With Veto, Bush seals his legacy as The Torture President

[Bill]

Way to go Bush!

You definitely go down in history now, as Bush the Torturer.

I can't think of a more fitting legacy.

[Smurf-Herder]

The point is it worked.

We used it three times; and not since 2005.

It was only used against the highest three Al-Qaeda leaders we had in custody, when nothing else did; as a last resort. And we got information that was corroborated and it led to further arrests and plots being stopped.

And I support it - only under those specific conditions in which it was used.

[Moby]

The scare tactic that's always used is, "What if there was a bomb ready to go off in Times Square 10 minutes from now and the only way to save 1,000s of lives is to water board." I don't really believe that anyone that knew the location of such a thing would give in to water boarding in 10 minutes but that's such an odd occurrence that it's an exception and not a rule.

Would it be OK for police to hit and kick a subdued hand cuffed prisoner under the above? Of course but that doesn't mean there should be a law that says it's OK to beat prisoners.

Would it be OK for a safety worker to push someone on the ground so that an explosion wouldn't kill them as we always see on TV? Of course but should there be a law that says that police and safety workers can push anyone to the ground?

If it's on the books then anyone can be tortured and that's the problem. It needs to be taken very seriously.


I have about as much confidence in how things played out under those interrogations as I believe the guys in Florida that couldn't afford boots were a serious threat. I'm sure something was up but the story details don't match the background.

[disrupter]

Bush should always be pictured with a hacked off hand or arm in the photo.

He is a monster.

It hasn't worked,

Bush is destroying this nation.

[Smurf-Herder]

We're still talking here about only three specific cases, that happened three years ago; involving the mastermind of the 911 attacks and two others equally as high up in Al-Qaeda.

This isn't standard practice.

[Moby]

We're still talking here about only three specific cases, that happened three years ago; involving the mastermind of the 911 attacks and two others equally as high up in Al-Qaeda.

This isn't standard practice.
Exactly. Let's keep it from becoming standard practice by not allowing it.

[Smurf-Herder]

Exactly. Let's keep it from becoming standard practice by not allowing it.

It hasn't happened in three years.

And when it was done it worked.

This whole argument against it is fear mongering.

[disrupter]

Smurfy, you have no idea if it worked.

Gosh, you don't suppose they would lie to justify their crimes would they?

Quit being such a naive child for this gang of liars.

The fact of the matter is under torture people tell you what you WANT to hear so that you will stop.
Victims do not care whether it is true or not,
But these damn fool torturers ASSUME it is true because it fulfills their suspicions.

Remember, these are the same people who listened to lying Chalabi & 'Curve Ball' BECAUSE THEY TOLD THEM THE LIES THEY WANTED TO HEAR & WANTED YOU AND EVERYONE ELSE TO HEAR.

Legalized torture is just a bad policy on at least three different levels,
(1) undermines the nation's moral standing
(2) creates hatred & animosity
(3) produces mostly faulty intelligence our people waste huge amounts of time & money on,

like guiding us into war with Iraq,

at least 3 Trillion Dollars, 5 years & counting,

and god alone knows how many lives & injuries.

I rest my case.

[Frankg]

Smurfy, you have no idea if it worked.

Gosh, you don't suppose they would lie to justify their crimes would they?

Quit being such a naive child for this gang of liars.

The fact of the matter is under torture people tell you what you WANT to hear so that you will stop.
Victims do not care whether it is true or not,
But these damn fool torturers ASSUME it is true because it fulfills their suspicions.

Remember, these are the same people who listened to lying Chalabi & 'Curve Ball' BECAUSE THEY TOLD THEM THE LIES THEY WANTED TO HEAR & WANTED YOU AND EVERYONE ELSE TO HEAR.

Legalized torture is just a bad policy on at least three different levels,
(1) undermines the nation's moral standing
(2) creates hatred & animosity
(3) produces mostly faulty intelligence our people waste huge amounts of time & money on,

like guiding us into war with Iraq,

at least 3 Trillion Dollars, 5 years & counting,

and god alone knows how many lives & injuries.

