Conservatives Start Speaking Out Against Torture

[catzmeow]

who are you trying to convince,?, hasn't the decision been made? all's left now is to live or die with it..

I'm hoping that people like you, Willow, good-hearted people who love this country, will take the risk of being exposed to something outside of the Sean Hannity bubble, and understanding why other conservatives, like me, are absolutely horrified at what we have done, as a country.

 

[editec]

I dont' care whether it works or not..its WRONG!

 

[Iriemon]

And I know many fellow conservatives that don't agree with the use of waterboarding... but know the difference between being against it and deeming it torture...

I can easily accept someone being against it... but trying to use it as a political jab or yet another excuse to try and chant the "Bush is a war criminal" bullshit is just absurd

I do consider waterboarding, as well as some of the other "enhanced interrogation techniques," to be torture. And, i'd love to see those who don't explaining to our founding fathers why we "needed" to engage in those kinds of acts.

I think that they could put into perspective what it means to sacrifice to be the land of the free, and the home of the brave. And, torturing suspects under duress isn't it.

Our founding fathers were very clear on their position about torture. It's the 8th amendment:

... nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

 

[catzmeow]

How CIA agents like Ali Soufan got terror suspects to talk...WITHOUT TORTURE.

‘We Could Have Done This the Right Way’ | Print Article | Newsweek.com

Agency operatives were aiming to crack him with rough and unorthodox interrogation tactics—including stripping him nude, turning down the temperature and bombarding him with loud music. But one impassioned young FBI agent wanted nothing to do with it. He tried to stop them.

The agent, Ali Soufan, was known as one of the bureau's top experts on Al Qaeda. He also had a reputation as a shrewd interrogator who could work fluently in both English and Arabic. Soufan yelled at one CIA contractor and told him that what he was doing was wrong, ineffective and an affront to American values. At one point, Soufan discovered a dark wooden "confinement box" that the contractor had built for Abu Zubaydah. It looked, Soufan recalls, "like a coffin." The mercurial agent erupted in anger, got on a secure phone line and called Pasquale D'Amuro, then the FBI assistant director for counterterrorism. "I swear to God," he shouted, "I'm going to arrest these guys!"

D'Amuro and other officials were alarmed at what they heard from Soufan. They fretted about the political consequences of abusive interrogations and the Washington blowback they thought was inevitable, say two high-ranking FBI sources who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. According to a later Justice Department inspector general's report, D'Amuro warned FBI Director Bob Mueller that such activities would eventually be investigated. "Someday, people are going to be sitting in front of green felt tables having to testify about all of this," D'Amuro said, according to one of the sources.

Mueller ordered Soufan and a second FBI agent home. He then directed that bureau personnel no longer participate in CIA interrogations. In the corridors of the White House, Justice Department and U.S. intelligence agencies, heated debates ensued. Three months later, on Aug. 1, 2002, Justice lawyers issued a chilling memo blessing everything the CIA contractors had proposed—including waterboarding, or simulated drowning, a ghoulish technique that was administered to Abu Zubaydah 83 times.

Those of you who claim that torture works...I hope you will take the time to read the ENTIRE article. The FBI backed away from these tactics because THEY KNEW they were illegal.

 

[catzmeow]

I dont' care whether it works or not..its WRONG!

You're right. But, I'm addressing the most common claim of the torture advocates in this forum and showing that their foundation for thier beliefs that torture is somehow justified are ENTIRELY FALSE.

 

[Iriemon]

More on this subject, from the British Ambassador to Uzbekistan:

It was made plain to me in briefing in London before initial departure for Tashkent that Uzbekistan was a key ally in the War on Terror and to be treated as such. It was particularly important to the USA who valued its security cooperation and its provision of a major US airbase at Karshi-Khanabad.

As Ambassador in Uzbekistan I regularly received intelligence material released by MI6. This material was given to MI6 by the CIA, mostly originating from their Tashkent station. It was normally issued to me telegraphically by MI6 at the same time it was issued to UK ministers and officials in London.

From the start of my time as Ambassador, I was also receiving a continual stream of information about widespread torture of suspected political or religious dissidents in Tashkent. This was taking place on a phenomenal scale. In early 2003 a report by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, in the preparation of which my Embassy much assisted, described torture in Uzbekistan as “routine and systemic”.

The horror and staggering extent of torture in Uzbekistan is well documented and I have been informed by the Chair is not in the purview of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. But what follows goes directly to the question of UK non-compliance with the UN Convention Against Torture.

