The CIA’s destroyed interrogation videos, what the Dems knew, and when; Update: What Harriet knew
Update 12/8 10:00am Eastern: What Harriet Miers knew.
And Ed Morrissey takes a closer look at what Reps. Silvestre Reyes and Pete Hoekstra say they did and didn’t know.
***
Update 1:05pm Eastern. Tom Maguire: “This ongoing selective outrage by the Congressional overseers is ridiculous.”
Par for the course.
***
It’s the top news at Memeorandum this morning. The New York Times reported yesterday:
The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Al Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about the C.I.A’s secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.
The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terror suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody — to severe interrogation techniques. They were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that tapes documenting controversial interrogation methods could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy, several officials said.
The C.I.A. said today that the decision to destroy the tapes had been made “within the C.I.A. itself,” and they were destroyed to protect the safety of undercover officers and because they no longer had intelligence value. The agency was headed at the time by Porter J. Goss. Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Goss declined this afternoon to comment on the destruction of the tapes.
The newspaper expresses its explicit hope that its scoop on the tapes will “reignite the debate over the use of severe interrogation techniques on terror suspects, and their destruction raises questions about whether C.I.A. officials withheld information about aspects of the program from the courts and from the Sept. 11 commission appointed by President Bush and Congress.” But remember: Bill Keller tells us that he and his reporters “are agnostic as to where a story may lead; we do not go into a story with an agenda or a pre-conceived notion.” Uh-huh. The news just happens to be perfectly timed as the Supreme Court hears a Gitmo case and, as the WaPo, notes, on the same day “House and Senate negotiators reached an agreement on legislation that would prohibit the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics by the CIA and bring intelligence agencies in line with rules followed by the U.S. military.”
So, how bad is it? The Left is going bananas–with one its most unhinged bloggers now dubbing America a “Banana Republic.” It is bad. Center and right-leaning bloggers are weighing in. James Joyner points out that “People have gone to jail for obstruction of justice for actions much, much less brazen than this.” Ed Morrissey believes the tape destruction “looks a lot more like destroying evidence than tightening security.” Rick Moran concludes “Any way you slice it, someone needs to be held accountable for the tape’s destruction.”
It is worth noting that the CIA actually informed members of Congress about the tapes four years ago and also informed them in advance about their intention to ultimately destroy the tapes. One leading Democrat admits he knew about the destruction of the tapes last fall. Via AP:
Rep. Jane Harman of California, then the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, was one of only four members of Congress in 2003 informed of the tapes’ existence and the CIA’s intention to ultimately destroy them.
“I told the CIA that destroying videotapes of interrogations was a bad idea and urged them in writing not to do it,” Harman said. While key lawmakers were briefed on the CIA’s intention to destroy the tapes, they were not notified two years later when the spy agency actually carried out the plan. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said the committee only learned of the tapes’ destruction in November 2006.
They knew and they did nothing.
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#98:
I like that sentence - sort of the obverse? reverse? of a “Catch-22″-type expression.
Another example of, if something is done or said well, it really doesn’t get old.
Oops…left out converse.
I could do differential and integral calculus just fine; but, as far as logic was concerned, my eyes just glazed over….
cpodug
Thanks, I’m officially out of Troll Food
#99:
Well said.
granite,
my old quantum mechanics prof used to say, “if any of this makes sense to you, you don’t get it….”
“”JHSII said:
Rusty (and the other liberals),
I hope that as the muslim terrorists are beheading you with the dull saw - that you stop whining about what torture really is.”
No problem, I’ll be whining about Bush not hiring enough Arabic translators for intelligence (and firing a couple good ones because they were gay).
Again, this isn’t about torture policy, it’s about the rule of law — if the CIA had gone to the most conservative federal judge out there and got permission to destroy these records and the appellate court agreed, so be it. That’s why there are national security exemptions in the Sunshine Act and Freedom of Information Act. If in 2005 you didn’t like those laws as they are written, change them (you controlled the government for 6 whole years — you passed Terri Schiavo legislation within days).
Y’all are acting like a bunch of Hugo Chavez’ Even Michelle admits “this is bad” — is she an appeaser in the war on terror now too?
