Delay Slams John McCain

[ClydeR]

It's not only Ross Perot (http://forum.gsplayers.com/showthread.php?t=29512) who's slamming John McCain. Tom Delay has joined the fray. Delay says (http://thenma.org/blogs/index.php/kouri/2008/01/12/tom_delay_slams_gop_presidential_hopeful) that McCain has betrayed conservative principles on issues such as "the environment, immigration, the International Criminal Court, his support for affirmative action and taxes." McCain is a media darling, Delay said.

Indeed, McCain seems more interested in protecting terrorists from interrogations than in protecting the safety of American citizens.

[Hulkein]

McCain is interested in protecting suspects from torture, not terrorists from interrogations.

[ClydeR]

McCain is interested in protecting suspects from torture, not terrorists from interrogations.

I've never heard that before. I think McCain wants to protect even known terrorists who are suspected to have valuable information from harsh interrogations. Are you certain that you are correct?

[Hulkein]

If you include water-boarding as harsh interrogation then you're right, he is against doing that to known terrorists as it is considered torture by most people.

[ClydeR]

If you include water-boarding as harsh interrogation then you're right, he is against doing that to known terrorists as it is considered torture by most people.

Waterboarding is safe, quick and reliable. Our interrogators have said that they got much valuable information using the technique that saved lives.


A leader of the CIA team that captured and interrogated the first major al Qaeda figure, Abu Zubaydah, says (http://thecitizensjournalblog.blogspot.com/2007/12/former-cia-officer-waterboarding-broke.html) subjecting him to waterboarding was torture but necessary. In the first public comment by any CIA officer involved in handling high-value al Qaeda targets, John Kiriakou, now retired, said the technique broke Zubaydah in less than 35 seconds.

"The next day, he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate," said Kiriakou in an interview to be broadcast tonight on ABC News' "World News With Charles Gibson" and "Nightline."

"From that day on, he answered every question," Kiriakou said. "The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks."

[Hulkein]

Your own snipped admits it is torture, genius.


A leader of the CIA team that captured and interrogated the first major al Qaeda figure, Abu Zubaydah, says subjecting him to waterboarding was torture but necessary.

His opinion is it is necessary. The opinion of most people who are not barbaric and would like some moral high ground (since we do tend to lecture other nations about what they should morally do) is that you cannot use torture.

There are also plenty examples of it yielding absolutely no information or misinformation just to get the torturers to stop.

Bottom line is I'll take McCain's word on anything regarding torture over yours or anyone else's.

[ClydeR]

Your own snipped admits it is torture, genius.

I never said it wasn't. I feel certain that waterboarding is terrifying. That's why it works. Whether or not it is "torture" is really a semantic and political question.

[Hulkein]

You implied it was 'harsh interrogation' two posts ago.

[Ilvane]

Delay not liking him makes me like him even more..LOL

Heh.

[ClydeR]

You implied it was 'harsh interrogation' two posts ago.

I did more than imply it. I cam right out and said it. "Harsh interrogation" and "torture" are not mutually exclusive terms. I used "harsh interrogation" to avoid an argument about semantics.

[Hulkein]

McCain is against using what most people consider (including the person you cited yourself) torture. I prefer that and couldn't care less what Tom Delay says.

[Tsa`ah]

Let's not even mention that torture yields very little to no valuable information. Just like during the Inquisition, victims will admit to anything to just to make the torture stop.

I suppose if we had ACTUAL terrorist, and just not a bunch of people we suspect, there's a remote possibility that torturing them may lead to something useful ... though as I said, the possibility is remote.

And yes, water boarding is torture.

[Latrinsorm]

Bottom line is I'll take McCain's word on anything regarding torture over yours or anyone else's.Seriously, how can anyone even argue this? It'd be like arguing with George Bush over how to say "GIMME AN H!"

[TheEschaton]

ClydeR delivers again - I was feeling down today, but damn, this thread almost made me lol in Evidence.

