Whoops! CIA Man Retracts Claim on Waterboarding

[CMike]

I never thought I would live to see the day when Americans openly embrace the use of TORTURE

What disgusts me is how liberals care more about the comfort of 3 arch terrorists who were taunting interrogators than stopping a terrorist attack of terrorists flying a plane filled with people into a Los Angeles building.

 

[Coyote]

I never thought I would live to see the day when Americans openly embrace the use of TORTURE

What disgusts me is how liberals care more about the comfort of 3 arch terrorists who were taunting interrogators than stopping a terrorist attack of terrorists flying a plane filled with people into a Los Angeles building.

No. That isn't what it's about at all.

 

[CMike]

The FBI one does. So do the 500 missing videotapes.

Not at all:

1) The FBI dude had nothing to do with it. The CIA did the interrogations. He only voiced his opinion about it. Opinions are like assholes everyone has one.

2) I explained the tapes. They were destroyed intentionally and with the full knowledge of the congressional intelligence committee.

They were destroyed because:

a) In 2005 they no longer had any value

and

b) If they were leaked they could compromise national security.


Once again, do you have anything credible evidence to contradict the CIA memo?

In reference to the above - you mentioned that opinions were "like assholes" and I agree. With the tapes destroyed this nothing but hearsay to contradict the CIA's "official" version is there? I find it very difficult to buy that they "had no value" anymore since they were specifically told not to destroy them. The only evidence *you* have is the CIA itself and they have their own asses (or assholes) to protect don't they?

Here's another interesting article. Though I do not agree with the author's conclusions he makes some good points:

One of the most specific CIA claims that the brutalizing of detainees averted a planned attack...

...Did tough interrogations prevent terrorists from crashing a hijacked airliner into the tallest building in Los Angeles?

This chain of events, the CIA insists, unraveled the dangerous "Second Wave" plot, planned by KSM and Hambali, that called for the Southeast Asian terrorists to crash a hijacked airliner into the tallest building in Los Angeles, the Library Tower.

There is also evidence cutting against the CIA's claims. A.B. Krongard, who was the agency's executive director when the coercive interrogations began, told author Ron Suskind that KSM and other Qaeda captives "went through hell and gave up very, very little." Former FBI agents have claimed that their conventional, non-coercive interrogation got better information out of Zubaydah than the CIA did with its tough stuff.

Many experienced military and FBI interrogators say they've never used coercion, contending that it doesn't work because prisoners will say anything to stop the pain. (But how would they know it doesn't work, not having tried it? And if you were a terrorist desperate to stop the pain, would you fabricate a story that your interrogators would likely consider suspect -- or tell them where to find other terrorists?) (my comment - that is assuming they even know where to find them - otherwise don't you think they'd make up anything they think you might want to hear to stop the pain?)

There are also reports of disagreement within the intelligence community as to the seriousness of the Second Wave plot. Maybe it would have fizzled even without coercive interrogations.

...The bottom line about the effectiveness of brutal interrogations, Blair has asserted, is that "these techniques have hurt our image around the world" so much that "the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us, and they are not essential to our national security."

According to this article, the critical intelligence information had been gained before harsh interrogation methods were used and those methods produced little of value.

Anonymous sources aren't very impressive.

 

[CMike]

Also this is from your own link.

"Even if the videotape does not constitute an official record that must be preserved under the law, the videotape would be the best proof that the written record is accurate, if such record is called into question in the future," Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., wrote in a Feb. 10, 2003 letter to then-CIA general counsel Scott Muller. "The fact of destruction would reflect badly on the agency."

If I was the CIA director I would destroy them too when they had no value for the CIA anymore. The leaking of these tapes could compromise national security.

Also, I can certainly see how liberals would leak it, and compromise national security.

The congressional intelligence committee based on your own link knew they were going to be destroyed. There was nothing wrong with them being destroyed.

 

[rightwinger]

I never thought I would live to see the day when Americans openly embrace the use of TORTURE

What disgusts me is how liberals care more about the comfort of 3 arch terrorists who were taunting interrogators than stopping a terrorist attack of terrorists flying a plane filled with people into a Los Angeles building.