God forbid they should get rid of their own things. I guess that is another one of those hidden, “read between the lives” clauses in the Constitution that states where all Government institutions that the Left doesn’t agree with or likes has to hang on the everything it has, even things it doesn’t even have to have, impertuity or until such time as they deem it necessary to be destroyed. Even after such time as they deem it necessary to be destroyed, the Left reserves the right to whine, bitch, piss and moan about it and create conspiricy theories where none ever existed or could stick before.
Now, I’m going back to watching “The Waltons”. It still is a great show that’s ventral thene in a strong familu built on love and trust for each other and themselves. A perfect TV show if ever there was one.
That’s my problem here with this. Rusty and watershed and others seem to imply that our intelligence professionals suddenly went Medieval when Bush The Terrible was s-elected in 2000. They are doing all sorts of malicious and evil things not just to get information, but to punish the guilty, and provide enjoyment to themselves and their colleagues through being brutal to these detainees, whether they had information or not. But, it shouldn’t suprise anyone because Sen. Dick Turbin(D-IL) has already declared Club Gitmo to be the new gulags. So the moral equivalence card has been played long ago.
There also was the implication that Donald Rumsfeld personally ordered the Abu Grab abuses so he could be amused by it. Sounds alot like Saddam & Sons,(really) torturing political prisoners on video, then reviewing the video and delighting in the suffering and gruesome deaths of their captives.
These implications are untrue, outrageous and offensive to me. I have a first cousin and her new husband who’s in the Navy living and working at Club Gitmo. They just had a baby girl a few weeks ago.
You think my family are sadistic torturing monsters who get off on the screams of their victims? Funny how these challenges are not answered.
#106 Brian72:
Chalk it up to yet another example of adolescent leftist & socialist projection.
#104 Old Tanker:
Great line - maybe it might be matched; but, it can’t be topped!
Just by reading the liberal posters, like Rusty, it’s clear they hate America. America, in their pea brain minds, can do nothing right. Save a life and they blame you for not saving 2. Bush could come up with the cure for aids all by himself and Crusty and his ilk will blame Bush for the drug’s side effect of a headache. As I posted earlier, they idiot libs fell right into the trap set out by Bush…..again.
It’s about time we all get over having our feelings hurt when:
-Traditional media slants a story towards one end of the political spectrum or the other. Learn to unemotionally read between the lines. Grow up.
-Someone somewhere does something unethical. Apply the bell curve to society. There are very few people who are completely ethical.
A little off-topic, but since I’m seeing more and more instances of it on more and more threads here then OK… I’ll bite:
What’s with this “TF” thing? I must have missed the memo. Best I can decipher so far is that “T” must mean “Troll.” But I’m not sure about that.
It reminds me of the old joke about the life-sentence-no-parole prisoners who told the same jokes so many times that after a while they just assigned numbers to them. So one would say, “Hey, how ’bout #45!” And everybody laughs. Then another says, “Yeah, and don’t forget #21!” And everybody laughs.
Then some new guy wants to get in on the fun and says, “#67!” And the room falls silent until someone says, “Well, some can tell ‘em, and some can’t.”
I’m not saying people can’t have their private encoded chats-within-chats here, but for those of us who aren’t in the club, the slightly less cryptic reaction becomes, “WTF?”
Brian72
Nail on the head. I was raised to give people the benefit of the doubt first until they prove they deserve otherwise. It is foreign for me to believe, as others have said, that our intelligence people would knowingly use techniques that they knew to be totally useless just for the sake of doing it or amusement. There’s always a few bad apples but to assume that EVERYBODY in the CIA is a sadist. I think they forget that the people who do this for amusement are the people we are fighting….after all, what questions were asked of Nick Berg before his head was removed???
#105:
Please. Not that canard again.
The truth is that the military discharged 20 Arabic and six Farsi speakers between 1998 and 2004–approximately three per year–for violating “Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell.” Those discharged were eligible for hiring by any civilian agency that wanted them.
In fiscal year 2005, the Defense Language Institute graduated 543 Arabic linguists and 166 Farsi linguists. Hardly seems that “Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell” is putting a crimp in the military’s supply of linguists.
The bottom line is that soldiers, sailors and airmen of all occupations have been discharged for violating “Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell.”
And yet we’re winning the Global War on Terror. Interesting.
Please don’t interrupt Rusty while he’s working up a reply to #95
I’m not certain the liberals hate America. I suspect that they secretly loathe themselves for not contributing more to that which makes America great.
