Patterico's Pontifications

12/10/2014

Current and Former CIA Directors Dispute Dem Torture Report

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:55 am



Three former CIA directors — George J. Tenet, Porter J. Goss and Michael V. Hayden — as well as three Deputy CIA Directors, took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to dispute the Democrat-penned torture report released yesterday:

What is wrong with the committee’s report?

First, its claim that the CIA’s interrogation program was ineffective in producing intelligence that helped us disrupt, capture, or kill terrorists is just not accurate. The program was invaluable in three critical ways:

• It led to the capture of senior al Qaeda operatives, thereby removing them from the battlefield.

• It led to the disruption of terrorist plots and prevented mass casualty attacks, saving American and Allied lives.

• It added enormously to what we knew about al Qaeda as an organization and therefore informed our approaches on how best to attack, thwart and degrade it.

The current CIA Director is reversing his previous declarations of agnosticism on the subject to agree that torture provided critical information.

Who is telling the truth?

74 Responses to “Current and Former CIA Directors Dispute Dem Torture Report”

  1. “Who is telling the truth?”

    LOL

    ThOR (130453)

  2. The Dems lie about everything else, why wouldn’t they lie about this. And notice the timing.

    f1guyus (647d76)

  3. Hey, tHor. Were you on Chicago 890 WLS this morning?

    nk (dbc370)

  4. Dianne Feinstein demonstrates once again how the assassination of George Moscone had some disastrous, far-reaching effects that have gone on for decades.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  5. Leaving no stone unthrown, Baracky Bolshevik.

    DNF (7b206c)

  6. what’s torturous is listening to these cia poofterboys whine

    they need to suck it up and dance with the dem whores who brought them to the dance

    after that they can waterboard a puppy or something

    happyfeet (a037ad)

  7. Let’s see, the leftist dems have lied about Fast & Furious, Benghazi, the IRS, Ferguson, “I can’t breathe”, Obamacare (700 times), immigration and just about every aspect of their “policies” and economic programs. So what would make anybody think that lying liars are now being truthful?

    Leopards don’t change their spots and as DNF alluded to, the dems have crossed over into all-out Bolshevik mode. Hell, they are the party that booed God…three times!

    Hoagie (4dfb34)

  8. Who is telling the truth?

    Given recent history, I can’t claim who is telling the truth, but I’m pretty sure the Democrats are lying.

    Dejectedhead (ec3741)

  9. We live in a dangerous world, complete with predators of the most vicious kind. With adversaries like ISIL and Al Queda , extreme measures are necessary. The real pofferboys are trying to hamstring our intelligence efforts for their own ends.

    Bar Sinister (b48c12)

  10. pifferboys

    happyfeet (a037ad)

  11. The Bigs see the storm clouds and double-down:

    http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2014/09/CB%20future.jpg

    Eggs will be broken.

    DNF (7b206c)

  12. the Senate report was “highly partisan and failed America”, per Bob Kerrey.

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  13. Who is telling the truth? If one of the people under consideration is a Democrat, you know that the truth is on the other side!

    The coldly realistic Dana (f6a568)

  14. Xmas cheer:

    10 Outrageous Predictions…

    1.Russia defaults again
    2.Volcano eruption decimates crops
    3.Japanese inflation to hit 5%
    4.Draghi quits ECB
    5.Corporate bond spreads to double in 2015
    6.Internet hacks smash online shopping
    7.China devalues yuan 20%
    8.Cocoa futures hit USD 5,000/tonne
    9.UK house sector to crash
    10.Brexit in 2017

    DNF (7b206c)

  15. If the Democrats had retained the Senate, and the lovely Senator Feinstein could have retained her chairmanship, this report would never have been released.

    Since the Democrats lost, now they are taking revenge. The appropriate response from the Republicans ought to be to refuse the Democrats’ placing of Mrs Feinstein on the Intelligence Committee; she should not be seated at all. Her security clearance should be revoked.

    It won’t happen, of course, but it should.

    The very realistic Dana (f6a568)

  16. Another grim chart:

    http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2014/12/Nirp%20bond%20chart.jpg

    Roubini says the next staircase down commences 2016. Watch your step.

