Senate Select Committee on Intelligence: torture report (1 Viewer)

[Ditka Butkus]

If only this could have been kept from the public, things would have been OK.

I believe you are kidding...but you are also right....That is why they are called Black Ops....I'll go as far to say whoever ordered the investigation into this is a traitor....Why should any of us know what goes on behind closed doors when it come to our national security....If we have to kill people to prevent things like 911 happening in the future..let the torture, abuse, humiliation and killing begin...USA! USA! USA!

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

I don't understand how anyone with libertarian beliefs can be at all ok with this. The federal government secretly torturing people, with no oversight, in violation of laws created with the intention of protecting the rights of individuals, and with no recourse or punishment for the torturers is pretty much the libertarian worst case nightmare scenario, right?

I'm trying to think about who is ok with torture as defined by ideology.

If you watch the video, painful as it is to watch, it certainly looks to me like this is all being wrapped in ISIS' interpretation of Islam.

Interesting point but I'm not sure it fits here?

Islamic State militants in Syria stoned to death a young woman whom they had accused of committing adultery.

Towards the end of the video, music -- added by the Islamic State’s editors – accompanies the scene of the father hurling, at point blank range, one stone after another at his daughter’s head.

Not really the issue here, but it's horrible enough to not ignore.

This kind of thing reminds me of what dictatorial regimes, like Stalinist USSR, Nazi Germany, North Korea, Maoist China, did to take the level of state authority to such a level that even relatives were asked to inform on their own kin, children on parents, parents on children, spouses on each other. Note this is a video produced by the Islamic State itself.

Classic police state, fascistic stuff if you ask me.

 

[roadkill1292]

If only this could have been kept from the public, things would have been OK.

I believe you are kidding...but you are also right....That is why they are called Black Ops....I'll go as far to say whoever ordered the investigation into this is a traitor....Why should any of us know what goes on behind closed doors when it come to our national security....If we have to kill people to prevent things like 911 happening in the future..let the torture, abuse, humiliation and killing begin...USA! USA! USA!

Well, now you've just outed yourself as some kind of fisherman. BTW, this is well below the standards set by your fellow denizens of The Cage.

 

[johnnycakes]

I don't understand how anyone with libertarian beliefs can be at all ok with this. The federal government secretly torturing people, with no oversight, in violation of laws created with the intention of protecting the rights of individuals, and with no recourse or punishment for the torturers is pretty much the libertarian worst case nightmare scenario, right?

I'm trying to think about who is ok with torture as defined by ideology.

If you watch the video, painful as it is to watch, it certainly looks to me like this is all being wrapped in ISIS' interpretation of Islam.

Interesting point but I'm not sure it fits here?

The point is that ISIS is perfectly OK with torture as part of their ideology.

The video fits unless you believe that getting stoned to death is not torture.

In that case, imagine the woman got stoned to within an inch of her life, then was allowed to live. Would that have been torture? if so, then I would argue being stoned to death is being tortured to death.

This is the ISIS ideology.

Please explain why it doesn't fit here.

 

[fatness]

If only this could have been kept from the public, things would have been OK.

I believe you are kidding...but you are also right....That is why they are called Black Ops....I'll go as far to say whoever ordered the investigation into this is a traitor....Why should any of us know what goes on behind closed doors when it come to our national security....If we have to kill people to prevent things like 911 happening in the future..let the torture, abuse, humiliation and killing begin...USA! USA! USA!

Yeah, why trust the people of this country to know about their government's conduct? They clearly aren't trustworthy; only the government is.

 

[Doctor Detroit]

Cheney and John Brennen throwing GW under the bus was typical and hilarious. As much a failure as the administration was, GW is a guy that understands his mistakes and leaving him out there is lame. Cheney is one of the worst people to ever hold high office in this country's history, he is despicable in every way imaginable. Donny Rumsfeld is not far behind. As much as I respect the Bush family, is as much as I question their inclusion of the likes of **** and Don in their decision making.

 

[jon_mx]

Cheney and John Brennen throwing GW under the bus was typical and hilarious. As much a failure as the administration was, GW is a guy that understands his mistakes and leaving him out there is lame. Cheney is one of the worst people to ever hold high office in this country's history, he is despicable in every way imaginable. Donny Rumsfeld is not far behind. As much as I respect the Bush family, is as much as I question their inclusion of the likes of **** and Don in their decision making.

Rumsfeld was far worse. I think Cheney was over villainized. Rumsfeld was the worst adviser and caused more harm than any of them.

 

[badmojo1006]

The woman at the Center of the CIA Torture report

This General sounds like a real piece of work

 

[Sabertooth]

If only this could have been kept from the public, things would have been OK.

I believe you are kidding...but you are also right....That is why they are called Black Ops....I'll go as far to say whoever ordered the investigation into this is a traitor....Why should any of us know what goes on behind closed doors when it come to our national security....If we have to kill people to prevent things like 911 happening in the future..let the torture, abuse, humiliation and killing begin...USA! USA! USA!

Wow, that's about as cowardly a post as I've ever seen.

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

I don't understand how anyone with libertarian beliefs can be at all ok with this. The federal government secretly torturing people, with no oversight, in violation of laws created with the intention of protecting the rights of individuals, and with no recourse or punishment for the torturers is pretty much the libertarian worst case nightmare scenario, right?