They only assume the people in the CIA who support Bush’s policies are the sadists. Never a word about their CIA heroes, Joseph Wilson III and his intrepid super-spy wife, the dashing Valerie Plame.
Texas,
I was #105, the quantum mechanics line, I think you mean #106……
Totally correct AND so painfully obvious that it is an embarrasment the left suggests otherwise.
The truth is that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been the most “pc” wars America has ever fought. Things that could have ended the confrontations much more quickly have been avoided to try and make it a more “compassionate” war. Yet somehow we’re accused of not being morally superior by our own countrymen on the left. The only thing that will make us morally superior in their eyes is to surrender.
Federal guidelines for keeping files etc usually expire 3-5 years and old files get thrown out….so what is the problem here?
I guess you liberal’s think we have enough storage for every little item the government collects.
If that were the case you eco-liberals would be screaming your asses off.
Oh and by the way if they lie come back and kill them. That is the way to interrogate.
Brian72
How do you do the reply tag?? I’ve yet to figure that out.
Valerie Plame, the “outed covert agent”? the ones the CIA was trying to protect by destroying the tapes???? You think that the left would be grateful that the CIA isn’t letting the evil Bushilterovian Empire out more covert agents……
The only reason for this Brouhaha is because the Leftists cannot pubicly expose the agents and put their lives and families lives at risk.
Nothing would satisfy the Congressional Leftists and their supporters more than having some CIA agents and their families killed.
#117 Old Tanker:
Posts seem not infrequently to get deleted or added, thus changing the number of some posts.
I just copy&paste the byline of the post I’m replying to into a blockquote, to head it up, as this one is. No reply tag in this format that I can see.
This is much easier to keep track of who and what you’re responding to than saying the number of the post, which I have to scroll back and find to see who it was. This way the name and time are right there. Also the quoteblock can include the actual words too, which helps sometimes.
Hope that helps.
Sure does!! I thought there was some hidden feature that I had yet to find…turns out it was easier than that, go figure! K.I.S.S.
LOL Texas #115. I think you scared it away.
He looks like Raymond.
Please, they’re not “the guilty,” they’re “undocumented combatants,” who deserve the same rights we do.
I learned that little trick by throwing the libs ludicrous statements right back at them in real-time, or as close as possible. Nobody remembers the numbers, like post #77. If you address me by the number of my post, I probably won’t even know it’s me you are addressing. Put the names and the quotes together, and there is no misunderstanding about who or what is being challenged. Even with all that precision, none of the libtrolls answered any of my challenges today. They have no excuse of confusion:)
One can love America and still hate parts of its past and present. It’s not an all or nothing thing. I hate the use of waterboarding and see it as a national embarrassment. Someone must agree with me since intelligence agencies say they no longer use it.
America has done more right than probably any other country in the history of civilization. But we’re regressing. Torture would never have been accepted by previous generations.
I love how lost in all this is that what the CIA did was so obviously illegal. Even the overlord of these comments, MM herself, said that destroying the tapes was “bad.” Not the most detailed analysis, but certainly contrary to what most of her commenting audience believes.
You people can’t honestly think that destroying subpoenaed evidence is acceptable.
That’s a good one.
Undocumented combatants, just doing the terrorism and torture Americans won’t do!
Folks:
JUST
IGNORE
THEM
Please tell me you aren’t in the Hillary camp, because if you are, that is a really Hillarious thing for you to say!
Note: Harman didn’t think it was torture, apparently. Otherwise, do you think she would have ONLY said “It was a bad idea” to destroy the tapes?
Once again, a case of my party before my country. The Dem(ogogue)s are shameless and disgusting.
My brother-in-law’s father and grandfather fought for Germany during WWII, ask them what it was like in an American POW camp vs. GITMO and then tell them they had it better than the terrorists at GITMO…..then run like hell before they get ahold of you…..
BTW, you’re still assuming there was torture on those tapes…….
Anyone who remembers the Pentagon Papers released by Daniel Ellsberg would applaud the destruction of these tapes. Mr Ellsberg’s actions caused the deaths of a number of CIA operatives. And, as one might expect, the NY Times was one of the papers that printed the material
The last thing we need is to plaster the faces of CIA interrogators all over the internet. Not only would this put them in jeopardy, but their families as well. Terrorists and radical leftists could do great damage.