America is defined by its values. Once we give those up, we are no better than the terrorists we so openly despise

 

[CMike]

From your link

"There is also evidence cutting against the CIA's claims. A.B. Krongard, who was the agency's executive director when the coercive interrogations began, told author Ron Suskind that KSM and other Qaeda captives "went through hell and gave up very, very little." Former FBI agents have claimed that their conventional, non-coercive interrogation got better information out of Zubaydah than the CIA did with its tough stuff.

So basically it's this "author" saying this, who can be making it up.

What your link also says

:A. B. Krongard, the C.I.A.’s third-ranking official under Mr. Tenet when the detention and interrogation program was created, called Mr. Brennan a “casualty of war” and said he believed C.I.A. tactics were being second-guessed for political purposes. The demise of Mr. Brennan’s candidacy, Mr. Krongard said, “is a huge loss to the country.”

That is spot on.

 

[CMike]

I never thought I would live to see the day when Americans openly embrace the use of TORTURE

What disgusts me is how liberals care more about the comfort of 3 arch terrorists who were taunting interrogators than stopping a terrorist attack of terrorists flying a plane filled with people into a Los Angeles building.

America is defined by its values. Once we give those up, we are no better than the terrorists we so openly despise

Yes, and the value shown is that america cares more about stopping a terrorist attack than making 3 arch terrorists uncomfortable.

 

[Coyote]

From your link

"There is also evidence cutting against the CIA's claims. A.B. Krongard, who was the agency's executive director when the coercive interrogations began, told author Ron Suskind that KSM and other Qaeda captives "went through hell and gave up very, very little." Former FBI agents have claimed that their conventional, non-coercive interrogation got better information out of Zubaydah than the CIA did with its tough stuff.

So basically it's this "author" saying this, who can be making it up.

What your link also says

:A. B. Krongard, the C.I.A.’s third-ranking official under Mr. Tenet when the detention and interrogation program was created, called Mr. Brennan a “casualty of war” and said he believed C.I.A. tactics were being second-guessed for political purposes. The demise of Mr. Brennan’s candidacy, Mr. Krongard said, “is a huge loss to the country.”

That is spot on.

Like I said - I disagreed with that author's conclusions but he provided some evidence that contradicted his conclusions or at least made them not "definate".

It's quite likely the CIA was doing it's own "politicizing" - that would not be the first time. Not the words: he believed

 

[Coyote]

What disgusts me is how liberals care more about the comfort of 3 arch terrorists who were taunting interrogators than stopping a terrorist attack of terrorists flying a plane filled with people into a Los Angeles building.

America is defined by its values. Once we give those up, we are no better than the terrorists we so openly despise

Yes, and the value shown is that america cares more about stopping a terrorist attack than making 3 arch terrorists uncomfortable.

Again, you are intentionally misrepresenting the issues at stake here unless you honestly think torture is nothing more than "discomfort".

There is a fine line between security and a free society. Once you start embracing torture as a legitimate tool - where do you draw the line? Where do you stop? And what does it do to you as a country? Is it worth it?

I don't think so.

 

[Coyote]

Also this is from your own link.

"Even if the videotape does not constitute an official record that must be preserved under the law, the videotape would be the best proof that the written record is accurate, if such record is called into question in the future," Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., wrote in a Feb. 10, 2003 letter to then-CIA general counsel Scott Muller. "The fact of destruction would reflect badly on the agency."

If I was the CIA director I would destroy them too when they had no value for the CIA anymore. The leaking of these tapes could compromise national security.

Also, I can certainly see how liberals would leak it, and compromise national security.

The congressional intelligence committee based on your own link knew they were going to be destroyed. There was nothing wrong with them being destroyed.

Yet you ignore: "Even if the videotape does not constitute an official record that must be preserved under the law, the videotape would be the best proof that the written record is accurate, if such record is called into question in the future," Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., wrote in a Feb. 10, 2003 letter to then-CIA general counsel Scott Muller. "The fact of destruction would reflect badly on the agency."


What you seem to be defending is a system with no accountability to any branch of the government or to the law. There are no checks to what can be done in the name of "national security" and no way to verify what is true. That is rather like the sort of system in place in countries we criticize for human rights violations - such as Russia, China, Cuba.

 

[SFC Ollie]

What it boils down to is that the CIA says that they used waterboarding on three people under very controlled circumstances. They say that they gained information that stopped a 9-11 type attack on the west coast.

