Waterboarding Used 266 Times on 2 Suspects

[HenryReardon]

There are other ways to elicit information after all and they all should be tried before you make the leap to torture.

All of which were likely exhausted before more effective means were brought to bear.

Now your turn to answer a tough question jack. I think we can all agree that the israelis have had more dealings with terrorists then we have yet the Israeli Supreme Court began its decision banning torture with a single word: Never

Surely you aren't naive enough to believe the Mossad doesn't use whatever methods it deems necessary.

It was never about their humanity jack its about ours.

[

Nonsense. It's all about your anti-war sentiments and/or your hatred of George Bush. Period.

 

[naked gent]

All of which were likely exhausted before more effective means were brought to bear.

If you say so Henry.

Surely you aren't naive enough to believe the Mossad doesn't use whatever methods it deems necessary.

I believe what they say which is torture is not the most effective way to elicit accurate information. I've read of some of their methods which are non violent and very clever. A good trick of theirs is getting those you want info from to believe you already know that info and once they believe that they usually open up.

But in any case its against their law and your only way around that seems to be 'they don't really mean that' and offering as proof nothing beyond a belief which comforts you.

Nonsense. It's all about your anti-war sentiments and/or your hatred of George Bush. Period.

Nonsense Henry even without the torture issue there are plenty of good reasons to hate George Bush.

 

[White Eagle]

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.

Good Lord, Jack. In this post you require Glafna to "Provide us with a cite, from a competent court of law, that has held this to be the case and ordered them freed", and then you come up with this:

Cybercast News Service (CNS) is a subsidary of the conservative news monitoring group, the Media Research Center (MRC). Originally calling itself the "Conservative News Service," CNS changed its name to Cybercast in 2000.

I took the following from a thread made back in March of 08 on this same subject. So, you will have to come up with a cite from a competent news source (I will not require a competent court of law) that proves that waterboarding Khalid Shaikh Mohammed made him confess to a plot to attack Los Angeles.
At the bottom the 2nd paragraph from the end states:

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan on March 1, 2003 — after the plot was discovered, after the plot was "derailed", after the pilot of the plane was captured. Khaled Sheikh Mohammed could not have "provided valuable information and saved lives" when all aspects of the plot were well-known and the attack had been foiled prior to his capture.

The rest of the article is about how he was waterboarded.

http://waterboarding.org/success_story

Waterboarding Success Stories: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Library Tower



The waterboarding of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is often cited as one of the major waterboarding "success stories". ABC News reporter Brian Ross credited waterboarding for the crucial information used to avert the destruction of Library Tower.

ROSS: That has happened in some cases where the material that's been given has not been accurate, has been essentially to stop the torture. In the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the information was very valuable, particularly names and addresses of people who were involved with al Qaeda in this country and in Europe. And in one particular plot, which would involve an airline attack on the tallest building in Los Angeles, known as the Library Tower.

The US Bank Tower plot was revealed to the public by President Bush on February 9, 2006 in a speech to the National Guard Association:

In the weeks after September the 11th, while Americans were still recovering from an unprecedented strike on our homeland, al Qaeda was already busy planning its next attack. We now know that in October 2001, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad -- the mastermind of the September the 11th attacks -- had already set in motion a plan to have terrorist operatives hijack an airplane using shoe bombs to breach the cockpit door, and fly the plane into the tallest building on the West Coast. We believe the intended target was Liberty [sic] Tower in Los Angeles, California.

Rather than use Arab hijackers as he had on September the 11th, Khalid Shaykh Muhammad sought out young men from Southeast Asia -- whom he believed would not arouse as much suspicion. To help carry out this plan, he tapped a terrorist named Hambali [Riduan Isamuddin], one of the leaders of an al Qaeda affiliated group in Southeast Asia called "J-I" [Jemaah Islamiyah]. JI terrorists were responsible for a series of deadly attacks in Southeast Asia, and members of the group had trained with al Qaeda. Hambali recruited several key operatives who had been training in Afghanistan. Once the operatives were recruited, they met with Osama bin Laden, and then began preparations for the West Coast attack.

Their plot was derailed in early 2002 when a Southeast Asian nation arrested a key al Qaeda operative. Subsequent debriefings and other intelligence operations made clear the intended target, and how al Qaeda hoped to execute it. This critical intelligence helped other allies capture the ringleaders and other known operatives who had been recruited for this plot. The West Coast plot had been thwarted.