Sandy Burger destroyed evidence but since it dealt with Clinton, guess that’s o.k. I keep seeing “torture” mentioned. Please tell me where I can send underwear to help out in the torture.
I am most amazed by the liberals’ lack of ability to recognize and identify enemies, based on bodily threats. This points to a drastic internal flaw in their mental wiring. They have an inability to seperate minor concerns such as close elections and changes of power from more pressing concerns such as the insistence of Radical Islam’s claimed right to rule the world according according to Allah.
For example, they worry more about the rights of the few (relatively) people we’ve captured attempting to KILL our troops, Iraqi politicians, Iraqi citizens, etc, than they do about Iraqi citizens being killed by terrorists. Where’s the liberal outrage at the slaying of innocents by suicide bombers? Where’s the outrage at beheadings of Christians, women, or children? Where’s the righteous indignation at the imposition of 200 lashes for a woman who dared to speak out about being gang-raped? Isn’t that “speaking truth to power”?
I personally want to see the conversation between an Islamic Fundamentalist and a liberal atheist about Mohammed! Would be short: the lib-atheist insists Mohammed couldn’t have talked to Allah, because no god exists, at which point the enraged Islamic Fundamentalist draws his sword and lops off the atheist’s head while screaming “Infidel! Allah Akbar!”
So a few tapes were destroyed because the decision was made within the CIA (long rumored to be staffed with liberal-minded stooges) that these tapes were no longer of informational value and could harm the agents’ safety. First, can the lib-minded stooges at the CIA not keep a secret at all or did they intend on releasing this info about the destroyed tapes at the worst possible time? If the tapes themselves proved W was right, about anything, then of course they’d be destroyed. Heck just the news that tapes were destroyed casts a pall over the Presidency, in the minds of liberals, totally overlooking the fact that they’d happily do it again to hurt the President. Can’t leave anything lying about which might show that the President knew what he was doing when invading Iraq, right?
The supposed “severe interrogation techniques” aren’t the issue (BTW, there should also be transcripts available from the tapes, due to the need to have the tapes translated). The issue is who decided to destroy them and why, and why was this information released?
@#126 Oops. . .I thought I was posting in the topic about the “Not to be trusted” guy. My bad.
Given the record of the Democrat Congress lately, they will probably cave to the Administration on waterboarding, too. They will say that only Dasani bottled water should be used, so no one gets any parasites. Then we will find out that Harry “The Body” Reid received $250,000 to his PAC from Coca-Cola, makers of Dasani.
Since when have you thought something MM wrote was correct?
For once, you’re right. Previous generations of Americans would have either shot them dead on the battlefield, or held a prompt military tribunal, convicted them of being enemy combatant in disguise, and summarily hung them until dead.
Why are these tapes being subpoenaed NOW, if it was known by members of the Democratic Party in 2005 that they were destroyed? What information was revealed in those tapes, outside of “severe interrogation techniques”? Why were these tapes considered “no longer informative”, and most importantly, WHO made that distinction? Were the translation transcripts also destroyed?
Game.set.match
Totally Funny
I think the little libbies just stomp their feet in frustration because they all have small “sticks”. That’s what Cheney reported. O.k. little libbies, time to go play in traffic.
Haha, do I get a blog-marksmanship badge for that shot, soap?
How about the top marksmanship badge, expert!
Shhh Brian. Do not talk ’bout anything that might bring g.u.n.s. into the thread. It will get highjacked.
Can we amend the Geneva Conventions to include dealing with libtrolls under the definition of torture?
Afternoon everybody. Glad to see that the discussion is lively.
I was hoping somebody could give me some legal advice. I was thinking about shredding my 2006 credit card statements, but if I do that, would I be admitting that I have something to hide?
The trolls never did respond to my questions. I guess they weren’t interested in anything but confirming the anti-conservative prejudices they already held.
I’ll take the credit for their exit from this thread, somebody has to!
Can we amend the Geneva Conventions to include dealing with libtrolls under the definition of torture?