    DNF (7b206c)

  17. CIA agents aren’t stupid people: they knew, full well, that “enhanced interrogation” techniques could be a personal liability for them, and if they didn’t produce good information, they’d have stopped using those methods by themselves. Those guys aren’t going to risk careers and freedom doing stuff that doesn’t work.

    The double-nought spy Dana (f6a568)

  18. Candidate for possible default, perhaps?

    Athens Stock Exchange Index is now down over 18% from Monday’s highs and yields on the 3Y GGB have exploded to 9.35% (pre-bailout levels) and are 75bps inverted to 10Y.

    Germany not happy.

    DNF (7b206c)

  19. Oil down to $60 and change today. Margin calls heard.

    DNF (7b206c)

  20. El Rushbo said he thought this report was payback to the CIA for their investigation of the Senate Intel committee.
    IDK, but it’s a thought.

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  21. Paradoxically, the ones looking to piggyback on the low oil prices are the ethanol producers. They’re trying, hard with radio ads even, to push their 15%. Because consumers are stupid and don’t understand that with ethanol they’re paying a lot of money for very little energy. But as long as gas prices stay low, they’ll go along with burning topsoil.

    Oh, and the socialists, too. The radio ad this morning for mandatory 15% in Chicago gas stationswas from Americans United for Change.

    nk (dbc370)

  22. 22. Any motor with a compression ratio above 8 is doomed.

    DNF (7b206c)

  23. Former Dem Senator (and MOH recipient) Bob Kerrey disses the report in an op-ed.

    http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2014/12/09/torture-cia-senate-intelligence-report-911-column/20088647/

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  24. How about we investigate Feinstein’s business dealings instead?

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  25. the report does not make sense, it says they knew abour Al Kuwaiti in Jan 2002, yet it took then more than two years for Hassan Ghul to point him out, without interrogation, it has the chief of interrogation, complaining they had no information, yet they say they got plenty, it’s totally gruber

    narciso (ee1f88)

  26. The Feinstein report will be used to justify closing GITMO, transferring KSM since he can’t be prosecuted and restructuring the CIA. That’s the why no one seems to be able to identify. Just wait…

    crazy (cde091)

  27. Send them to the world court for trial if they are so innocent they should want to clear their names. Conservative mantra “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear!”

    ameriKKKa (c7740f)

  28. “…to agree that torture provided critical information.”

    Who defined “water boarding” as “torture”, and where?
    If we’re going to have a conversation, we first have to speak the same language.
    Is it not true that in the law, “torture” is described as an act that causes long-term pain and disability – something that does not occur with “water boarding”?

    askeptic (efcf22)

  29. 16- The appropriate GOP response is for Mitch to fire the Intell Cmte Dem staff that compiled this garbage, with prejudice.
    That he won’t tells us all we need to know about Mitch.
    And, Yes, DiFi needs to 86’d from the Intell Cmte in the same manner as was “Leaky” Leahy.

    askeptic (efcf22)

  30. Those guys aren’t going to risk careers and freedom doing stuff that they admit doesn’t work, or admit doesn’t do too much, or even does damage.

    The careers are actually over in most cases, and the legal problems, which were a bog concern for a long time, and was part of the reason no people were interviewd by the Senate committee, have been dropped, without being quite resolved. They did get approval from the whote House Office of Legal Counsel.

    The CIA hasn’t had any prisoners since 2008.

    Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58)

  31. 29. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding

    The term water board torture appeared in press reports as early as 1976.[7] In the fall of 2007, it was widely reported that the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was using waterboarding on extrajudicial prisoners and that the Office of Legal Counsel, Department of Justice had authorized the procedure among enhanced interrogation techniques.[8][9] Senator John McCain noted that in World War II, the United States military hanged Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American prisoners of war.[10] The CIA confirmed having used waterboarding on three Al-Qaeda suspects: Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, in 2002 and 2003.[11][12]

    The Senate report says it was actually more tahn just these three.

