IGX

dead man walking wrote:fair question, bogatir, and it is the essential one.

so far, no one has demonstrated that torture gets interrogators good info quickly--except in movies. when we used "enhanced" techniques on keys guys, those sessions extended over a fair period of time, so we weren't getting info immediately. would recognized techniques have worked better?

i think i've said this before, the fbi wouldn't participate in "enhanced" interrogations. i was told the agency concluded they are both wrong and ineffective.

Problem solved: the threat of immediate hanging per some of the other suggestions--with the twist of a female executioner.

The Venerable Bogatir X wrote:Your ideas (and Bubbles for that matter) all seem doable to me when there might not be perceived time sensitivity/urgency...and that's one of the rubs, I can imagine there are many times where that urgency is there and/or quick decisions need to be made, so what then? (Rhetorical)

This only really happens on 24. And even then, you can resist torture for a while.

The Venerable Bogatir X wrote:

dead man walking wrote:fair question, bogatir, and it is the essential one.

so far, no one has demonstrated that torture gets interrogators good info quickly--except in movies. when we used "enhanced" techniques on keys guys, those sessions extended over a fair period of time, so we weren't getting info immediately. would recognized techniques have worked better?

i think i've said this before, the fbi wouldn't participate in "enhanced" interrogations. i was told the agency concluded they are both wrong and ineffective.

Problem solved: the threat of immediate hanging per some of the other suggestions--with the twist of a female executioner.

heh

The key question is 'what works.' If it's used and doesn't get valid information-- it's not being used correctly. If it is effective, and is used for the right purposes (i.e. to get time sensitive intel)-- should it be used?

Is the CIA doing everything the best way they can? No-- they can always improve. If they're torturing people just for the hell of it, that's wrong. If they're learning, not repeating mistakes, and getting valid information-- that's another matter. To my knowledge, no law enforcement agency or military department has gone on C-SPAN and talked in detail about exactly how they're going to do things before they do them-- they're given a certain amount of latitude. There's a good reason for this, despite what the chattering classes want.


VPA COL Bui Tin:

[The American anti-war movement] was essential to our strategy. Support for the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us."
"The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.

The conscience of America was part of its war-making capability, and we were turning that power in our favor. America lost because of its democracy; through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win.

Sometimes dissent is more useful to the other side.

Turd, you're hilarious....but your red herring is utterly off point and rancid.

Torture is ok if it's effective....we torture a few innocent people...meh..NBD, did we learn to torture better?

Political Dissent is "giving aid and comfort to the enemy."

Trust us, we're from the government....now get in the box car you filthy nips, we're off to an adventure in Montana...

Straight form central casting, this one...

For a more middle path discussion of this subject, give Dan Carlin's podcast a listen. It's 700 times more resonant of American Values than this Potomac Double Speak being sluiced out.

Common Sense 285 – Torturing our Values
http://www.dancarlin.com/common-sense-h ... ding-page/

And there's your issue in a nutshell-- the only ones who should be allowed to torture (if anyone is) is the government, and you don't trust the government. Not so different than your position on the police really.

Turdacious wrote:And there's your issue in a nutshell-- the only ones who should be allowed to torture (if anyone is) is the government, and you don't trust the government. Not so different than your position on the police really.

Hence my change of position. I don't trust them and neither should you. You either let slip the dogs of war (we're too pussy for that) or you keep the fuckers on a leash...if you don't you get Abu Ghraib.

So yes...absent our developing a stomach for TOTALWAR...(something we can;'t even be allowed an insight into), we need a couple bright lines. No one should be allowed to torture. Justice Scalia had it right when he said that if the government had someone in custody they knew* had knowledge of an imminent threat to substantial numbers of lives and they determined the only way to extract that information quickly was to engage in torture, there's not a jury in the US that would convict them for doing so. There's your out.

We have bright lines against specifically targeting civilians, esp. women and children. We have bright lines against summary execution. We developed a sensibility that we won't intern civilians for being japs or Saudis. Has this hampered our operational effectiveness? OHHELLYEAH. Are we able to reconcile ourselves to that perceived loss of effectiveness AND the fact we blur these otherwise bright lines from time to time..Yes on both counts again.

Ergo. A bright line against torture is really something that we can and need to live with. Shit happens...Making Shit Happens your policy is giving up in the worst way.

PS...I have never stated a *position on the police* other than you'd have to be an idiot to trust your adversary in an adversarial criminal justice system.

Except you're missing the point that all the AIT proponents here have made-- that the people and agencies doing AIT should be kept on a leash, that only authorized and trained people should use the techniques, and that it should be done for legit purposes. What happened at Abu Ghraib met none of those criteria. The failure of command and control and breakdown of discipline that happened there has quite possibly been responsible for the deaths of more Americans than any of our authorized AIT use combined.

No....I see your point, you're just wrong. Your argument flows something like the above with the following additional implications.

-Don't question whether it not it works..that's classified.