And the only thing some of you can say is that we shouldn't have done it and screw the thousands who would have died if we hadn't.

Well I would rather the world believed us to water board every damned one of the extremists before I would allow another 9-11 type attack against our citizens.


Now you guys tell me which is more important, the worlds view of the USA or protecting thousands of innocent lives?

I don't give a shit if you can prove it is torture. It worked and saved innocent lives.

Nuff said.

 

[QUENTIN]

Blah blah blah.

The fact is that it was used 3 times. When it was used was under strict criteria.

It stopped a massive terrorist attack of terrorists flying a plane into a LA building.

If it wasn't used, the terrorist attack would have occurred.

I am grateful that it was used, and those CIA people deserve a medal for saving countless american lives.

You believe that torture was acceptable because you believe the ends justified the means. Fine, but as the saying goes, everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts. It's a fact that waterboarding is and always has been torture.

You believe it's okay to torture terrorist suspects if it might produce valuable intelligence, so just say that. It's the dishonesty, or at best gross ignorance in the face of readily available information, in justifying the stance by claiming it isn't torture.

What disgusts me is how liberals care more about the comfort of 3 arch terrorists who were taunting interrogators than stopping a terrorist attack of terrorists flying a plane filled with people into a Los Angeles building.

America is defined by its values. Once we give those up, we are no better than the terrorists we so openly despise

Yes, and the value shown is that america cares more about stopping a terrorist attack than making 3 arch terrorists uncomfortable.

Here's Matthew Alexander, the country's top interrogator of suspected Al Qaeda and insurgent detainees, who was personally responsible for extracting the information that led to the elimination of the highest priority target in the entire war on terror, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (when he was alive, Bin Laden was considered the #2 target and he first, he was the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq), who conducted more than 300 interrogations and supervised well over a thousand, on why waterboarding and other torture techniques aren't just morally repugnant, but pragmatically, do not produce good intelligence:

AN INTERROGATOR SPEAKS: I'm Still Tortured by What I Saw in Iraq

I should have felt triumphant when I returned from Iraq in August 2006. Instead, I was worried and exhausted. My team of interrogators had successfully hunted down one of the most notorious mass murderers of our generation, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq and the mastermind of the campaign of suicide bombings that had helped plunge Iraq into civil war. But instead of celebrating our success, my mind was consumed with the unfinished business of our mission: fixing the deeply flawed, ineffective and un-American way the U.S. military conducts interrogations in Iraq. I'm still alarmed about that today.

I'm not some ivory-tower type; I served for 14 years in the U.S. Air Force, began my career as a Special Operations pilot flying helicopters, saw combat in Bosnia and Kosovo, became an Air Force counterintelligence agent, then volunteered to go to Iraq to work as a senior interrogator. What I saw in Iraq still rattles me -- both because it betrays our traditions and because it just doesn't work.

Violence was at its peak during my five-month tour in Iraq. In February 2006, the month before I arrived, Zarqawi's forces (members of Iraq's Sunni minority) blew up the golden-domed Askariya mosque in Samarra, a shrine revered by Iraq's majority Shiites, and unleashed a wave of sectarian bloodshed. Reprisal killings became a daily occurrence, and suicide bombings were as common as car accidents. It felt as if the whole country was being blown to bits.
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Amid the chaos, four other Air Force criminal investigators and I joined an elite team of interrogators attempting to locate Zarqawi. What I soon discovered about our methods astonished me. The Army was still conducting interrogations according to the Guantanamo Bay model: Interrogators were nominally using the methods outlined in the U.S. Army Field Manual, the interrogators' bible, but they were pushing in every way possible to bend the rules -- and often break them. I don't have to belabor the point; dozens of newspaper articles and books have been written about the misconduct that resulted. These interrogations were based on fear and control; they often resulted in torture and abuse.

I refused to participate in such practices, and a month later, I extended that prohibition to the team of interrogators I was assigned to lead. I taught the members of my unit a new methodology -- one based on building rapport with suspects, showing cultural understanding and using good old-fashioned brainpower to tease out information. I personally conducted more than 300 interrogations, and I supervised more than 1,000. The methods my team used are not classified (they're listed in the unclassified Field Manual), but the way we used them was, I like to think, unique. We got to know our enemies, we learned to negotiate with them, and we adapted criminal investigative techniques to our work (something that the Field Manual permits, under the concept of "ruses and trickery"). It worked. Our efforts started a chain of successes that ultimately led to Zarqawi.