Which aspects of this plot could Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's waterboarding have revealed?

* We learned about Al Qaeda's interest in flying planes into buildings on September 11, 2001.
* We knew about Al Qaeda's use of shoe bombs from Richard Reid, captured in December 22, 2001.
* We knew about Jemaah Islamiyah at least since the Bali Bomb attack on October 12, 2002.
* The "key al Qaeda operative" and pilot for the plot, Zaini Zakari, was arrested by Malaysian authorities in December 2002.

[RED]Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan on March 1, 2003 — after the plot was discovered, after the plot was "derailed", after the pilot of the plane was captured. Khaled Sheikh Mohammed could not have "provided valuable information and saved lives" when all aspects of the plot were well-known and the attack had been foiled prior to his capture.[/RED]
Coercive interrogation is extremely effective at obtaining confessions. Evidence obtained from coercive interrogation is highly dubious and must be corroborated with reliable sources. The claims of interrogators who coerce their prisoners should be treated with as much skepticism as the claims of the prisoners themselves.

Coercive interrogation is extremely effective at obtaining confessions. Evidence obtained from coercive interrogation is highly dubious and must be corroborated with reliable sources. The claims of interrogators who coerce their prisoners should be treated with as much skepticism as the claims of the prisoners themselves.

Now I've got to muddle through the rest of this thread and the rest of your trying to justify torture.

 

[White Eagle]

Now that I've muddled through I think that you, Jackoroe and jav1231 and Henry Reardon and letme owe all the posters of this thread an apology. In particular, Glafna, tx-beau, Drewsuf and Naked Gent.
I believe it was Drewsuf that suggested that you, jackoroe, act like a MOD. I also ask that you act like a MOD.
What you have said is not very MOD like.

 

[HenryReardon]

Now that I've muddled through I think that you, Jackoroe and jav1231 and Henry Reardon and letme owe all the posters of this thread an apology. In particular, Glafna, tx-beau, Drewsuf and Naked Gent.
I believe it was Drewsuf that suggested that you, jackoroe, act like a MOD. I also ask that you act like a MOD.
What you have said is not very MOD like.

Don't hold your breath.

Keep on apologizing for the terrorists all you like. We do, after all, have free speech.

 

[TX-Beau]

Eh..it worked. All I'm sayin'. He made an imminent threat that another attack was pending. I have no issue with it.

There is no consensus on whether it worked. People who want to believe it does, just believe. What does "it worked," mean anyway. Seems to me that if we really had all these highly placed Al Queda terrorists, and the torture of them worked, we'd have Bin Laden in custody by now.

Past that, what information were they trying to elicit? Did they already know there was an attack planned and were torturing to get specifics? Were they just torturing in general with the hopes that something would pop up? What was the evidence that the people they tortured had the information they wanted in the first place? Were they torturing in the hopes that one of the people they tortured would be someone who knew something? Are these two things the same? What other avenues did they pursue to try and get the same information? What is your standard for "worked."

Past that, it was illegal, do you agree that the President and his cabinet can ignore the law at will? Can we now apply that theory to Obama? Do you believe in the rule of law anyway? Do you believe that the United Sates is a country that gives lip service to the rule of law while being justified in doing anything it pleases? Is the US government required to follow it's own laws?

What are the consequences of following a policy of torture? Do you think this makes us better able to promote freedom and justice? Do you think our allies will be more amenable to following our lead if we are a nation that endorses torture? By following a policy of torture, do we recruit for the enemy? How many partisans do we create to plan more terrorist acts, with more venom, by behaving exactly as their leaders wanted us to behave?

But no, we don't want to think about any of this. We just walk around saying:

Eh..it worked. All I'm sayin'. He made an imminent threat that another attack was pending. I have no issue with it.

It never ceases to amaze me how conservatives who go on and on about the nobility of American Freedom and liberty, completely abandon both in an attempt to justify something wrong that was forced on them by Cheney. It's hardly the first time he lied to you. You should know better by now.

Conservatism will not recover until it backs away from the adolescent idea that posturing is strength, and intelligence is weakness.

 

[HenryReardon]

Past that, it was illegal, do you agree that the President and his cabinet can ignore the law at will? Can we now apply that theory to Obama? .

Obama is already ignoring both the law and the Constitution.

Get back to basics:

The rack is torture.
The iron maiden is torture.
Red hot pokers applied to skin is torture.

Waterboarding is NOT torture.

If it had happened during the Clinton admin. would you be quite so upset?
I doubt it.

