Torture Works

[QUENTIN]

The CIA memo never said the number of times on one person. How do you know what it is?

Your editorial had zero backup. It was the opinion of author with no internal documenation.

How about proving that it was already thwarted other than by opinions of left wingers?

Once again, according to the Obama declassified CIA memo to the justice department, it was done just to 3 arch terrorists who were uncooperative in lighter methods.

Waterboarding caused them to give information that led to the thwarting of a 911 attack of a plane into a Los Angeles building.

I can document everything that I said here.

Can you document anything that you say? So far you haven't.

You didn't click the link, did you? The one provided at the very top of the first post to the article? It's got documentation and links to sources for every single assertion of fact. Here it is again:

Why al-Qaida's plot to bomb L.A.'s Library Tower didn't warrant torture. - By Timothy Noah - Slate Magazine

From the links provided in that article, which link to the White House archives:

Press Briefing on the West Coast Terrorist Plot by Frances Fragos Townsend, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism



Again, the plot was thwarted in February, 2002 with the arrest of the cell leader. KSM wasn't arrested until over a year later. Since time progresses forward linearly, it's impossible to claim something that happened over a year after the plot was thwarted is responsible for thwarting it.

Another link that is provided in that article that you erroneously claim had no internal documentation and was just the author's opinion, also from the White House's site:

Fact Sheet: Keeping America Safe From Attack



The plot was broken up in February, 2002, KSM was captured March, 2003. This is according to all the documentation of both produced by the government.

That KSM talked about the plot after being interrogated or tortured is likely true, but that's all that's in those CIA memos. What the author of the memos apparently didn't know is that the plot was already known about, its cell leader captured, and the attack stopped over a year before anyone so much as tickled Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

So, I've not only provided the evidence that proves that the attack was thwarted in 2002 as I claim without torture and before KSM was even captured, but in the process demonstrated that what you keep asserting that waterboarding forced them to give up the information that thwarted the attack is absolute bullshit. We already knew of the attack and already stopped it, more than a year before.

As for how many times we waterboarded the three suspects whose waterboarding was authorized by the Executive and later made public:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/world/20detain.html




How Waterboarding Got Out of Control - TIME



Here's the OLC memo itself: http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X13...et/o10/clients/aclu/olc_05302005_bradbury.pdf

And exactly what it says on the subject:

The CIA used the waterboard "at least 83 times during August 2002" in the interrogation of Zubaydah. IG Report at 90, and 183 times during March 2003 in the interrogation of KSM, see id. at 91.

Notice that it cites the CIA Inspector General's Report (IG Report) which derived its numbers from actually viewing the videotapes of the interrogations, doesn't get much more backed up than that.

Now will you stop pretending that waterboarding was used three times and that it prevented the Library Tower attack? If not, frankly, you're intellectually dishonest. It couldn't be more plain and clear and proven.

Thank you.

1) I could care less about the anonymous sources and the other drivel from the NYT, but I do care a lot about what the CIA memo says. I posted this memo as well. This is the actual documentation.

2) I don't see the actual number in the CIA memo, other than it was done twice to one of the people.

Here's the OLC memo itself: http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X13...et/o10/clients/aclu/olc_05302005_bradbury.pdf

And exactly what it says on the subject:

The CIA used the waterboard "at least 83 times during August 2002" in the interrogation of Zubaydah. IG Report at 90, and 183 times during March 2003 in the interrogation of KSM, see id. at 91.

Page 37 of the OLC memo explicitly says Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 86 times and KSM was waterboarded 183 times.

You linked to the exact same memo I did, but failed to note as I did that it does say clearly that the two people we're referencing being waterboarded were waterboarded 266, not close to 3 but more than 88 times that much, times.

3) I would like to extend my remarks. Not only was a 911 like plot to crash a plane into a Los Angeles building was thwarted.

ADDITIONALLY, another plot to explode a "dirty bomb" in Washington D.C. was also thwarted as a direct result of the waterboarding of the 3 arch terrorists.

Also it led to over 6000 intelligence reports, and over half of the information on Al Qaida came as a result as well.

The Los Angeles plot was thwarted, as Frances Fragos Townsend, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism said, in February 2002 when the cell leader was captured. Not over a year later when KSM was captured and waterboarded. He very likely mentioned the plot, but it was already known and stopped and its leader already in jail.

We've thwarted many terrorist plots, but the Library Tower attack that torture apologists are using as proof that waterboarding works was actually thwarted, according to the Homeland Security and Counterterrorism spokesperson and the White House's Fact Sheet on terror plots, in February, 2002 with the capture of Hambili, not with KSM's waterboarding which happened over a year later.

I'm not sure if it's cognitive dissonance or if you're cherry picking what you choose to read from the government's own accounts, but waterboarding over a year after a plot was disrupted could not have had been the cause of the disruption.

 

[QUENTIN]

I want to add I don't know what LA building was going to be hit with a plane. The CIA memo doesn't say.

The CIA Memo doesn't say, the White House Fact Sheet does. In 2002, with the capture of Hambili, the plot was thwarted to attack "the tallest building on the West Coast" which is the Library Tower. What waterboarding KSM did was confirm what we already knew, that there was a plan to attack the Library Tower via hijacked airplanes (if the passengers didn't take over the plane, which following 9/11 they all but surely would), and which we had already thwarted.

It seems you're not reading these, so I'll repost the proof from The White House:

Fact Sheet: Keeping America Safe From Attack

In 2002, we broke up a plot by KSM to hijack an airplane and fly it into the tallest building on the West Coast. During a hearing at Guantanamo Bay two months ago, KSM stated that the intended target was the Library Tower in Los Angeles.

