Waterboarding Used 266 Times on 2 Suspects

[White Eagle]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/world/20detain.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

Waterboarding Used 266 Times on 2 Suspects

By SCOTT SHANE
Published: April 19, 2009

C.I.A. interrogators used waterboarding, the near-drowning technique that top Obama administration officials have described as illegal torture, 266 times on two key prisoners from Al Qaeda, far more than had been previously reported.

The C.I.A. officers used waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002 against Abu Zubaydah, according to a 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum. Abu Zubaydah has been described as a Qaeda operative.

A former C.I.A. officer, John Kiriakou, told ABC News and other news media organizations in 2007 that Abu Zubaydah had undergone waterboarding for only 35 seconds before agreeing to tell everything he knew.

I doubt Zubaydah told everything he knew, I'll bet it was more to what the CIA wanted to hear. Torture does not give accurate information. I don't care what anyone says.
I also don't care that they were al Qaeda. The US DOES NOT torture. It is against the law in most countries or at least the ones that signed the pact.
I hope this changes Obama's mind about not prosecuting and I hope it brings other countries to agree to prosecute all the way up to Bush.

 

[PabloZed]

Even if the procedure is not torture in a single instance, it certainly is in duration (either length or number of times). This shocks my conscience.

I happen to be listening to Aretha Franklin singing "My Country tis of Thee" from the inauguration. Certainly, torture is not consistent with our ideals.

If anyone is prosecuted it must be those officials who authorized torture.

 

[Julian89]

The idea that torture doesn't work- that's been put out from John McCain on down- You know, for the longest time McCain said torture doesn't work then he admitted in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention last summer that he was broken by North Vietnamese. So what are we to think here?

Truly Epic. It made me believe that torture really works.

 

[iman]

If they had to use waterboarding 83 times on this guy, it could not be working too well. We still do not know if any information of value was gained from these techniques.

 

[Kulindahr]

Probably the most accurate and dependable information gained from this is that a person can actually survive that many repetitions of water-boarding and remain sane enough to give answers to questions.

The only things torture achieves are to make the torturer feel powerful, and make the tortured comply with expected/desired/demanded behavior -- and it doesn't do those dependably.

Oh, wait; one other thing it does well: gives talk show people lots of mileage to fill the air waves.

 

[White Eagle]

Even if the procedure is not torture in a single instance, it certainly is in duration (either length or number of times). This shocks my conscience.

I happen to be listening to Aretha Franklin singing "My Country tis of Thee" from the inauguration. Certainly, torture is not consistent with our ideals.

If anyone is prosecuted it must be those officials who authorized torture.

Yeah, I will reconsider. I was pissed when I wrote the thread.. It's like Abu Gharab (sp). I bet the ones prosecuted were way down on the list.
It needs to be from the top down to how far the guilt goes.

And I have a copy of Aretha's My Country tis of Thee. I need to listen to it again today.
Also Susan Boyle's "I dreamed a dream" fits too.

 

[Kulindahr]

If anyone is prosecuted it must be those officials who authorized torture.

Don't forget to water-board them till they confess.

 

[hermanding]

i also wondered about the frequency of torture. if it worked so quickly, then keeping doing it must be THE classic example of sadism
ding

 

[Glafna]

I'm just waiting for chance or justapixel or someone from the right to jump in and try and disprove this information...

What?? They aren't coming, oh darn, what a shame .



It is just horrific to see what men will do to one another... especially under the facade of what is "good" and "just". But unfortunately, me, like much of this and the last 1-2 generations, have become numb from the introduction of horrific events through the media, so we don't feel the shock as we should.

 

[Kulindahr]

"And I'm proud to be an American..."

I remember being proud to be an American....




I think.

 

[spooger]

short of being drawn and guartered, i find the talk about torture to be....whining

when thousands ....or perhaps in the case of WMDs, millions....of lives hang in the balance....i say....go for it

oh, yes, i know....Geneva Convention....."they'll do it to us if we do it to them"...... "it makes us just as bad as they are" ....

i stand by what i said

 

[jackoroe]

These are the guys responsible for killing thousands of people in the 9-11 attacks. They killed several thousand of my fellow human beings. They forfeited their humanity in doing so. They could nail their balls to a board with rusty nails and that wouldn't be punishment enough. Fuck them and those who feel they were somehow "mistreated".

 

[spooger]

These are the guys responsible for killing thousands of people in the 9-11 attacks. They killed several thousand of my fellow human beings. They forfeited his humanity in doing so. They could nail their balls to a board with rusty nails and that wouldn't be punishment enough. Fuck them and those who feel they were somehow "mistreated".

 

[jackoroe]

^If it saves one American life, yes.

 

[Kulindahr]

short of being drawn and guartered, i find the talk about torture to be....whining

when thousands ....or perhaps in the case of WMDs, millions....of lives hang in the balance....i say....go for it

oh, yes, i know....Geneva Convention....."they'll do it to us if we do it to them"...... "it makes us just as bad as they are" ....

i stand by what i said

Why don't you start a "We Love Stalin and His Kind" fan club? What you're really saying here is that it's okay to jerk people out of their lives on the basis of hearsay, lock them up, subject them to cruel and/or unusual forms of physical duress for as long as people with some claim to authority feel like keeping them. That's what the whole business at Gitmo amounted to -- utterly arbitrary exercise of authority, without restriction or oversight.

 

[TX-Beau]

Why don't you start a "We Love Stalin and His Kind" fan club? What you're really saying here is that it's okay to jerk people out of their lives on the basis of hearsay, lock them up, subject them to cruel and/or unusual forms of physical duress for as long as people with some claim to authority feel like keeping them. That's what the whole business at Gitmo amounted to -- utterly arbitrary exercise of authority, without restriction or oversight.

