Torture delayed finding bin Laden

[MARIS61]

[video] pite[/video]

 

[jlprk]

The day after the assassination, Obama said, "Today, America can be proud. This shows the U.S. can accomplish anything."

That used to be said about the moon landing. Back then, this country's great goal was to do something constructive, a great engineering project. Now, its greatest goal is to assassinate someone.

In every other war, progress was decribed as the taking of territory. Any deaths were byproducts. They didn't announce, "Our goal is to kill the province's leader, and the side effect will be to take his territory." They used to announce, "We have taken the province, and oh by the way, the leader died in the fighting."

Now, the blatant goal is to simply kill the unarmed leader, not in battle, but after rousting him from bed. That used to be considered cowardly. Then, try to make HIM look like the coward for how you killed him, covering up your murder of his wife by lying that he hid behind a woman.

This comes after torturing over a thousand of his comrades to find him. You won't find in history any search for a leader involving a higher number of tortures, or any torture campaign that has lasted almost 10 years. It's as if the goal had been to finish within a decade.

Osama bin Laden is the Apollo of torture projects. Torture is the technology of the future.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

I think America's already moved on from this to the next news story.

 

[Denny Crane]

 

[BrianFromWA]

it's good that Mr. Alexander is "convinced". His opinion has just as much weight as yours or shooter's. And has about the same level of logic and evidence behind it.

 

[MrJayremmie]

I thought you were a Ron Paul Libertarian?

 

[tlongII]

Fuck yah you torture those bastards if it helps get Osama! The way to deal with terrorists is to kill them all.

 

[Denny Crane]

I thought you were a Ron Paul Libertarian?

I like to watch the lefties squirm over their "change you can count on."

 

[MrJayremmie]

I like to watch the lefties squirm over their "change you can count on."

So can we finally put this Libertarian shit behind us and just call you a republican that has socially liberal tendencies?

 

[bluefrog]

John McCain (a man who knows a thing or two about torture) had an interesting opinion piece in the Washington Post this morning:

I have sought further information from the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and they confirm for me that, in fact, the best intelligence gained from a CIA detainee — information describing Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti’s real role in Al-Qaeda and his true relationship to Osama bin Laden — was obtained through standard, non-coercive means, not through any ‘enhanced interrogation technique.’

In short, it was not torture or cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees that got us the major leads that ultimately enabled our intelligence community to find Osama bin Laden. I hope former Attorney General Mukasey will correct his misstatement. It’s important that he do so because we are again engaged in this important debate, with much at stake for America’s security and reputation. Each side should make its own case, but do so without making up its own facts.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

Fuck yah you torture those bastards if it helps get Osama! The way to deal with terrorists is to kill them all.

Agreed.

 

[44Thrilla]

So can we finally put this Libertarian shit behind us and just call you a republican that has socially liberal tendencies?

we should have done that a long time ago.

 

[Denny Crane]

So can we finally put this Libertarian shit behind us and just call you a republican that has socially liberal tendencies?

I don't vote for republicans, but have voted for democrats - like Jerry Brown for gov. If that's republican in your eyes, so be it.

 

[maxiep]

So can we finally put this Libertarian shit behind us and just call you a republican that has socially liberal tendencies?

You seem to care a lot about labels that you clearly don't understand.

 

[MrJayremmie]

You seem to care a lot about labels that you clearly don't understand.

You seem to care about posts you don't understand.

we should have done that a long time ago.

Yep

 

[MrJayremmie]

Bush aide says 9/11 mastermind mocked waterboarding

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2015072235_waterboarding17.html?syndication=rss

WASHINGTON — A former speech writer for President George W. Bush said Monday that confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed mocked his CIA interrogators during his March 2003 waterboarding sessions by using his fingers to tick off the number of seconds he would be subjected to near drowning.

"He was communicating to his interrogators that he was on to them," Marc Thiessen said during a panel discussion on what role harsh interrogation tactics might have played in developing the intelligence that led to Osama bin Laden's hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the record about the report, and there was no independent verification of Thiessen's account. Mohammed's lawyer also declined to comment.

Thiessen said Monday that Mohammed knew that agents had to relent after 40 seconds, something he may have divined after undergoing the procedure repeatedly.

Only two detainees, Mohammed, who is also known as KSM, and a Palestinian, Zayn al Abdeen Mohammed Hussein, who's also known as Abu Zubaydah, were waterboarded scores of times, U.S. documents indicate. Abu Zubaydah underwent the procedure at least 83 times, while KSM was waterboarded 183 times, according to a Justice Department memo written in 2005, citing a 2004 report by the CIA's inspector general.

