My Thoughts On Water Boarding

[Moby]

I just can't imagine that it's an effective tool. Maybe it is but I'm missing something.

1. If it happened to me I'd spill my guts easily as I think the feeling of drowning would be enough to make me spill my guts but I'm not a trained operative or terrorist. I remember when I was learning to scuba dive I paniced the first time my mask and mouthpiece was removed. I totally freaked but after a few tries and some help with the instructors I was able to stay calm as water filled my nose and I learned to breath the bubbles which is a very uncomfortable feeling until you get used to it. My guess is that with a little training that the average person could learn to accept water boarding. Of course it would be unbearable to normal people that were picked up off the street.

2. Innocent people would end up saying anything to get the treatment to stop. Terrorist would be trained to handle water boarding so it wouldn't do any good. If we did something more extreme such as breaking fingers then I think a lot times we would get false information. "The man that you want is Mumahd Smith. Now may I please have a glass of water?"

3. I read Bravo Two Zero by Andy McNabb an ex-SAS officer that was captured in the first Iraq war. He was beaten constantly for a week or two and then only offered information basic information that was of no value. He didn't believe he was doing God's will. He only believed he was protecting his mates.

I just don't think that this type of stuff would get accurate information from someone that was involved with a plot to kill 1,000s of innocent civilians. I could be wrong but I just don't see it happening.

[kittens]

I just can't imagine that it's an effective tool. Maybe it is but I'm missing something.

...

I just don't think that this type of stuff would get accurate information from someone that was involved with a plot to kill 1,000s of innocent civilians. I could be wrong but I just don't see it happening.

I agree with you on one level. Rationally, as humane human beings, I don't see it as being effective in any way.

But it's fun for the psychopaths that run things. Hypothetically, a CIA torture facility is a great place to sift through loyal recruits to find the candidates with the Right Stuff to do any dirty work. Including a plot to kill 1,000s of innocent civilians.

You see well-meaning Americans are deluded into thinking that there are no psychopaths in our government/military/control structure. That they only exist abroad -- this time we call them Islamofascists! (How's that for misnomer?)

No the ruthless, conscienceless always rise to the top. They've always had the power. We only see their pawns and they pick their pawns carefully. Loyalty is bred into this predator class. The Fourth Reich has risen from the ashes of the 9/11 Reichstagg fire.

[LadyMod at scam.com]

I just don't think that this type of stuff would get accurate information from someone that was involved with a plot to kill 1,000s of innocent civilians. I could be wrong but I just don't see it happening.

I agree. I can't imagine that this kind of treatment or that below yielded any valuable information.


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[LadyMod at scam.com]

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Y'all come back now you hear?


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[disrupter]

It creates a lot of false leads that just waste people's time.

It is pure hearsay or lies. No court of law would accept that. Eye witnesses are notoriously inaccurate. If you don't have hard independent detail evidence gotten independently that matches it it's just so much vapor.

And It is being done to SUSPECTs, not convicts. they are only GUESSING these people have info.
Just like that poor innocent Canadian who got kidnapped & flown to Syria to be tortured at the US's request.

It doesn't provide good information & it completely undermines even a phony facade of decency of this nation.

it is like spending money without any accounting system, another fave of the loony NeoCrooks. The same way pathogenic diseases work, they destroy & consume with no structure or organization.

I think the US government is degrading into bacterial mindsets.

These are just sociopaths & psychopaths run amok.
Frighteningly running the USA.
running it into the ground.

Do you believe in NOTHING America?

This is just sick AND illogical.

[Smurf-Herder]

From what I understand, waterboarding has only been used three times. And Kahlid Sheik Mohammed gave up a lot of useful info, which resulted in plots foiled and other Al-Qaeda captured.

I know you guys don't want to believe it, because it goes against the talking points that it doesn't work. But that's your thing, if you refuse to believe.

[Cat slave]

I found Ted Kennedys righteous indignation regarding water boarding amusing.
Can we say "Mary Jo"?

[Smurf-Herder]

I found Ted Kennedys righteous indignation regarding water boarding amusing.
Can we say "Mary Jo"?

