Senate Report on CIA Torture

[MachineGhost]

Mr. O'Reilly disagreed of course. Being the good Christian he is (Catholic, I believe), he's cool with torturing our enemies if there is any possibility of a beneficial result to keep Americans safe. He also stated the majority of Americans agreed with him and sadly I think that might be true. So much for being a Christian nation.

O'Reilly says that about just everything.  He has no credibility.  He's just an overpaid pundit and entertainment for Fox to bring in the viewers.

[Lonestar]

The answer is so obvious:

"This is what we call smart power, using every possible tool and partner to advance peace and security. Leaving no one on the sidelines. Showing respect even for one’s enemies. Trying to understand, in so far as psychologically possible, empathize with their perspective and point of view."

Hillary R. Clinton
circa 2014

[Reub]

The answer is so obvious:

"This is what we call smart power, using every possible tool and partner to advance peace and security. Leaving no one on the sidelines. Showing respect even for one’s enemies. Trying to understand, in so far as psychologically possible, empathize with their perspective and point of view."

Hillary R. Clinton
circa 2014

When Hillary said this was she referring to Elizabeth Warren?

[Jan Van]

I was watching Bill O'Reilly last night and he had John McCain on to discuss the torture issue. I don't generally agree much with what McCain has to say about any thing but I did this time. Although he didn't actually use the Biblical language what he was really advocating was that we should be following the Golden Rule of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". As a former POW that suffered torture in Vietnam I thought that was an interesting bit of advice. He also pointed out how some were convicted of war crimes after WWII for water-boarding and that it is against the Geneva convention of which we are a signatory.

Mr. O'Reilly disagreed of course. Being the good Christian he is (Catholic, I believe), he's cool with torturing our enemies if there is any possibility of a beneficial result to keep Americans safe. He also stated the majority of Americans agreed with him and sadly I think that might be true. So much for being a Christian nation.

Funny how it's people like O'Reilly and Cheney who have no experience with torture (or war, or combat) are all for it, but the people who actually know what it does are against it.

[Jan Van]

...I am also shocked by our illustrious leader in that he continues to tell (or allow others to tell) everyone the US is a mess and unexceptional - he seems to revel in airing dirty laundry, that is, all dirty laundry that is not his or that he thinks he can use for potential political advantage.
... Mountaineer

Do you mean Obama? He sent his chief of staff to the hill to get the publication postponed (so republicans in the next congress could bury it). When that didn't work, he sent Kerry to try getting it postponed. Can't blame him for this!

[Lonestar]

The answer is so obvious:

"This is what we call smart power, using every possible tool and partner to advance peace and security. Leaving no one on the sidelines. Showing respect even for one’s enemies. Trying to understand, in so far as psychologically possible, empathize with their perspective and point of view."

Hillary R. Clinton
circa 2014

When Hillary said this was she referring to Elizabeth Warren?

Probably..........................or maybe Monica.....................................or both.

[WiseOne]

I'm pretty sure Jon Stewart (of Daily Show fame) is going to have a field day with Cheney's interview.  The callousness of it was pretty shocking but just about what you'd expect of the guy who shot his friend in the face :-)  Looking forward to this!

Also, Cheney was factually incorrect when he said the the torture methods "got results" - with implication that the results were better than standard interrogation methods would have achieved.  Since standard methods were not used, it can't be said that they failed.  They just went straight to the water boarding, object rape etc.  And trying to define those things as "not torture"... I just don't have words for that except to say that a lot of victims of the Spanish Inquisition should be thankful he wasn't around then.

[Reub]

I know that at least in New York, and probably the rest of the country as well, people from the religion of peace are no longer "profiled" because that would be just dead wrong!

[moda0306]

Not satire:

Torture in a Dick Cheney Minute

Todd mentioned a number of cases of outright mistaken identity—“They were released, no apologies, nothing”?—and wondered what those people were owed. “Twenty-five per cent turned out to be innocent. … Is that too high? You’re O.K. with that margin of error?”? Todd asked. Yes, Cheney was O.K. with that. “I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective,”? he said. A couple of minutes later, as if the exchange about mistaken detentions had not taken place, Cheney said of the prisoners, sweepingly and unequivocally, “They are unlawful combatants. They are terrorists.”? He spoke approvingly of the decision not to read them any Miranda rights.
    .....
When Todd asked what he’d consider torture, Cheney would only cite the September 11th attacks themselves. (“I’ve told you what meets the definition of torture. It’s what nineteen guys armed with airline tickets and box cutters did to three thousand Americans on 9/11.”?) Calling anything else torture suggested a “moral equivalence”? that he found offensive—as if he would have had to personally pilot a plane into a tower before he owned up to being a torturer. Todd again pressed him for a definition, but got opposite: anything “specifically authorized and O.K.’d”? and “blessed by the Justice Department”? was not torture. If the executive says you can do it, you aren’t a torturer. (The key legal memos have since been withdrawn.) Todd, perhaps seeing an opening, asked about something that, as Cheney himself acknowledged, was not on the list of approved techniques—the shoving of a “lunch plate”? of pureed “hummus, pasta, sauce, nuts, and raisins”? into the rectum of a man named Majid Khan. Cheney: “I believe it was done for medical reasons.”?

