GayPatriot

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Rumsfeld: WikiLeaks Proves Bush Was Right

by

Here’s the thing… I read this article and thought — “Duh, no kidding.”

But then it dawned on me that many lib/progressive drones will never accept these facts. Because they are so blinded by their anti-military views and too infected with Bush Derangement Syndrome.

Osama bin Laden’s death at the hands of U.S. special operations forces is a major success in our country’s war against al-Qaeda. As a result of the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation program and the intelligence gained from detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a major fraction of al-Qaeda’s senior leadership has been captured or killed since 2001.

This conclusion was inadvertently reinforced recently by WikiLeaks’ illegal disclosure of more than 700 classified Defense Department files on Guantanamo Bay detainees. Their publication has harmed our security and cemented the impression among allies that America is incapable of keeping secrets. But the material also provides compelling evidence of the effectiveness of Bush administration anti-terror policies after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The illegally released files, in addition to a host of declassified documents on U.S. detention policies posted at www.rumsfeld.com, record complex decisions and excruciating trade-offs that President Bush and national security officials had to make. They document the deadly techniques and intentions of hundreds of Guantanamo detainees who still desire to return to the fight, and the labors of analysts and interrogators who enabled us to stop additional attacks.

Gathering intelligence is a painstaking process. Some information comes in an immediately actionable form. More often, the significance of particular data, whether provided by senior or lower-ranking operatives, does not become apparent for months or years, as happened with the years-long effort to patch together information that led our forces to bin Laden.

The classified files from Guantanamo Bay, particularly those on senior operative Abu Faraj al-Libi, contain clues about al-Qaeda’s courier network and even mention Abbottabad. Had bin Laden closely followed WikiLeaks’ release of these documents April 25, it is unlikely he would have been there when U.S. Navy SEALs descended into his compound days later.

The primary documents are the best public evidence yet of our systematic efforts to ascertain detainees’ links to terrorism and to weigh the dangers of their potential release or repatriation. In a war in which our nation’s terrorist enemies hide among civilians and do not carry their arms openly, the question is not whether some unfortunate detention mistakes are made but whether there are appropriate protections to detect errors and correct them when discovered.

Read the whole thing — it is chock full of FACTS.

I can only hope that the most important lib/progressive sees the error of his previous anti-Bush, anti-American world view. He lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

I am not holding my breath.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Comments

  1. “The documents should also disprove some myths that have dogged Guantanamo and the reputations of those who honorably serve there. The classified record, for example, confirms that three detainees who died in 2006 were suicides — not, as some have irresponsibly alleged, victims of brutal interrogations. The documents chronicle the lengths to which military guards accommodated Muslim religious sensibilities: sounding a call to prayer five times a day, providing halal meals and touching Korans only with gloves — not flushing them down toilets, as was falsely alleged by one U.S. magazine. There was no policy of mistreatment, much less torture.”

  2. Maybe a little off-topic, but if certain interrogation techniques are immoral or illegal, then they shouldn’t be used and the fact that using them resulted in gaining useful information doesn’t justify their use. I’m not arguing for or against their use, but the fact that these techniques “worked” is not a valid argument when discussing their use with a lib.

  3. If some method of gaining intelligence that can prevent the loss of life may possibly be immoral, should it still be used? The answer is obvious to me, and, to me, it seems immoral not to use said method. In life or death situations, the most pragmatic approach should be taken, in my opinion. Any possible life or lives saved are worth more than the discomfort (or even permanent trauma or injury) of a possibly, but unlikely, innocent person. I don’t understand why the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” is such a divisive issue, especially since there is little (if any) evidence to suggest that it actually is torture.

  4. I agree with most of what you say Naam, but I am trying to look at this from the standpoint of someone who believes it is torture and shouldn’t be done. Coming back at them with the argument “look at the results” isn’t good enough, IMO.