I'm trying to think about who is ok with torture as defined by ideology.

If you watch the video, painful as it is to watch, it certainly looks to me like this is all being wrapped in ISIS' interpretation of Islam.

Interesting point but I'm not sure it fits here?

The point is that ISIS is perfectly OK with torture as part of their ideology.

The video fits unless you believe that getting stoned to death is not torture.

In that case, imagine the woman got stoned to within an inch of her life, then was allowed to live. Would that have been torture? if so, then I would argue being stoned to death is being tortured to death.

This is the ISIS ideology.

Please explain why it doesn't fit here.

I see what you meant, I asked who is ok with torture and then you tiold me who, Isis and islamists. Yes, I agree. I meant inside the US, so I hadn't thought of it that way but you're right.

 

[whoknew]

Not a single person prosecuted for these war crimes. Ridiculous.

Ex-CIA Boss Admits US Tortured Prisoners

The CIA tortured terror suspects in its programme of "enhanced interrogation", the agency's former executive director, Buzzy Krongard, has admitted to the BBC's Panorama programme.

The agency's position has always been that the "enhanced interrogation" techniques it used under George W Bush, did not amount to torture, because they were legally approved by the White House at the time.

President Obama closed the CIA's programme down when he came to power in 2009.

Torture is illegal under American law, but President Obama has been reluctant to prosecute high level officials.

Under the CIA's programme at least 119 detainees were held in a network of secret prisons scattered around the world. In one of the black sites codenamed COBALT, the windows were blacked out so that it was utterly dark, and some detainees were chained to the walls of their cells for months on end.

I asked Buzzy Krongard, the CIA's former executive director, if he thought waterboarding and painful stress positions were torture:

"Well, let's put it this way, it is meant to make him as uncomfortable as possible. So I assume for, without getting into semantics, that's torture. I'm comfortable with saying that," he explained.

The position of senior CIA officials involved has always been that the "enhanced interrogation" techniques used under President George W Bush were not torture, as they were legally approved by the White House at the time.

And, on 29 April 2007, George Tenet, at that time the CIA's director, told the US television programme 60 Minutes: "We don't torture people. Let me say that again to you. We don't torture people. We don't torture people. We don't torture people. I do not talk about techniques, and we do not torture people."

"You know that the sun will rise once a day, but not if you're at the hands of the CIA," said Glenn Carle, a former CIA interrogator. "We will control whether you sleep or not and when you sleep or not and where in the universe you are."

The enhanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA included waterboarding, slamming prisoners against a flexible wall, prolonged sleep deprivation, and cramming detainees into small boxes.

One detainee, Abu Zubaydah, was described by the White House as a key terrorist recruiter connected with Al Qaeda. Captured in Pakistan in 2002, he is currently in US detention in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Abu Zubayadah was held in a box measuring less than three feet by three feet, for 29 hours over a 20-day period in 2002. The box, which soon becomes stiflingly hot, is too small to do anything but crouch, with an arched back.

He was also held in a larger upright box, the shape of a coffin, for a total of 266 hours, or more than 11 days.

The CIA took its interrogation techniques from the United States military programme known as SERE - Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape - which teaches soldiers how to resist torture techniques used in the conflicts in Vietnam, Korea and Nazi Germany.

Malcolm Nance, former military instructor for the SERE programme, recreated the techniques the CIA adopted, for the BBC.

"These close confinement boxes were used by the SS," Nance explained. "They would stuff these British and American agents into them and drive them mad."

The use of close confinement was banned by the Geneva Conventions after World War Two.

Nance conducted the waterboarding procedure for the BBC, the first accurate recreation of the technique in public. His assistant endured 18 seconds of the procedure under strict medical supervision, his body violently convulsing as the water entered his nose. Waterboarding puts the subject into the initial stage of drowning.

A report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released last December highlights a number of unauthorised interrogation techniques that were also used on detainees in the CIA's secret prisons, including excessive beatings, and ice water dousing and baths.

In a public rebuttal to the Senate committee's report, the CIA has admitted to significant lapses in the monitoring and development of its initial interrogation activities, including instances of using unauthorized techniques.

Another detainee is Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, who is said to have admitted to organising the 9/11 attacks on the United States. He was arrested in Pakistan in 2003 and is also currently being held at Guantanamo Bay,

The most severe part of his interrogation at the hands of the CIA went on for more than two weeks in March 2003. He was subjected to walling, waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other techniques around the clock.

The BBC was told that Britain shared in intelligence directly from his interrogation.

"Anything that we thought the Brits would be interested in and particularly represented a threat, I guarantee you was shipped out." said Mr Krongard,

"I can't think of two intelligence services working in a more harmonious or closer matter and that I think, had a lot to do with the relationship at the top," he added.

Asked if British intelligence knew that "enhanced interrogation" techniques were going to be used in interrogations, Mr Krongard replied: "It's hard for me to think that they didn't, they're professional intelligence people, I mean obviously,"

And, asked to respond to the allegation that intelligence was shared from torture sessions, the Foreign Office said "We stand firmly against torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment. We do not condone it, nor do we ask others to do it on our behalf."