Patterico's Pontifications

Slow news Tuesday.

Patterico (9c670f) — 12/9/2014 @ 7:47 am

it’s super-easy not to get tortured by the government just buy my book Tips and Strategies for to Avoid Getting Tortured by the United States Government

it’s loaded with lots of practical advice and tons of testimonials from people who’ve successfully road-tested all the different approaches I lay out – one of them is sure to work for you!

happyfeet (a037ad) — 12/9/2014 @ 7:54 am

Dude, that was like six years ago. What difference at this point does it make?

nk (dbc370) — 12/9/2014 @ 7:55 am

It’s a huge news day because Gruber is appearing before Issa’s committee so the Obama Administration had to do something big to make sure the media would have an excuse not to cover Gruber. But this should do the trick since the media can’t resist when it comes to Bush and torture.

DRJ (a83b8b) — 12/9/2014 @ 8:07 am

Torture Report? Huh, wonder what Valerie Plame is up to these days?

Yujin (284134) — 12/9/2014 @ 8:11 am

Even Democrats are savaging Gruber, although they’re mad at him for his stupidty instead of his honesty. And Gruber is sitting next to CMS Secretary Tavenner, a photo op the White House desperately wanted to avoid.

DRJ (a83b8b) — 12/9/2014 @ 8:22 am

All the major networks, even Fox, are covering the Feinstein press conference on the torture report. It’s as if Gruber never happened. Well-played, Obama.

DRJ (a83b8b) — 12/9/2014 @ 8:51 am

Fallon was NCIS, but he now works for Soufan, the fellow who misled us about Abu Zubeydah

https://patterico.com/2009/04/23/

narciso (ee1f88) — 12/9/2014 @ 8:52 am

DRJ (a83b8b) — 12/9/2014 @ 8:07 am

It’s a huge news day because Gruber is appearing before Issa’s committee so the Obama Administration had to do something big… terrorist terrorist-supporting-countries moles in the CIA.

3) Nevertheless, there were some actual cases, when, combined with other factors, it did help, and one of those was in locating Osama bin Laden. Not that anybody told the truth, but it did force 3 men and maybe some others to say something, and they told different lies.

The difference in the lies was spotted some years later (KSM claimed some courier had “retired” but another one claimed he had never worked for them) and this was crucial in drawing attention to the importance of a certain individual. The female analyst who spotted this never got proper credit – because the CIA is infested with moles, as I said.

Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58) — 12/9/2014 @ 8:53 am

Look! Look at that, would you look at that? Look at that! It’s a fish. It’s a red fish. Over there! No not Gruber, look over there. Yes! Over there! Look at that! Oh. My. God. Would. You. Look. at That! What is that? Is that a big red fish? What kind of fish do you suppose that is? You say it’s a herring? Well it sure is an amazing fish!

Jack (ff1ca8) — 12/9/2014 @ 8:58 am

What happened here? More than half of my comment got deleted!

DRJ said:

It’s a huge news day because Gruber is appearing before Issa’s committee so the Obama Administration had to do something big…

Here is the substance of what what is missing: (I rewrote and shortened it)

The Obama Administration did not release this. In fact, they opposed its release. On the grounds that it could spark attacks against Americans overseas. Like I suppose the video did? This idea must come from the CIA. They actually alerted embassies.

This Senate Intelligence Committee report was released by Senator Dianne Feinstein, ove rthe objections of the CIA, and Bush Administration officials, including George W. Bush himself, as well as the Obama Administration, and committee Republicans, who also objected to the conclusions and wrote a dissenting report which defended the CIA.

The timing is because Senator Feinstein will lose her chairmanship in less than 4 weeks: noon, January 3, 2015, which in practical terms is Friday, January 2, and maybe the end of next week (Friday, December 19) and the Republican who would succeed her probably wouldn’t release it.

As to its conclusions:

1) It is unfair to accuse anyone of breaking the law, as this was only decided later, and probably in substantial part for ideological and political reasons.

2) The CIA probably did indeed lie to others in the government and itself, about the value of the “enhanced interrogations” And I’ll go further – in some cases they actually sabotaged interrogations that were going well. And I’ll go further, the reason is because of the moles in the CIA.

3) My third point did get posted. Sometimes they did help, not because anyone told the truth, but by an analysis of lies told by different men. They learned the nom de guerre of a courier to Osama bin Laden.

Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58) — 12/9/2014 @ 9:06 am

While I dispute the idea that enhanced interrogation techniques are ‘torture’, the claim that even enhanced interrogation techniques ‘…gave us nothing’ is probably technically accurate.

Enhanced interrogation techniques are not designed or intended to bring-forth information, although any information that is derived is potentially valuable when combined with other information. The techniques are designed and intended to break a subjects will to resist, nothing more.

Once the subject is ‘broken’, their value as an intel source substantially increases as their information comes from greater motivation on their part.

It’s really a very simple process – Break their will to resist, Reinforce their ability to control their destiny in exchange for cooperation, then Reward their cooperation in both simple (better conditions in detention), then complex (initiate the process of repatriation) ways. It is a process derived from eons of experience at getting uncooperative people to talk about things they don’t want to talk about when it was discovered that torture…TRUE torture…does not work.

MJN1957 (d1de05) — 12/9/2014 @ 9:14 am

38,000 footnotes. That’s pretty cheap at approximately $1,053 per footnote.

Davod (f3a711) — 12/9/2014 @ 10:31 am

The Obama Administration supported the release of this report, Sammy.

DRJ (a83b8b) — 12/9/2014 @ 10:45 am

I think the Administration especially supported reading the report today.

DRJ (a83b8b) — 12/9/2014 @ 10:46 am

Mr. Frey,

“. . . (Mark Fallon) says torture gave us nothing. I don’t believe him.”

With this statement you are implicitly agreeing with the left; i.e., “yes, the U.S. did torture people.” Do you really mean to say that? Do you really mean to agree with the left’s correlation of coerced interrogation with “torture”?

T (105f3f) — 12/9/2014 @ 10:49 am

How many of those tortured were POW’s? Bill makes this excellent point

I’m ashamed of what some U.S. soldiers did to Iraqi POWs because those
POWs were ordinary men who were probably drafted into Saddam’s army, and
they are entitled to the protections of the Hague and the Geneva
Convention. They had nothing to do with atrocities that were committed
by Iraqi terrorists. If our people (or the Israelis) did that sort of
thing to Hamas members or similar vermin, however, I would not give a
damn. If they had actually set German Shepherds on Hamas members or
other terrorists instead of just threatening them, I would not shed one
single tear.

On the other hand, the guards who seemed to be enjoying their work too
much, i.e. were engaging in sadistic enjoyment at the prisoners’
expense, are not the kind of people who should be in any army even if
they were doing it to terrorists instead of POWs. There is a difference
between righteous anger (and revenge) and sadism.

Then again, my opinion is that terrorists should not be taken prisoner
in the first place. Their surrender should not be requested or accepted
and first aid for terrorists should consist of the coup de grace. I hope
the two terrorists who were killed were wounded first, and were then
shot dead while begging for mercy.

If soldiers committed torture, they should be punished, because it constitutes assault and battery under the UCMJ. But CIA spooks are not subject to the UCMJ. And for good reason. Unlike our soldiers, CIA spooks get no protection from the Geneva Convention. If they get captured, they are subject to torture. Who are we to tell them not to do the same to enemy spies under their custody?

Michael (e545b1) — 12/9/2014 @ 11:10 am

By “torture” the things that were accused of being torture is meant.

Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 12/9/2014 @ 11:11 am

As I recall, Obama has banned EITs but retains the right to use them, should circumstances warrant.

Davod (f3a711) — 12/9/2014 @ 11:33 am

24. DRJ (a83b8b) — 12/9/2014 @ 10:45 am

The Obama Administration supported the release of this report Sammy

When did you switch to believing Josh Earnest?

Yes. I see he said:

“The president believes that, on principle, it’s important to release that report, so that people around the world and people here at home understand exactly what transpired,”

But didn’t Secretary of State John Kerry oppose its release last week? And note the “in principle” qualification.

Bloomberg View Dec 5, 2014 2:24 PM EST: Kerry Puts Brakes on CIA Torture Report </a

> Secretary of State John Kerry personally phoned Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Friday morning to ask her to delay the imminent release of her committee’s report on CIA torture and rendition during the George W. Bush administration, according to administration and Congressional officials.