  5. I think the left isnt as anti-military as we think. Most of them only hate the military when Republicans are in charge, and of those who are always anti-military, a large chunk of those only hate if cus they would rather spend the money on entitlement programs.

  6. Those who “believe” that waterboarding is torture set a typical unknowable standard: prove that it is not torture.

    Those who prattle about morality while practicing moral relativism for their own purposes of convenience set a typical impossible standard: Those who are moral must never waiver.

    There are two moral codes. The first is for individuals negotiating the vices of everyday life. That code is full of principles which delineate right from wrong and good from evil.

    The second moral code is for the “lifeboat” scenario which most of us never encounter. If your lifeboat is overloaded and people are swimming toward it ……. Unfortunately, this type of situation is the one that attracts the moral relativists and gins ups their imaginations and their ability and willingness to pontificate on nearly any little detail.

    Social liberals place the convenience of the womb over the life that is in it. That should be enough to explain moral relativism. But these same people will come back with doubts about how we treat terrorists. After all, terrorists have made it past being aborted and killed, so now they must be babied. That is how moral relativism works.

    The nation state is charged with protecting the safety and security of the people. To that end, it pays people to kill people under a set of codes and guidelines. Certainly, being a paid killer is immoral within the domestic framework of daily life. But being a soldier or member of a swat team under direct orders removes you from the domestic morality and places you under the state morality.

    Those who chatter about the Nuremberg trials, do not usually understand the complexity of separating what one is ordered to do as opposed to taking license and pleasure in carrying out the order. War makes such issues very knotty.

    To my knowledge, no waterboarding was done to a random person pulled off the street. That is as it should be. The random person is protected by the general code of morality.

    When a person reaches the level of prime interest to the authorities who are acting under the rules of martial law, the situation changes drastically. This is not “situation ethics.” This is the reality of war and the highly truncated domestic morality that goes with it.

    We are not vandals who rape and pillage. That is because our everyday moral code has profoundly affected how we fight wars. But the reality of war and the immediate circumstances may cause us to handle prisoners in a manner that would be entirely unacceptable in a town jail in peacetime.

    Osama bin Laden was shot in the face. Could he have been captured? That call was made by the military chiefs in the time of war. The SEAL who pulled the trigger is exonerated by virtue of his orders. KSM was waterboarded and the same conditions apply as to the “morality” of the action.

    I imagine that waterboarding is about as unpleasant a thing that you can walk away from without physical damage. I suspect that is why it is not generally applied to every captured terrorist who might have a little information.

    You can not explain this to a liberal and expect him to agree or even understand. The liberal is so tied to moral relativism that he can only focus on his determined opinion that the moral person is caught up in hypocrisy.

    It is not about torture or morality to the liberal. It is about sticking it to those who are moral and taunting them with “what would Jesus do?” and doing the political correctness two-step. You can not pin any liberal down to a set of values. That is because they never shut the door on a possible escape route.

  8. So, basically, you guys who oppose waterboarding under any circumstances think it’s better that innocent people should die than terrorists should suffer the discomfort of having water poured on their nose. Is that correct?

  9. Eddie – it’s easy to disapprove of many things *in the abstract*.

    It’s easy to criticize the Bushies (or the Obamarhoids who have continued and expanded many of the Bush polices they once condemned) from the outside.

    But if YOU are the one with the decision to make… what would you do.

    Myself, I oppose beating someone with a rubber hose to make them talk – in the abstract. But if my partner is the one in jeopardy then pass the hose and let me at the bad guys – they’ll spill the beans one way or the other.

    For us, it’s academic. But if you were the president, could you live with potentially thousands of deaths that may have been prevented with a few enhanced interrogations? Does the president have the right to unnecessarily sacrifice the lives of citizens?

    ILC – you mentioned something that’s always stuck in my craw: handling Korans with gloves. I figure that this “courtesy” simply confirms in the minds of these miscreants that we’re the filthy ones.