    It also says the CIA kept on saying it had held only held 98 prisoners all told, even though the true number was 119 – of which it said, 26 were wrongly held.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/10/world/senate-intelligence-committee-cia-torture-report.html

    The report also said that the C.I.A.’s leadership for years gave false information about the total number of prisoners held by the C.I.A., saying there had been 98 prisoners when C.I.A. records showed that 119 men had been held. In late 2008, according to one internal email, a C.I.A. official giving a briefing expressed concern about the discrepancy and was told by Mr. Hayden, then the agency’s director, “to keep the number at 98” and not to count any additional detainees.

    The committee’s report concluded that of the 119 detainees, “at least 26 were wrongfully
    held.”

    It said one was an ‘intellectually challenged’ man held only as leverage on another member of his family, two were former CIA sources who were intelligence sources for foreign liaison services (whats the story there?) and two were held only because of information fabricated by a C.I.A. detainee subjected to the C.I.A.’s enhanced interrogation techniques.”

    Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58)

  32. Eventually almost everyone tells the truth, even if they don’t believe it.

    I am sure it’s not the Democrats’ time yet. There may never be such a time.

    Not so sure I believe the Republicans, either ….

    That we encourage terrorists to strike at us with this nonsense (that is, the report and the hearing) is a disgrace. Did this start under Clinton, or the elder Bush? (Well, waterboarding has been around for close to a half-century, at least.)

    htom (9b625a)

  33. We do know that “extraordinary rendition” was started under Clinton, following the Twin Towers bombing in ’93.

    askeptic (efcf22)

  34. With the exception of Finkelman and his ilk, just who gives a damn anyway?

    Rorschach256 (61bf43)

  35. It’s retaliation for the CIA spying on Feinstein’s staff once they tracked them illegally downloading secret files from a secure CIA computer. They should have pursued it through channels instead, but were afraid of what anyone connected with a known security risk like mega-leaker DiFi might do with sensitive stuff.

    She is a very nasty person.

    Estragon (ada867)

  36. 26. narciso (ee1f88) — 12/10/2014 @ 10:00 am

    the report does not make sense, it says they knew abour Al Kuwaiti in Jan 2002,

    I don’t knows it says January – January os the month in 2004 when Hassan Ghul identified him one of the top three people most likely to be woth Osama bin Laden.

    The Senate report says that several detainees in the custody of other governments, said in 2002, that al-Kuwaiti may have been a courier, and that the CIA is not counting that. Of course, that’s not the same thing as saying he is very important, or a personal aide to Osama bin Laden.

    The report seems to treat mention of someone – a lead – as the same thing as the best possible information.

    yet it took then more than two years for Hassan Ghul to point him out, without interrogation,

    With interrogation, but without “enhanced interrogation.

    It quotes some memo as saying he “sang like a tweetie bird” and “opened up right away, and was co-operative from the outset.” And says 21 reports were filed in 2 days.

    Then some idiots or worse took him away for enhanced interrogation and stopped all of that.

    It says that nothing after that from him was very valuable. Or at least no “no actionable threat information.” The al-Kuwaiti information wasn’t actionable either, really.

    KSM had been asked a;-Kuwaiti about him already in 2003. He was a name. He said that he was “retired”. Abu Zubaydeh had been asked about him also and said he was never a courier.

    That is the whole basis for saying that waterboarding led to Osama bin Laden.

    At a date I do not yet know, but apparently some time after 2004, a female CIA analyst, spotted the discrepancy between what KSM had said and what Abu Zubaydeh had said and said, or maybe it was used this to argue, that al-Kuwaiti was a really important person.

    it has the chief of interrogation, complaining they had no information, yet they say they got plenty, it’s totally gruber

    The report tries to argue that everything they gained from “enhanced interrogation” they could have, or did, learn some other way. They will not concede that even one little thing was learned because of that.

    This ignores that sometimes people need to be hit over the head multiple times with information till they pay attention or till the penny drops. And also that there are investigative priorities.

    Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58)

  37. (Well, waterboarding has been around for close to a half-century, at least.)

    I hope you know that it has been part of SERE training for US airmen for longer than that. Fools and Democrats (But I repeat myself) don’t know that.