Kerry was not going rogue — his call came after an interagency process that decided the release of the report early next week, as Feinstein had been planning, could complicate relationships with foreign countries at a sensitive time and posed an unacceptable risk to U.S. personnel and facilities abroad. Kerry told Feinstein he still supports releasing the report, just not right now.

15. DRJ (a83b8b) — 12/9/2014 @ 10:46 am

I think the Administration especially supported reading the report today.

Maybe you are right, and they were trying to time it precisely, without telling anyone why, or even that, they wanted December 9.

If so, that was quite an achievement. Last week, they were saying this week was too early.

But Feinstein had always bene planning this week. Bloomberg View, Dec 3, 2014 6:12 PM EST: Dec 3, 2014 6:12 PM EST

Dianne Feinstein, the committee’s chairman, is set to release the summary early next week

And then Kerry calls her and says, no, next week is too early.

Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 12/9/2014 @ 11:39 am

I made a mistake trying to create the links.

They are:

Dec 3: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-12-03/inside-the-battle-over-the-cia-torture-report

Dec. 5 http:/www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-12-05/kerry-puts-brakes-on-cia-torture-report

Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 12/9/2014 @ 11:41 am

Dec. 5: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-12-05/kerry-puts-brakes-on-cia-torture-report

Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 12/9/2014 @ 11:42 am

Actionable intelligence, hell. I say torture every jihadi we catch, just for the sheer satisfaction of it. Then kill them.

gp (5a38d9) — 12/9/2014 @ 11:48 am

I bet if we tortured bush and cheney and their daughters we would get some answers! You can get more information with a kind word and a cattle prod then you can with just a kind word!

mr cattleprod (4812d4) — 12/9/2014 @ 11:55 am

New York Times, Saturday, December 6, 2014, page A10:

Senate Panel Faces New Obstacle to Release of Torture Report

The Senate Intelligence Committee on Friday faced a new obstacle in its efforts to make public its report on the torture of prisoners once held by the Central Intelligence Agency after last-minute warnings from the Obama administration that the report’s release could ignite new unrest in the Middle East and put American hostages at risk.

The warnings were delivered on Friday during a phone call between Secretary of State John Kerry and Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who leads the committee. According to congressional officials, Mr. Kerry warned that allies were concerned that the report could incite violence in the Middle East.

Ms. Feinstein had planned to make the report public next week, but it is uncertain whether the call from Mr. Kerry would affect that timetable.

Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 12/9/2014 @ 12:12 pm

25.New York Times, Tuesday December 9, 2014, front page:

White House and Republicans Clash Over C.I.A. Torture Report

While the United States has put diplomatic facilities and military bases on alert for heightened security risks, administration officials said they do not expect the report — or rather the declassified executive summary of it that will be released Tuesday morning — to ignite the kind of violence that killed four Americans at a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012. Such violent reprisals, they said, tend to be fueled more by perceived attacks against Islam as a religion than by violence against individual Muslims.

But some leading Republican lawmakers have warned against releasing the report, saying that domestic and foreign intelligence reports indicate that a detailed account of the brutal interrogation methods used by the C.I.A. during the George W. Bush administration could incite unrest and violence, even resulting in the deaths of Americans…..

…The White House acknowledged that the report could pose a “greater risk” to American installations and personnel in countries like Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, Libya and Iraq. But it said that the government had months to plan for the reverberations from its report — indeed, years — and that those risks should not delay the release of the report by the Senate Intelligence Committee. “When would be a good time to release this report?” the White House press secretary, Josh Earnest, asked. “It’s difficult to imagine one, particularly given the painful details that will be included.”…

The administration appeared to have qualms Friday when Secretary of State John Kerry telephoned the Democratic chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, to warn her about unrest that might erupt because of the report.

The director of national intelligence, James R. Clapper, repeated those warnings in a briefing Saturday with several members of the Intelligence Committee. But Mr. Clapper told the senators that he favored the release of the report, officials said.

Mr. Kerry was not putting pressure on Ms. Feinstein to delay the report, administration officials said, but merely informing her about the latest assessment of the security risks, which at that time included a threat to an American hostage then being held in Yemen. The hostage, Luke Somers, a photographer, was killed by his captors several hours later during a rescue attempt by American commandos.

In addition to tightening security at embassies, the Pentagon will bolster the protection of its forces in Afghanistan, officials said. Intelligence agencies will ramp up their monitoring of the communications of terrorist groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State….

Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 12/9/2014 @ 12:16 pm

When dealing with an enemy that operates without behavioral limits or constraints, sh*t will happen. This grandstanding by Senate Democrats, John McCain and the Obama administration will put Americans and American assets in grave danger around the world and virtually guarantees a lack of cooperation from any country foolish enough to remain the ally of an America not intelligent enough to protect its national interests or security.

Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 12/9/2014 @ 12:17 pm

So the Republicans are buying into the spontaneous mob story more than the Obama Administration.

It’s coming from the CIA and certain some intelligence agencies.

Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 12/9/2014 @ 12:17 pm

http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/11/19/vladimir-putin-echoes-al-capone-weapons-and-politeness-a-lot-more-effective-than-politeness-alone/

Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 12/9/2014 @ 12:20 pm

I must infer that I am a lesser man than most (all?) because I can say, with moral certainty, that torture and even “enhanced interrogation” techniques would work like a charm on me.

I just assumed everybody worked the same way. Shame on me for believing in the efficacy of these techniques and, thereby, profiling the rest of humanity the way I did.

ThOR (130453) — 12/9/2014 @ 12:40 pm

It’s that “lying eyes” problem all over again.

ThOR (130453) — 12/9/2014 @ 12:44 pm

General Magoo, yes he’s an authority, Abu Ghraib was stupid behavior, then again when those innocent folk as you put it, were mortaring and planning IEDs, temperatures can get heated, now running that story for 40 days was manifestly unhelpful, it’s a good thing we’re not facing an insurgency that recruits from all around the Moslem word, wait a second, we are at least three if you count the Khorassan group,

the plots against the Library Tower, revealed by Abu Zubeydah aren’t mentioned prominently, wonder why?

narciso (ee1f88) — 12/9/2014 @ 12:45 pm

Interesting that most of the MSM headlines and analysis of the torture report are along the lines of “torture didn’t produce the desired results, so therefore it’s bad,” which implies that if torture had worked, then it would be OK.

Tom (1c889b) — 12/9/2014 @ 1:32 pm

Sammy,

The real question is: Why do you believe anything this Administration says?

DRJ (a83b8b) — 12/9/2014 @ 1:32 pm

There is a 39 page report by someone with first hand knowledge of all of this, written under a pseudonym and cleared with the CIA and agencies involved. I’m not going to look it up now, but I’m surprised no one has linked it (unless I missed it, my apology). I think I may have seen it linked at PowerLine.
This paper says the senate report is what you would expect from the same people that gave us the Holder DOJ and the Lerner IRS.

MD in Philly (f9371b) — 12/9/2014 @ 1:50 pm

Here’s the only timeline you need, Sammy:

November 25, 2014 — Gruber agrees to testify before the Issa committee, without the need of a subpoena. (On the same day, FOX News reported the hearing would be held on December 9 at 9:30 AM.)

November 26, 2014 — Feinstein says the torture report will be released by January 3. She says her negotiations with the White House over redactions in the report is down to “one item” and will be resolved.

December 5, 2014 (Friday) — Feinstein announced the torture report would be released “next week.”

December 9, 2014 — Gruber’s testimony before Congress around 10-10:30 AM. In an amazing coincidence, Feinstein’s speech on the Senate Floor started at approximately December 9 at 11:00 AM EST.

DRJ (a83b8b) — 12/9/2014 @ 1:51 pm

god torture reports are so boring like who even cares about torture reports

happyfeet (a037ad) — 12/9/2014 @ 1:54 pm

“The truth lies somewhere in between Dick Cheney and Mark Fallon.” really, so you think they are both lying ? I’ll take Dick Cheney every day of the week … Cheney has no reason to lie … he doesn’t give a damn what you think of what he did … nor should he …

KaiserDerden (faa0ee) — 12/9/2014 @ 2:08 pm

34. DRJ (a83b8b) — 12/9/2014 @ 1:32 pm

The real question is: Why do you believe anything this Administration says?

there sometimes may be some reasons to believe it, taking everything into consideration, including logic. Sometimes it says it is going to do something, and it actually does it.

But when Josh Earnest says they support the release – this is not actually what they were doing last week, and also he added the caveat “in principle”

December 9 or thereabouts was probably Dianne Feinsteins’s drop-dead date.