 

[naked gent]

Get back to basics:

The rack is torture.
The iron maiden is torture.
Red hot pokers applied to skin is torture.

So if I'm understanding you correctly Henry you would not resort to these methods of eliciting information even if they would avert a possible terrorist attack and save innocent american lives?

Do I have that right?

 

[TX-Beau]

...There are none so blind as they who will not see...

 

[Julian89]

Obama is already ignoring both the law and the Constitution.

"I don't give a goddamn," Bush retorted. "I'm the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way."

"Mr. President," one aide in the meeting said. "There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution."

"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face," Bush screamed back. "It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"

Source: http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7779.shtml

Wow. I like it that right-wingers ranting President Obama fulfilling his promise of transparency. In all due fairness to the President, he seems to be taking many views into consideration before making any decisions. The mere fact that he talked to some rank and file officials before releasing this controversial human rights abuse memos mainly AG Holder shows how mature and responsible this statesman is. And I wish right-wingers would give him the credit on that.

And one more thing, for all those who argue that torture works, we must remember that these were almost the same techniques used in the Inquisition against possible witches and heretics back-then. But it is later found out that "confessions" made under these trials were false and were just given so as to stop further torture inflicted upon them.

 

[Glafna]

There is no dispute that KSM is a terrorist. He has freely admitted to being the mastermind behind 9-11. He has plead guilty to everything he was charged with down in Gitmo. He is a monster and murderer of epic proportions, by his own admission.

Now THAT is an outright lie. He was water boarded for the information, so therefore did not give it freely.

And as I said, it was 10 months between them admitting they had used water boarding on him, and his plea of guilty. And referring back to my example, a "monster and murderer of epic proportions" would not feel remorse, and would more then likely plead innocent to try to save their own hide.

 

[White Eagle]

Don't hold your breath.

Keep on apologizing for the terrorists all you like. We do, after all, have free speech.

What part of this do you not understand?

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was captured in Rawalpindi, Pakistan on March 1, 2003 — after the plot was discovered, after the plot was "derailed", after the pilot of the plane was captured. Khaled Sheikh Mohammed could not have "provided valuable information and saved lives" when all aspects of the plot were well-known and the attack had been foiled prior to his capture.

This plainly says that no lives were saved due to torture to Mohammed. He was NOT there to make the statement. All of what he was supposed to have said was already over by the time he was to have said it.

I really don't think you are this ignorant. Read the part in red again and again until you understand it.

 

[Glafna]

jav doesn't owe anyone an apology, as he has offended no one here.

jack, Henry, and possibly letme on the other hand, have made outright declarations about other people that are ridiculous, inflammatory, and most importantly, FALSE. And therefore DO owe apologies to several posters.

NO ONE is supporting terrorism. NO ONE is saying that terrorists are not bad people. What we ARE saying is that THE END DOES NOT JUSTIFY THE MEANS!!! It's the exact same thing with suicide bombers and flying planes into buildings. The Taliban and Al Queda got what they wanted, they wanted the US turned into a country held in fear, and I have a feeling they wanted the hatred of the US to spread in the Middle East.. as it would give them that many more recruits. Their end was met, but the means to attaining it does not justify their actions, nor does anything else.

And you wanna know something?? If it had happened under Clinton, I'd still be as opinionated and disagreeing with it as I am now. Bush and Cheney were scum, no doubt about it. They abused the American peoples trust horribly, and do not deserve any respect. If there are any other heads of state who had water boarding performed as an interrogation method, I would be demonizing them as well.

And here is the final argument.. which has been stated MANY times.

THE ACT OF WATER BOARDING HAS BEEN CONDEMNED AS TORTURE BY YOUR GOVERNMENT IN THE PAST!!!!

Here is a blurb from the war crimes trials after WW2.

Chase J. Nielsen, one of the U.S. airmen who flew in the Doolittle raid following the attack on Pearl Harbor, was subjected to waterboarding by his Japanese captors.[69] At their trial for war crimes following the war, he testified "Well, I was put on my back on the floor with my arms and legs stretched out, one guard holding each limb. The towel was wrapped around my face and put across my face and water poured on. They poured water on this towel until I was almost unconscious from strangulation, then they would let up until I'd get my breath, then they'd start over again… I felt more or less like I was drowning, just gasping between life and death."[29]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding#World_War_II

And guess what, the next section, which actually DOES use the term illegal.