Sure. It would start something like:
“Don’t feed the trolls”
I think what bugs me the most about this whole torture stuff is the fact that our operatives, CIA and others, have WAY TOO MANY things to worry about coming back on them to truly do a decent job of protecting me and my family. Let’s see here…..we have Mohammed in a chair with some bright lights on him. “Jim, is this torture?” “Well, I don’t know Bill, let me check with higher HQ and see if we have a specific “light brightness” scale to insure this here light is not too bright as to cause some sort of retina damage.” “We could really throw our careers out the window if this damn light is too bright!” “I say we just give Mohammed some tea and maybe a plate of fillet mignon and see if he tells us where the bombs are located.”
Meanwhile, elsewhere in Islamo-land….Abu has John (a captured soldier or possibly a journalist) in a chair somewhere in the mountain caves and the only thing he is worried about is if the camera angle is right to get the full affect when Johns head is sawed-off with a Rusty knife! IMHO, I could care less about the moral high ground America is being forced to take by these crazy left-wing PC fools! If I were running the show…our guys would have an ample supply of the most up-to-date torture devices for extreme cases like these…where possibly hundreds maybe thousands of peoples lives are at stake. In other words…waterboarding would be the least of their worries! But maybe that’s why I’m not running the show…Hmmmmm
That depends. Are you a conservative? If yes, well, the answer is obvious now isn’t it?
Whoever is responsible for this should be punished as severly as Sandy Berger!
WJWWYNH
The tapes had not been subpoenaed.
Transcripts exist. Those should be sufficient for documenting the intelligence obtained.
#112
On December 7th, 2007 at 12:22 pm, Regulus said:
You are on the right path. don’T Feed the troll.
Desertlover - ya just gave me a spit-take, Pilgrim…..
OK, Soap. Thanks. I guess I’ll just invite Sandy Berger over for dinner then.
Hide the silverware, and if Bill is coming over too, hide the wife and/or daughters.
If Hillary’s coming - hide the cat.
…and the Havana’s
You forgot the dog.
What tapes?
The old Barry Manilow tapes – real touture!!!
Judging by Rusty’s insistence to post here everyday, libs really do believe in the use of torture.
#165 –
#165 -
As I was trying to say - Libs believe in torture, but like everything else, it is selective. It’s ok if the right people are being tortured.
“[The Convention] marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.”
-Ronald Reagan, after singing the UN convention against torture, 1988
Now go on, tell me how the world has changed since 9/11, and if Reagan were alive today he would think differently. You know you want to. Or better yet, “enhanced interrogation techniques are not torture.” I like that one even better.
At this point, whatever you say does not matter. You have already shamed conservatism beyond repair. Keep digging. You will see light again, eventually.
Well, I’m glad to see the CIA doing something right for a change. They did something secret, and then destroying something secret to keep it secret. Good on them.
That must be why they’re in trouble - for doing something right.
And again huggybear, it comes down to what you consider torture. No conservative has denounced the Geneva convention. We just don’t agree that what you claim is torture is actually torture.
huggybear:
We’re still waiting for someone who believes that American interrogators use torture to explain the above.
Care to take a crack?
#138 On December 7th, 2007 at 2:25 pm, huggybear said:
“Or better yet, ‘enhanced interrogation techniques are not torture.’ I like that one even better.
At this point, whatever you say does not matter. You have already shamed conservatism beyond repair. Keep digging. You will see light again, eventually.”
What????????
I’m hesitant (truly) of sounding like a conspiracy theorist…
However, to play devil’s advocate, the assumption here is that the Democratic party either forgot or did not know about the tapes. Although, it’s been pointed out here that the timing of this is suspect.
If the tapes are destroyed, particularly if they were of no further value, could it be that the group that ‘leaked’ this has been sitting on this piece of information for quite a while? The destruction of the tapes would also mean that the CIA could not prove that the techniques used were not torture. Perhaps (and this is only hypothesis, not necessarily my opinion yet) the group that leaked this knew that the ’severe interrogation’ techniques used would not qualify as torture, but the lack of evidence to the contrary would be damning in and of itself to the CIA.
In other words, is the CIA now in a position to try and prove a negative because everyone will assume that they were torturing in that tape?
There’s been a lot of discourse here regarding torture versus interrogation. Some other folks here have also mentioned the timing.