We also read that the Obama Administration was negotiating with the CIA.

Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58) — 12/9/2014 @ 2:24 pm

I think they can be believed more about the future than about the past.

Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58) — 12/9/2014 @ 2:24 pm

An interrogator breaks his silence can be found here:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/246578813/An-Interrogator-Breaks-His-Silence

The cut out part is included here. I apologize for the spacing.

“When youre staring at an ironclad complicity rap from a general public and liberal base looking for some sign that you stood athwart the black site gates and shouted,Stop!
”
yet no such evidence exists or is forthcoming. When you
’
re putting the final touches on a report that somehow cost the taxpayers 40 million dollars, the content of which you characterize as shocking, brutal, and un-American, while looking for a way to extricate yourself and your colleagues from the role of enabler for that which will undoubtedly shock, albeit with intent. When your unanimous and full-throated opposition to the program you once supported hinges upon the notion that it was not only immoral, but ineffective
–
because how can you explain shutting down a program, however objectionable, which was effective at pulling actionable intelligence out of high value Al Qaeda leadership detainees? When the President who signed the executive order shutting down the program, having actually seen the intelligence after being inaugurated and spoken with the leadership at CIA, changes his campaign trail characterization from
“
It didn
’
t work; people will say anything to make it stop
”
to
“
Even if it did produce some information, we don
’
t know if we could have gotten that information using standard techniques.
”
When the famously Democratic former director of the CIA, Leon Panetta, states that the program provided valuable information used against Al Qaeda terrorists
–
but is compelled to attach the Obama administration caveat that he also doesn
’
t know whether we could have gotten the same information using different techniques

Davod (f3a711) — 12/9/2014 @ 2:32 pm

The assertion that torture never works is designed to avoid the question of how many American lives you are willing to sacrifice to eschew torture if it worked.

Richard Aubrey (f6d8de) — 12/9/2014 @ 2:47 pm

Sammy:

I think they can be believed more about the future than about the past.

How can anyone tell the truth about the future? At most, all we can do is express our intent, and I don’t even trust them to do that. Gruber proves that.

DRJ (a83b8b) — 12/9/2014 @ 3:03 pm

It’s useless to comment here anymore.

DRJ (a83b8b) — 12/9/2014 @ 3:03 pm

Sammah lives in a different world, DRJ.

Isn’t this “report” just the Senate Dems partisan report that they wanted to get out before they were no longer in control of the Senate?

JD (86a5eb) — 12/9/2014 @ 3:08 pm

For only about six months after 9/11, Americans had their minds right about the nature of this enemy. We knew then that we could give no quarter to fiends so inhumane and treacherous, that any and all tactics were acceptable. Now, memories faded and spines weakened, we’re bigger simps than we ever were before 9/11. You’ll see, even after the jihadis eventually nuke us, we’ll be searching our souls over trifling sh!t like waterboarding a handful of those insects.

gp (0c542c) — 12/9/2014 @ 3:12 pm

then the Levick group narrative was spread, putting a black hat on every coalition soldier, and a white hat on every detainee:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/keyword/CIA

narciso (ee1f88) — 12/9/2014 @ 3:18 pm

Why do we even need to capture terrorists? Can we not just shoot them and then shove them into a brazen bull for good measure?

Michael (e545b1) — 12/9/2014 @ 3:23 pm

That would offend Moloch. He wants innocent, living sacrifices to enjoy their screams and the injustice done to them.

nk (dbc370) — 12/9/2014 @ 3:30 pm

Davod (f3a711) — 12/9/2014 @ 2:32 pm

Thank you. That is what I had seen and was talking about.

As JD said, DRJ. In fact, I saw a day or two ago some posts by Sammy that seemed to me to be particularly tangential even for him, and I made me worry a little bit for him.

I wonder who among the Dems first suggested that they turn on Bush and his efforts for the country for their own partisan gain.

MD in Philly (f9371b) — 12/9/2014 @ 4:02 pm

“I think they can be believed more about the future than about the past.”

DRJ (a83b8b) — 12/9/2014 @ 3:03 pm

How can anyone tell the truth about the future? At most, all we can do is express our intent, and I don’t even trust them to do that. Gruber proves that.

You can’t entirely tell the truth about the future, but you can come close.