I remember when it happened; and everybody was appauled at how the bastard got off. I'm from Massachusetts; and I never met anyone who ever voted for him. Everyone I knew hated him. I don't know how he keeps getting elected. Him and his asshole rich "kill the windfarm, because it might spoil the view" attitude. The disgusting drunken splatter of human pond scum.

[Moby]

From what I understand, waterboarding has only been used three times. And Kahlid Sheik Mohammed gave up a lot of useful info, which resulted in plots foiled and other Al-Qaeda captured.

I know you guys don't want to believe it, because it goes against the talking points that it doesn't work. But that's your thing, if you refuse to believe.
Actually I'd like to believe that it helps. I'm very interested in the information from the Sheik. Got links?

[radioguy]

Actually I'd like to believe that it helps. I'm very interested in the information from the Sheik. Got links?

I hope this is helpful:


Exclusive: Only Three Have Been Waterboarded by CIA
November 02, 2007 1:25 PM
Brian Ross and Richard Esposito Report:

For all the debate over waterboarding, it has been used on only three al Qaeda figures, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials.

As ABC News first reported in September, waterboarding has not been used since 2003 and has been specifically prohibited since Gen. Michael Hayden took over as CIA director.

Officials told ABC News on Sept. 14 that the controversial interrogation technique, in which a suspect has water poured over his mouth and nose to stimulate a drowning reflex as shown in the above demonstration, had been banned by the CIA director at the recommendation of his deputy, Steve Kappes.

Hayden sought and received approval from the White House to remove waterboarding from the list of approved interrogation techniques first authorized by a presidential finding in 2002.

The officials say the decision was made sometime last year but has never been publicly disclosed by the CIA.

One U.S. intelligence official said, "It would be wrong to assume that the program of the past moved into the future unchanged."

A CIA spokesman said, as a matter of policy, he would decline to comment on interrogation techniques, "which have been and continue to be lawful," he said.

The practice of waterboarding has been branded as "torture" by human rights groups and a number of leading U.S. officials, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., because it amounted to a "mock execution."

It has been at the center of the debate that threatens to derail the confirmation of President George Bush's attorney general nominee, Michael Mukasey.

As a result of Hayden's decision, officials say, the most extreme technique left available to CIA interrogators would be what is termed "longtime standing," which includes exhaustion and sleep deprivation with prisoners forced to stand handcuffed, with their feet shackled to the floor.

The most effective use of waterboarding, according to current and former CIA officials, was in breaking Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, known as KSM, who subsequently confessed to a number of ongoing plots against the United States.

A senior CIA official said KSM later admitted it was only because of the waterboarding that he talked.

Ultimately, KSM took responsibility for the 9/ll attacks and virtually all other al Qaeda terror strikes, including the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

"KSM lasted the longest under waterboarding, about a minute and a half, but once he broke, it never had to be used again," said a former CIA official familiar with KSM's case.

Full Story (http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/11/exclusive-only-.html)

[Smurf-Herder]

Actually I'd like to believe that it helps. I'm very interested in the information from the Sheik. Got links?

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0609/21/pzn.01.html

"ARENA: KSM's information led U.S. officials, they say, to several alleged terrorists who were actively putting together another 9/11-style plot, this time to attack the West Coast. One of those alleged plotters was Majid Khan, another one of the 14 who was recently transferred from a secret CIA prison to Guantanamo Bay. In 1996 Khan moved with his parents from Pakistan to Baltimore where he worked at his family's gas station. In 2002 he returned to Pakistan where officials say he was recruited by al Qaeda.

MCLAUGHLIN: His major significance for them is knowledge of the United States.

ARENA: Interrogators claim Khan was sent to southeast Asia with money to help operatives there fund that West Coast plot. The plan was to allegedly crash a commercial jet into L.A.'s Library Tower. At least three other operatives, now in custody, were allegedly involved in that plot, Ali al-Aziz Ali, who happens to be KSM's nephew, another man, known only as Lillie and another called Zubair, who in turn, led investigators to the most important capture in southeast Asia, an alleged terrorist known simply as Hambali. The government claims he and henchmen already had a long and deadly track record.

