John Yoo responds to democrat smears of the CIA....

[Spare_change]

Thomas Sowell- another Uncle Tom who goes in front of white people and says, "We sho be shiftless, boss!"

LOL --- wouldn't be letting your prejudices get in the way of intelligent thought, would you?

 

[Disir]

I know...there are several threads about the democrats smearing the CIA and redefining harsh interrogation techniques as torture.....but this is a response from the man who looked at the legalities and helped make policy. It didn't seem right to let his response get buried in another thread....

John Yoo A torture report for the dustbin - NY Daily News

As a Justice Department lawyer who worked on the legality of the interrogation methods in 2002, I believed that the federal law prohibiting torture allowed the CIA to use interrogation methods that did not cause injury — including, in extraordinary cases, waterboarding — because of the grave threat to the nation’s security in the months after the 9/11 attacks.

I was swayed by the fact that our military used waterboarding in training thousands of its own soldiers without harm, and that the CIA would use the technique only on top Al Qaeda leaders thought to have actionable information on pending plots.

CIA officers have said that they used waterboarding on only three terrorist leaders, and that the interrogations yielded valuable intelligence on Al Qaeda.

I would want to know if they lied to me and other Bush administration officials, as the Feinstein report asserts. If it turned out that the facts on which I based my advice were wrong, I would be willing to change my opinion of the interrogation methods. As economist John Maynard Keynes reportedly said to a critic, “When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?”

But given its profoundly partisan tenor and fiercely disputed details, I have significant reason to doubt this report’s veracity.

Take, for example, an absolutely critical fact related to the utility of enhanced interrogation tactics — about how the U.S. tracked down and ultimately killed Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.

According to several former CIA directors, harsh interrogations and waterboarding of Al Qaeda leaders such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed allowed U.S. analysts to identify Bin Laden’s courier (he would not use electronic communications). Tracking the courier then led us to Bin Laden’s hideout.

The Feinstein report alleges that other sources had already provided the name of the courier independently.
But the CIA’s rebuttal — signed by Obama’s appointee Director John Brennan — makes clear this information “was insufficient to distinguish him from many other Bin Laden associates until additional information from detainees put it into context and allowed CIA to better understand his true role and potential in the hunt for Bin Laden.”

It's torture. Not enhanced interrogation techniques. It doesn't work. If it was 100% foolproof then we wouldn't be calling it torture. But, it's not. If I torture you then you will tell me anything and everything that I want to hear whether it is true or not. You are not going to give a flying fuck.

I guarantee that every single cotton picking one of those clowns knew this in advance. Torture 9 out of 10 times will not elicit truth. Knowing this in advance, like they do, it can be said that it was designed to elicit false confessions.

I don't give a damn how many times they repeat the shit: it gave us very critical information. It doesn't show a damn thing besides an advert as good as Shannon Miller on a box of Wheaties. So and so said that it gave us critical information, therefore, it must be true.

Now, the CIA has received all kinds of money to create all kinds of mayhem for a very long time. There is no moral line in the sand and hasn't been for some 40 + years. So, maybe we can drop the bullshit.

If we focus on this and spend hours arguing a bunch of petty bullshit then we can pretend that the US wasn't behind or wasn't instigating much of the revolts in other countries in our current and recent past for another twenty years. How bloody convenient is that.

Its not torture and it is effective. Not 100%, but nothing is 100%. You are wrong.

No. You are wrong.

No, I am not. Simply wanting it to be torture does not make it torture.

Yes, you are. You are in denial of the history that date backs to Wickersham Report. You would still be dealing with the repercussions today had there been no incorporation of your rights. Further, you are in denial of the data since that period.

Get a solid argument and get back to me. I'm not going to spend 3 pages of No/yes crap.