And I think they come closer to telling the truth about the future (where what they say their intentions are, can affect what happens) than they do about the past (where it can’t).

Gruber, by the way, is an example of lying about the past, not the future..

Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58) — 12/9/2014 @ 4:05 pm

One thing is, people remember the future better than they do the past, so the Obama Administration has to be more careful talking about the future, than about the past..

Say you have a doctor’s appointment. You’ll remember when it is scheduled, how you are supposed to get there, and get back, and what exactly you are going to do, a month in advance. Two days later, all these details aren’t remembered so well.

Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58) — 12/9/2014 @ 4:08 pm

You really should not have explained that, Sammy. It could have been taken as that they can be believed more about the future than about the past because they are more capable of prophesy than they are of honesty. 😉

nk (dbc370) — 12/9/2014 @ 4:12 pm

Greetings, Sammeh… interested in the future?… for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future. You are interested in the unknown… the mysterious. The unexplainable. That is why you are here. And now, for the first time, we are bringing to you, the full story of what happened during those dark days. We are bringing you all the evidence, based only on the secret testimony, of the miserable souls, who survived this terrifying ordeal. The incidents, the places. Sammeh, we cannot keep this a secret any longer. Let us punish the guilty. Let us reward the innocent. Sammeh, can your heart stand the shocking details of a policy Dianne Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi were fine with just 10 short years ago?

Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 12/9/2014 @ 4:12 pm

Sammy, you have a bit of a point there at least in terms of what the future is supposed to look like according to one’s plan.

But I wouldn’t trust these people with saying whether they planned on blowing their nose in the next ~~5 minutes~~ 30 seconds.

MD in Philly (f9371b) — 12/9/2014 @ 4:12 pm

4. DRJ (a83b8b) — 12/9/2014 @ 8:07 am

It’s a huge news day because Gruber is appearing before Issa’s committee so the Obama Administration had to do something big to make sure the media would have an excuse not to cover Gruber. But this should do the trick since the media can’t resist when it comes to Bush and torture.

The media did cover Gruber, or at leastthe CBS Evening News devoted a substantial segment to his testimony, about 15 minutes into the broadcast.

They said Gruber apologized for being careless or flippant or something like that, and said he was pretending to be more of an insider than he was at the time, and also that a person should never try to make himself look better by making other people look worse, which he said he did. He was challenged by Trey Goudy.

Scott Pelley concluded by saying that Democrats (on the committee) said this was extensively debated, and that Republicans knew exactly how Obamacare was being financed.

And indeed that is true. Gruber didn’t understand the reason for all the financial shenanigans, although the Wall Street Journal editorial page did.

It was because members of Congress had long ago agreed that in dealing with budgeting they would discuss the costs of anything according to what the Congressional Budget Office said regardless of whether any individual member of Congress believed in that or not.

Having committed themselves to never arguing with the CBO numbers, manipulating the CBO numbers became a course of action by people trying to pass legislation, since both Democrats and Republicans had committed themselves to never questioning those numbers.

That’s why I said abolish the federal budget, tie every appropriation to a source of revenue, and let the only croteria be what actually happens. If republicans believe the economy will imporve if X is passed, they can live by it, and so on.

Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58) — 12/9/2014 @ 4:18 pm

Sammeh, the paleomedia ignored Gruber for several weeks before today, wafe the EFF up.

Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 12/9/2014 @ 4:20 pm

And then wake the EFF up

Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 12/9/2014 @ 4:24 pm

News from the CBS report about tthe Feinstein report:

Senator Feinstein says, or the report says, they were exceedingly brutal at times (and there’s no particular reason to suppose that helped) and one prisoner died of hypothermia.

Senator Feinstein says the CIA credited its enhanced interrogation techniques for information that came by otehr means. The CIA had 20 alleged cases where enhanced interrogation led to useful intelligence – she claimed they had examined every one of them and found not tehjm all faulty.

Now this is really not true. Because at one point they were reading off a list of couriers that they had obtained somehow, and Khalid Sheik Mohammad was confirming many of them. One in particular he said, used to be one.

At another point Abu Zubaidah was asked about this person and he said he was not a courier.

Some years later maybe, a CIA analysts noticed that they said different things about the same person. (apparently they had mostly said the same thing otherwise. And perhaps many were conformed other ways.