In gathering evidence from victims of torture, we built a consistent picture of the narrative which the torturers were seeking to validate from confessions under torture. They sought confessions which linked domestic opposition to President Karimov with Al-Qaida and Osama Bin Laden; they sought to exaggerate the strength of the terrorist threat in Central Asia.

People arrested on all sorts of pretexts – (I recall one involved in a dispute over ownership of a garage plot) suddenly found themselves tortured into confessing to membership of both the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and Al-Qaida. They were also made to confess to attending Al-Qaida training camps in Tajikistan and Afghanistan. In an echo of Stalin’s security services from which the Uzbek SNB had an unbroken institutional descent, they were given long lists of names of people they had to confess were also in IMU and Al-Qaida.It became obvious to me after just a few weeks that the CIA material from Uzbekistan was giving precisely the same narrative being extracted by the Uzbek torturers – and that the CIA “intelligence” was giving information far from the truth.

I was immediately concerned that British ministers and officials were being unknowingly exposed to material derived from torture, and therefore were acting illegally.

Craig Murray - Trying Again to Stop Torture: My Formal Statement for the Joint Committee on Human Rights

This is what we did. This is who we have become.

Read it, and weep.

What an ugly stain on America.

 

[Ravi]

I'm done talking about waterboarding. Democwats are in charge and the decision has already been made. I just don't want to hear any phony cries of sympathy from them when the next attack occurs.. You've been told that waterboarding did prevent one in LA you have been educated and your decision has been made.

Link?

 

[DiamondDave]

Anybody trying to pass off the lie that waterboarding isn't torture is either seriously disinformed or simply condones torture.

I invite any of you to the editec compound where I will waterboard you for a few minutes.

THEN tell me it wasn't torturous.

Not a single person here trying to tell us that isn't torture will think it isn't torture ofter you go through a minute or to of the experience.

Oh yeah, one more thing?

If you waterboard people incorrectly they will die.

Why?

Because waterboarding is simply controlled drowding.

That's exactly WHY it's torture.

Because they are killing you by inches.

Horseshit

They are not killing you by inches... it's not controlled drowning... and there are indeed rules on how it is done, when it is done, how often it is done, medical personnel there, etc...

And I would invite you to actually go thru some training that many of my other fellow vets went thru that is above and beyond the 'torture' you and the rest of your kind complain about

And because some don't accept waterboarding as torture by definition, does not mean that those people condone torture... and it certainly does not mean that they are misinformed

 

[WillowTree]

who are you trying to convince,?, hasn't the decision been made? all's left now is to live or die with it..

I'm hoping that people like you, Willow, good-hearted people who love this country, will take the risk of being exposed to something outside of the Sean Hannity bubble, and understanding why other conservatives, like me, are absolutely horrified at what we have done, as a country.

yes, and I'm thanking god and George Bush that lefties like you are alive to be horrified.. you could be dead and feeling all sanctimonious about your white hat..but as I've said,, no problem it's going to be your way,, so you should stop whining.oh,, btw I never listen to Sean Hannity so you can stop with that left wing talking point.

 

[catzmeow]

yes, and I'm thanking god and George Bush that lefties like you are alive to be horrified.. you could be dead and feeling all sanctimonious about your white hat..but as I've said,, no problem it's going to be your way,, so you should stop whining.oh,, btw I never listen to Sean Hannity so you can stop with that left wing talking point.

Did you take the time to read the articles I've posted? If you had, you'd realize why there are plenty of us on the right who are even more horrified than the leftists.

 

[WillowTree]

I dont' care whether it works or not..its WRONG!

You're right. But, I'm addressing the most common claim of the torture advocates in this forum and showing that their foundation for thier beliefs that torture is somehow justified are ENTIRELY FALSE.

you can't change any minds,, just be happy in knowing we Americans who disagree with you scare you more than the terrorists do.. and don't be horrified at the results you get..if I'm alive I'm gonna be the one laughing at you.

 

[Gunny]

The source for this claim: John Kiriakou of the CIA.

The problems with his claim: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/28/business/media/28abc.html?_r=1

Mr. Zubaydah started to cooperate after being waterboarded for “probably 30, 35 seconds,” Mr. Kiriakou told the ABC reporter Brian Ross. “From that day on he answered every question.”

His claims — unverified at the time, but repeated by dozens of broadcasts, blogs and newspapers — have been sharply contradicted by a newly declassified Justice Department memo that said waterboarding had been used on Mr. Zubaydah “at least 83 times.”