We knew the plot was to hijack planes and fly them into "the tallest building on the West Coast." Since that is the Library Tower (a simple google search will reveal as much) and that plot was already thwarted upon the arrest of the cell leader in February, 2002, all KSM did was tell us what we already knew.

 

[CMike]

This is from the memo.

"Both KSM and Zubaydah had 'expressed their belief that the general U.S. population was "weak," lacked resilience and would be unable to "do what was necessary" to prevent the terrorists from succeeding in their goals,' " the memo says. "Indeed, before the CIA used enhanced techniques in its interrogation of KSM, he resisted giving any answers to questions about future attacks, simply noting, 'Soon, you will know.' "

After he was waterboarded, KSM provided the CIA with information that enabled the U.S. government to close down a terror cell already "tasked" with flying a jet into a building in Los Angeles.

"You have informed us that the interrogation of KSM - once enhanced techniques were employed - led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the 'Second Wave,' 'to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into' a building in Los Angeles," the memo says, referring to information the CIA provided to the Justice Department.

"You have informed us that information obtained from KSM also led to the capture of Riduan bin Isomuddin, better known as Hambali, and the discovery of the Guraba Cell, a 17-member Jemaah Islamiyah cell tasked with executing the 'Second Wave,' " the memo says.

"More specifically, we understand that KSM admitted that he had [redaction] large sum of money to an al Qaeda associate [redaction] ... . Khan subsequently identified the associate [Zubair], who was then captured," the memo says. "Zubair, in turn, provided information that led to the arrest of Hambali. The information acquired from these captures allowed CIA interrogators to pose more specific questions to KSM, which led the CIA [to] Hambali's brother, al-Hadi. Using information obtained from multiple sources, al-Hadi was captured, and he subsequently identified the Garuba cell. With the aid of this additional information, interrogations of Hambali confirmed much of what was learned from KSM."

This is also from the CIA memo about waterboarding itself.


"With respect to the waterboard, you have also orally informed us that the Navy continues to use it in training," says a 2002 Office of Legal Counsel memo to the CIA's Mr. Rizzo. "You have informed us that other services ceased use of the waterboard because it was so successful as an interrogation technique but not because of any concerns over harm, physical or mental, caused by it. It was also reported to be almost 100 percent effective in producing cooperation among trainees."

 

[CMike]

So what some of you are saying is, "the end justifies the means, especially when the other guys aren't following the rules."

Shame on you. Your use of the deaths of thousands of Americans to satisfy your blood lust not only cheapens their suffering, but hurts our country.

We shouldn't break the rules because we can get away with breaking them. We shouldn't break the rules because other people are breaking them. We follow the rules (i.e. our internal conscience) because it's the right thing to do. I'm all for self-defense and wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger if a home invader had a gun on me or my family...but once you have them in custody, you don't torture people. That's not what AMERICA does. End of f@#$%@g story.

Good grief.

We didn't break the rules.

Okay terrorist supporters please try and follow.

1) 911 just occurred

2) 3 arch terrorists were caught

3) When asked about futher terrorist attacks they simply responsed ominiously "soon, you will know"

4) The guidelines for when to apply waterboarding were very strict, and the 3 arch terrorists met those guidelines

5) The information extracted them stopped a 911 like attack of a plane crashing into a Los Angeles building

This is all documented in the Obama declassified CIA memo.

The CIA operatives that did this were heros

The arch terrorists were taunting them about what the terrorist attack would be. The CIA also had to assume it could be biological or nuclear. They didn't know. They had to get tht information.

Because they did what they did thousands of american civilian lives were saved.

Also waterboarding is done routinely on CIA people as part of their training, so apparently it's not quite that bad.

Don't call me a terrorist supporter you c*@k-juggling thunder@unt. Flippant use of that moniker makes anything you say circumspect at best and complete ASS-HATTERY at worst.

I was referring to the prevalent sentiment in this thread and on this board that any form of torture seems to be ok because "them r bad. we r gud."

Get your head out of your ass on waterboarding, btw. Your shock jock Mancow seems to change his tune when it was done to him. That liberal bastion of all things Soviet the Red Cross calls it torture. And the possible results can be brain damage, dry drowning, and broken bones. Let me help your retarded ass out - I said possible. There's where you can try to attack my argument. I said "try" because even that's not a real weakness in the logic. If American interrogators are doing ANYTHING with consequences like this, we're fucking criminals.

Do you think torture is a new thing? You think your founding fathers had never thought of putting people on a rack or slitting them a few holes in the ribs before? Of course they did. And that's why our constitution doesnt allow it!

Now, uber-genius, lets get to the legal argument about citizens getting rights that non-citizens don't...since that seems to be the technicality that you suckers try to use as an end run. Just because you have someone off American soil...and just because there may or may not be formal war declared doesnt mean that the Founders expected you to treat a living, breathing person like a voodoo doll. If you like, I can educate you on the law. I'm a lawyer who defends people's civil rights and liberties via constitutional arguments every day.

Our principles and our moral values encompass what the way we think it's civil and humane to treat even the least of people. You suckers are taking defense of country past where the founders wanted you to. Cheney and Bush shredded the Constitution to the point that it's unrecognizable...to the point that America looks like a fucking joke...and you still want to chant USA! USA! USA! like some frothing at the mouth redneck? Fine. Knock yerself out, Cochise. But realize your end-justifies-the-means rhetoric...no matter how many lives you delude yourself into thinking you're saving...is RUINING America.

Since you are supporting terrorist rights and their rights to withhold information that leads to mass disaster such as flying a plane into a LA building and exploding a "dirty bomb" in Washington D.C., rather than having an unpleasent experience YOU ARE a terrorist supporter.

