Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Salon has an article pulling details of how detainees were waterboarded from government documents. The article shows that when Dick Cheney referred to waterboarding as a "dunk in the water" he was lying. And that Marc Thiessen and his ilk, when they pretend that waterboarding can't be torture because we do it to our own troops, are lying.
Interrogators pumped detainees full of so much water that the CIA turned to a special saline solution to minimize the risk of death, the documents show. The agency used a gurney "specially designed" to tilt backwards at a perfect angle to maximize the water entering the prisoner's nose and mouth, intensifying the sense of choking - and to be lifted upright quickly in the event that a prisoner stopped breathing.The documents also lay out, in chilling detail, exactly what should occur in each two-hour waterboarding "session." Interrogators were instructed to start pouring water right after a detainee exhaled, to ensure he inhaled water, not air, in his next breath. They could use their hands to "dam the runoff" and prevent water from spilling out of a detainee's mouth. They were allowed six separate 40-second "applications" of liquid in each two-hour session - and could dump water over a detainee's nose and mouth for a total of 12 minutes a day. Finally, to keep detainees alive even if they inhaled their own vomit during a session - a not-uncommon side effect of waterboarding - the prisoners were kept on a liquid diet. The agency recommended Ensure Plus.
"This is revolting and it is deeply disturbing," said Dr. Scott Allen, co-director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at Brown University who has reviewed all of the documents for Physicians for Human Rights. "The so-called science here is a total departure from any ethics or any legitimate purpose. They are saying, 'This is how risky and harmful the procedure is, but we are still going to do it.' It just sounds like lunacy," he said. "This fine-tuning of torture is unethical, incompetent and a disgrace to medicine."
And every single doctor who participated in this should lose their medical license immediately for violating the Hippocratic oath. More details:
These memos show the CIA went much further than that with terror suspects, using huge and dangerous quantities of liquid over long periods of time. The CIA's waterboarding was "different" from training for elite soldiers, according to the Justice Department document released last month. "The difference was in the manner in which the detainee's breathing was obstructed," the document notes. In soldier training, "The interrogator applies a small amount of water to the cloth (on a soldier's face) in a controlled manner," DOJ wrote. "By contrast, the agency interrogator ... continuously applied large volumes of water to a cloth that covered the detainee's mouth and nose."One of the more interesting revelations in the documents is the use of a saline solution in waterboarding. Why? Because the CIA forced such massive quantities of water into the mouths and noses of detainees, prisoners inevitably swallowed huge amounts of liquid - enough to conceivably kill them from hyponatremia, a rare but deadly condition in which ingesting enormous quantities of water results in a dangerously low concentration of sodium in the blood. Generally a concern only for marathon runners , who on extremely rare occasions drink that much water, hyponatremia could set in during a prolonged waterboarding session. A waterlogged, sodium-deprived prisoner might become confused and lethargic, slip into convulsions, enter a coma and die.
Therefore, "based on advice of medical personnel," Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Steven Bradbury wrote in a May 10, 2005, memo authorizing continued use of waterboarding, "the CIA requires that saline solution be used instead of plain water to reduce the possibility of hyponatremia."
The agency used so much water there was also another risk: pneumonia resulting from detainees inhaling the fluid forced into their mouths and noses. Saline, the CIA argued, might reduce the risk of pneumonia when this occurred.
"The detainee might aspirate some of the water, and the resulting water in the lungs might lead to pneumonia," Bradbury noted in the same memo. "To mitigate this risk, a potable saline solution is used in the procedure."
That particular Bradbury memo laid out a precise and disturbing protocol for what went on in each waterboarding session. The CIA used a "specially designed" gurney for waterboarding, Bradbury wrote. After immobilizing a prisoner by strapping him down, interrogators then tilted the gurney to a 10-15 degree downward angle, with the detainee's head at the lower end. They put a black cloth over his face and poured water, or saline, from a height of 6 to 18 inches, documents show. The slant of the gurney helped drive the water more directly into the prisoner's nose and mouth. But the gurney could also be tilted upright quickly, in the event the prisoner stopped breathing.
Detainees would be strapped to the gurney for a two-hour "session." During that session, the continuous flow of water onto a detainee's face was not supposed to exceed 40 seconds during each pour. Interrogators could perform six separate 40-second pours during each session, for a total of four minutes of pouring. Detainees could be subjected to two of those two-hour sessions during a 24-hour period, which adds up to eight minutes of pouring. But the CIA's guidelines say interrogators could pour water over the nose and mouth of a detainee for 12 minutes total during each 24-hour period. The documents do not explain the extra four minutes to get to 12.
Interrogators were instructed to pour the water when a detainee had just exhaled so that he would inhale during the pour. An interrogator was also allowed to force the water down a detainee's mouth and nose using his hands. "The interrogator may cup his hands around the detainee's nose and mouth to dam the runoff," the Bradbury memo notes. "In which case it would not be possible for the detainee to breathe during the application of the water."