Some critics say that the now-discredited information shared by Mr. Kiriakou and other sources heightened the public perception of waterboarding as an effective interrogation technique. “I think it was sanitized by the way it was described” in press accounts, said John Sifton, a former lawyer for Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group.

During the heated debate in 2007 over the use of waterboarding and other techniques, Mr. Kiriakou’s comments quickly ricocheted around the media. But lost in much of the coverage was the fact that Mr. Kiriakou had no firsthand knowledge of the waterboarding: He was not actually in the secret prison in Thailand where Mr. Zubaydah had been interrogated but in the C.I.A. headquarters in Northern Virginia. He learned about it only by reading accounts from the field.
On “World News,” ABC included only a caveat that Mr. Kiriakou himself “never carried out any of the waterboarding.” Still, he told ABC that the actions had “disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.” A video of the interview was no longer on ABC's website.

“It works, is the bottom line,” Rush Limbaugh exclaimed on his radio show the next day. “Thirty to 35 seconds, and it works.”

Those of you who are claiming that waterboarding works...have been somewhat mislead. And, I guess in this instance, mislead is probably an inappropriately polite term. I'd say that you were lied to.

More on where the mistaken idea that "waterboarding works" came from:

Brian Ross spread the same falsehoods about the Khalid Sheik Mohammed interrogation - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com

In his Roll Call column, Mort Kondrake wrote that "the highest-ranking al Qaeda operative yet captured, Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, held out for two and a half minutes before begging to talk. The CIA claims it got valuable information from him." National Review's Rich Lowry echoed the claim: " Most terrorism suspects can't withstand waterboarding for more than 14 seconds, and KSM impressed his interrogators by holding out for more than two minutes." Another of National Review's super tough-guy warriors, Deroy Murdock, wrote: "Khalid Sheik Mohammed was silent until exposed to a few minutes of highly uncomfortable but non-lethal waterboarding, after which he babbled like a teenage girl on the telephone."

This claim that Mohammed lasted less than 3 minutes before confessing everything was repeatedly cited on CNN, MSNBC and by other news outlets and countless pundits as proof that (a) waterboarding works to save American lives; (b) it works almost immediately; and therefore (c) it is hard to call it "torture" since it only lasts for seconds. Indeed, Ross' report was cited to bolster one of the central arguments made by those who insisted that waterboarding could not be "torture" because individuals are subjected to it for such a short duration. Yet all along, Ross' report about Mohammed -- like his report about Zubaydah -- was based on nothing more than his mindless recitation of what unnamed Bush administration sources whispered to him about Mohammed's interrogation treatment, and it was false from start to finish.

Anyone that says torture DOESN'T work is lying or stupid. Anyone that says it works 100% of the time is lying or stupid.

Anyone who defines "torture" outside the conventional defnitions historically used is a liar AND stupid.

Anyone who deludes themselves into thinking that we have not engaged in torture within our own nation as well as with enemies of outside this nation during times of war is delusional.

And this faux-outrage is getting old. What do you expect from a Nation of people that kicks the basis of our moral standard -- Judeo-Christianity -- to the curb?

 

[sealybobo]

an ideology that we are better than that persists here, we want to show the WORLD how great we are that we don't use TOUGH INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES, the problem is we may not be around after the next attack to show the world anything.

We certainly don't have a President that believes it is more important to protect Americans than it is to look good to the world. Lookin good, is everything to him, appease everyone, be popular to hell with the safety of American citizens.

No, we are a nation of laws.

Torture wasn't necessary and didn't work.

And them torturing made us less safe.

And what you treasonist traitors fail to acknowledge is they did this to a fucking American. Hose Padilla.

The law doesn't say, "if you are a good American, you have the right to an attorney, you have the right to remain silent, you have the right to an attorney, due process, habius corpus, privacy, free speech........

It doesn't matter if YOU and BUSH think Padilla is a bad man. He was entitled to his fucking rights.

Does that make us less safe? You fucking right wing lunitics.

But keep it up. Your positions on these issues are why you are losing seats. But don't listen to me.

 

[catzmeow]

"Anyone who knows what waterboarding is could not be unsure. It is a horrible torture technique used by Pol Pot," - John McCain, October 2007.

Is John McCain not sufficiently heroic or conservative to speak on this subject? Is he also a leftist American hater who wants to weaken us and expose us to Jihad?