-Trust Big Brother to do it proper

-These are essential tools of the trade that have saved countless lives that we cant prove, discuss or even contemplate.

In college I wrote a paper advocating in favor of interment of Latin Americans should a cross border revolution occur when Mexico finally falls. I argued efficacy and the fact that this was a grave threat to our country never before seen. The only thing I accurately foresaw was the fall of Mexico to a narco-state. I was wronger than you are about everything else.

If you aren't willing to stand up and call this torture by any other name,
Admit that in many cases those performing the torture became sickened and broken psychologically,
that is takes a near sociopathic level of dissociation to even perform the milder forms of enhanced interrogation
Admit you're performing TOTALWAR lite..... you don't deserve to do it at all.

Sorry to continue sweeping your leg so brutally. You're just wrong. You can't have your Human Torture and eat it too.

Blaidd Drwg wrote:No....I see your point, you're just wrong. Your argument flows something like the above with the following additional implications.

-Don't question whether it not it works..that's classified.

-Trust Big Brother to do it proper

-These are essential tools of the trade that have saved countless lives that we cant prove, discuss or even contemplate.

More like trust but verify. There were relatively strict guidelines in place, as the John Yoo article I posted stated.

Blaidd Drwg wrote:If you aren't willing to stand up and call this torture by any other name,
Admit that in many cases those performing the torture became sickened and broken psychologically,
that is takes a near sociopathic level of dissociation to even perform the milder forms of enhanced interrogation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01033.html
Our techniques are so mild that they can be demonstrated, and my guess is that many of the waterboarders have had the technique demonstrated on them. I doubt they'd protest electrodes to the nuts in public. FWIW, you got ten points from the East German judge for outrage and hyperbole. Your 'no room for error' standards are completely unrealistic.

Blaidd Drwg wrote:Admit you're performing TOTALWAR lite..... you don't deserve to do it at all.

War is much easier from 10000 feet or from fort living room, always has been. Up close it's a far messier business.

http://gawker.com/skinny-puppy-u-s-owes ... =pulsenews

Phaedrus wrote:http://gawker.com/skinny-puppy-u-s-owes ... =pulsenews

If they win, millions of dads will sue Disney for the Frozen soundtrack.

turd,

re abu ghraib and john yoo

you saw, i'm sure, that in addition to what we have seen of abu g, there are hundreds (perhaps more) of suppressed photos of our soldiers mistreating enemy soldiers and messing with their corpses and also that john yoo has publicly said that rectal hydration and other activities were beyond the boundaries laid out in the guidelines.

evidence suggests that leashes (or "strict guidelines," to use your antiseptic phrase) in wartime cannot be relied upon.

It would probably be even more efficacious to get the children of the purported terrorist and threaten to torture them if he doesn't talk. Of course you'd actually have to torture them to be sure he wasn't just telling lies, but since efficacy is the metric here, what are we waiting for?

several years ago i read that jordan uses threats against families to keep bad guys in line. i have no idea how reliable that info is.

dead man walking wrote:several years ago i read that jordan uses threats against families to keep bad guys in line. i have no idea how reliable that info is.

Bad black guys did that to good black people in Ferguson, MO, too....just thought I'd throw that in there.

dead man walking wrote:turd,

re abu ghraib and john yoo

you saw, i'm sure, that in addition to what we have seen of abu g, there are hundreds (perhaps more) of suppressed photos of our soldiers mistreating enemy soldiers and messing with their corpses and also that john yoo has publicly said that rectal hydration and other activities were beyond the boundaries laid out in the guidelines.

evidence suggests that leashes (or "strict guidelines," to use your antiseptic phrase) in wartime cannot be relied upon.

There is ample evidence that the military employs thousands of lawyers trained in the Law of War and US guidelines for acceptable behavior, and that a big portion of their job is to evaluate whether the rules are broken and how to punish those who break them; there's ample evidence that nearly all members of the military get briefed on these rules and guidelines at least annually; and there's ample evidence that members of the military that break these guidelines and rules are punished.

There is, AFAIK, very little disagreement among service members that what happened at Abu Ghraib should have been punished. The main disagreement is about where the punishment was concentrated (specifically, did the higher ups at that unit receive enough punishment). Leavenworth is populated for a reason. Supressing photos and declining to punish service members who break the kind of rules you're talking about is one thing; suppressing photos and punishing service members appropriately is another.

With rectal hydration, it depends on whether or not it's being done for hydration purposes or for torture purposes. Rectal hydration is a recognized medical technique AFAIK.

dead man walking wrote:several years ago i read that jordan uses threats against families to keep bad guys in line. i have no idea how reliable that info is.

It would explain why there isn't more outrage against the report in the Middle East (at least as far as I have read). The US military burns a couple copies of the Koran and riots ensue. A filmmaker makes a third-rate documentary and an embassy burns (or so we are told). A report released says that the US is torturing to death people who are known to be innocent and it appears to have been accepted, possibly because it's nothing new in some parts of the world. Egypt does it, Iraq does it and the US does it.