 

[CMike]

I want to add I don't know what LA building was going to be hit with a plane. The CIA memo doesn't say.

The CIA Memo doesn't say, the White House Fact Sheet does. In 2002, with the capture of Hambili, the plot was thwarted to attack "the tallest building on the West Coast" which is the Library Tower. What waterboarding KSM did was confirm what we already knew, that there was a plan to attack the Library Tower via hijacked airplanes (if the passengers didn't take over the plane, which following 9/11 they all but surely would), and which we had already thwarted.

It seems you're not reading these, so I'll repost the proof from The White House:

Fact Sheet: Keeping America Safe From Attack

In 2002, we broke up a plot by KSM to hijack an airplane and fly it into the tallest building on the West Coast. During a hearing at Guantanamo Bay two months ago, KSM stated that the intended target was the Library Tower in Los Angeles.

We knew the plot was to hijack planes and fly them into "the tallest building on the West Coast." Since that is the Library Tower (a simple google search will reveal as much) and that plot was already thwarted upon the arrest of the cell leader in February, 2002, all KSM did was tell us what we already knew.

The Guraba cell was the one tasked with the "second wave" attack as per the memo.

"You have informed us that information obtained from KSM also led to the capture of Riduan bin Isomuddin, better known as Hambali, and the discovery of the Guraba Cell, a 17-member Jemaah Islamiyah cell tasked with executing the 'Second Wave,'

 

[Vanquish]

Good grief.

We didn't break the rules.

Okay terrorist supporters please try and follow.

1) 911 just occurred

2) 3 arch terrorists were caught

3) When asked about futher terrorist attacks they simply responsed ominiously "soon, you will know"

4) The guidelines for when to apply waterboarding were very strict, and the 3 arch terrorists met those guidelines

5) The information extracted them stopped a 911 like attack of a plane crashing into a Los Angeles building

This is all documented in the Obama declassified CIA memo.

The CIA operatives that did this were heros

The arch terrorists were taunting them about what the terrorist attack would be. The CIA also had to assume it could be biological or nuclear. They didn't know. They had to get tht information.

Because they did what they did thousands of american civilian lives were saved.

Also waterboarding is done routinely on CIA people as part of their training, so apparently it's not quite that bad.

Don't call me a terrorist supporter you c*@k-juggling thunder@unt. Flippant use of that moniker makes anything you say circumspect at best and complete ASS-HATTERY at worst.

I was referring to the prevalent sentiment in this thread and on this board that any form of torture seems to be ok because "them r bad. we r gud."

Get your head out of your ass on waterboarding, btw. Your shock jock Mancow seems to change his tune when it was done to him. That liberal bastion of all things Soviet the Red Cross calls it torture. And the possible results can be brain damage, dry drowning, and broken bones. Let me help your retarded ass out - I said possible. There's where you can try to attack my argument. I said "try" because even that's not a real weakness in the logic. If American interrogators are doing ANYTHING with consequences like this, we're fucking criminals.

Do you think torture is a new thing? You think your founding fathers had never thought of putting people on a rack or slitting them a few holes in the ribs before? Of course they did. And that's why our constitution doesnt allow it!

Now, uber-genius, lets get to the legal argument about citizens getting rights that non-citizens don't...since that seems to be the technicality that you suckers try to use as an end run. Just because you have someone off American soil...and just because there may or may not be formal war declared doesnt mean that the Founders expected you to treat a living, breathing person like a voodoo doll. If you like, I can educate you on the law. I'm a lawyer who defends people's civil rights and liberties via constitutional arguments every day.

Our principles and our moral values encompass what the way we think it's civil and humane to treat even the least of people. You suckers are taking defense of country past where the founders wanted you to. Cheney and Bush shredded the Constitution to the point that it's unrecognizable...to the point that America looks like a fucking joke...and you still want to chant USA! USA! USA! like some frothing at the mouth redneck? Fine. Knock yerself out, Cochise. But realize your end-justifies-the-means rhetoric...no matter how many lives you delude yourself into thinking you're saving...is RUINING America.

Since you are supporting terrorist rights and their rights to withhold information that leads to mass disaster such as flying a plane into a LA building and exploding a "dirty bomb" in Washington D.C., rather than having an unpleasent experience YOU ARE a terrorist supporter.

Supporting terrorists rights? You need to take the crack pipe out of your anal sphincter and get some rehab. I'm for HUMAN rights. The rights that the Founders said were...wait for it...wait for it...inalienable. Ooooohhh daaaaammmmnnn. Burrrrrrn.

There you go with the end justifies the means bullshit again.

 

[QUENTIN]

I want to add I don't know what LA building was going to be hit with a plane. The CIA memo doesn't say.

The CIA Memo doesn't say, the White House Fact Sheet does. In 2002, with the capture of Hambili, the plot was thwarted to attack "the tallest building on the West Coast" which is the Library Tower. What waterboarding KSM did was confirm what we already knew, that there was a plan to attack the Library Tower via hijacked airplanes (if the passengers didn't take over the plane, which following 9/11 they all but surely would), and which we had already thwarted.

It seems you're not reading these, so I'll repost the proof from The White House:

Fact Sheet: Keeping America Safe From Attack

In 2002, we broke up a plot by KSM to hijack an airplane and fly it into the tallest building on the West Coast. During a hearing at Guantanamo Bay two months ago, KSM stated that the intended target was the Library Tower in Los Angeles.

We knew the plot was to hijack planes and fly them into "the tallest building on the West Coast." Since that is the Library Tower (a simple google search will reveal as much) and that plot was already thwarted upon the arrest of the cell leader in February, 2002, all KSM did was tell us what we already knew.

That's not what he said.