[oldanforgotten]

Of Course Clyde supports the use of torture. That's what the church did in Africa in the 1800's, and throughout history to scientists, anyone they deemed a heretic, or just anyone they didn't like, to "spread God's word". Torture is the most effective form of the Christian arm of righteousness.

I'm sure if asked, he'd approve of the "euthanization" of abortion clinic workers by use of nail grenades or other explosive devices, to stop them from "murdering" fetuses.
________
EASY VAPE (http://vaporizer.org/)

[thefarmer]

ClydeR is a bot, I just know it.

[Clove]

Let's not even mention that torture yields very little to no valuable information. Just like during the Inquisition, victims will admit to anything to just to make the torture stop....

And yes, water boarding is torture.

x10

[Parkbandit]

Let's not even mention that torture yields very little to no valuable information. Just like during the Inquisition, victims will admit to anything to just to make the torture stop.

I suppose if we had ACTUAL terrorist, and just not a bunch of people we suspect, there's a remote possibility that torturing them may lead to something useful ... though as I said, the possibility is remote.

And yes, water boarding is torture.


Well, except for when water boarding actually does yield valuable information.

Personally.. I couldn't give 2 shits about some scumbag who puts a bomb on himself to go blow up innocent people. Hell, where do I sign up, I'll torture the little fucker myself.

[Clove]

Well, except for when water boarding actually does yield valuable information...

Hate to disagree but waterboarding CAN yield valuable info, IF the person has valuable info to yield. Just about any torture can. The problem is knowing that person actually has the information you think they do.

Torture is not an area we want to comprimise on as a society. Being a scumbag and/or being suspected of having crucial information is NOT AN EXCUSE FOR TORTURE.

Believe me, it pains me to agree with Tsa'ah on this one, but I do and I have to give credit where it's due. Torture is an unacceptable means of gathering information.

[Daniel]

I'm going to hazard to say that it is a little difficult to waterboard someone who has blown themselves up.

[Parkbandit]

I'm going to hazard to say that it is a little difficult to waterboard someone who has blown themselves up.

pre-blowed up :)

So... if we have a suspect who we are pretty sure has valuable information about a pending nuclear attack on an American city.. we should just hug the information out of him?

[Gan]

I'm all about chemical interrogation.

En Medicinae Veritas

[Stanley Burrell]

I think forced opiate withdrawal would be the most effective method of torturing another human being.

Remember though, compassionate conservative.

[Clove]

I'm all about chemical interrogation.

En Medicinae Veritas

Better living through chemistry!


pre-blowed up :)

So... if we have a suspect who we are pretty sure has valuable information about a pending nuclear attack on an American city.. we should just hug the information out of him?

Hmmm good question. What if that suspect was your daughter and she was thought to have information because she recently dated a key player in the attack?

I don't think the ends, justifies the means. Sorry. In this instance the vulnerability we risk is the price we pay for being a free and civilized society.

[Gan]

Better living through chemistry!

http://www.harry-potter-movie-buzz.com/uploads/uploadForumPhotos/medium_Snape%20Treaching%20Occlumency-7skeyb77.jpg

The professor agrees.

[Sean of the Thread]

"Maybe he really didn't know anything... /shrug NEXT!"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GcXl1y_mQw

[Parkbandit]

Better living through chemistry!



Hmmm good question. What if that suspect was your daughter and she was thought to have information because she recently dated a key player in the attack?

I don't think the ends, justifies the means. Sorry. In this instance the vulnerability we risk is the price we pay for being a free and civilized society.


I'm against torturing a witness in that fashion.. obviously. And I'm pretty much against torture.. but I will never completely dismiss it's need if the scenario presents itself. It should be used as a last resort and to a bonafide scumbag.

[Tsa`ah]

Well, except for when water boarding actually does yield valuable information.

Personally.. I couldn't give 2 shits about some scumbag who puts a bomb on himself to go blow up innocent people. Hell, where do I sign up, I'll torture the little fucker myself.