A different 2005 Justice Department memo noted in a footnote that "after multiple applications of the waterboard, it may become apparent to the detainee that, however frightening the experience may be, it will not result in death." In another footnote, the memo quoted the CIA's Office of Medical Services as saying that "some subjects unquestionably can withstand a large number" of waterboard applications.

Neither Justice Department memo nor the portions of the CIA inspector general's report that have been made public, however, mentions KSM as counting down the seconds during his waterboard sessions.

Thiessen, who now writes a weekly column for The Washington Post, said he learned of KSM's actions while researching a book that defends the Bush administration's use of harsh interrogation techniques. He referred to Mohammed's waterboard experience as "183 splashes" administered in five separate sessions.

The description of KSM came during a panel discussion at the conservative American Enterprise Institute prompted by reports that some of the information that led to bin Laden was developed during harsh interrogation at so-called CIA black sites, where several al-Qaida figures were secretly held for years before being transferred to Guantanamo in 2006.

Former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Monday that information from waterboarding "was part of the mosaic" that led to the May 2 raid that killed bin Laden. But U.S. Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, speaking on the Senate floor, said Friday that CIA director Leon Panetta had personally assured him that harsh interrogations had not resulted in the information that led to bin Laden.

In comments to reporters after the session, Thiessen quoted an unidentified interrogator as speaking admiringly of KSM's ability to withstand the waterboard: "For a psychopath, you have to give him his props. He's tough," Theissen said the agent told him.

Mohammed, 46, has been held at Guantanamo since September 2006 after Bush ordered the CIA to transfer him to military custody for a war crimes trial. The Obama administration had planned to try KSM in civilian court in New York City, but after Congress banned the Pentagon from spending money to transfer detainees to the U.S. for trial, Attorney General Eric Holder returned the case to the Pentagon. New charges have yet to be brought.

KSM 1, Torture 0

 

[MARIS61]

it's good that Mr. Alexander is "convinced". His opinion has just as much weight as yours or shooter's. And has about the same level of logic and evidence behind it.

So you're implying the military's interrogators (which he was) lack credibility?

Seems he would know a hell of a lot more about the topic than you. Kind of first hand expert knowledge, I would say.

I guess that makes your opinions on this topic completely useless, since you obviously have less factual knowledge than he does.

 

[BrianFromWA]

Here was his quote:

The laying of the groundwork, if you will, of these [Bush-era] techniques, I believe wholeheartedly, slowed us down on the road towards Osama bin Laden and numerous other members of al-Qaeda," Alexander says. "I’m convinced we would have found him a lot earlier had we not resorted to torture and abuse.

He's guessing, and stating his opinion. That's fine. But I have spoken to actual Gitmo interrogators and their commanders and have heard a different story. That said, I'm not the one who put up the quote of some interrogator's opinion as a fact.

 

[3RA1N1AC]

how exactly did mccain get tortured? always wondered exactly what he went through

 

[PapaG]

A CIA spokesman declined to comment on the record about the report, and there was no independent verification of Thiessen's account.

Well, that convinces me. A Bush speechwriter says so! :MARIS61:

 

[Ed O]

KSM 1, Torture 0

Waterboarding is not torture.

Ed O.

 

[bluefrog]

how exactly did mccain get tortured? always wondered exactly what he went through

He wrote a first hand account about three years ago. Here's a short excerpt:

For almost two months, nothing happened. Then the punishment sessions began. I was hauled into an empty room and kept there for four days. At intervals, the guards returned to administer beatings.

One guard held me while the others pounded away.

They cracked several of my ribs and broke a couple of teeth. Weakened by beatings and dysentery, with my right leg again almost useless, I found it impossible to stand.

On the third night I lay in my blood and waste, so tired and hurt that I could not move. Three guards lifted me to my feet and gave me the worst beating yet. They left me lying on the floor moaning from the stabbing pain in my re-fractured arm.

 

[3RA1N1AC]

ok i thought they raped him and poked his eyeballs with hot needles or something

 

[BlazerCaravan]

ok i thought they raped him and poked his eyeballs with hot needles or something

No, not *real* torture, just beatings.

 

[3RA1N1AC]

well yeah

 

[magnifier661]

Chop their fingers off and force them to try and flip you off!

 

[maxiep]

You seem to care about posts you don't understand.

Irony alert.