderman’s Chart of Coercion,” have circulated on anti-cult sites on the Web, where the methods are used to describe how cults control their members.

Dr. Robert Jay Lifton, a psychiatrist who also studied the returning prisoners of war and wrote an accompanying article in the same 1957 issue of The Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, said in an interview that he was disturbed to learn that the Chinese methods had been recycled and taught at Guantánamo.

“It saddens me,” said Dr. Lifton, who wrote a 1961 book on what the Chinese called “thought reform” and became known in popular American parlance as brainwashing. He called the use of the Chinese techniques by American interrogators at Guantánamo a “180-degree turn.”

The harshest known interrogation at Guantánamo was that of Mohammed al-Qahtani, a member of Al Qaeda suspected of being the intended 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Qahtani’s interrogation involved sleep deprivation, stress positions, exposure to cold and other methods also used by the Chinese.

Terror charges against Mr. Qahtani were dropped unexpectedly in May. Officials said the charges could be reinstated later and declined to say whether the decision was influenced by concern about Mr. Qahtani’s treatment.

Mr. Bush has defended the use the interrogation methods, saying they helped provide critical intelligence and prevented new terrorist attacks. But the issue continues to complicate the long-delayed prosecutions now proceeding at Guantánamo.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a Qaeda member accused of playing a major role in the bombing of the American destroyer Cole in Yemen in 2000, was charged with murder and other crimes on Monday. In previous hearings, Mr. Nashiri, who was subjected to waterboarding, has said he confessed to participating in the bombing falsely only because he was tortured.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: July 3, 2008
An article on Wednesday about coercive interrogation methods taught at Guantánamo Bay that were copied from a 1957 journal article about Chinese techniques misstated the given name of the author of the article. He was Albert D. Biderman, not Alfred.





--------------------


"anchor blocks counteract the process of pontiprobation..while omalean globes regulize the pressure"...

Edited by Annapurna1 (12/08/09 04:32 PM)

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: alan dershowitzs' torture warrants revisited... [Re: Phred]
    #11613104 -

What intel did water boarding give us that "non-enhanced interrogation methods" could not have?

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: alan dershowitzs' torture warrants revisited... [Re: Redstorm]
    #11613770 -

Quote:
What intel did water boarding give us that "non-enhanced interrogation methods" could not have?



Basically everything Khalid Sheikh Mohammed revealed, for one. Before waterboarding he was a clam. After, he was a canary.

That is not to say that perhaps, for some subjects, with skilled enough interrogators given enough time to work their mad empathy skillz or whatever, said member of a particular subset of captured terrorists would not eventually reveal everything he knows.

But that is not the same thing as saying waterboarding does not work, it is claiming - with no evidence whatsoever - that other methods are as effective.




Phred


--------------------

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: alan dershowitzs' torture warrants revisited... [Re: Annapurna1]
    #11615082 -

zappaisgod said:
Another one of your lies that will not be excused is this one:

Quote:
and this is doubly true amidst revelations that bu$hco was in fact copying the chinese method of using torture to obtain false confessions for political purposes (NYTIMES).. in this case..to trump up a case for invading iraq...and these are all well-known facts...



A complete lie on your part and one which will not pass.  It also has nothing to do with attempted narrowing of the focus to "deterrent".




Annapurna1 said:
if you still think its a lie..then take it up with the authour..below (and your simply removing the link doesnt make it a lie either)...OTOH..i have no reason to believe that hes' lying ..



http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/02/us/02detain.html
/quote]

Perhaps I should point out just precisely what part of your sentence is a lie not supported by the article.

Quote:
in this case..to trump up a case for invading iraq...and these are all well-known facts...




Nowhere in the article is this even remotely asserted.  How about this for a statement of fact:
Quote:
The Chinese used buildings to torture people in to obtain political confession.  Bush copied the Chinese method of using buildings....to sleep in.  This is a well known fact.



I would like to see you provide a link to some article that supports your assertion that Bushco used torture for the express purpose of obtaining intel to trump up a case for invading Iraq.  This would necessarily include examples of intel obtained through the use of torture before the invasion of Iraq that were released to the public.

Happy hunting.