  10. So, basically, you guys who oppose waterboarding under any circumstances think it’s better that innocent people should die than terrorists should suffer the discomfort of having water poured on their nose. Is that correct?

    What was it that Spock said, before assuming room temperature, in Wrath of Khan?

  15. I can’t wait till you start calling Private Manning a hero of the republic.

    Honestly people despite starting at a very very pro-torture position I oppose it now based on the fact that the information is not that reliable and it destroys the personal and ethical guideline of practicing soldiers. This destruction leads to ever larger and more destructive acts that eventually kill the people they are suppose to be interrogating or worse destroy any possible goodwill with the prisoner or the general population they are from. If you read the research on why it should be avoided by non-covert institutions and compare it’s findings with what happened in the military after 2011. It is a text book case of what happens and why official policy should remain anti-torture.

  17. #18: “This destruction leads to ever larger and more destructive acts that eventually kill the people they are suppose to be interrogating or worse destroy any possible goodwill with the prisoner or the general population they are from.”

    Tim, what happened to you? Seriously.

  18. @V the K no I said don’t let it be official policy and only let the CIA indulge in it. However if you want a serious discussion of torture you’re going to have to do the research and all the research says the same thing. It’s not that effective and it destroys the integrity of any military institution that has ever engaged in it. Leave it to the shadows, not the troops. If we ever have a way of mind raping terrorist and taking every bit of their memory and leaving them an empty husk than fine lets use that, but until than let’s acknowledge that a tortured person will say anything to make it stop, that’s why they all sign confessions, and it if asked give long winded apologies to the state.

  19. [I] start[ed] at a very very pro-torture position

    Good for you Tim, you learned not to be evil. Meanwhile, the rest of us started at (and still have) an anti-torture position. I’m against torture.

    Now what does that have to do with this post? Remember, the topi ic is: “Rumsfeld: WikiLeaks Proves Bush Was Right.” As Rumsfeld elaborated (and as I already quoted at #1):

    “The documents should also disprove some myths that have dogged Guantanamo and the reputations of those who honorably serve there. The classified record, for example, confirms that three detainees who died in 2006 were suicides — not, as some have irresponsibly alleged, victims of brutal interrogations. The documents chronicle the lengths to which military guards accommodated Muslim religious sensibilities: sounding a call to prayer five times a day, providing halal meals and touching Korans only with gloves — not flushing them down toilets, as was falsely alleged by one U.S. magazine. There was no policy of mistreatment, much less torture.”

    If you want to have a meaningful impact with your comments, Tim, first you must say something remotely relevant.

    You must also avoid mis-using the word “torture” to refer to acceptable and useful interrogation tactics. If your meaning here is to refer to acceptable/useful interrogation tactics as being somehow “torture”, you show you basic unseriousness.

  20. @V the K no I said don’t let [torture] be official policy and only let the CIA indulge in it

    Whoa, Tim! You’re saying that torture is OK, when the CIA does it?

    Aside from the evil of that position, what about the self-contradiction of it? I mean, how do you propose to let torture be OK when the CIA does it, without having a *policy* that torture is OK when the CIA does it? Winking and nodding?

    let’s acknowledge that a tortured person will say anything to make it stop, that’s why they all sign confessions, and it if asked give long winded apologies to the state.

    No problem. Consider it acknowledged. But again: What does it remotely have to do with this post? I.e., with Bush policies, or for that matter with current CIA policies? Which, to be clear and in fact, are *not* pro-torture?

  21. (P.S. My joke comment #17 was obviously NOT intended to have a meaningful impact. My view is that if you understand what you are doing – that you are being unserious – you can be as irrelevant as you like. 😉 )

  22. @ILoveCapitalism I’d think i’d draw the line at beatings, asphyxiations, and water boarding, theres also little need to humiliate prisoners though it’s such a broad term because I have no problem treating them like prisoners but without the right to attorney’s. I’d allow sleep deprivation and cold temps.