    Mike K (90dfdc)

  38. hanging boehner by his balls would be torture
    hanging boehner by his balls and giving him a razor blade would be compassionate.

    mg (31009b)

  39. Who is telling the truth?

    Neitehr of them, actually, probably.

    The CIA is exaggerating the value of enhanced interrogations and minimizing its mistakes, if they were mistakes, and the committee report is determined to prove that they were of absolutely no use, and it does it by making two assumptions:

    1) It counts as valuable only immediately actionable intelligence.

    2) If anything was reported anywhere else, it assigns that as the source of the information. (and assigns no value at all to hearing something twice, or three times, or more. and it;s enough for something to be a lead.)

    What’s also getting lost is that nothing even close to what went on – any kind of diffeernces in treatment, promises of punishment or no punishment – or any interrogations at all – of prisoners is going on, except when they are facing crimninal charges, in which case they may be interrogated for a short time, in search of imminent threats, before being given Miranda warnings.

    They can actually be interrogated more if facing criminal charges.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)

  40. Roubini says the next staircase down commences 2016. Watch your step.

    Roubini also predicted in 2008 a 10% decline in the rate at which goods and services were produced in the economy and the Dow Jones Index would be falling to 4,000 in 2009. He predicted in additionthat over $100 bn would have to change hands following the credit default swaps auction re the Lehman Brothers bonds, and insisted on this after the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation reported that the amount would be $6 bn. The man’s not a huckster in the manner of Nassim Taleb, but he has his biases.

    Art Deco (ee8de5)

  41. Waterboarding only works with people who are afraid that they will die. SERE volunteers know in advance that there are cardiologists with ventilators and defibrillators standing by. They had to waterboard KSM 183 times? He probably finally broke down from boredom.

    Or from the prolonged malnutrition, sleep-deprivation, administration of psychotropics, chaining in contorted positions, and being kept in a 40 degree Fahrenheit concrete cell? But let’s talk only about waterboarding and SERE.

    nk (dbc370)

  42. except when they are facing crimninal charges, in which case they may be interrogated for a short time, in search of imminent threats, before being given Miranda warnings.

    They can actually be interrogated more if facing criminal charges.

    Nonsense ! POWs are not “facing criminal charges !” Obama has decided to kill them instead of capture and interrogate. That’s all.

    The possible intelligence from the “underwear bomber” stopped when he was given Miranda warnings by the FBI.

    Mike K (90dfdc)

  43. the committee report is garbage, actually I’ll go further it a declaration of war against the intelligence community and an invitation for AQ to strike at us,

    narciso (ee1f88)

  44. Mike K (90dfdc) — 12/10/2014 @ 3:50 pm

    Nonsense ! POWs are not “facing criminal charges !” Obama has decided to kill them instead of capture and interrogate. That’s all.

    That is approximately correct.

    The way Barack Obama has things set up now, you can’t ask any POW any questions -or at least you can’t offer him any kind of indicement whatsoever to talk, but you can offer indicements to people facing criminal charges, and every al Qaeda person taken into U.s. custody, now faces criminal charges.

    The possible intelligence from the “underwear bomber” stopped when he was given Miranda warnings by the FBI.

    But under the new dispensation, there would have been even less interrogation had he been treated as a POW.

    Sammy Finkelman (03c82c)

  45. There’s a third option, Sammy. The one Bush used. Al Qaeda operatives do not qualify for POW status — there are, I think, 4 specific requirements in the Geneva Convention and they satisfy NONE of them. As far as the Convention is concerned, we could execute them after a military tribunal found them guilty of being illegal combatants. Our laws say different, perhaps, but that does not make them “POWs”. They are quite exactly “war criminals.”

    Kevin M (25bbee)

  46. From one of Sammy’s quotes, from Wikipedia:
    Senator John McCain noted that in World War II, the United States military hanged Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American prisoners of war.[10]

    My understanding that this is at least a mistake, if not a lie. What the Japanese did that some have called “Waterboarding” was different from what the US enhanced interrogation technique is.
    As commonly said, some of our military go through everything we did to detainees as part of their training. I don’t think we do to our own soldiers the same things that warranted execution for Japanese officers convicted of war crimes.