--------------------

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Re: alan dershowitzs' torture warrants revisited... [Re: zappaisgod]
    #11616437 -

if they used the same methods as the chinese..then it was to the same end.. and the most obvious political motive they had at the time was invading iraq...dont pretend that you cant do the math...

and because you asked for it ..

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66622.html

Quote:
McClatchy Washington Bureau

Posted on Tue, Apr. 21, 2009
Report: Abusive tactics used to seek Iraq-al Qaida link
Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: April 22, 2009 07:42:11 PM

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.

Such information would've provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush's main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. In fact, no evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and Saddam's regime.

The use of abusive interrogation — widely considered torture — as part of Bush's quest for a rationale to invade Iraq came to light as the Senate issued a major report tracing the origin of the abuses and President Barack Obama opened the door to prosecuting former U.S. officials for approving them.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and others who advocated the use of sleep deprivation, isolation and stress positions and waterboarding, which simulates drowning, insist that they were legal.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.

"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.

"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."

It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released Justice Department document.

"There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he continued.

"Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies."

Senior administration officials, however, "blew that off and kept insisting that we'd overlooked something, that the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information," he said.

A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.

"While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq," Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."

Excerpts from Burney's interview appeared in a full, declassified report on a two-year investigation into detainee abuse released on Tuesday by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., called Burney's statement "very significant."

"I think it's obvious that the administration was scrambling then to try to find a connection, a link (between al Qaida and Iraq)," Levin said in a conference call with reporters. "They made out links where they didn't exist."

Levin recalled Cheney's assertions that a senior Iraqi intelligence officer had met Mohammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, in the Czech Republic capital of Prague just months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The FBI and CIA found that no such meeting occurred.

A senior Guantanamo Bay interrogator, David Becker, told the committee that only "a couple of nebulous links" between al Qaida and Iraq were uncovered during interrogations of unidentified detainees, the report said.

Others in the interrogation operation "agreed there was pressure to produce intelligence, but did not recall pressure to identify links between Iraq and al Qaida," the report said.

The report, the executive summary of which was released in November, found that Rumsfeld, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and other former senior Bush administration officials were responsible for the abusive interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo and in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rumsfeld approved extreme interrogation techniques for Guantanamo in December 2002. He withdrew his authorization the following month amid protests by senior military lawyers that some techniques could amount to torture, violating U.S. and international laws.

Military interrogators, however, continued employing some techniques in Afghanistan and later in Iraq.

Bush and his top lieutenants charged that Saddam was secretly pursuing nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in defiance of a United Nations ban, and had to be overthrown because he might provide them to al Qaida for an attack on the U.S. or its allies.

(John Walcott and Warren P. Strobel contributed to this article.)



the article seems to imply that bu$hco at least intended to torture a causus belli out of the prisoners..but that the programme may or may not have come to fruition...


--------------------


"anchor blocks counteract the process of pontiprobation..while omalean globes regulize the pressure"...

Edited by Annapurna1 (12/09/09 12:00 PM)

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: 1 | 2 |  [ show all ]

Unfolding Nature Shop: Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order


Similar ThreadsPosterViewsRepliesLast post
* "torture-lite" and human rights after 9/11 Edame 883 4 06/28/03 08:08 AM
by Cornholio
* European torture instruments Great_Satan 543 5 12/20/04 05:31 PM
by afoaf
* alan dershowitzs' torture warrants (repost)... *DELETED*
( 1 2 all )
Annapurna1 1,841 28 01/16/10 04:41 PM
by Phred
* Break Them Down. (Torture) Psychoactive1984 1,249 14 05/15/05 12:54 PM
by Annapurna1
* Minimum Wage Revisited
( 1 2 all )
Evolving 4,497 33 04/15/04 12:49 PM
by Tao
* Carry on torture!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
( 1 2 all )
madscientist 2,353 30 07/30/02 11:11 AM
by toxick
* Debunking another Gitmo myth. lonestar2004 759 4 06/23/05 08:43 AM
by Phred
* More torture news SoopaX 384 0 06/04/05 12:02 PM
by SoopaX

Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: Enlil, ballsalsa
1,698 topic views. 0 members, 3 guests and 11 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2026 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.031 seconds spending 0.006 seconds on 16 queries.