Over the course of this renaissance in interrogation tactics, our attitudes changed. We no longer saw our prisoners as the stereotypical al-Qaeda evildoers we had been repeatedly briefed to expect; we saw them as Sunni Iraqis, often family men protecting themselves from Shiite militias and trying to ensure that their fellow Sunnis would still have some access to wealth and power in the new Iraq. Most surprisingly, they turned out to despise al-Qaeda in Iraq as much as they despised us, but Zarqawi and his thugs were willing to provide them with arms and money. I pointed this out to Gen. George Casey, the former top U.S. commander in Iraq, when he visited my prison in the summer of 2006. He did not respond.

Perhaps he should have. It turns out that my team was right to think that many disgruntled Sunnis could be peeled away from Zarqawi. A year later, Gen. David Petraeus helped boost the so-called Anbar Awakening, in which tens of thousands of Sunnis turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and signed up with U.S. forces, cutting violence in the country dramatically.

Our new interrogation methods led to one of the war's biggest breakthroughs: We convinced one of Zarqawi's associates to give up the al-Qaeda in Iraq leader's location. On June 8, 2006, U.S. warplanes dropped two 500-pound bombs on a house where Zarqawi was meeting with other insurgent leaders.

But Zarqawi's death wasn't enough to convince the joint Special Operations task force for which I worked to change its attitude toward interrogations. The old methods continued. I came home from Iraq feeling as if my mission was far from accomplished. Soon after my return, the public learned that another part of our government, the CIA, had repeatedly used waterboarding to try to get information out of detainees.

I know the counter-argument well -- that we need the rough stuff for the truly hard cases, such as battle-hardened core leaders of al-Qaeda, not just run-of-the-mill Iraqi insurgents. But that's not always true: We turned several hard cases, including some foreign fighters, by using our new techniques. A few of them never abandoned the jihadist cause but still gave up critical information. One actually told me, "I thought you would torture me, and when you didn't, I decided that everything I was told about Americans was wrong. That's why I decided to cooperate."

Torture and abuse are against my moral fabric. The cliche still bears repeating: Such outrages are inconsistent with American principles. And then there's the pragmatic side: Torture and abuse cost American lives.

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.


...continue reading...

So the reason people (far from just liberals) oppose the use of torture are at least three-fold:

-It is an immoral act, committed only by immoral people and immoral states, and has been recognized as such from the dawn of modern civilization. Tyrants, despots, and terrorists torture people and we hope not to let our country behave that way on our behalf for ethical and humane reasons. We are a people above torture and torture besmirches our national character.

-It is an illegal act, the UN Convention Against Torture we helped craft, signed, and ratified - to which we are legally bound - not only outlaws torture but creates a universal jurisdiction by which every state signatory is legally bound to investigate and prosecute all claims of torture (and if they fail to do so, other states must prosecute the crimes instead, as Spain has begun to do) and makes not only torture a serious crime, but the failure to prosecute suspected torturers itself a serious crime.

-It is an inefficient act, it is infamous for producing bad intelligence and is far more often effective at coercing false confessions than any actionable intelligence because almost anyone will say anything they think their torturers want to hear to get them to stop. We know throughout history that the use of waterboarding and other forms of torture by the Spanish Inquistion, Nazis, Soviet secret police, Vietcong, Koreans, etc. resulted in innocent people lying and corroborating whatever their torturers were asking them about. Bad intelligence, where we trust what someone has told us under torture, leads to dangerous actions that put us all at risk. Again, according to the most effective and prolific interrogator of the war on terror, classic interrogation is a great means of eliciting information from even the hardest of terrorists while torture (whether you call it enhanced interrogation or not, he's talking about the same techniques) does not produce valuable information and is in fact counterproductive, often shutting out the possibility of the tortured from ever again trusting an interrogator enough to reveal intel.