Unfortunately we have no proof, absolutely none, of this torture yielding anything productive. One would think with the current atmosphere the government agencies involved would release some tidbit to support the claims of success ... yet there are none.

We hear abstracts and nothing more. History has shown the opposite and even people with years of experience in military interrogation have said interrogation through torture will get you what you want to hear, but nothing valid.

There was an interesting article in the Washington post about three years back called "The Torture Myth"


Just for a moment, let's pretend that there is no moral, legal or constitutional problem with torture. Let's also imagine a clear-cut case: a terrorist who knows where bombs are about to explode in Iraq. To stop him, it seems that a wide range of Americans would be prepared to endorse "cruel and unusual" methods. In advance of confirmation hearings for Attorney General-designate Alberto Gonzales last week, the Wall Street Journal argued that such scenarios must be debated, since "what's at stake in this controversy is nothing less than the ability of U.S. forces to interrogate enemies who want to murder innocent civilians." Alan Dershowitz, the liberal legal scholar, has argued in the past that interrogators in such a case should get a "torture warrant" from a judge. Both of these arguments rest on an assumption: that torture -- defined as physical pressure during interrogation -- can be used to extract useful information.

But does torture work? The question has been asked many times since Sept. 11, 2001. I'm repeating it, however, because the Gonzales hearings inspired more articles about our lax methods ("Too Nice for Our Own Good" was one headline), because similar comments may follow this week's trial of Spec. Charles Graner, the alleged Abu Ghraib ringleader, and because I still cannot find a positive answer. I've heard it said that the Syrians and the Egyptians "really know how to get these things done." I've heard the Israelis mentioned, without proof. I've heard Algeria mentioned, too, but Darius Rejali, an academic who recently trolled through French archives, found no clear examples of how torture helped the French in Algeria -- and they lost that war anyway. "Liberals," argued an article in the liberal online magazine Slate a few months ago, "have a tendency to accept, all too eagerly, the argument that torture is ineffective." But it's also true that "realists," whether liberal or conservative, have a tendency to accept, all too eagerly, fictitious accounts of effective torture carried out by someone else.

By contrast, it is easy to find experienced U.S. officers who argue precisely the opposite. Meet, for example, retired Air Force Col. John Rothrock, who, as a young captain, headed a combat interrogation team in Vietnam. More than once he was faced with a ticking time-bomb scenario: a captured Vietcong guerrilla who knew of plans to kill Americans. What was done in such cases was "not nice," he says. "But we did not physically abuse them." Rothrock used psychology, the shock of capture and of the unexpected. Once, he let a prisoner see a wounded comrade die. Yet -- as he remembers saying to the "desperate and honorable officers" who wanted him to move faster -- "if I take a Bunsen burner to the guy's genitals, he's going to tell you just about anything," which would be pointless. Rothrock, who is no squishy liberal, says that he doesn't know "any professional intelligence officers of my generation who would think this is a good idea."

Or listen to Army Col. Stuart Herrington, a military intelligence specialist who conducted interrogations in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq during Desert Storm, and who was sent by the Pentagon in 2003 -- long before Abu Ghraib -- to assess interrogations in Iraq. Aside from its immorality and its illegality, says Herrington, torture is simply "not a good way to get information." In his experience, nine out of 10 people can be persuaded to talk with no "stress methods" at all, let alone cruel and unusual ones. Asked whether that would be true of religiously motivated fanatics, he says that the "batting average" might be lower: "perhaps six out of ten." And if you beat up the remaining four? "They'll just tell you anything to get you to stop."