Regardless of whether or not the CIA used torture, I believe that a key point here is that this story has come out now as a matter of political posturing. It seems clear that anything that injures the war effort or the intelligence community serves as a ‘gotcha’ for the left. We, on the right, are also a bit hasty to leap to automatic defenses as well. All the teeth gnashing serves an ultimate purpose of distracting us from the fact that there are terrorists that would do us serious harm if they had the opportunity.
I dunno… My rambling point is this: If the left abhors torture as much as some posters here claim, why did it take this long for this to become a major story? Isn’t that what Michelle is really talking about here? As rotarymunkey already said, why now?
huggbear…
Real torture would be to dump a truckload of turtles into Gitmo, feed them a bunch of burritos and turn them loose inside the compound. Within 24 hours, all the detainees would dead.
Turtle Farts can be deadly.
Huggybear, isn’t “conservatism” what the Green Movement used to call itself before they figured out no one was listening? Hard to shame that group more than they already have themselves, don’t you think?
Besides, if NOT worrying about the treatment of a few sub-human scum who were identified and apprehended in the midst of or while plotting terrorist attacks makes us conservatives “bad”, then I don’t want to be good. I will contentedly go to sleep tonight with the knowledge that me and mine are safe flying airplanes across the Atlantic in part due to these “severe interrogation techniques”.
The libs scream that information obtained by “torture” is unreliable and courts routinely throw out confessions made under duress. Had those “tortured” said they had direct knowledge and Moussaoui was innocent, would the libs have been just as quick to say that information was unreliable as they would if they said he was involved? I think not.
Judge Brikema wanted all information on interrogations yet, at best, only deserved information about those with direct knowledge on Moussaousi’s involvement. No one has shown those interrogated had direct knowledge of his involvement (one way or the other) so there is no evidence to support the insinuation the CIA hindered Moussaousi’s defense.
We all know that if the tapes were not destroyed, the NY Times would demand them (”freedom of information”) and a liberal federal judge appointed by Carter/Clinton would order the release. The Times would demand the names of the CIA agents doing the interrogation and publish the names and then the Times would say it was doing so more in sorrow than in anger. And then Clark Hoyt, the liberal public editor, would write an anguished column in which he says he talked to Mr. Keller and Mr. Keller explained everything and he agrees that Mr. Keller is right. And his column would end with another ringing endorsement of the courage and objectivity of everyone at the NY Times. Recall that The Times described the Jordanian mass killer “Al Zarkawi”
the “Jordanian fighter”.
And then when an explosion destroyed the homes of both agents on the same night the Times would report it as:
IN a bizarre coincidence, the homes of two CIA Interrogators investigated for torture and accused (by us) of war crimes and crimes against humanity, were destroyed this evening and all family members killed when both were crashed into by large trucks. According to Abdullah Akbar Kizmaass, new acting Fire Chief, “The infidels and their children were smitten tragically.” This appears to be a farming accident as both trucks were full of fertilizer and diesel fuel, possibly on their way to the state fair. In the strangest note of the evening, a CD was still playing in one of the trucks what was apparently a garbled repetition of, “Alan Alda Bear”, obviously a reference to a commemorative bear memorializing Alan Alda’s nomination at this year’s Grammy Awards for best spoken word.
Waterboarding - a detainee is strapped down, dunked under water and made to believe that he might be drowned.
Waterboarding appears to be the “worst” technique we’ve used simply becuase it’s the one that keeps popping up when US & torture is mentioned.
Are you saying waterboarding remotely approaches beheading by sawing the neck with a knife?
Once you strip out the Times spin, there does not appear to much of a story here at all.
Maybe we’re not framing the case for waterboarding correctly.
What if we advocated defending the interrogators’ right to choose their methods? And, and while we’re personally opposed to waterboarding, we don’t want to impose our morality on those with a difficult choice to make.
We want waterboarding to be safe, legal and rare!
I’ve gotten pretty tired of all the whining about it. I almost at the point of saying to the whiners, er, liberals, “Listen. No one ever tried to blow up Ghingas Kahn’s house. Why? Because he would have killed the assassin, the assassin’s family, everyone in the village where the assassin was born and everyone in the village where he lived. Everyone knew that so no one screwed with him. Now let’s finish this thing and bring our soldiers home!”
…and I was stunned to see on the NYT’s front page, running on the same day, in large bold print, about the democrats’ outrage at Sandy Berger’s adventure.
Sarc off.