Official claims from the government on this subject have been repeatedly, routinely revealed to be lies when the facts eventually come to light. It is only official government claims that "only 3 terrorists were waterboarded." In the same breath as that claim, they also said they broke within 30 seconds of being waterboarded the first time and instead, upon the declassification and revelation of the report of his torture, we learned that was a lie and he in fact was waterboarded over 80 times. So there is no legitimate rationale for accepting as truth the idea that only 3 people were waterboarded given the source. Which of course also calls into serious question their unproven claim that information received through waterboarding led to the prevention of a terrorist attack in LA. The government, particularly the CIA, has a long and storied history of simply making up such claims in order to justify their illicit activity, there is no reason to accept it at face value as though it must be true. We simply do not know. Beyond that, we know that numerous other torture techniques were routinely used at camps around the globe, so there's no point confining the argument so strictly to waterboarding.

 

[CMike]

America is defined by its values. Once we give those up, we are no better than the terrorists we so openly despise

Yes, and the value shown is that america cares more about stopping a terrorist attack than making 3 arch terrorists uncomfortable.

Again, you are intentionally misrepresenting the issues at stake here unless you honestly think torture is nothing more than "discomfort".

There is a fine line between security and a free society. Once you start embracing torture as a legitimate tool - where do you draw the line? Where do you stop? And what does it do to you as a country? Is it worth it?

I don't think so.

This was the criteria for waterboarding.

I posted the link already.

This was because the CIA imposed very tight restrictions on the use of waterboarding. “The ‘waterboard,’ which is the most intense of the CIA interrogation techniques, is subject to additional limits,” explained the May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo. “It may be used on a High Value Detainee only if the CIA has ‘credible intelligence that a terrorist attack is imminent’; ‘substantial and credible indicators that the subject has actionable intelligence that can prevent, disrupt or deny this attack’; and ‘[o]ther interrogation methods have failed to elicit this information within the perceived time limit for preventing the attack.’” The quotations in this part of the Justice memo were taken from an Aug. 2, 2004 letter that CIA Acting General Counsel John A. Rizzo sent to the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel

 

[CMike]

Also this is from your own link.

"Even if the videotape does not constitute an official record that must be preserved under the law, the videotape would be the best proof that the written record is accurate, if such record is called into question in the future," Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., wrote in a Feb. 10, 2003 letter to then-CIA general counsel Scott Muller. "The fact of destruction would reflect badly on the agency."

If I was the CIA director I would destroy them too when they had no value for the CIA anymore. The leaking of these tapes could compromise national security.

Also, I can certainly see how liberals would leak it, and compromise national security.

The congressional intelligence committee based on your own link knew they were going to be destroyed. There was nothing wrong with them being destroyed.

Yet you ignore: "Even if the videotape does not constitute an official record that must be preserved under the law, the videotape would be the best proof that the written record is accurate, if such record is called into question in the future," Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., wrote in a Feb. 10, 2003 letter to then-CIA general counsel Scott Muller. "The fact of destruction would reflect badly on the agency."


What you seem to be defending is a system with no accountability to any branch of the government or to the law. There are no checks to what can be done in the name of "national security" and no way to verify what is true. That is rather like the sort of system in place in countries we criticize for human rights violations - such as Russia, China, Cuba.

It was already reviewed

From the article, I posted the link.

This is from CIA Director Hayden

From Hayden

The tapes were meant chiefly as an additional, internal check on the program in its early stages. At one point, it was thought the tapes could serve as a backstop to guarantee that other methods of documenting the interrogations -- and the crucial information they produced -- were accurate and complete. The Agency soon determined that its documentary reporting was full and exacting, removing any need for tapes. Indeed, videotaping stopped in 2002.

As part of the rigorous review that has defined the detention program, the Office of General Counsel examined the tapes and determined that they showed lawful methods of questioning.
...Were they ever to leak, they would permit identification of your CIA colleagues who had served in the program, exposing them and their
families to retaliation from al-Qa'ida and its sympathizers.

And yes, I don't want CIA techniques and methods to be public, because that helps the enemy.

I don't care if 3 arch terrorists were treated poorly. The information gotten stopped would have been a devastating terrorist attack.

To Quentin, it's not a fact that waterboarding is torture.

What is torture is very subjective.

As I said reading some liberal posts here can be considered torture.

The bottom line is that it was done to 3 arch terrorists under strict guidelines, it got critical information that saved thousands of american lives.

I think it would have been immmoral not to have done what was necessary to get this information from the terrorists.