  24. #25: ” I have no problem treating them like prisoners but without the right to attorney’s. I’d allow sleep deprivation and cold temps.”

    But, Tim, that could lead “to ever larger and more destructive acts that eventually kill the people they are suppose to be interrogating or worse destroy any possible goodwill with the prisoner or the general population they are from.” (Tim, comment # 18)

    Tim, if you start depriving a prisoner of sleep and/or don’t keep the thermostat at a comfortable temperature, you’re risking the destruction of “goodwill” with the prisoner (and possibly the “goodwill” of the general population the prisoner comes from). And I ask you, what’s more important than maintaining the “goodwill” of the prisoner?

  27. V, I think the discussion is a waste of time. Generally, the other party is only out to grandstand, or to smear poo on the walls; bringing in reasoned concepts has no effect except to reward that party by making the discussion both long and futile. BUT, since you’re going there and I like you, I’ll throw in another reason. Under the law, torture is a matter of intent. U.S. Special Forces are waterboarded in training, and it is not torture. Emergency surgery sans anesthetic will inflict both severe pain and severe injury (unlike waterboarding), yet is not torture. If there is a genuine life-saving intent (as opposed to, say, an intent to punish) and if the genuineness of that intent is reflected in the stress-inducing procedure being used only in controlled conditions (or as controlled as possible) and no more than absolutely necessary to achieve the genuine life-saving purpose, then it is not torture.

  28. (continued) In the case of waterboarding, they only ever did it to 3 terrorists, under highly controlled conditions and yes, it was effective in yielding life-saving information, where no other technique was at that time, in those 3 cases.

    I’ve never seen a leftie explain, if waterboarding somehow is torture, how emergency surgery isn’t. It’s not a matter of consent; emergency surgery can be done to you without your consent. Compared to emergency surgery done without anesthetics, waterboarding inflicts far less pain and carries far less risk of injury; and assuming it is done for an honest interrogative purpose, it may save a vastly greater number of lives.

  29. Obama’s Justice Department agreed that ‘torture’ is a matter of intent. From one of their legal briefs in 2009:

    [T]orture is defined as “an extreme form of cruel and inhuman treatment and does not include lesser forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. . . . ” 8 C.F.R. § 1208.18(a)(2). Moreover, as has been explained by the Third Circuit, CAT requires “a showing of specific intent before the Court can make a finding that a petitioner will be tortured.” Pierre v. Attorney General, 528 F.3d 180, 189 (3d Cir. 2008) (en banc); see 8 C.F.R. § 1208.18(a)(5) (requiring that the act “be specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering”); Auguste v. Ridge, 395 F.3d 123, 139 (3d Cir. 2005) (“This is a ‘specific intent’ requirement and not a ‘general intent’ requirement” [citations omitted.] An applicant for CAT protection therefore must establish that “his prospective torturer will have the motive or purpose” to torture him. Pierre, 528 F.3d at 189; Auguste, 395 F.3d at 153-54 (“The mere fact that the Haitian authorities have knowledge that severe pain and suffering may result by placing detainees in these conditions does not support a finding that the Haitian authorities intend to inflict severe pain and suffering. The difference goes to the heart of the distinction between general and specific intent.”)

    The Justice Department’s reference to ‘specific intent’ vs. ‘general intent’ concerns a legal doctrine which you can look up. Bottom line is that the CIA people who waterboarded the 3 terrorists under controlled conditions did not inflict severe pain and had no intention of doing so, therefore what they did is legally not torture.

    Patterico was good on this. From one link:

    Here is how “torture” is defined in 18 USC Sec. 2340:

    (1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control…

    [now quoting an article by Stuart Taylor] Congress quite deliberately chose not to limit the CIA to [the Army Field Manual’s interrogation] methods, and thus tacitly gave the CIA approval to use unspecified forms of physical coercion… The case law suggests that whether various interrogation practices shock the conscience depends on the importance and urgency of the information likely to be obtained and “exact analysis of [the specific] circumstances.”… Congress could seek to explicitly ban [waterboarding], along with other highly coercive techniques. It has not done so [i.e., had not as of Taylor’s and Patterico’s writing in May 2007, despite many opportunities]…

    As to the effectiveness of CIA waterboarding, and as quoted in Patterico, Brian Ross of ABC News reported the following:

    ROSS: … 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.