This is exactly what was said

"The cell leader was arrested in February of 2002, and as we begin -- at that point, the other members of the cell believed that the West Coast plot has been canceled, was not going forward. You'll recall that KSM was then arrested in April of 2003 -- or was it March -- I'm sorry, March of 2003.

Apparently, it was not cancelled.

I really get the impression you're not reading my posts. This is the second time you've reposted something I already did, to ignore what it says and try to claim it means something it doesn't.

You'll notice I previously posted the quote you're now re-citing from Frances Fragos Townsend (a she, not a he) that the plot was cancelled upon Hambili's arrest in February, 2002.

You are citing this and, based no no evidence but your own estimation and personal conjecture, asserting that it was "apparently" not canceled even though the White House said it was.

And the White House Fact Sheet I've linked to twice now, from georgewbush-whitehouse.gov, makes it abundantly clear and explicit that the plot was thwarted in 2002, not 2003 after KSM was captured and waterboarded. It makes it perfectly clear that your continued assertions are flatly and simply wrong and that rather KSM's confession merely confirmed what we already knew and had already thwarted:

In 2002, we broke up a plot by KSM to hijack an airplane and fly it into the tallest building on the West Coast. During a hearing at Guantanamo Bay two months ago, KSM stated that the intended target was the Library Tower in Los Angeles.

Fact Sheet: Keeping America Safe From Attack

 

[QUENTIN]

You're also linking to and asserting things that may be factual but are tangential to our discussion, seemingly in an attempt to obfuscate the matter.

So I'd like to get some frank admissions out of you.

First, you made the assertion and I called you on it that waterboarding was used three times. As per this memo,

http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X134...5_bradbury.pdf

And exactly what it says on the subject:

The CIA used the waterboard "at least 83 times during August 2002" in the interrogation of Zubaydah. IG Report at 90, and 183 times during March 2003 in the interrogation of KSM, see id. at 91.

Do you now admit you were wrong and that waterboarding was used over 266 times, not 3 as you previously claimed?

I'll move on the Library Tower again and how the government has asserted multiple times that it was thwarted in 2002, disproving the claim that KSM's waterboarding is what ended it, once I get an admission from you that waterboarding was done hundreds of times not three. If you can't admit that in the face of clear and stark evidence from the very sources you're trying to cite, then it's not worth discussing anything with you.

 

[Coyote]

Yeah, because he defend terrorism, and Al Qaida is a terrorist group.

Where did he defend terrorism....and, particularly Al Qaida since that is what we are talking about? Terrorism is to vague a concept to defend or condemn - who and what a terrorist is depends on the powers that be in the situation. Are they Chechnyan freedom fighters against the Soviets occupation or are they terrorists?

When it comes to Al Qaida however, there is greater clarity and in this thread I find this:

Mike: There is no justifiable reason for intentionally targeting civilians to spread terror.Kalam: That's why I dislike terrorist organizations like al-Qa'idah and the IDF.

Doesn't sound like he's relating to al-Qa'idah much.
__________________

http://www.usmessageboard.com/2011482-post47.html

Good grief Mike - how is that an example of defending al-Qaidah????

 

[CMike]

Where did he defend terrorism....and, particularly Al Qaida since that is what we are talking about? Terrorism is to vague a concept to defend or condemn - who and what a terrorist is depends on the powers that be in the situation. Are they Chechnyan freedom fighters against the Soviets occupation or are they terrorists?

When it comes to Al Qaida however, there is greater clarity and in this thread I find this:

Mike: There is no justifiable reason for intentionally targeting civilians to spread terror.Kalam: That's why I dislike terrorist organizations like al-Qa'idah and the IDF.

Doesn't sound like he's relating to al-Qa'idah much.
__________________

http://www.usmessageboard.com/2011482-post47.html

Because he is justifying terrorism.

He also posted a pro-jihad youtube video in arabic, which I am not going to look for.

 

[CMike]

You're also linking to and asserting things that may be factual but are tangential to our discussion, seemingly in an attempt to obfuscate the matter.

So I'd like to get some frank admissions out of you.

First, you made the assertion and I called you on it that waterboarding was used three times. As per this memo,

http://go2.wordpress.com/?id=725X134...5_bradbury.pdf

And exactly what it says on the subject:

The CIA used the waterboard "at least 83 times during August 2002" in the interrogation of Zubaydah. IG Report at 90, and 183 times during March 2003 in the interrogation of KSM, see id. at 91.

Do you now admit you were wrong and that waterboarding was used over 266 times, not 3 as you previously claimed?

I'll move on the Library Tower again and how the government has asserted multiple times that it was thwarted in 2002, disproving the claim that KSM's waterboarding is what ended it, once I get an admission from you that waterboarding was done hundreds of times not three. If you can't admit that in the face of clear and stark evidence from the very sources you're trying to cite, then it's not worth discussing anything with you.

No I don't. It was done on 3 people. Other than the memo saying it was done twice to one of the terrorists I don't see the exact count in the memo. The page you mentioned had nothing to do with it.

Also the CIA memo explicitly documents that it stopped two major terrorist attacks:

1) The plane crash attempt into an LA building by Guraba cell

and

2) Stopping a dirty bomb from being built and exploding in Washington D.C.

To the CIA operatives that waterboarded and got that information from the arch terrorists

 

[Vanquish]

Remember that CIA man John Kiriakou who said Waterboarding was bad, but justified as it worked (got suspects talking in 30 seconds)? Yeah, he made that up.

CIA Man Retracts Claim on Waterboarding | Foreign Policy

Crazy, huh?

 

[QUENTIN]

You're also linking to and asserting things that may be factual but are tangential to our discussion, seemingly in an attempt to obfuscate the matter.