Also, once again, here is the actual memo declassified by Obama, page 10 talks about it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/pdf/OLCmemo_May30_Part1.pdf?sid=ST2009041602877

 

[CMike]

What it boils down to is that the CIA says that they used waterboarding on three people under very controlled circumstances. They say that they gained information that stopped a 9-11 type attack on the west coast.

And the only thing some of you can say is that we shouldn't have done it and screw the thousands who would have died if we hadn't.

Well I would rather the world believed us to water board every damned one of the extremists before I would allow another 9-11 type attack against our citizens.


Now you guys tell me which is more important, the worlds view of the USA or protecting thousands of innocent lives?

I don't give a shit if you can prove it is torture. It worked and saved innocent lives.

Nuff said.

Spot on

 

[QUENTIN]

What it boils down to is that the CIA says that they used waterboarding on three people under very controlled circumstances. They say that they gained information that stopped a 9-11 type attack on the west coast.

And the only thing some of you can say is that we shouldn't have done it and screw the thousands who would have died if we hadn't.

Well I would rather the world believed us to water board every damned one of the extremists before I would allow another 9-11 type attack against our citizens.


Now you guys tell me which is more important, the worlds view of the USA or protecting thousands of innocent lives?

I don't give a shit if... it is torture. It worked and saved innocent lives.

Nuff said.

Indeed.

This is all some people were looking for: An admission that you support it not on the grounds that it isn't torture, because that just isn't true, but rather you believe torture to be acceptable to use on people we declare (without charge, trial, or conviction) to be terrorists and think might have valuable intelligence.

If you support torture, okay, just say so, don't use the obfuscating language to pretend it's anything else.

Of course, many of you are operating under the fallacy that "CIA claims that help justify their actions = the truth." It's not as if the CIA has an immaculate, or really anything but remarkably dishonest and constantly deceptive, record. There is no actual evidence to suggest waterboarding led to the prevention of a major terrorist attack, it's just the uncorroborated claim of the same people who used waterboarding and have legitimate concerns about being prosecuted for it, thus every motivation to lie. That doesn't mean it's necessarily a lie, but you'd have to be foolish and ignore the context and history entirely to just accept it as fact.

 

[QUENTIN]

To Quentin, it's not a fact that waterboarding is torture.

What is torture is very subjective.

The law defines torture. It is a fact that waterboarding meets the legal definition of torture. Laws are written to intentionally not be subjective.

Killing someone in cold blood because they previously killed your loved one, for instance, you might think is justifiable or deserved or whatever, but it's still a fact that it's murder (because it meets the legal definition of murder) and the courts have an obligation to prosecute it as such.

 

[Coyote]

Yes, and the value shown is that america cares more about stopping a terrorist attack than making 3 arch terrorists uncomfortable.

Again, you are intentionally misrepresenting the issues at stake here unless you honestly think torture is nothing more than "discomfort".

There is a fine line between security and a free society. Once you start embracing torture as a legitimate tool - where do you draw the line? Where do you stop? And what does it do to you as a country? Is it worth it?

I don't think so.

This was the criteria for waterboarding.

I posted the link already.

This was because the CIA imposed very tight restrictions on the use of waterboarding. “The ‘waterboard,’ which is the most intense of the CIA interrogation techniques, is subject to additional limits,” explained the May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo. “It may be used on a High Value Detainee only if the CIA has ‘credible intelligence that a terrorist attack is imminent’; ‘substantial and credible indicators that the subject has actionable intelligence that can prevent, disrupt or deny this attack’; and ‘[o]ther interrogation methods have failed to elicit this information within the perceived time limit for preventing the attack.’” The quotations in this part of the Justice memo were taken from an Aug. 2, 2004 letter that CIA Acting General Counsel John A. Rizzo sent to the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel

Do you think every system that attempts to legitimize torture starts out thinking - we're going to torture everyone that pisses us off, looks at us funny, or jaywalks? No. They start out trying to carefully limit and define it - but it doesn't tend to stay that way. Once you start to institutionalize the rationale of "the ends justify the means" it's hard to stop there.

Is torture ever justified....certainly, there are cases where it works or has seemed to be necessary, but at what cost and is the cost always worth what you gain? Is it worth it when at the hands of a skilled interrogator, other methods can yield the same results?