Worse, you'll have the other side effects of torture. It "endangers our soldiers on the battlefield by encouraging reciprocity." It does "damage to our country's image" and undermines our credibility in Iraq. That, in the long run, outweighs any theoretical benefit. Herrington's confidential Pentagon report, which he won't discuss but which was leaked to The Post a month ago, goes farther. In that document, he warned that members of an elite military and CIA task force were abusing detainees in Iraq, that their activities could be "making gratuitous enemies" and that prisoner abuse "is counterproductive to the Coalition's efforts to win the cooperation of the Iraqi citizenry." Far from rescuing Americans, in other words, the use of "special methods" might help explain why the war is going so badly.

An up-to-date illustration of the colonel's point appeared in recently released FBI documents from the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. These show, among other things, that some military intelligence officers wanted to use harsher interrogation methods than the FBI did. As a result, complained one inspector, "every time the FBI established a rapport with a detainee, the military would step in and the detainee would stop being cooperative." So much for the utility of torture.

Given the overwhelmingly negative evidence, the really interesting question is not whether torture works but why so many people in our society want to believe that it works. At the moment, there is a myth in circulation, a fable that goes something like this: Radical terrorists will take advantage of our fussy legality, so we may have to suspend it to beat them. Radical terrorists mock our namby-pamby prisons, so we must make them tougher. Radical terrorists are nasty, so to defeat them we have to be nastier.

Perhaps it's reassuring to tell ourselves tales about the new forms of "toughness" we need, or to talk about the special rules we will create to defeat this special enemy. Unfortunately, that toughness is self-deceptive and self-destructive. Ultimately it will be self-defeating as well.

I'll take the word of people with experience over yours ... anyday.

[Parkbandit]

I'll take the word of people with experience over yours ... anyday.

As I will you. For every claim that no valuable information was pryed from someone through torture, there's another claim that there was.

Like I previously stated.. I'm pretty much against the use of water boarding or torture.. but will never keep it off the table if the absolute need arises.

[Stanley Burrell]

Alright. This is directed at the MMORPG player/man/elder/husband/father/human/non e-based entity who totes the userhandle ParkBandit on these forums and makes text appear...

As face to face as I possibly can convey things. Man to man. Hombre y hombre:








































































































You have really bad hemorrhoids.

[Clove]

There was an interesting article in the Washington post about three years back called "The Torture Myth"


Good article. I particularly liked the observation that 9 out of 10 people can be persuaded to talk without any use of "stress methods". It's consistent with my very limited experience with interviewing and interrogation.

I think people believe torture methods are effective because let's face it, we all know that people respond immediately to pain and stress. In my opinion it is PRECISELY this urgent response that makes torture techniques unreliable for gathering information. A person faced with such circumstances responds in whichever way they THINK will buy them relief the FASTEST; which may or may not be what you're looking for out of them. Put simply torture only guarantees a response; it doesn't guarantee a worthwhile one.


I'll take the word of people with experience over yours ... anyday.

Unfortunately you don't require words of experience- just agreement.

[Bhuryn]

It's funny to hear a man of the cloth (clyde) support terrorism.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

[Parkbandit]

Alright. This is directed at the MMORPG player/man/elder/husband/father/human/non e-based entity who totes the userhandle ParkBandit on these forums and makes text appear...

As face to face as I possibly can convey things. Man to man. Hombre y hombre:
You have really bad hemorrhoids.


Shouldn't you be stealing your mommy's credit card to buy some crack... then 'rehabilitate', then do it again.. asking us for forgiveness every step?


Folks.. Stanley Burrell is a prime example of the "This is your brain.. this is your brain on drugs" campaign. A good lesson for the kids out there.

[Parkbandit]

Unfortunately you don't require words of experience- just agreement.


Welcome to the tiny world of Tsa'ahville.

[Stanley Burrell]

Shouldn't you be stealing your mommy's credit card to buy some crack... then 'rehabilitate', then do it again.. asking us for forgiveness every step?


Folks.. Stanley Burrell is a prime example of the "This is your brain.. this is your brain on drugs" campaign. A good lesson for the kids out there.

It was my dad, godfuckingdammit.

And if I ever did crack, I'd sell some to your kids to get smarter.