The report found that there were no “medical reasons.”? But Cheney, having just argued that anything officially sanctioned could not be torture, then seems to say that anything unsanctioned couldn’t be torture, either:

CHUCK TODD: But you acknowledge this was over and above…

DICK CHENEY: That was not something that was done as part of the interrogation program.

CHUCK TODD: But you won’t call it torture?

DICK CHENEY: It wasn’t torture in terms of it wasn’t part of the program.

Holy.  F*cking.  Sh!t.

You simply can't make this stuff up.

The innocence rate is something I've posed several times and pro-torture advocates like to skip over that by implying in their argument that it is pre-determined or self-evident that these guys are terrorists.  In reality, many were likely not.

Whatever moral gymnastics you can do to allow yourself to torture GUILTY terrorists for a friggin CONFESSION (rather than for vital details on an imminenta attack), they certainly change a lot when you have an INNOCENT person unlawfully detained having hummus shoved up his ass.

I don't usually take joy in pontificating the premature death of politicians, but I think when that old, evil SOB goes, I'm going to cry the same tear of joy I did when Osama was killed.

[Pointedstick]

It was so, so easy to be a liberal when bond villain Cheney and his crew were running the show. Man, how the Bush administration wrecked Republicanism for years. "Medical reasons." Medical reasons my ass! Oh wait...

[moda0306]

The fact that he so obviously personally profited through his investent interests from the war, as well, adds an entire extra layer of evil to all this.

I tend to disagree with most folks around how much we should pay politicians.  I think they should be paid far more than they are, but that they should have to move all of their financial interests into a trust that is invested in a standard diversified portfolio.  Perhaps this should be in the statist/anarchist thread. 

[clacy]

This has to be related to the fact that we made a terrorist from Afghanistan stand for a really long time in a jail cell 10 years ago.

[moda0306]

This has to be related to the fact that we made a terrorist from Afghanistan stand for a really long time in a jail cell 10 years ago.

Or perhaps it's because we raped a non-terrorist by shoving food up his ass. 

Or maybe they're not related, and you're just straw-manning and using an evil act by terrorists to justify advocating for evil treatment of unconvicted detainees.

But hummus and rectal delivery devices don't cost much in the federal budget, so thank God we've stuck to principles of small government.


Sorry for the snarkasm... I'll let the thread return to being about this tragedy in Australia.

[clacy]

This has to be related to the fact that we made a terrorist from Afghanistan stand for a really long time in a jail cell 10 years ago.

Or perhaps it's because we raped a non-terrorist by shoving food up his ass. 

Or maybe they're not related, and you're just straw-manning and using an evil act by terrorists to justify advocating for evil treatment of unconvicted detainees.

But hummus and rectal delivery devices don't cost much in the federal budget, so thank God we've stuck to principles of small government.


Sorry for the snarkasm... I'll let the thread return to being about this tragedy in Australia.

Sorry, but Radical Islamists like to kill innocents.  I really do not care if our intel community mistreats a few bad guys.  It sucks if there are a small number of good people that get caught up as collateral, but you and I both know we try to minimize that as much as possible.

If you want to talk about rape, here is one of about a million stores of the Taliban or Isis mass raping young women in Muslim villages....

http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/23/world/mea ... e-refugee/

I don't have a problem treating these guys badly.

[moda0306]

This has to be related to the fact that we made a terrorist from Afghanistan stand for a really long time in a jail cell 10 years ago.

Or perhaps it's because we raped a non-terrorist by shoving food up his ass. 

Or maybe they're not related, and you're just straw-manning and using an evil act by terrorists to justify advocating for evil treatment of unconvicted detainees.

But hummus and rectal delivery devices don't cost much in the federal budget, so thank God we've stuck to principles of small government.


Sorry for the snarkasm... I'll let the thread return to being about this tragedy in Australia.

Sorry, but Radical Islamists like to kill innocents.  I really do not care if our intel community mistreats a few bad guys.  It sucks if there are a small number of good people that get caught up as collateral, but you and I both know we try to minimize that as much as possible.

If you want to talk about rape, here is one of about a million stores of the Taliban or Isis mass raping young women in Muslim villages....

http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/23/world/mea ... e-refugee/

I don't have a problem treating these guys badly.

So are you asserting that 100% of the people tortured are "these guys," because if you are, you'd be wrong.

And if you're wrong, than you are one of "these guys" that is ok with watching innocent men be raped.