Here is an interesting article:

The Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz argues for legally sanctioning torture in ''ticking bomb'' cases. ''At bottom, my argument is not in favor of torture of any sort,'' he says. ''It is against all forms of torture without accountability.'' His rationale is that in ticking bomb cases the idea that torture in some form will not be used is illusory, and the government should not be able to walk away from responsibility for it. That, in effect, would leave the interrogators with all of the legal and moral blame.

Jean Bethke Elshtain, a professor of ethics at the University of Chicago, counters that torture is so extreme that it should remain ''tabooed and forbidden,'' and that any attempt to legitimize torture even in the rarest of cases risks the slippery slope toward normalizing it.

Seeking a middle ground, Miriam Gur-Arye, a criminal law professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, argues that in the absence of a concrete terrorist threat, only a specific self-defense argument can justify force in an interrogation: it cannot be justified by the more general and utilitarian -- that is, Machiavellian -- argument of necessity.

And, the same article concludes with:

No matter how wise those drawing up the guidelines are, however, the art of interrogation does not lend itself to micromanagement from above. Interrogators will forever be forced to make split-second decisions with grave life-and-death consequences. The way toward public safety and out of the moral abyss will come less from philosophy than from sturdy bureaucratic reform: correcting, for example, the broken reserve system that contributed directly to the abuses at Abu Ghraib. An interrogator armed with fluent Arabic and every scrap of intelligence the system can muster, who has mastered the emerging science of eye movements and body signals, who can act threatening as well as empathetic toward a prisoner, should not require the ultimate tool.

 

[PatekPhilippe]

Torture is torture whether it is illegal or not.

and what your definition of torture is differs from what the law states.

 

[Coyote]

Also this is from your own link.

"Even if the videotape does not constitute an official record that must be preserved under the law, the videotape would be the best proof that the written record is accurate, if such record is called into question in the future," Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., wrote in a Feb. 10, 2003 letter to then-CIA general counsel Scott Muller. "The fact of destruction would reflect badly on the agency."

If I was the CIA director I would destroy them too when they had no value for the CIA anymore. The leaking of these tapes could compromise national security.

Also, I can certainly see how liberals would leak it, and compromise national security.

The congressional intelligence committee based on your own link knew they were going to be destroyed. There was nothing wrong with them being destroyed.

Yet you ignore: "Even if the videotape does not constitute an official record that must be preserved under the law, the videotape would be the best proof that the written record is accurate, if such record is called into question in the future," Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., wrote in a Feb. 10, 2003 letter to then-CIA general counsel Scott Muller. "The fact of destruction would reflect badly on the agency."


What you seem to be defending is a system with no accountability to any branch of the government or to the law. There are no checks to what can be done in the name of "national security" and no way to verify what is true. That is rather like the sort of system in place in countries we criticize for human rights violations - such as Russia, China, Cuba.

It was already reviewed

From the article, I posted the link.

This is from CIA Director Hayden

From Hayden

The tapes were meant chiefly as an additional, internal check on the program in its early stages. At one point, it was thought the tapes could serve as a backstop to guarantee that other methods of documenting the interrogations -- and the crucial information they produced -- were accurate and complete. The Agency soon determined that its documentary reporting was full and exacting, removing any need for tapes. Indeed, videotaping stopped in 2002.

As part of the rigorous review that has defined the detention program, the Office of General Counsel examined the tapes and determined that they showed lawful methods of questioning.
...Were they ever to leak, they would permit identification of your CIA colleagues who had served in the program, exposing them and their
families to retaliation from al-Qa'ida and its sympathizers.

And yes, I don't want CIA techniques and methods to be public, because that helps the enemy.

I don't care if 3 arch terrorists were treated poorly. The information gotten stopped would have been a devastating terrorist attack.

To Quentin, it's not a fact that waterboarding is torture.

What is torture is very subjective.

As I said reading some liberal posts here can be considered torture.

The bottom line is that it was done to 3 arch terrorists under strict guidelines, it got critical information that saved thousands of american lives.

I think it would have been immmoral not to have done what was necessary to get this information from the terrorists.

Also, once again, here is the actual memo declassified by Obama, page 10 talks about it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/pdf/OLCmemo_May30_Part1.pdf?sid=ST2009041602877

Office of General Counsel examined the tapes and determined that they showed lawful methods of questioning. - come on! That is not an independent review! They were asked NOT to destroy the tapes. Our government has a system of checks and balances between the branches for exactly this reason.