Ah, she said, this must be a very important person. KSM reserved one of his few outright lies for him.

This person was the contact with Osama bin Laden. Now they only had his nom de guerre – later they found his family name etc. But they were focused on him because of this. I don’t know how Senator Feinstein can say this information was useless. Now maybe there’s more to the story

McCain was included on CBS saying people don’t tell the truth under torture. But here the point wa that they didn’t, but a very good CIA analyst analyzed the lies.

Enhanced interrogation is also supposed to have led to the caoture of some important people.

Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58) — 12/9/2014 @ 4:29 pm

56. The claim was made that the report was released today in order to get the media to ignore Gruber. If that was the case, it didn’t work, at least on CBS.

Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58) — 12/9/2014 @ 4:30 pm

CBS by the way, didn’t explained exactly how KSM led to important information.

I don’t know if that is in the report, but that story, of the different lies two men who were waterboarded told, has been published.

The difference in the lies was only spotted some years later. Maybe there was some other information that this guy – al-Kuwaiti I think he went by – was important. Even in that case, it confirmed it and caused resources to be devoted to finding out more about him.

Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58) — 12/9/2014 @ 4:35 pm

abu zubeydah led to KSM, who was evasive about Al Kuwaiti, the first to mention Kuwaiti, was Ould Slahi, then the 20th hijacker, Mohammed Quahtani, then Zubeydah’s successor Faraj al Libi

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/you-lie-cia-chiefs-say-they-saved-lives-were-ignored-by-senate-dems/article/2557154

narciso (ee1f88) — 12/9/2014 @ 4:55 pm

Sammy:

And indeed that is true. Gruber didn’t understand the reason for all the financial shenanigans, although the Wall Street Journal editorial page did.

Gruber has been a professor of economics at MIT since 1992, and specializes in the economics of health care. He not only understood the “tricks” better than anyone in America, he was paid a lot of money by the government to understand them.

DRJ (a83b8b) — 12/9/2014 @ 5:16 pm

Do you comment at any other websites, Sammy?

DRJ (a83b8b) — 12/9/2014 @ 5:17 pm

“One thing is, people remember the future better than they do the past, …”

Really?!?! When you were typing that, just for a moment, didn’t it sound just a little bit crazy?

JD (86a5eb) — 12/9/2014 @ 5:28 pm

DRJ

There is another Sammy at LI, but that one gets personal, at times

EPWJ (db4127) — 12/9/2014 @ 5:34 pm

past should be prologue:

http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2014/12/6_guantanamo_detaine.php

narciso (ee1f88) — 12/9/2014 @ 6:02 pm

http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2014/12/09/blitzer-to-feinstein-i-assume-you-would-feel-guilty-if-americans-are-killed-because-of-cia-report/

narciso (ee1f88) — 12/9/2014 @ 6:12 pm

In SERE school (where these techniques came from), we were taught “You will break. You will give them all the classified information that you know.”

OF COURSE this stuff works. And OF COURSE the interrogators know that the subjects will try to offer false information, and will be ready for it.

John Moore (ac5430) — 12/9/2014 @ 7:35 pm

John Moore- thank you for your contribution, thank you for your service.
If you haven’t read the link at #40 you may want to, for encouragement knowing others are speaking out.

MD in Philly (f9371b) — 12/9/2014 @ 7:40 pm

“One thing is, people remember the future better than they do the past, …”

JD (86a5eb) — 12/9/2014 @ 5:28 pm

Really?!?! When you were typing that, just for a moment, didn’t it sound just a little bit crazy?

I know. It’s paradoxical, but I think it’s true, especially when dealing within a short range of time.

You remember what you want to do in an hour or two better than you remember what you did an hour or two ago.

The best way to remember the past is to transform it into the future, as with a regular commemoration, for instance.

Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58) — 12/9/2014 @ 8:47 pm

“And indeed that is true. Gruber didn’t understand the reason for all the financial shenanigans, although the Wall Street Journal editorial page did.”

DRJ (a83b8b) — 12/9/2014 @ 5:16 pm

Gruber has been a professor of economics at MIT since 1992, and specializes in the economics of health care. He not only understood the “tricks” better than anyone in America, he was paid a lot of money by the government to understand them.

He undserstood the tricks – and by the way he is saying nothing about there being tricks.