American courts for a century have held that waterboarding is torture. We condemn others (Pol Pot, etc.) for doing it.
Conservatives have advocated “withdrawing” from the Geneva conventions. A famous example is Rumsfeld, who called them “quaint”.
Making something illegal doesn’t mean there is no conceivable circumstance under which one should do it. For example, we condone stealing to save a life. The laws against theft do not say this, it’s up to prosecutors to use prosecutorial discretion. In the same way, we don’t need a special exemption to anti torture laws the contrived (Bin Laden is torturing my grandmother somewhere in North Korea) scenarios posted here.
The experts (military people) say torture doesn’t work. The non-experts, including Republican politicians pandering to a sadistic base, refuse to believe them or don’t care. What can you do?
Calling me a troll doesn’t make me wrong. I read MM’s posts and comment on them, just like you.
1. It was stupid for the CIA to tell Congress that there were tapes.
2. It was stupid to keep them.
3. It is stupid to handicap our agenceys that are protecting ur sorry butts.
Out here we call that “high surf”
The videos of the interrogation of the terrorists shouldn’t have been destroyed. They would have helped to determine how big a raise our agents should be getting.
Besides, I had just bought the jumbo-sized bag-o-popcorn…ah,well…
I have a hard time getting excited by these stories that indicate that maybe we did hurtful things to a terrorist.
And I have no trouble deciding that we are on the moral high ground in this war. Frankly, an interrogation tape is far too trivial to be relevent to drawing any conclusion on such matters. A bunch of sadistic dirtball savages who deliberately blow up women and children and think they are going to paradise for it vs the worst we could possibly imagine in an interrogation — wouldn’t tip the balance in the slightest.
If the law disagrees and lets the terrorists off the hook over this, then it simply shows we need some changes in the law.
@TexasTiger
You’re on to something!
The penumbra of the Right to Privacy should cover waterboarding in the sanctity of the agent’s own safe house.
Burn the tapes, feed the ashes to the gitmo detainees, then render them to the Northern Alliance warlords - package up a chunk of cash to prepay for the service - end of story.
Oops, almost forgot - stop taking prisoners - if forced to ship directly to the Northern Alliance or Kurds with a bag of cash.
I was night scuba diving on a wall in about 100′ of water. My throat was really dry and I suddenly had a coughing attack. I coughed out my regular and couldn’t stop coughing. My bouancy was really trim so as I coughed I started sinking. On top of that, my dive buddy and I were at the back of the pack and he didn’t notice that I had disappeared. I watched the lights of the group disappearing into the haze as I started sinking. My lungs were on fire, but every time I cleared the regulator and started to take a breath I started coughing again even though I basically had no air left in my lungs. It is the only time scuba diving I really thought I was going to drown. I was near panic and only my training and will prevented me from freaking out. If I had panicked I would have died and floated down to the 200′ bottom. Water- check. Fear of drowning - check. Panic - well not quite but then I am trained to deal with panic.
I didn’t realize until I read some of the posts in this thread that it was not actually a survivable, although scary, scuba incident, I was tortured in a sinister conspiracy by “the man”.
That makes as much sense as the liberal view on the rest of this stuff.
It’s high time that the courts respect the sanctity of the relationship between an interrogator and his client.
Damned if you do…Damned if you don’t.
Six weeks of foot-stamping & sippy-cup banging begins in 4…3…
[yawn]
Question, for these self-righteous, sanctimonious, Liberal butt-heads:
What would you do with the tapes, if you had them?
Comment #194 cont’d…
And beings, you are so g’damned predictable, can you give us a reason to NOT destroy the tapes?
Shhhh…don’t tell the Liberals, bt the CIA does things that are secret. It is the nature of their business to do things that are secret. It is called “Doing things that are secret for the good of the country and for National Security”
Also, don’t tell them that they don’t need to know everything that goes on. Just because they don’t know everything that goes on doesn’t automtically mean there is a cover-up or a conspiracy. It may be a simple as we just plain do not want our enemies to know what we are doing so that they do not take ad vantage of that knowledge and destroy us. I know it is a very difficult concept for them to understand, what with them wanting to see our nation destroyed and handed over to our enemies and all, what with all their sedition and treason and everything, but it really is just that freaking simple.
The nature of the CIA is SECRET!!!!
Morons.