Don't forget that Osama - who, with all this wonderful intelligence producing torture, we still can catch, thanks us all for the new recruits.

 

[Glafna]

These are the guys responsible for killing thousands of people in the 9-11 attacks. They killed several thousand of my fellow human beings. They forfeited their humanity in doing so. They could nail their balls to a board with rusty nails and that wouldn't be punishment enough. Fuck them and those who feel they were somehow "mistreated".

short of being drawn and guartered, i find the talk about torture to be....whining

when thousands ....or perhaps in the case of WMDs, millions....of lives hang in the balance....i say....go for it

oh, yes, i know....Geneva Convention....."they'll do it to us if we do it to them"...... "it makes us just as bad as they are" ....

i stand by what i said

In case you guys have missed the little word that starts with a S, I'll repeat it.

They were/are SUSPECTED of terrorist actions, or otherwise the CIA/FBI/DHS think they were either in the midst of planning or had been party to terrorist actions. But then again, they might have just been one of the people fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq that were captured, or wherever else they obtained their detainee's.

They were held in that hellhole illegally, without charge, and had their basic human rights abused horribly.

And jack, I would rather be dead then do anything like that to another human being. It's disgusting that they felt the need to do it over 200 times.. over 200 fucking times, when it's simulated drowning. I don't know about you, but one time I came close to drowning... and it was one of the most terrifying moments of my life. To willingly, and I'll bet happily, force that feeling onto another human being is a crime against humanity all on its own.

Two wrongs do not make a right, and the end does not justify the means.

 

[Kulindahr]

And jack, I would rather be dead then do anything like that to another human being. It's disgusting that they felt the need to do it over 200 times.. over 200 fucking times, when it's simulated drowning. I don't know about you, but one time I came close to drowning... and it was one of the most terrifying moments of my life. To willingly, and I'll bet happily, force that feeling onto another human being is a crime against humanity all on its own.

Two wrongs do not make a right, and the end does not justify the means.

Amen, and amen... and amen.

I came close to drowning once -- and forced myself to go through it again because it was that or let someone else drown. That second instance is the only reason any human being should have to go through such a thing.

It doesn't even matter if you know you won't drown: we did that in lifeguard training -- down under water three or four meters, mud enough that visibility was nearly zero, turbulence above enough that it could be felt at depth, knowing that if we screwed up there was a team right overhead in the boat... I told myself over and over that there wasn't really any danger, nothing to be scared of, but I -- like all but one in the class -- added my own little personal contribution to those murky waters. Regardless of the cognitive knowledge, the animal brainstem is screaming that this is life or death -- screaming in terror.

Supposedly we're fighting terrorism, but with Glafna triggering memories, I have to say that waterboarding, and anything like it, is terrorism.

 

[Kulindahr]

This guy couldn't hold up too long under it and lost his bet

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/20/playboy-journo-bets-he-ca_n_189280.html

As a lifeguard, I trained in situations where we were disoriented, held down, blindfolded under water, tumbled through powerful, turbulent currents, attacked without warning and dragged under water -- and I don't think I'd be able to do fifteen seconds of that. I'm not sure I could have back when I was in shape to swim a hundred meters at a sprint, head up and eyes on target, to swim a mile in the surf, and monthly had to go through thirty second escape drills (a half dozen guys taking turns trying to wrestle you into submission in deep water).

Watching that, I totally disagree with the statement that torture requires pain. The essence of torture isn't pain; it's submission to a situation the brain comprehends as a threat to life/survival.

Water-boarding is torture.

And if I were a telepath, I would make Cheney and every other person in that chain of command experience it in waking dreams, minute for minute for every last person so tortured under their authority.

 

[jackoroe]

In case you guys have missed the little word that starts with a S, I'll repeat it.

They were/are SUSPECTED of terrorist actions, or otherwise the CIA/FBI/DHS think they were either in the midst of planning or had been party to terrorist actions. But then again, they might have just been one of the people fighting in Afghanistan or Iraq that were captured, or wherever else they obtained their detainee's.

They were held in that hellhole illegally, without charge, and had their basic human rights abused horribly.

And jack, I would rather be dead then do anything like that to another human being. It's disgusting that they felt the need to do it over 200 times.. over 200 fucking times, when it's simulated drowning. I don't know about you, but one time I came close to drowning... and it was one of the most terrifying moments of my life. To willingly, and I'll bet happily, force that feeling onto another human being is a crime against humanity all on its own.

Two wrongs do not make a right, and the end does not justify the means.

Yes, of course, your one of those who would extend Constitutional rights to terrorists. You claim they were held illegally. Provide us with a cite, from a competent court of law, that has held this to be the case and ordered them freed. I've heard all of this nonsensical caterwauling about "illegalities". Laws are determined by courts. Yet the courts have yet to shut down Club Gitmo, nor prohibit water boarding of these fucking "boy scouts"!

In fact, we have evidence that these techniques have in fact saved the lives of innocent people. A plot to attack Los Angeles, with planes in much the same manner as 9-11, was disrupted, thanks to water boarding one of these filthy scum bags. Khalid Shiekh Mohammed, an admitted not suspected mastermind of 9-11, told interrogators of the plan after water boarding loosened his slimy tongue.

http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=46949

Good for the CIA! They made this sub human piece of shit give up a plan to harm innocent people. They should get fucking medals for their good work. Of course people like you, would rather jail patriots and coddle terrorists.