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  47. Lawyers need to get out of the war game.

    mg (31009b)

  48. “My understanding that this is at least a mistake, if not a lie.”

    MD in Philly – Your understanding is correct. What the Japanese did in WWII was not the same and I do not believe any Japanese soldier was executed solely for using water torture on a U.S. P.O.W. It was typically among a basket of charges levied someone receiving the death sentence. It does, however, perpetuate misinformation popular on the left eight or nine years ago originally stemming from somebody’s graduate thesis on the subject.

    daleyrocks (bf33e9)

  49. I don’t get McCain’s take on all of this. I would think he should know people that can clarify what is “waterboarding torture” vs. waterboarding,
    and things I’ve read from military and CIA interrogators is that they would love to be held by an enemy that does what we did, instead of what they do. I would think McCain knows the difference between torture and enhanced interrogation, so I don’t know if he has some kind of PTSD response when the “T” word is mentioned, or if he is just politically posturing and showing he is not “one of those kind” of Repubs.

    MD in Philly (f9371b)

  50. The SERE mythology arises from the two psychologists, James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, the CIA hired to defeat the resistance methods taught to trainees at SERE. They reverse engineered the SERE training. Primarily, they implemented Martin Zeligman’s learned helplessness theories. McCain might have experienced some of that — sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition and hydration, cramped confines, immobilized or contorted positions, slaps, manhandling, loud noises, uncomfortable temperatures, around the clock non-stop questioning — as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese.

    nk (dbc370)

  51. 42. … SERE volunteers know in advance that there are cardiologists with ventilators and defibrillators standing by…

    There is so much wrong with what you have to say, nk, I’ll just unpack that one sentence.

    SERE students normally aren’t volunteers; you are required to go to SERE if you intend to be an aviator or a SEAL or work in any high-risk-of-capture specialty. The amusing thing is, not everyone who gets into those fields of endeavor is aware of that fact. They find out they have to go to SERE and they don’t like it. Tough. They either go to SERE and pass or they lose their jobs. Which makes SERE training a requirement, not an option.

    I went through although I strictly speaking didn’t have to. But I’m weird. Also I wanted to shut my Ops O up and remove every last little BS excuse he had for not putting me on the flight schedule.

    There are no teams of cardiologists standing by with defibrillators and ventilators or what have you. If there is any medical staff present you certainly will not know it. That would remove all the realism and defeat the entire purpose of the training. By the point in the training when they get around to waterboarding you or anyone else, you have suspended your disbelief. It is real. It is supposed to feel real or else the training has no value whatsoever.

    …But let’s talk only about waterboarding and SERE.
    nk (dbc370) — 12/10/2014 @ 3:42 pm

    What’s the point? You have no clue about what you’re talking about. And after all these years you clearly intend to studiously avoid them.

    About the only thing of value you’ve added by expressing your ignorance on the subject of waterboarding is this. If it were actually a torture, you’d need medical staff on hand. The US has a legal definition of torture.

    18 U.S. Code § 2340 – Definitions

    As used in this chapter—
    (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…

    If waterboarding, as applied in both SERE training and in these enhanced interrogations, came anywhere near the definition of torture you’d need to do it in an ER because people would be dying right and left of heart attacks. Only people who don’t know better, and some who damn well should know better, talk about waterboarding as practiced by the US as torture.

    http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/waterboarding-is-torture-period-links-updated-9

    Waterboarding is Torture… Period (Links Updated # 9)

    by Malcolm Nance

    …In fact, waterboarding is just the type of torture then Lt. Commander John McCain had to endure at the hands of the North Vietnamese. As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately. SERE staff were required undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception. I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school’s interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques used by the US army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What was not mentioned in most articles was that SERE was designed to show how an evil totalitarian, enemy would use torture at the slightest whim. If this is the case, then waterboarding is unquestionably being used as torture technique.

    With regards to the waterboard, I want to set the record straight so the apologists can finally embrace the fact that they condone and encourage torture.