    O’REILLY: Well, in fact, you say in your report that more than a dozen plots, a dozen al Qaeda plots to kill people were stopped because of the information they got from coerced interrogation?

    ROSS: That’s what we were told by sources.

    O’REILLY: Do you believe that?

    ROSS: I do believe that.

    I have no doubt that if a 15 year old boy were to waterboard his sister, basically to terrify her despite his protestations of good purpose, that would be torture. So would be waking her up under certain circumstances, or playing certain music to her. Again, torture is a matter of intent – and courts determine the honesty and reasonableness of intent, all the time.

  31. ILC, I think we are in agreement. We don’t subject terrorists to discomfort out of vengeance or sadism, we do it to get information. It’s not that we feel good about doing it; it’s that we would feel much worse if innocent people died because we didn’t do it.

    Besides, if you can get over it by toweling off, it isn’t torture. (It’s similar to the difference between sex and love, in that regard.)

    And I agree that most of the people who get so shrill that waterboarding is torture are just grandstanding. None of them seemed the least bit bothered about OBL getting the double-tap to the head; surely, that was far more injurious than him getting water up his nose.

  32. if you can get over it by toweling off, it isn’t torture. (It’s similar to the difference between sex and love, in that regard.)

    Heh 🙂

    None of them seemed the least bit bothered about OBL getting the double-tap to the head; surely, that was far more injurious than him getting water up his nose.

    Agreed. No left-winger who crowed over OBL’s execution (which was extralegal, treating him as a battlefield combatant) has any standing left to complain about the vastly lesser offense of waterboarding. Including Obama.

  33. I’d have to agree with the statement that torture is a matter of intent. what i consider torture and what some of my liberal friends consider torture is radically different. I’ve had an ongoing debate for 3 years about this very subject and there are a few points I’d like to make. The Geneva convention 2 is radically different than the first, and I think it missed the point. The first Geneva convention clearly addressed none uniformed combatants, with the goal of reducing civilian deaths, the 2nd tried to bring legal procedures against said nonuniformed combatants in an attempt to end summary execution. I think this was a mistake, and has lead to the confusion of how to treat prisoners of war since the late 90’s. However with all this in context the clear issues of allowing the military to conduct torture versus summary executions has blurred the consequences of a state military torturing it’s prisoners. Because of the lack of clear guidelines post 2001 the military lurched towards prisoner abuse, something it had prided itself on not doing and lead to several deaths, embarrassing and morale killing photos, and the slippery slope of moral ambiguity. Do we want the reputation for a military you can’t surrender to or do we want the moral high ground? by leaving torture to the shadow groups the military can claim the high ground and the spiders can pick their targets. Doing the reverse leaves our troops more likely to be tortured, abused, or killed. Yes sometimes you can gain intelligence, but it’s no more or less suspect than intelligence gained through less brutal ways. celebrating barbarity is not seemly, so if research shows us thta we can achieve the same ends through new ways lets not disparage that information. Warfare is both psychological and physical we need to keep the goal in sight and not loose track of the fact that we want total victory, not just an abused populace waiting to rebel.

  34. as a non-uniformed combatant, Osama adopted the position that the world was the battle ground therefore it didn’t matter where he was found and killed from a legal perspective. By leaving the traditional battlefield he brought his method and place of death on his own head.

  35. Doing the reverse leaves our troops more likely to be tortured, abused, or killed.

    We are fighting barbarian savages who are going to torture and kill our troops anyway. The argument that our behavior will change this fact is based on wishful thinking, not reality.