What he didn’t understand was the reason why. It wasn’t to hide it from everybody, although some of it was to make it difficult to criticize using short slogans.

Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58) — 12/9/2014 @ 9:12 pm

Soundbyte-proof.

Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58) — 12/9/2014 @ 9:14 pm

There’s a lot in the papers about the Senate report.

The committee says the CIA actually had quite a lot of information about Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti before any waterrboarding.

They say the best information (of course that’s in retrospect) came from Hassan Ghul, who had been captured in Iraqi Kurdistan who, according to one CIA report written right after he was captured in January 2004, “sang like a tweetie bird” and “opened up right away, and was co-operative from the outset.”

The CIA produced 21 reports in two days.

Some of what Ghul said was speculation, but that’s what somebody really co-operative would do. He said that al-Kuwaiti was one of bin Laden’s closest associates and was always with him, was one of three people most likely to be with bin Laden, and he said bin Laden was most likely living in a house in Pakistan (this is before the house in Abbotabad near Pakistan’s “West Point” where he was found in in 2011 was built) and that al-Kuwaiti was most likely tending to his needs.

His reward for all of this was getting tortured on the grounds he might say more.

He was mistreated, and his health put at risk, but the report says he provided “no actionable threat information.”

This ignores the fact that “actionable threat information” is not all the CIA was after, though. They wanted to know the structure of al Qaeda, it’s long range plans, where important people were etc.

KSM had been waterboarded before the capture of Ghul over a 2-week period on May, 2003. The report says he revealed a lot of imaginary plots.

This still does not take away the fact that the combination of KSMs and Abu Zubaydeh’s waterboarding may have helped, years later, resolve an internal dispute about the importance of al-Kuwaiti.

The CIA says that the first person to mention that al-Kuwaiti was a courier was Ammar al-Baluchi, who was arrested and subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques in May 2003. The Senate report says, though, that this was not recognized as a breakthrough. Furthermore, there was detailed information in its records from even earlier, in 2002, from several detainees in the custody of other governments, that al-Kuwaiti may have been a courier.

(But you could also say, that if they didn’t have any information, they wouldn’t have asked KSM about him. KSM said he used to be acourier but was so no longer, and the CIA apparently, for some time, accepted that answer, until an analyst came along some years later and put two and two together.)

Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58) — 12/10/2014 @ 7:11 am

Abu Zubaydeh, I remember reading some time ago, was another person was who was initially co-operative but was nevertheless subjected to enhanced interrogation. The CIA had decided he was an extremely important person. Acttually he was just the man in charge of logistics – moving people around.

It is often said he revealed the “dirty bomb” plot. First, the report says, he revealed that early on. Second, the CIA never took taht plot seriously – and indeed it wasn’t serious.

It has been known or obvious since the beginning – Jose Padilla claimed that – he had come up with the plot as means of getting away from al Qaeda and getting sent back to the United States, and had no intention of trying to implement this, which he had no means of doing anyway.

The report says the plot was based on one in a satirical Internet web site.

Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58) — 12/10/2014 @ 7:16 am

The report says two psychologists, who had no special expertise, came up with all the enhanced interrogation techniques, and later made a lot of money on it.

It says that Bush was not fully briefed on the details until 2006 (which I suppose meand he could not have approved it) and that it stopped after he was briefed. Or rather, that almost all of it had happened before. (The Washington Post had first reported on it in Nov 2005)

It says there is an CIA e-mail from July 2003saying don’t tell Colin Powel the details because the white House (who?) is “extremely concerned Powell would blow his stack if he were to be briefed on what’s been going on.”

It says the CIA helped edit a speech by Bush in 2006 and they had him saying that key intelligence was obtained through the most brutal interrogation techniques, when, the report says, that wasn’t true.

It says that people in the CIA who complained that the interrogations were too brutal, or were not useful were ignored.

It says a good percentage of people interrogated were innocent, sometimes cases of mistaken identity.

Sammy Finkelman (7e7e58) — 12/10/2014 @ 7:30 am

“… What he didn’t understand was the reason why. It wasn’t to hide it from everybody, although some of it was to make it difficult to criticize using short slogans.”

– Teh Long-Winded Sammeh

Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 12/10/2014 @ 7:36 am

12/9/2014

Outrage of the Day: Torture Report

77 Responses to “Outrage of the Day: Torture Report”

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