    …There is No Debate Except for Torture Apologists

    1. Waterboarding is a torture technique. Period. There is no way to gloss over it or sugarcoat it. It has no justification outside of its limited role as a training demonstrator. Our service members have to learn that the will to survive requires them accept and understand that they may be subjected to torture, but that America is better than its enemies and it is one’s duty to trust in your nation and God, endure the hardships and return home with honor.

    2. Waterboarding is not a simulation. Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.

    Waterboarding is a controlled drowning that, in the American model, occurs under the watch of a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a trained strap-in/strap-out team. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that…

    The plain and simple truth is this; Malcolm Nance is a liar. There is no such thing as “controlled drowning.” Drowning is drowning. Consequently, no one ever aspirates water in a US-administered waterboarding. Ever. Because the mortality rate would shoot through the roof.

    15-20 percent of people who drown have no water in their lungs. The larynx spasms when water (or other liquids) threaten to enter the lungs. That 15-20 percent will die of heart attacks before the larynx allows water into their lungs. And the idea that you could feel “pint after pine” of water involuntarily filling your lungs is a physical impossibility. You’d be unconscious. And a teaspoon of water can and does kill people. They can be taken out of the water, be walking and talking and completely asymptomatic, and then drop dead inside of 24 hours. And then there’s secondary, where the lungs fill up with fluid the body generates due to pulmonary edema.

    If we did waterboarding as this fool would have you believe, 100% of the students who underwent waterboarding would have to be hospitalized. We’d probably have a 25-30% mortality rate.

    That’s some “controlled drowning,” huh?

    And the survivors would be physical and/or psychological wrecks. Because actual no s#%$ torture produces lasting physical, mental, and emotional scars. But waterboarding doesn’t.

    And unless you know of some secret cache of waterboarding experts who learn some other way of doing it besides by practicing on SERE students, by all means please speak up, nk. The world wonders.

    So Malcolm Nance is lying about waterboarding for public consumption.

    Steve57 (1985cb)

  52. 51. The SERE mythology arises from the two psychologists, James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, the CIA hired to defeat the resistance methods taught to trainees at SERE. They reverse engineered the SERE training. Primarily, they implemented Martin Zeligman’s learned helplessness theories. McCain might have experienced some of that — sleep deprivation, inadequate nutrition and hydration, cramped confines, immobilized or contorted positions, slaps, manhandling, loud noises, uncomfortable temperatures, around the clock non-stop questioning — as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese.
    nk (dbc370) — 12/10/2014 @ 8:39 pm

    Thank gawd none of that stuff goes on in SERE school, nk.

    Steve57 (1985cb)

  53. SERE students normally aren’t volunteers;
    followed by
    you are required to go to SERE if you intend to be an aviator or a SEAL or work in any high-risk-of-capture specialty.

    Sorry, Steve. The double-talk fuse blew on my hearing aid. Can’t hear you anymore.

    nk (dbc370)

  54. Nice try at pretending you have a point, nk.

    SERE training is a requirement for some military specialties. Anyone who fails to complete SERE training washes out of that particular pipeline. Often right out of the military entirely. It’s not optional. Almost no one ever volunteers for SERE.

    I suppose you’re hanging your hat on the fact it’s an all volunteer force. Right now, at this moment, it is.

    But to speak of students as “SERE volunteers” makes as little sense as speaking of law school students who “volunteer” to study torts or contracts.

    I know; that’s really complicated.

    Steve57 (1985cb)

  55. I don’t even ….

    nk (dbc370)

  56. Law students do volunteer to study torts or contracts. If they don’t want to study torts or contracts, no one is going to make them. They do it, even though they don’t have to do it. That’s what a volunteer is.

    By the same logic, people in the military volunteer to undergo SERE regimens.

    Leviticus (f9a067)

  57. They may be compelled by a desire to advance their careers or better serve their country or whatever, but they aren’t compelled at gunpoint, and there’s a difference.

    Leviticus (f9a067)

  58. Law students do volunteer to study torts or contracts. If they don’t want to study torts or contracts, no one is going to make them. They do it, even though they don’t have to do it. That’s what a volunteer is.