    Osama adopted the position that the world was the battle ground therefore it didn’t matter where he was found and killed from a legal perspective.

    Tell that to the lefties who’ve been whining for nine years that detainees at Gitmo were just poor dears caught in the wrong place at the wrong time and should be considered innocent until proven guilty. (Yes, KSM included.)

  36. but until than let’s acknowledge that a tortured person will say anything to make it stop,

    What do I have to do to get you to stop with the bullcrap you posted above?

  38. it’s no more or less suspect than intelligence gained through less brutal ways

    Tim: it is a FACT that waterboarding KSM was EFFECTIVE in gaining ACCURATE information that saved thousands of lives.

    You keep saying that torture doesn’t yield reliable information. I agree. Let’s put 2 and 2 together, shall we? Since torture CANNOT yield reliable information, and since waterboarding DID yield reliable information, it follows (on that measure as on several other measures) that waterboarding is not torture.

    When done under controlled conditions and with a genuine intent to save lives, waterboarding cannot even be reasonably classed as ‘brutal’ (your word).

  39. But until than let’s acknowledge that a tortured person will say anything to make it stop,

    This is another stupid argument against Enhanced Interrogation. It’s not like intelligence officers are going to stake everything on a single utterance a detainee makes under duress. But if you have a detainee that gives you information that is consistent with other information from other sources, then you have an increased incidence of confidence in the reliability of said intelligence.

    It’s like Levi’s comments. You can’t take a single comment of his and assume he’s an idiotic buffoon, no matter how idiotic that one comment is. But when you look over a number of Levi’s comments made over a period of time, you the consist stupidity and vitriol of his comments shows that he is in fact an idiotic buffoon and a partisan hack with a distinctly deluded view of reality.

  40. V, agree and I would add only that: before you can check something for consistency, you must have something to check. So first, the terrorist has to give you the lead. In KSM’s case, only after waterboarding, he gave up a bunch of names and addresses for sleeper terrorists (who were planning future attacks). Then yeah, they checked those out.

  42. Perhaps cotton candy and pictures of rainbows and a comfy couch and TV stocked with Disney movies will make the terrorists want to betray information about their comrades, to save our citizens’ lives.

  43. (continued) That is less of a straw man than it appears. Once you concede that stressful interrogation is OK when it is necessary – that it makes people reveal tidbits they would otherwise hide – then you have conceded the essential point, and all that remains is to dicker over which stressful techniques are allowed “when” (and are effective, etc.).

  44. If that doesn’t work, ILC. We can always give them back-rubs and spa treatments. And even if they don’t give us intel, the mere fact that we give them spa treatments will lead them to reciprocate when our troops are captured.

    Or so the leftist reasoning goes.

  45. @ILoveCapitalism your reading skills are apparently at a low level or you only read what you want to, I said, the information is no more or less reliable and since there are drawbacks to using brutal torture (For our own military no less) other methods might as well be used.

    @VtheK where exactly did you develop you’re moral code? You’ve often said, “I don’t like treating people/saying things like this/doing things but since they are doing it I feel forced to. People murder other people because of traffic rage but I don’t, should I? after all other people do it therefore it is now acceptable in your eyes to do the same. Until you can understand the difference of why a mature adult acts a certain way rather debase themselves in blood, pain and, death than nothing I say here really matters. You often speak about the horrors of moral relativity but you seem to practice it far more than I do.
    If the military doesn’t torture people, and they have a reputation for treating their prisoners fairly (as written in the geneva convention of which we are legally bound signatories) than there a base line to judge the actions of our enemies. However if the rules of war break down and we act like they do, beheading torturing, maiming and raping, than what right do we have to judge them if we ourselves are willing to engage in the same actions with no remorse or legal debt? Now if the military has this reputation and keeps it, how much greater is the threat of handing them over to the CIA which has greater leeway in what they can do? It’s good cop/bad cop, it’s not rocket science. Do you really think that torture will always get someone to tell the truth? If so why is it used than by dictators to force false confessions?
    Honestly the old ways were best summary battlefield executions of non-uniformed combatants, until people fear the consequences of being a terrorist it will be seen as a legitimate for of combat. That was one of the central tenets of the First Geneva convention and it holds true today.