So I'd like to get some frank admissions out of you.

First, you made the assertion and I called you on it that waterboarding was used three times. As per this memo,

http://luxmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o10/clients/aclu/olc_05302005_bradbury.pdf

And exactly what it says on the subject:

The CIA used the waterboard "at least 83 times during August 2002" in the interrogation of Zubaydah. IG Report at 90, and 183 times during March 2003 in the interrogation of KSM, see id. at 91.

Do you now admit you were wrong and that waterboarding was used over 266 times, not 3 as you previously claimed?

I'll move on the Library Tower again and how the government has asserted multiple times that it was thwarted in 2002, disproving the claim that KSM's waterboarding is what ended it, once I get an admission from you that waterboarding was done hundreds of times not three. If you can't admit that in the face of clear and stark evidence from the very sources you're trying to cite, then it's not worth discussing anything with you.

No I don't. It was done on 3 people. Other than the memo saying it was done twice to one of the terrorists I don't see the exact count in the memo. The page you mentioned had nothing to do with it.

Also the CIA memo explicitly documents that it stopped two major terrorist attacks:

1) The plane crash attempt into an LA building by Guraba cell

and

2) Stopping a dirty bomb from being built and exploding in Washington D.C.

To the CIA operatives that waterboarded and got that information from the arch terrorists

I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt, but this'll be the last time. I'm not sure if you're lying or just ignoring the links and choosing to pretend they don't say what they do.

For the last time, from the OLC Memo from May of 2005:

http://luxmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o10/clients/aclu/olc_05302005_bradbury.pdf

Click on that, you linked to the exact same memo in this thread so I suppose you've opened it. Go down to page 37, it says, verbatim:

The CIA used the waterboard "at least 83 times during August 2002" in the interrogation of Zubaydah. IG Report at 90, and 183 times during March 2003 in the interrogation of KSM, see id. at 91.

The CIA Inspector General's report on pages 90 and 91, cited and re-referenced in the OLC memo of 2005, makes absolutely clear and mentions specifically despite your continued false assertions to the contrary that Zubadayah was waterboarded at least 83 times and KSM was waterboarded 183 times. That's 266 times combined on just two people. That's according to the CIA and OLC, the same sources you're citing.

Please respond honestly or this just isn't a conversation worth having with you. I've done the work and found the sources and brought them to you exactly, which isn't worth my time if you pretend they don't exist and say what it is they say.

 

[CMike]

I never stated how many times each one was waterboarded, other than one was waterboarded twice.

I did say that waterboarding was only done on three of the terrorists.

I only asked for the source for the number of times.

I am confused in one part.

You are using the CIA memo to supposedly prove your case.

However, the same CIA memo says explicitly that because of the waterboarding the 3 arch terrorists, who were previously uncooperative, gave information that led to:

1) The thwarting of a plane into a LA building

and

2) The stopping of a plot to build and donate a "dirty bomb" in Washington, D.C.

How do you reconcile that?

 

[CMike]

Page 37

http://luxmedia.vo.llnwd.net/o10/clients/aclu/olc_05302005_bradbury.pdf

The Inspector General report also says that the CIA subjects the terrorists to no more duress than is necessary and it takes great care to "avoid inflicting severe pain".

That it only did so in order to stop an imminent attack.

That it used waterboarding very sparingly and along with the guidelines.

The IG report also says that waterboarding is routinely done on CIA personnel as part of their SERS training. It also says that in some instances the waterboarding done to the 3 terrorists was milder than the waterboarding done to the CIA personnel as part of their training.

The ones in CIA training is a complete immersion in water that is below 40 degrees farenheit.

In the waterboarding of the arch terrorists, the terrorists were only splashed with water and it was never below 41 degrees farenheit.

It says that in short that the CIA subjects the terrorists no more duress needed to protect the government's interest.

If you read the IG report it vindicates the CIA for the use of the waterboarding that it did.

 

[QUENTIN]

I never stated how many times each one was waterboarded, other than one was waterboarded twice.

This is false. From your first post in the thread:

This is the CIA criteria for waterboarding, which was done only 3 times.

When I called you on it, you continued to claim that there was no proof they'd been waterboarded more than three times and I didn't have proof they were waterboarded 83 and 183 times and that my source didn't say anything about it when it so clearly did.

Please now, don't backpedal. Admit that you've been caught in a lie or an honest mistake, and admit the error. You said it was three times, you were wrong. No biggie, but don't go spouting it anymore now that it's been proven for a fact not to be true.

It wasn't used three times, it was used at least 266 times. Now you know.

You are using the CIA memo to supposedly prove your case.

However, the same CIA memo says explicitly that because of the waterboarding the 3 arch terrorists, who were previously uncooperative, gave information that led to:

1) The thwarting of a plane into a LA building

and

2) The stopping of a plot to build and donate a "dirty bomb" in Washington, D.C.

How do you reconcile that?

The memo is a CYA document designed for CYA purposes. Beyond that, the person who wrote it very likely had no idea the Library Tower bombing KSM talked about was already something the CIA knew about and had already captured the ringleader and thwarted the plot. The CIA, like any government bureaucracy, is not monolithic but contains many moving parts and often the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing.

As for the SERE training issue, I've been over this many times before. Special forces are waterboarded at SERE specifically because waterboarding is torture, not in spite of it. It's a torture tactic we learned when the Koreans and Vietnamese tortured our boys in POW camps in order to force false confessions out of them. Special forces are waterboarded specifically so that they can withstand that torture technique and not condemn their government in our enemies' propaganda.