    “Have you ever done any volunteer work?”

    “You mean other than my torts and contracts classes? Yes, property, con law, and crim pro.”

    Patterico (9c670f)

  59. Actually, I suspect the whole SERE/Mitchell/Jessen mythology is a lie. A CIA smokescreen. A double bluff to hide what actually went on. “Dezinformatsiya”. Why would the CIA need a couple of psychologists to teach it how to torture by reverse-engineering the SERE training? When it has been doing it for its entire existence? Widely, in the Phoenix program in Viet Nam. Teaching it to Latin American death squads in the School of the Americas, and to other tinpot dictatorships around the world. If it needed a refresher course, all it had to do was call some of its veterans or alumni.

    nk (dbc370)

  60. 46. Kevin M (25bbee) — 12/10/2014 @ 6:20 pm

    There’s a third option, Sammy. The one Bush used. Al Qaeda operatives do not qualify for POW status — there are, I think, 4 specific requirements in the Geneva Convention and they satisfy NONE of them.

    That’s right. That was the Bush Administration position. They were not POWs, but “enemy combatants>”

    I think they said, at some point anyway, that they would be treated as if they were POWs (but noboy could make a claim and charge the U.S. with violating the Geneva Conventions). That may be teh Obama Administration position, because they still have not been classified as POWs.

    Earlier, it was said they would be given the rights of POWs, or many of he rights, on humanitarian grounds. None of the enhanced interrogations, by the easy, took place at Guantanamo, but that’s misunderstanding is probably the reason for the promise to close Guantanamo. Guantanamo was indeed selected as a means of avoiding law, but what it was avoiding was habeus corpus. Later, the Supreme Court said habeus corpus applied there, too because it was just the same as U.S. territory. But in the meantime a very good prison, that couldn’t be better suited for Moslems, offshore, had been built.

    As far as the Convention is concerned, we could execute them after a military tribunal found them guilty of being illegal combatants. Our laws say different, perhaps, but that does not make them “POWs”. They are quite exactly “war criminals.”

    If individually guilty, yes. I am not sure if some of them are not being charged with that. That’s what amilitary tribunal does.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Khalid_Sheikh_Mohammed

    Human rights groups, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the Center for Constitutional Rights, and U.S. military defense lawyers have criticised the military commissions for lacking necessary rights for a fair trial. Critics generally argue for a trial either in a federal district court as a common criminal suspect, or by court-martial as a prisoner under the Geneva Conventions which prohibit civilian trials for prisoners of war.[1] Mohammed could face the death penalty under any of these systems.

    Since he is neither a common criminal suspect, or a prisoner of war, I think he’s being charged with war crimes.

    Yes, here it is. At least he was at one point:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khalid_Sheikh_Mohammed

    He was charged in February 2008 with war crimes and murder by a U.S. military commission at Guantanamo Bay detention camp and faces the death penalty if convicted.

    The case was transferred to a civilian court – or supposed to be – and then back again to a military commission by the Obama Administration. The case apparently is still active, proceeding slowly.

    Sammy Finkelman (f5c867)

  61. 51. Gail Collins in her column in the New York Times today puts it this way:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/11/opinion/gail-collins-its-cruel-its-useless-its-the-cia.html

    She says they took two psychologists who had some expertise in training Air Force officers how to resist (North Korean intterrogation basically)

    She says they may have done a great job in showing their students how to withstand pressure to record a statement denouncing the United states when they crash into North Korea. But that’s not precisely the same thing as getting a suspected al Qaeda operative to tell you where Osama bin Laden is.

    They had some theories about breaking people – learned helplessness. So they tried it.

    Some of the prisoners had already been co-operating. Others turned out to have no involvement with al Qaeda whatsoever. And some were undoubtably, bad people with information the CIA needed, who hadn’t talked voluntarily.

    The question then becomes did they co-operate better.

    Well, she says, there’s a lot of precedent that it doesn’t.