  46. @ILoveCapitalism your reading skills are blah blah blah

    (*yawn*)

    As I predicted at #30, this has been a waste of time – as far as discussion with Tim is concerned. But it was good to get my own thoughts in order – and V, always good interacting with you!

  47. Likewise, ILC. Who knows, ILC. Maybe someday someone will come along who will engage in debate on the substance of our actual comments; rather than throwing up a bunch of strawmen.

    What I said: Our use of interrogation techniques should not be predicated on a false premise that our troops will be treated humanely by our enemies if we treat their prisoners well.

    The Straw Man version (a.k.a what I didn’t say at all) : It’s OK for us to brutalize, maim, and mutilate captured enemy combatants because they do the same to ours.

    SRSLY? Why can’t we have a more adult level of argument around here?

  48. V, and what I said: Careful waterboarding can’t be torture because the latter is a crime of specific intent and, accepting the accounts from the CIA as fact, careful waterboarding was in reality the ONLY way (available at the time) to get certain information from KSM that saved thousands of American lives.

    The Straw Man Version: Pretend I said none of that.

  49. ILC, VtK,

    I love when they bring out the ‘but we signed Geneva’ canard.

    Fine, we signed Geneva. They didn’t. In fact they ignore the constraints of Geneva, meaning we can and should, kill them. W/o any ‘due process’.

    And if we have to use EIT on them to find them? We’re still abiding be Geneva. Heck, we could actually torture them instead of using carefully monitored EIT and still be following Geneva. According to Geneva, they don’t exist.

  50. Anyone who thinks waterboarding is torture needs to read “Unbroken” by Laura Hillenbrand (sp?)

    What the Japanese did to Allied POWs in a “good war” with “rules” was positively sadistic and beyond imagination for a civilized people.

    Our men were beaten with clubs and fists every day while being barely fed. And those were the GOOD days.

    I’d bet anyone of the POWs in Japanese camps would have traded any day they spent for one hour of waterboarding.

  51. @ILoveCapitalism your reading skills are apparently at a low level or you only read what you want to,

    He does know, at least, how to use than properly.

  52. Tim @ #48:

    Oh my goodness. Circular reasoning has never been so abused. Tortured, even.

    If the US military is known for beheading, maiming, slicing of noses, raping and gouging out eyes, how can the CIA, with more leeway improve on the mayhem? Truth be told, I don’t know.

    If dictators torture the daylights out of people to get them to sign false confessions, why do we think we can torture people into telling the truth? Truth be told, I don’t know.

    Why don’t we just execute non-uniformed combatants to teach them to wear uniforms. Truth be told, I don’t know.

    Why don’t we treat terrorists to the Geneva Conventions which do not apply to terrorists? Truth be told, why should we?

    Do you really think torture will always, 100.5% of the time get people to tell the truth? Truth be told, I don’t know.

    So, Tim: What is torture? You toss the word into the mix, so define it. And why must a “technique” work infallibly? You reference good cop/bad cop, so why the two “techniques” if a single technique must be infallible? (“Do you really think that torture will always get someone to tell the truth?“)

    Oh, yeah, why should the CIA have “more leeway” since the military and the CIA are both agents of the same government?

    And why not address why a non-uniformed combatant should not be given the full scope of the domestic, civilian US justice system? Why not send lawyers with every patrol in Afghanistan to represent the people the troops are determined to shoot? Huh?

    How do you draw your line in the sand?

    I really liked your logic concerning road rage, mayhem and moral relativity with you being exempt from your example. Do you think you could pare that down to some Ten Commandments sort of stricture that would make common sense across the millenia?

    I will await your profound unraveling of your own posting.