Turdacious wrote: War is much easier from 10000 feet or from fort living room, always has been. Up close it's a far messier business.

The comment on techniques is all well and good...fact is no one here is that far out in the weeds. Waterboarding is torture, things like it are torture...as I stated before I'm not unsympathetic to the the argument that we can and should be able to torture people....what I have a problem with the the slimy obfuscation from the torture lite crowd. These are lies.

Everyone knows war is messy, those who have fought a modern war understand this better than all of us, but this has nothing to do with determining your principles. Principles are not based on exigencies...unless your only principle is Efficiency. I know that is not yours, nor is it even Darth at his most shrill.

Torture and all that lies along the TOTALWAR continuum either ARE or ARE NOT consistent with American Values. I submit they are not...if only by the way we squirm at the thought of what we have become. Now I can speak only from what I see...I have inflicted physical violence on people...and I know there are many people on this board who have done difficult things, hurt people with intent, killed people. and yet..it's plain as day that not a single one of the coldest most saber rattling-est motherfuckers on this board would choose recommend torturer to their child as a career. If necessity and efficiency were our chief values...we'd conduct ourselves like the Mongols...conceptually I'm ok with that, the amount self delusion it would take to get us there is beyond our capabilities.

you might find this ny times piece instructive. it discusses how hastily the cia moved to put its interrogation program in place and in moving urgently, how a thoughtful path was not taken. it is fair to the two psychologists who have been getting attacked.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/us/po ... 03353&_r=0

Well, today Taliban murdered 140+ children and schoolteachers while Americans fret over what type of music prisoners were forced to listen to, or whether they got enough sleep, and hummus enemas. My personal feeling is that this is insane. We should hang people like this, and if it seems like it might be useful, we should torture them for information, and then hang them. We will have peace when there are none left.

Why the long commute? Plenty of places to play total war where it matters.

Blaidd Drwg wrote:

Turdacious wrote: War is much easier from 10000 feet or from fort living room, always has been. Up close it's a far messier business.

The comment on techniques is all well and good...fact is no one here is that far out in the weeds. Waterboarding is torture, things like it are torture...as I stated before I'm not unsympathetic to the the argument that we can and should be able to torture people....what I have a problem with the the slimy obfuscation from the torture lite crowd. These are lies.

Everyone knows war is messy, those who have fought a modern war understand this better than all of us, but this has nothing to do with determining your principles. Principles are not based on exigencies...unless your only principle is Efficiency. I know that is not yours, nor is it even Darth at his most shrill.

Torture and all that lies along the TOTALWAR continuum either ARE or ARE NOT consistent with American Values. I submit they are not...if only by the way we squirm at the thought of what we have become. Now I can speak only from what I see...I have inflicted physical violence on people...and I know there are many people on this board who have done difficult things, hurt people with intent, killed people. and yet..it's plain as day that not a single one of the coldest most saber rattling-est motherfuckers on this board would choose recommend torturer to their child as a career. If necessity and efficiency were our chief values...we'd conduct ourselves like the Mongols...conceptually I'm ok with that, the amount self delusion it would take to get us there is beyond our capabilities.

Those are YOUR principles. Unless they are based on unfettered access to the program and it's records, and expert interviews and assessment with those who administered it, they are nothing more. And that's a depth and breadth of access that even those who did the Senate report didn't have.

That's a three fold null argument, Turd.

Null Thing one...unless you know, what no one is allowed to know, you don't have an opinion on efficacy or whether or not enhanced interrogation even works...you have to trust us...No one is allowed facts on which to form an reasoned judgement so trust our judgement.. Nonsense...you cant have it both ways.

Null Thing Two: The report is actualy extremely thorough in many regards, enough so that anyone could form an opinion one way or the other as to whether enhanced interrogation is good policy on whatever grounds the chose to make that decision. One does not need ALL the minutia and facts in order to form a reasoned judgement..They put the report out in the first place for just that reason. To allow informed policy to be made.

Null Thing Three: Principles/Morals/Guidelines/Policies are rarely if ever based on these out in the weeds minutiae you seem to want to hide under your cloak. Principles are based on ideals of who the country wants to be, not necessarily who it is when it defaults to exigency based behavior. The whole point of having principles is so you don;t default to the lowest common denominator behavior of your enemy. You either have principles because you believe in them no matter what or you don't really have them at all.

As I have stated explicitly and repeatedly. I am completely fine with the notion that TOTALWAR is sound policy if it's done with full awareness that this is a choice we make as a nation. I don;t think we're there...failing that, the only other viable alternative worth any stock are traditional American values such as ....we don;t torture, we don't purposefully target civilians, we dont intern people, we believe in due process. The path the services have us on is to play around at TOTALWAR as long as no one is looking and then go running home like scared bitches when we get caught out violating long held principles.

That hypocrisy is what is making us a nation of soft cunts and shitbirds.