Just curious.

 

[Gunny]

More on this subject, from the British Ambassador to Uzbekistan:

It was made plain to me in briefing in London before initial departure for Tashkent that Uzbekistan was a key ally in the War on Terror and to be treated as such. It was particularly important to the USA who valued its security cooperation and its provision of a major US airbase at Karshi-Khanabad.

As Ambassador in Uzbekistan I regularly received intelligence material released by MI6. This material was given to MI6 by the CIA, mostly originating from their Tashkent station. It was normally issued to me telegraphically by MI6 at the same time it was issued to UK ministers and officials in London.

From the start of my time as Ambassador, I was also receiving a continual stream of information about widespread torture of suspected political or religious dissidents in Tashkent. This was taking place on a phenomenal scale. In early 2003 a report by the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, in the preparation of which my Embassy much assisted, described torture in Uzbekistan as “routine and systemic”.

The horror and staggering extent of torture in Uzbekistan is well documented and I have been informed by the Chair is not in the purview of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. But what follows goes directly to the question of UK non-compliance with the UN Convention Against Torture.

In gathering evidence from victims of torture, we built a consistent picture of the narrative which the torturers were seeking to validate from confessions under torture. They sought confessions which linked domestic opposition to President Karimov with Al-Qaida and Osama Bin Laden; they sought to exaggerate the strength of the terrorist threat in Central Asia.

People arrested on all sorts of pretexts – (I recall one involved in a dispute over ownership of a garage plot) suddenly found themselves tortured into confessing to membership of both the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and Al-Qaida. They were also made to confess to attending Al-Qaida training camps in Tajikistan and Afghanistan. In an echo of Stalin’s security services from which the Uzbek SNB had an unbroken institutional descent, they were given long lists of names of people they had to confess were also in IMU and Al-Qaida.It became obvious to me after just a few weeks that the CIA material from Uzbekistan was giving precisely the same narrative being extracted by the Uzbek torturers – and that the CIA “intelligence” was giving information far from the truth.

I was immediately concerned that British ministers and officials were being unknowingly exposed to material derived from torture, and therefore were acting illegally.

Craig Murray - Trying Again to Stop Torture: My Formal Statement for the Joint Committee on Human Rights

This is what we did. This is who we have become.

Read it, and weep.

It's who we've ALWAYS been. Learn to deal.

 

[Valerie]

I'm done talking about waterboarding. Democwats are in charge and the decision has already been made. I just don't want to hear any phony cries of sympathy from them when the next attack occurs.. You've been told that waterboarding did prevent one in LA you have been educated and your decision has been made.

Link?

CIA official: No proof harsh techniques stopped terror attacks on America | McClatchy

CIA official: No proof harsh techniques stopped terror attacks on America

 

[WillowTree]

yes, and I'm thanking god and George Bush that lefties like you are alive to be horrified.. you could be dead and feeling all sanctimonious about your white hat..but as I've said,, no problem it's going to be your way,, so you should stop whining.oh,, btw I never listen to Sean Hannity so you can stop with that left wing talking point.

Did you take the time to read the articles I've posted? If you had, you'd realize why there are plenty of us on the right who are even more horrified than the leftists.

no, I didn't read them,, it's not about right and left with me,, everyone gets an opinion,, mine disagrees with yours.. and we live or die by what we believe I'm just not going to be grateful to you knowing that you will let me and everyone in my family die for your love of the terrorists. I can't figure it out.

 

[catzmeow]

It's who we've ALWAYS been. Learn to deal.

Is it who we should be?

 

[catzmeow]

no, I didn't read them,, it's not about right and left with me,, everyone gets an opinion,, mine disagrees with yours.. and we live or die by what we believe I'm just not going to be grateful to you knowing that you will let me and everyone in my family die for your love of the terrorists. I can't figure it out.

God forbid your opinion should be based on facts. Let's just operate off of rabid fear and hyperbole.

The terrorists are coming! Your children are going to die in their beds unless we waterboard some towel heads!

 

[Ravi]

"Anyone who knows what waterboarding is could not be unsure. It is a horrible torture technique used by Pol Pot," - John McCain, October 2007.

Is John McCain not sufficiently heroic or conservative to speak on this subject? Is he also a leftist American hater who wants to weaken us and expose us to Jihad?

Just curious.

I've got to say Kitty, leftist Americans aren't haters and they don't wish to weaken us and expose us to Jihad, so STFU with that bullshit.