PETER BERGEN, TERRORISM ANALYST: This is the group that blew up a bomb in Bali, killing 200 people, attacked the Australian embassy in Indonesia, attacked a J.W. Marriott Hotel in Indonesia.

ARENA: Intelligence officials say the capture of those men involved in the West Coast plot potentially saved thousands of lives.

BOB GRENIER, FMR. CIA STATION CHIEF: I strongly doubt, had it not been for the capture of KSM and the successful interrogation, that we would have found Hambali in time.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA: These weren't the only terrorists who were caught mid- plot. Intelligence officials say there were other plans to attack U.S. interests, but this time at sea.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA (voice-over): Officials claim al Rahim al-Nashiri was the mastermind behind the USS Cole bombing, which killed 17 sailors. They say he was planning more of the same when he was captured. BERGEN: Nashiri was al Qaeda's, sort of, director of Gulf operations, planning to attack additional shipping, planning to attack additional American targets in the Persian Gulf region.

ARENA: Officials claim interrogations with detainees in U.S. custody also led to the capture of an entire second tier of operatives, Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, an alleged master forger, who led Hassan Dourad, who they say transferred weapons and supplies, and Abu Faraj al-Libi, a Libyan communications expert. Al-Libi allegedly helped organize two assassination attempts on Pakistani President Musharraf. In the end it was the Pakistanis who got him, capturing him alive.

GRENIER: That occurred in May of 2005, and as a matter of fact, I was with the chief of Pakistani intelligence, having breakfast with him as a matter of fact, when one of his aids came up and whispered in his ear, and he then announced that Abu Faraj had been captured.

ARENA: Intelligence officials say al-Libi had started to climb the al Qaeda management ladder and was taking on a bigger leadership role. He was the last high-profile terrorist taken into custody."

[Smurf-Herder]

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Names Names
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,436061,00.html

"Captured al-Qaeda planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has given U.S. interrogators the names and descriptions of about a dozen key al-Qaeda operatives believed to be plotting terrorist attacks on American and other Western interests, according to federal officials. Other high-level al-Qaeda detainees previously disclosed some of the names, but Mohammed, until recently al-Qaeda's chief operating officer and the brains behind the 9/11 attacks, has volunteered new ones. He has also added crucial details to the descriptions of other suspects and filled in important gaps in what U.S. intelligence knows about al-Qaeda's practices.

One of the al-Qaeda operatives identified by Mohammed is Adman G. El Shukrijumah, a 27-year-old Saudi who went to college in South Florida. Last week the FBI launched a global manhunt for Shukrijumah, who, officials say, Mohammed has dubbed a leader on a par with Mohammed Atta, the top man on the 9/11 hijack team. Sources tell TIME that U.S. intelligence agencies are urgently searching for at least two other key lieutenants fingered by Mohammed. Still other team names and descriptions have been refined during Mohammed's interrogation. This data has been dispatched to allied intelligence and security services to be placed on lookout lists.

Mohammed's cooperation has improved investigators' understanding of al-Qaeda's command-and-control structure. Sources say he has explained that at any time, the organization has open-ended plans for as many as two dozen attacks — mostly ideas proposed by field operatives and sanctioned and financed by Osama bin Laden's inner circle.

Mohammed's account dovetails with those of other detainees. Al-Qaeda schemes, now in various stages of development, run the gamut from old-fashioned truck bombings to assassinations to the dispersal of chemical and biological agents, sources say. He has underscored al-Qaeda's interest in spectacular attacks on landmarks such as the White House, the Israeli embassy in Washington, Chicago's Sears Tower and bridges in Manhattan, St. Louis and San Francisco.

Mohammed, captured March 1 in Rawalpindi by Pakistani security officials working with the CIA, began talking much sooner than anticipated, and some officials remain skeptical that at least some of the information he is feeding interrogators is intentionally misleading. But as some of his disclosures have been corroborated by other detainees and electronic sources, investigators are more confident that, as one counter-terror official says, "We're getting valuable, credible, specific information."