I rest my case.

You have no case disrupter because waterboarding saves lives
Ex-CIA agent: Waterboarding 'saved lives'
NEW YORK (CNN) -- A former CIA agent who participated in interrogations of terror suspects said Tuesday that the controversial interrogation technique of "waterboarding" has saved lives, but he considers the method torture and now opposes its use.
http://i.l.cnn.net/cnn/2007/POLITICS/12/11/agent.tapes/art.cia.agent.cnn.jpg
Ex-CIA agent John Kiriakou says he underwent waterboarding in training and cracked in a few seconds.

Former CIA operative John Kiriakou also told CNN's "American Morning" that he disagrees with a decision to destroy videotapes of certain interrogations, namely of al Qaeda's Abu Zubayda.

Kiriakou made the remarks as two congressional committees prepared to grill CIA Director Michael Hayden on the destruction of the tapes and on "alternative" means of interrogation.

Waterboarding begins by placing a suspect on a table with the suspect's feet slightly elevated, said Kiriakou, who was waterboarded several years ago as part of his CIA training. He said he elected not to learn how to perform the technique, which is designed to emulate the sensation of drowning.

Once a suspect is secured on the table, interrogators wrap his or her face in a cellophane-like material, Kiriakou said. a water source, above the head with water pouring down on the mouth, so no water is going into your mouth, but it induces a gag reflex and makes you feel like you're choking," Kiriakou said.
Kiriakou said he lasted only a few seconds during his training because his body felt like it was seizing up almost immediately.

"It's entirely unpleasant," Kiriakou said. "You are so full of tension that you tense up, your muscles tighten up. It's very uncomfortable."
Abu Zubayda lasted a little longer, said Kiriakou, but not much.

The former agent, who said he participated in the Abu Zubayda interrogation but not his waterboarding, said the CIA decided to waterboard the al Qaeda operative only after he was "wholly uncooperative" for weeks and refused to answer questions.

All that changed -- and Zubayda reportedly had a divine revelation -- after 30 to 35 seconds of waterboarding, Kiriakou said he learned from the CIA agents who performed the technique.

The terror suspect, who is being held at Guantanamo Bay (http://topics.cnn.com/topics/guantanamo_bay), Cuba, reportedly gave up information that indirectly led to the the 2003 raid in Pakistan yielding the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, an alleged planner of the September 11, 2001, attacks, Kiriakou said.

The CIA (http://topics.cnn.com/topics/central_intelligence_agency) was unaware of Mohammed's stature before the Abu Zubayda interrogation, the former agent said.

"Abu Zubayda's the one who told us that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was so important in the al Qaeda structure, and we didn't realize at the time how important he was," Kiriakou said.

Abu Zubayda also divulged information on "al Qaeda's leadership structure and mentioned people who we really didn't have any familiarization with [and] told us who we should be thinking about, who we should be looking at, and who was important in the organization so we were able to focus our investigation this way," Kiriakou said.

Abu Zubayda reportedly told the agent who waterboarded him that "Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate because it would make it easier on the other brothers who had been captured," Kiriakou said.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/11/agent.tapes/#cnnSTCText

[disrupter]

Talk is cheap.
They destroyed tapes.
Undermined their own potential credibility.

AS FAR AS WE KNOW THE TAPES SHOW THEM GETTING A LOT OF GARBAGE INFORMATION THAT THEY SPENT MILLIONS RESEARCHING AND CAME UP WITH SQUAT!

[LogicallyYours]

So, you're good with other countries torturing our soldiers?....where is our moral high ground when we have to lower ourselves to your values?

[disrupter]

I am good with the fact that they don't get any benefits from it.

Many of them use that same rationale when they torture.

The important thing is holding the logical high ground more than the 'moral' [wtf does that even mean?] high ground.

They are stupid & torture proves it.

[LogicallyYours]

"I am good with the fact that they don't get any benefits from it."

Really?....there have been many instances where US soldiers have given into torture. Who could blame them! Do you think only American soldiers give false information to make their torturer stop?