Here's what Malcolm Nance, a "former master instructor and chief of training at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) who underwent and trained in the waterboarding technique (in order to teach U.S. soldiers how to endure captivity at the hands of waterboarders such as Al Qaeda)" had to say about it:

Waterboarding is Torture? Period (Links Updated # 9) (SWJ Blog)

Waterboarding is just the type of torture then Lt. Commander John McCain had to endure at the hands of the North Vietnamese. As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately. SERE staff were required undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception. I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school’s interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques used by the US army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What was not mentioned in most articles was that SERE was designed to show how an evil totalitarian, enemy would use torture at the slightest whim. If this is the case, then waterboarding is unquestionably being used as torture technique.

The carnival-like he-said, she-said of the legality of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques has become a form of doublespeak worthy of Catch-22. Having been subjected to them all, I know these techniques, if in fact they are actually being used, are not dangerous when applied in training for short periods. However, when performed with even moderate intensity over an extended time on an unsuspecting prisoner – it is torture, without doubt. Couple that with waterboarding and the entire medley not only “shock the conscience” as the statute forbids -it would terrify you. Most people can not stand to watch a high intensity kinetic interrogation. One has to overcome basic human decency to endure watching or causing the effects. The brutality would force you into a personal moral dilemma between humanity and hatred. It would leave you to question the meaning of what it is to be an American.

We live at a time where Americans, completely uninformed by an incurious media and enthralled by vengeance-based fantasy television shows like “24”, are actually cheering and encouraging such torture as justifiable revenge for the September 11 attacks. Having been a rescuer in one of those incidents and personally affected by both attacks, I am bewildered at how casually we have thrown off the mantle of world-leader in justice and honor. Who we have become? Because at this juncture, after Abu Ghraieb and other undignified exposed incidents of murder and torture, we appear to have become no better than our opponents.

With regards to the waterboard, I want to set the record straight so the apologists can finally embrace the fact that they condone and encourage torture.

History’s Lessons Ignored

Before arriving for my assignment at SERE, I traveled to Cambodia to visit the torture camps of the Khmer Rouge. The country had just opened for tourism and the effect of the genocide was still heavy in the air. I wanted to know how real torturers and terror camp guards would behave and learn how to resist them from survivors of such horrors. I had previously visited the Nazi death camps Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. I had met and interviewed survivors of Buchenwald, Auschwitz and Magdeburg when I visited Yad Vashem in Jerusalem. However, it was in the S-21 death camp known as Tuol Sleng, in downtown Phnom Penh, where I found a perfectly intact inclined waterboard. Next to it was the painting on how it was used. It was cruder than ours mainly because they used metal shackles to strap the victim down, and a tin flower pot sprinkler to regulate the water flow rate, but it was the same device I would be subjected to a few weeks later.

On a Mekong River trip, I met a 60-year-old man, happy to be alive and a cheerful travel companion, who survived the genocide and torture … he spoke openly about it and gave me a valuable lesson: “If you want to survive, you must learn that ‘walking through a low door means you have to be able to bow.’” He told his interrogators everything they wanted to know including the truth. They rarely stopped. In torture, he confessed to being a hermaphrodite, a CIA spy, a Buddhist Monk, a Catholic Bishop and the son of the king of Cambodia. He was actually just a school teacher whose crime was that he once spoke French. He remembered “the Barrel” version of waterboarding quite well. Head first until the water filled the lungs, then you talk.

Once at SERE and tasked to rewrite the Navy SERE program for the first time since the Vietnam War, we incorporated interrogation and torture techniques from the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia into the curriculum. In the process, I studied hundreds of classified written reports, dozens of personal memoirs of American captives from the French-Indian Wars and the American Revolution to the Argentinean ‘Dirty War’ and Bosnia. There were endless hours of videotaped debriefings from World War Two, Korea, Vietnam and Gulf War POWs and interrogators. I devoured the hundreds of pages of debriefs and video reports including those of then Commander John McCain, Colonel Nick Rowe, Lt. Dieter Dengler and Admiral James Stockdale, the former Senior Ranking Officer of the Hanoi Hilton. All of them had been tortured by the Vietnamese, Pathet Lao or Cambodians. The minutiae of North Vietnamese torture techniques was discussed with our staff advisor and former Hanoi Hilton POW Doug Hegdahl as well as discussions with Admiral Stockdale himself. The waterboard was clearly one of the tools dictators and totalitarian regimes preferred.

There is No Debate Except for Torture Apologists

1. Waterboarding is a torture technique. Period. There is no way to gloss over it or sugarcoat it. It has no justification outside of its limited role as a training demonstrator. Our service members have to learn that the will to survive requires them accept and understand that they may be subjected to torture, but that America is better than its enemies and it is one’s duty to trust in your nation and God, endure the hardships and return home with honor.

2. Waterboarding is not a simulation. Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.

Waterboarding is a controlled drowning that, in the American model, occurs under the watch of a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a trained strap-in/strap-out team. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning. How much the victim is to drown depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim’s face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral.

Waterboarding is slow motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of black out and expiration –usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch and if it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia. When done right it is controlled death. Its lack of physical scarring allows the victim to recover and be threaten with its use again and again.

Call it “Chinese Water Torture,” “the Barrel,” or “the Waterfall,” it is all the same. Whether the victim is allowed to comply or not is usually left up to the interrogator. Many waterboard team members, even in training, enjoy the sadistic power of making the victim suffer and often ask questions as an after thought. These people are dangerous and predictable and when left unshackled, unsupervised or undetected they bring us the murderous abuses seen at Abu Ghraieb, Baghram and Guantanamo. No doubt, to avoid human factors like fear and guilt someone has created a one-button version that probably looks like an MRI machine with high intensity waterjets.