Nice try.

[clacy]

Or perhaps it's because we raped a non-terrorist by shoving food up his ass. 

Or maybe they're not related, and you're just straw-manning and using an evil act by terrorists to justify advocating for evil treatment of unconvicted detainees.

But hummus and rectal delivery devices don't cost much in the federal budget, so thank God we've stuck to principles of small government.


Sorry for the snarkasm... I'll let the thread return to being about this tragedy in Australia.

Sorry, but Radical Islamists like to kill innocents.  I really do not care if our intel community mistreats a few bad guys.  It sucks if there are a small number of good people that get caught up as collateral, but you and I both know we try to minimize that as much as possible.

If you want to talk about rape, here is one of about a million stores of the Taliban or Isis mass raping young women in Muslim villages....

http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/23/world/mea ... e-refugee/

I don't have a problem treating these guys badly.

So are you asserting that 100% of the people tortured are "these guys," because if you are, you'd be wrong.

And if you're wrong, than you are one of "these guys" that is ok with watching innocent men be raped.

Nice try.

No, I'm saying probably 99% of the people that are held and possibly quasi-tortured by our intel, are either terrorists, or they have intimate knowledge of known terrorists.  There are likely a small, 1% minority that would fall into the "collateral damage" category.  You have that in any justice system, as mistakes are made occasionally.

I certainly won't equate our aggressive intel techniques, that are done with the intention of saving innocents from future terrorist attacks, with mass rape and terror that is perpetrated daily by Radical Islamists around the world, in the quest for power so that they may install a Sharia law regime.

I'm not sure how or why you are so willing to equate the two but I guess our minds just work differently.

[stuper1]

It doesn't sound so bad until you yourself are one of the 1% who are wrongly assumed to be terrorists.  Then, all the "due process" stuff really starts to make sense.  I've had a small experience being on the wrong side of the law due to essentially a case of mistaken identity.  It was one of the worst experiences of my life, and nothing was shoved up my backside.

If we treat people like animals, or turn a blind eye while our agents do so, guess who really becomes the animals?  Us.

There are effective ways to fight terrorism, but EITs aren't.  They just make us as bad as the terrorists.  I'd love to see what Dick Cheney would say about EITs if one of his family were mistakenly assumed to be a terrorist.

[Pointedstick]

Furthermore, the number isn't 1%. As has been repeatedly reported, it's 25%. Fully one quarter of people who were tortured were even "enemy combatants." This is completely counter-productive because these innocents may become terrorists as a result of their experiences!

Just think about it. Imagine that the Iranian secret police kidnaps you while you're vacationing in the UK. They imprison and torture you for years. Then they discover you're actually not the Israeli agent they were looking for, and they dump you in El Salvador with $1,000 in your pocket.

Question: are you more or less likely to want to fight against the Iranian government?

[dualstow]

It doesn't sound so bad until you yourself are one of the 1% who are wrongly assumed to be terrorists.  Then, all the "due process" stuff really starts to make sense. 

Exactly.

[Reub]

I think that it was just last week that Prez Obama released more of these animals back into society....this time to S. America. Is he deranged?

[WiseOne]

Yup, the Daily Show excelled as usual!  Here's the clip - enjoy.

http://thedailyshow.cc.com/videos/h3d8h ... ot-torture

[MachineGhost]

"This is what we call smart power, using every possible tool and partner to advance peace and security. Leaving no one on the sidelines. Showing respect even for one’s enemies. Trying to understand, in so far as psychologically possible, empathize with their perspective and point of view."

If only she would do to that to economics and the U.S. economy.  Then again, talk is cheap.  Look at Obama and what greater speaker has there been since The Gipper?

[MachineGhost]

I don't usually take joy in pontificating the premature death of politicians, but I think when that old, evil SOB goes, I'm going to cry the same tear of joy I did when Osama was killed.

+1. Cheney is Satan.

[MachineGhost]

No, I'm saying probably 99% of the people that are held and possibly quasi-tortured by our intel, are either terrorists, or they have intimate knowledge of known terrorists.  There are likely a small, 1% minority that would fall into the "collateral damage" category.  You have that in any justice system, as mistakes are made occasionally.

Are you going to be singing the same tune when you personally find yourself caught up in that 1%?  Because you are constantly focusing on the wrong thing.  Our government is supposed to be about protecting your proverbial 1% from ever happening and it did not operate as it should have because of conservative religious ideology, which you appear to share.

So I vote we clandestinely kidnap clacy and subject him to off-the-books quasi-torture and then release him with "Sorry, better luck next time, sucker!"  Anyone game?  Because I know how I would relishly feel as Type A torturer to a religious conservative.... 

And that should seriously scare everyone.  If it doesn't, you just don't get it.

[MachineGhost]

Holy Shit, those two episodes are hilarious!!!  Literally rofling.