It's a fact, torture does not mean the information you are getting is good intel.

[disrupter]

Logically Yours wrote:It's a fact, torture does not mean the information you are getting is good intel.

Exactly.
Why are you arguing my case?

Only stupid people expect to get good intel from torture.
Finesse & humane treatment is far more likely to get you accurate, intact intel.
You have no idea what you are getting when you torture someone, because the torturer is deciding when to start & when to stop, completely divorced from the supposed source of the information.
The Interrogator is sculpting the information instead of the source.
Which is logically absurd.
The source is the one who knows or doesn't know whatever they may.

It is like someone who speaks only english telling you what a spanish sentence means.

The imagination of the interrogator is guiding it rather than any concise facts the source may or may not have to offer.

It's nuts.

By devaluing the subject you degrade the intel. If you respect any potential intel, you must treat the subject/source with reasonable care.

Torture is for stupid countries that want to undermine their standing in the world.
Make it LESS likely captives will decide it is 'ok' to give into them because they aren't really bad guys.

Torture is for stupid, primitive, INEFFECTIVE, people & nations.
It is neurotic, spastic actions by people who have lost control of themselves & their minds.
In a word, losers

Torture is performed by losers.

[LogicallyYours]

I misunderstood your position. My bad.

[Moby]

It hasn't happened in three years.

And when it was done it worked.

This whole argument against it is fear mongering.
Three years that you know about it.

From the reports they rolled over awful quick for people that were master minds of the killings of 1,000s of people in the name of their religious belief. It just seems out of character for the type of people that we're fighting against. You know, they'll do anything for God as long as it's not uncomfortable.

It may have worked but really think about the reports. Something is not right.

[disrupter]

SirMoby if you think for one instant if they had a major coup of information from torture, they would not have trumpeted it from the rooftops?

Please think about it.

Egos can not resist claiming glory,
we are not, afterall, machines.

They are just covering their criminal asses with innuendo & implications & claims 'we can't tell you how many lives have been saved due to national security'.

If we opened up what goes on in the CIA & NSA you would see the cockroaches scattering as the lights shined on them.

Unobserved people degenerate into our evolutionary base mode of operation,
and trust me, that is not a pretty sight.
nobility is mostly an effect of our collective social interactions & pressures.
These people have no nobility, no decency.
They have the most cynical, destructive attitudes,
perhaps even bordering on suicidally fatalistic.

We can not allow ourselves to be blindly, passively led around by suicidally, cynical, fatalistic people.

[Cat slave]

I think hell go down as the father of the NAU and the biggest bf from Egypt
that ever held up in the WH. The first prez ever to allow our country to be
invaded....!

[Moby]

SirMoby if you think for one instant if they had a major coup of information from torture, they would not have trumpeted it from the rooftops?
I've already explained that things don't add up.

What I still don't understand is when this same staff was working for Nixon we know for a fact that they were trying to destroy democracy and could not be trusted. For some reason we seem to believe them now.

[disrupter]

They are adrenaline rushing sadists.
this is not about intel,
this is not about protecting america,
this is about insanity leading the nation rather than rational, sensible thinking.

What matters to them is when they are dead or cynical avarice while alive.
This necessarily runs counter to people who give a damn about life.

[bigfootzx]

Two torture presidents in a row, right???? At least Bush never went so low as to use the miltary to kidnap terrorists with the extraordinary idea that torture would work.

I wonder if terrorists use the Sudan kidnapping attempt as one of their arguements for decapitating their American victims. We sent the message its okay if Clinton authorized it, and no Dems speak out against it, yet Bush takes all the heat. More double standard, more reason to level the playing field. Both presidents did it and I wonder if anyone cares to debate the facts??

[disrupter]

Bush made torture wide spread and banally casual.

Torture produces no reliable data,
It creates a firestorm of hate, resentment & shame.

Torture is performed by losers.
Stupid people who don't see it produces great harm & no good.

Want a quick way to sort out the really stupid people form the rest?
Ask all the people who support torture to stand on one side of the room.
in a nutshell,
a torturous little nutshell.