Waterboarding was designated as illegal by U.S. generals in the Vietnam War.[73] On January 21, 1968, The Washington Post published a controversial photograph of two U.S soldiers and one South Vietnamese soldier participating in the waterboarding of a North Vietnamese POW near Da Nang.[74] The article described the practice as "fairly common".[74] The photograph led to the soldier being court-martialled by a U.S. military court within one month of its publication, and he was discharged from the army.[73][75] Another waterboarding photograph of the same scene is also exhibited in the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City.[76]

 

[Shafted]

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".

"Those who would forsake the ideals of liberty for a temporary safety, deserve neither safety nor liberty."

--Ben Franklin

 

[Kulindahr]

I believe what they say which is torture is not the most effective way to elicit accurate information. I've read of some of their methods which are non violent and very clever. A good trick of theirs is getting those you want info from to believe you already know that info and once they believe that they usually open up.

But in any case its against their law and your only way around that seems to be 'they don't really mean that' and offering as proof nothing beyond a belief which comforts you.

I read once that their captives don't always know that they aren't allowed to use torture, and in such cases they have a technique of talking to each other about items they could use for 'persuasion', never mentioning what such things might be used for. Apparently the prisoners' minds are creative enough -- or fearful enough? -- to invent rather horrifying things that might be done to them with whatever items the Mossad agents think up that they crack quite well without any such items ever being present. The freaky thing is that the items are just ordinary household objects or goods.

I could understand if they said things like a corkscrew and Drano -- the things someone might do to me with that combination is scary enough!

With that as an example, my guess is that the Mossad are quite creative enough to terrify their captives without ever resorting to torture -- or, as here, to let their captives terrify themselves.

 

[Kulindahr]

Don't hold your breath.

Keep on apologizing for the terrorists all you like. We do, after all, have free speech.

Yeah, and it lets people say really inane things.



Like, accusing others of "apologizing for terrorists".

 

[Kulindahr]

There is no consensus on whether it worked. People who want to believe it does, just believe. What does "it worked," mean anyway. Seems to me that if we really had all these highly placed Al Queda terrorists, and the torture of them worked, we'd have Bin Laden in custody by now.

Even before the internet it was possible to have an underground network with reliable communications, yet no one in various cells actually knowing anyone in others. With the 'net, that communications connect with personal disconnect is childishly simple.

That means we could capture a gross of Al Qaeda operatives and still never find one who had a clue where Bin Laden is, or be able to use them to trace back to someone who does.

 

[Kulindahr]

In all due fairness to the President, he seems to be taking many views into consideration before making any decisions. The mere fact that he talked to some rank and file officials before releasing this controversial human rights abuse memos mainly AG Holder shows how mature and responsible this statesman is. And I wish right-wingers would give him the credit on that.

Talking to his own (corrupt) appointees like Holder is likely to mean he's just going to hear agreement with his own views. Holder isn't that brilliant a star, anyway; the man does doublespeak very well.

On that note, though -- so does Obama.

 

[naked gent]

With that as an example, my guess is that the Mossad are quite creative enough to terrify their captives without ever resorting to torture -- or, as here, to let their captives terrify themselves.

Kul the truth, as elusive it may be to those with a world view similar to Henry's or jack's, is that the Mossad knows the people they are dealing with. They have an intimate knowledge of their culture and speak their language fluently which allows them to interrogate their captives and to trick them in ways beyond the capacity of the CIA.

In our case just finding people who can speak the language is a challenge and on the rare occasions when we do we are suspicious of the fact that they can speak the language.

Our inabilities are what leads us down the dark road to torture. Taking the time to know your prey, as the israelis do, is not something we're good at as immediate results are the currency of our culture.

But in the end the question that jack and Henry prefer to avoid is why is it that what Israel views as a moral question they view as a political question. Its not because we are under a greater threat, and its not because we've suffered more than Israel has. There must be some other reason but until they speak up as to what it might be all we can do is guess.

 

[jackoroe]

Now that I've muddled through I think that you, Jackoroe and jav1231 and Henry Reardon and letme owe all the posters of this thread an apology. In particular, Glafna, tx-beau, Drewsuf and Naked Gent.
I believe it was Drewsuf that suggested that you, jackoroe, act like a MOD. I also ask that you act like a MOD.
What you have said is not very MOD like.

Request denied until such time as the request for a judicial citation I asked for is provided. Then I might consider it. And citing ABC as a legitimate news source is really kind of funny, too!