3. If you support the use of waterboarding on enemy captives, you support the use of that torture on any future American captives. The Small Wars Council had a spirited discussion about this earlier in the year, especially when former Marine Generals Krulak and Hoar rejected all arguments for torture.

Evan Wallach wrote a brilliant history of the use of waterboarding as a war crime and the open acceptance of it by the administration in an article for Columbia Journal for Transnational Law. In it he describes how the ideological Justice Department lawyer, John Yoo validated the current dilemma we find ourselves in by asserting that the President had powers above and beyond the Constitution and the Congress:

“Congress doesn’t have the power to tie the President’s hands in regard to torture as an interrogation technique....It’s the core of the Commander-in-Chief function. They can’t prevent the President from ordering torture.”

That is an astounding assertion. It reflects a basic disregard for the law of the United States, the Constitution and basic moral decency.

Another MSNBC commentator defended the administration and stated that waterboarding is "not a new phenomenon" and that it had "been pinned on President Bush … but this has been part of interrogation for years and years and years." He is correct, but only partially. The Washington Post reported in 2006 that it was mainly America’s enemies that used it as a principal interrogation method. After World War 2, Japanese waterboard team members were tried for war crimes. In Vietnam, service members were placed under investigation when a photo of a field-expedient waterboarding became publicly known.

Torture in captivity simulation training reveals there are ways an enemy can inflict punishment which will render the subject wholly helpless and which will generally overcome his willpower. The torturer will trigger within the subject a survival instinct, in this case the ability to breathe, which makes the victim instantly pliable and ready to comply. It is purely and simply a tool by which to deprive a human being of his ability to resist through physical humiliation. The very concept of an American Torturer is an anathema to our values.

I concur strongly with the opinions of professional interrogators like Colonel Stewart Herrington, and victims of torture like Senator John McCain. If you want consistent, accurate and reliable intelligence, be inquisitive, analytical, patient but most of all professional, amiable and compassionate.

Who will complain about the new world-wide embrace of torture? America has justified it legally at the highest levels of government. Even worse, the administration has selectively leaked supposed successes of the water board such as the alleged Khalid Sheik Mohammed confessions. However, in the same breath the CIA sources for the Washington Post noted that in Mohammed’s case they got information but "not all of it reliable." Of course, when you waterboard you get all the magic answers you want -because remember, the subject will talk. They all talk! Anyone strapped down will say anything, absolutely anything to get the torture to stop. Torture. Does. Not. Work.

According to the President, this is not a torture, so future torturers in other countries now have an American legal basis to perform the acts. Every hostile intelligence agency and terrorist in the world will consider it a viable tool, which can be used with impunity. It has been turned into perfectly acceptable behavior for information finding.

A torture victim can be made to say anything by an evil nation that does not abide by humanity, morality, treaties or rule of law. Today we are on the verge of becoming that nation. Is it possible that September 11 hurt us so much that we have decided to gladly adopt the tools of KGB, the Khmer Rouge, the Nazi Gestapo, the North Vietnamese, the North Koreans and the Burmese Junta?

What next if the waterboarding on a critical the captive doesn’t work and you have a timetable to stop the “ticking bomb” scenario? Electric shock to the genitals? Taking a pregnant woman and electrocuting the fetus inside her? Executing a captive’s children in front of him? Dropping live people from an airplane over the ocean? It has all been done by governments seeking information. All claimed the same need to stop the ticking bomb. It is not a far leap from torture to murder, especially if the subject is defiant. Are we willing to trade our nation’s soul for tactical intelligence?

Is There a Place for the Waterboard?

Yes. The waterboard must go back to the realm of SERE training our operators, soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. We must now double our efforts to prepare for its inevitable and uncontrolled use of by our future enemies.

Until recently, only a few countries considered it effective. Now American use of the waterboard as an interrogation tool has assuredly guaranteed that our service members and agents who are captured or detained by future enemies will be subject to it as part of the most routine interrogations. Forget threats, poor food, the occasional face slap and sexual assaults. This was not a dignified ‘taking off the gloves’; this was descending to the level of our opposition in an equally brutish and ugly way. Waterboarding will be one our future enemy’s go-to techniques because we took the gloves off to brutal interrogation. Now our enemies will take the gloves off and thank us for it.

There may never again be a chance that Americans will benefit from the shield of outrage and public opinion when our future enemy uses of torture. Brutal interrogation, flash murder and extreme humiliation of American citizens, agents and members of the armed forces may now be guaranteed because we have mindlessly, but happily, broken the seal on the Pandora’s box of indignity, cruelty and hatred in the name of protecting America. To defeat Bin Laden many in this administration have openly embraced the methods of by Hitler, Pinochet, Pol Pot, Galtieri and Saddam Hussein.

Not A Fair Trade for America’s Honor

I have stated publicly and repeatedly that I would personally cut Bin Laden’s heart out with a plastic MRE spoon if we per chance meet on the battlefield. Yet, once captive I believe that the better angels of our nature and our nation’s core values would eventually convince any terrorist that they indeed have erred in their murderous ways. Once convicted in a fair, public tribunal, they would have the rest of their lives, however short the law makes it, to come to terms with their God and their acts.

This is not enough for our President. He apparently secretly ordered the core American values of fairness and justice to be thrown away in the name of security from terrorists. He somehow determined that the honor the military, the CIA and the nation itself was an acceptable trade for the superficial knowledge of the machinations of approximately 2,000 terrorists, most of whom are being decimated in Iraq or martyring themselves in Afghanistan. It is a short sighted and politically motivated trade that is simply disgraceful. There is no honor here.

It is outrageous that American officials, including the Attorney General and a legion of minions of lower rank have not only embraced this torture but have actually justified it, redefined it to a misdemeanor, brought it down to the level of a college prank and then bragged about it. The echo chamber that is the American media now views torture as a heroic and macho.