    And then she tells a story, which, if you think about it, might explain why Japan surrenderd so quickly. Just after the Hiroshima bomb was dropped, an American pilot was captured. He was tortured for information about the atomic bomb, of which he actually knew nothing. Threatened with beheading (note, by the way, there are some other methods of pressuring people other than torture) he said the U.S. had 100 atomic bombs – not true, the last one was used up on Nagasaki – but this happened to be exactly what the Potsdam declaration implied, and what Truman wanted them to think – and that Tokyo was the next target.

    This information was immediately shared with the war minister and the Japanese war cabinet.

    And I suppose similarly, you can say, KSM and maybe others revealed many non-existent or impractical plots which the CIA took very very seriously. Like anthrax weaponization.

    Sammy Finkelman (f5c867)

  62. Gail Collins does not get into why waterboarding was chosen as a tactic. This was explained years ago. It was because they didn’t want to harm the detainees – risk killing them or anything like that, although one did die in a CIA run prison.

    So they did things they had experience with – which they knew how to do withou killing people – which happened to be the Chinese devised methods of forcing prisoners to make untrue statements, that the interrogators knew were untrue!

    Sammy Finkelman (f5c867)

  63. Volunteer

    1.
    a person who voluntarily offers himself or herself for a service or undertaking.
    2.
    a person who performs a service willingly and without pay.
    3.
    Military. a person who enters the service voluntarily rather than through conscription or draft, especially for special or temporary service rather than as a member of the regular or permanent army.
    4.
    Law.

    a person whose actions are not founded on any legal obligation so to act.

    Leviticus (9382da)

  64. Ah, Leviticus, the memories you brought back of my 1L. How the Jesuits put me in a strait-jacket and then in a 4x4x6 steel box with airholes and flew me 9,000 miles from Afghanistan to Loyola. How the kept me on naloxone the whole time I was there. How every time I got a question wrong in Torts, they would take me to a concrete cell, shackle me to an eye-bolt in the floor, lower the temperature to fifty degrees Fahrenheit, and pour buckets of ice water on me. Those were the days.

    nk (dbc370)

  65. The Democrats’ sell-out of the CIA might be worth it if the folks at the CIA would actually focus on who sold them out, but they won’t. Instead, what they will learn is that Republicans have their back and Democrats will turn on them, so they will focus on pleasing Democrats. It’s a foreign policy disaster but they won’t care, because disasters keep them in business.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  66. At this point, I’d favor out-sourcing the CIA.

    DRJ (a83b8b)

  67. Well then, I guess it’s completely voluntary to even take the bar exam if you want to be a lawyer. You can after all practice law without passing the bar exam.

    Steve57 (1985cb)

  68. 64. Military. a person who enters the service voluntarily rather than through conscription or draft, especially for special or temporary service rather than as a member of the regular or permanent army.
    4.
    Law.

    a person whose actions are not founded on any legal obligation so to act.

    Leviticus (9382da) — 12/11/2014 @ 8:04 am

    But a person ordered to SERE school does have a legal obligation to act. They have to go. And there have been people who have been surprised to find out that they had to go to SERE school. They certainly didn’t volunteer for it, and wouldn’t have gone if they could have avoided it.

    The only thing voluntary about the service at this moment in our history is entry.

    Steve57 (1985cb)

  69. DRJ

    As America is waking up to the fact that the Democrats don’t have our back – As many brave Americans who sacrificed in our armed services – the fact that the CIA was there to make sure they were safe is on the minds of many African American and Hispanic veterans. Couple that with The first Black President virtually ignoring the NAACP and the community as a whole – not traveling to Ferguson, pandering to illegal immigrants has furthered sown dissention or disinterest in the democrat party.

    Could this be the beginning of the migration to the republicans?

    Hmmm

    EPWJ (db4127)

  70. DRJ, a couple of Winston Churchill quotes:

    “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”

    “There are a lot of lies going around … and half of them are true.”

    nk (dbc370)

  71. the CIA deepsixed the KUBARK manuals, after a previous kerfluffle, when Torricelli was trying to impress Bianca Jagger, and Deutsch dialed to eleven and purged the whole asset list, and a whole passel of operatives

    narciso (ee1f88)

  72. 69. American Standard bulldog. Note to butt: keep clear.

    DNF (7b206c)


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