Torture advocates hide behind the argument that an open discussion about specific American interrogation techniques will aid the enemy. Yet, convicted Al Qaeda members and innocent captives who were released to their host nations have already debriefed the world through hundreds of interviews, movies and documentaries on exactly what methods they were subjected to and how they endured. In essence, our own missteps have created a cadre of highly experienced lecturers for Al Qaeda’s own virtual SERE school for terrorists.

Congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle need to stand up for American values and clearly specify that coercive interrogation using the waterboard is torture and, except for limited examples of training our service members and intelligence officers, it should be stopped completely and finally –oh, and this time without a Presidential signing statement reinterpreting the law.

 

[CMike]

1) In that post I said 3 times. I meant on 3 people. I stated that in numerous other posts.

As you said youreself I specifically said that I don't know how many times it was on an individual person, other than the 2 on one person.

I will admit I could have written that sentence clearer. I have said (written) in numerous other posts that I meant that waterboarding was only done on 3 people.

2) That opinion piece is simply an opinion of one person. Opinions are like assholes everyone has one.

However, let's talk about real torture.

a) This is what John McCain went through.

John McCain: Torture Worked on Me

He described the day Hanoi Hilton guards beat him "from pillar to post, kicking and laughing and scratching. After a few hours of that, ropes were put on me and I sat that night bound with ropes."

"For the next four days, I was beaten every two to three hours by different guards . . . Finally, I reached the lowest point of my 5 1/2 years in North Vietnam. I was at the point of suicide, because I saw that I was reaching the end of my rope."

McCain was taken to an interrogation room and ordered to sign a document confessing to war crimes. "I signed it," he recalled. "It was in their language, and spoke about black crimes, and other generalities

This is why they did it.

Hanoi Hilton - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

aim of the torture was usually not acquiring military information;[7] rather, it was to break the will of the prisoners, both individually and as a group.[7][14] The goal of the North Vietnamese was to get written or recorded statements from the prisoners that criticized U.S. conduct of the war and praised how the North Vietnamese treated them.[7]

b) My own father was actually tortured. In the days of the dictator Franco under Spain, my father led an operation in Spain to capture a nazi. He was caught.

His prisonmates were political prisoners. There he was tortured. He was beaten.

It was so cold there, that afterwards he would have veins that would burst from his foot for almost the rest of his life

3) Now let's compare this to waterboarding

a) No one is beaten

b) There are no physical lasting effects

4) And furthermore let's compare the waterboarding done to the 3 arch terrorists to the waterboarding the CIA does to its own people for it's own survival training

a) The training is called "The Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) "

They are waterboarded so CIA people have a taste of what could happen if they were captured, not because it's torture

This is why it's done

Navy SERE Training

SERE is actually an advanced code-of-conduct course. All military personnel get their initial code-of-conduct instruction during basic training in which they are taught an American service member’s moral and legal responsibilities if captured by enemy forces. But SERE goes way beyond that.

“We teach individuals what to do when things go from bad to worse,” said Hospital Corpsman 1st Class Harry Haug, a SERE instructor assigned to Fleet Aviation Specialized Operational (FASO) training Group, Brunswick, Maine.

“The students who attend the course have a greater risk of being stranded behind enemy lines,” said Haug. “They come here to learn how to stay alive and the values behind the code of conduct. When the situation is real, the threat is real, so these students need to be ready to handle it.”

Aviators, aircrewmen, Special Forces and force reconnaissance personnel are the types of jobs that require SERE school training.

“With today’s ever-changing battlefield, I believe most military personnel are at risk of being captured,” said Haug. “Hopefully what I teach here on the mountain is enough to give someone the courage and know-how to survive if they are ever in that situation.”

-building, trapping, creating shelters, finding edible plants – are actually rules to live by.

“Once we have the students on the mountain, we split them into teams and immediately get their hands dirty. Like ducks out of water, they do their best to demonstrate all that we teach them about survival,” Haug added.

“You never know what’s going to happen out there, in hostile environments,” said Haug. “Survival starts with prior planning and that is where we begin with the students. They have to be ready for the unknown.”

b) The 3 arch terrorists had a milder form of waterboarding than those undergoing the SERE course.

In the SERE course the waterboarding

1) completely immerses the person in water

2) Is below 41 F

In the one with the 3 arch terrorists

a) They were only splashed with water and not immersed in it
b) The water was always over 41 F

c) Also what was the purpose of waterboarding the terrorists? It was to stop an imminent terrorists attack. It wasn't for breaking down the will or for propoganda purposes. It was for the sole purpose of saving thousands of american lives

d) Most importantly, it worked. Because of it a major terrorist attack of a plane crashing into a LA building was thwarted and a plot to explode a "dirty bomb" in Washington, D.C was thwarted as well

Once again for the CIA people who waterboarded the 3 arch terrorists and thwarted the attacks

 

[potter 58]

d) Most importantly, it worked. Because of it a major terrorist attack of a plane crashing into a LA building was thwarted and a plot to explode a "dirty bomb" in Washington, D.C was thwarted as well
and we know this how , because Bush told you LOL now that's rich

 

[CMike]

Also I did a search on Malcom Nance.

He is a politician. Figures. He works for the Obama administration.

SWJ Blog

 

[CMike]

Quentin what is funny is how you pick and chose what you like for the memo. You cherry pick.

If you don't believe the CIA memo regarding that a major terrorist attack was thwarted, then you can't legitimately use the same memo as evidence of how many times it was used on each person.

Make up your mind either the CIA has no clue and made everything up or it's a legitimate source. You can't credibly have both.