Can you imagine sitting down and writing a memo authorizing this kind of thing? How could you live with yourself?
Politics
Comments
Ed:
I'm surprised at your naïveté in this.
The PWTBWC (People We Tortured Because We Could) WERE subjected to that process to bolster our national security.
While BlackwaterXE had all of their mercs, er, I mean, contract security personnel in Iraqistan it was imperative that they be battle ready and not in various states of arrest for one thing and another. Since it's becoming pretty obvious that the two avenues for "blowing off steam" for those proud professionals are a.) sadistic behavior and b.) rape of fellow contractors who have made the mistake of having a uterus, the DorkLordCheney decided it would be easier to buy off the families of dead Iraqistanians than it would be to have all of those pesky civil suits in this country.
It's all just so, so frangible, dude!
Posted by: democommie | March 15, 2010 9:13 AM
Any perspective regarding how well the major TV news networks have covered this story, if at all? They've had ample time to digest this report.
I also ask because it's my opinion that illuminating waterboarding as an argument against torture has unfortunately been a political non-starter. I argued that describing the combination of all treatments was more persuasive at falsifying the "enhanced interrogation" lie since it described torture lasting days rather than discrete events lasting seconds, descriptions that undeniably portray torture whereas previous descriptions of waterboarding failed to resonate. I now think that with this new information, properly describing these acts may be even more compelling than what I previously argued though I'd like to see how well the mainstream media presents this new evidence. Of course these two descriptive approaches are not mutually exclusive; my optimal desire is to see the media describe the totality of events and its results.
Finally, is there any way that a special interest group such as the American Medical Association can lobby a prosecutor to criminally investigate the doctors that both enabled and participated in torturing detainees? At a minimum one would hope they would demand to know who these doctors are so they can use whatever licensing bodies are available with their attendant standards to seek the removal of these doctors' licenses.
Posted by: Michael Heath | March 15, 2010 9:21 AM
Is the hyppocratic oath still relevant in the US? In Germany, most doctors don't swear it, and even if they do, it's only ritualistic, not binding.
Also, I'm afraid that torture proponents (a.k.a. idiots) will say that this report shows how exact the interrogators were, ensuring that nobody died (liquid diet) or that they went too far (time constraints). It's the allure of organized evil – making absolutely sure it doesn't get too evil and the trains run on time.
Posted by: Patrick | March 15, 2010 9:36 AM
If only we could compel waterboarding lover Rove to go for it, we could finally get the truth about...well, doesn't matter.
Pretty much the same result with the other tortured folks too.
Posted by: MikeMa | March 15, 2010 9:55 AM
The documents do not explain the extra four minutes to get to 12
Such scientific-sounding justification is laid out and they don't even get the math right. It's like they wanted to put something in writing and make is sound like they had done all this research as to the limits, but then just to cover themselves a little more added on some extra time.
Were there really medical personnel or was that simply another layer of BS to work through if these people were ever held to task for writing the memos?
Posted by: Odie | March 15, 2010 9:57 AM
And we're still waiting for Hannity to submit to a waterboarding session.
Posted by: wheatdogg | March 15, 2010 10:08 AM
wheatdogg @ 6:
And we'll be waiting for the rest of our lives. Hannity is a coward.
Posted by: CHV | March 15, 2010 11:04 AM
@CHV
So is Rove.
Posted by: MikeMa | March 15, 2010 11:23 AM
I'm horrified by the clinical precision with which the author of the quoted piece describes the "procedure." It's reads like a manual for a dental hygienist and as dispassionate. Any normal person would flatly refuse to draft such a thing.
IN the end, of this doesn't merit prosecution of Bush administration officials, nothing will. The excuse of "just following orders" doesn't cut it.
Posted by: Keanus | March 15, 2010 11:38 AM
This compares very closely to another form of torture. We should describe this torture also in detail.
It's a really complex and interesting torture. You see, it involves the equivalent of a corporate-fat-cat-government-republican-polluter-guy-in-rich-white-land, whom is the most hated person around the world, only this one is a religious-leader-fat-cat-guy-in-a-poor-brown-country-aww-so-sad, convincing others (usually poor-not-having-anything-but-what-somebody-told-them guys) that killing anything that doesn't believe everything in their book is good, and calling it martyrdom.
Now here's where the torture starts: One of these poor beknighted souls walks into a crowded subway station and detonates a weapon! Oh my gosh, it's only OK to do that if you're at like, Enron's headquarters or something.
So now we have all these people that died. And they have all these relatives, families, friends.. And they all cry, boo hoo. And there is water all over their faces too. And they use napkins and kleenex to "dam the runoff" of their tears. And they can't give their kids and husbands and wives a proper muslim burial, either, because they can't find all the pieces of the fucking body.
Draw a picture of mohammed and they think it's ok to kill you. Try to put up a store in their country and they think it's ok to kill you. Write a book they don't agree with and they think it's ok to kill you. TRANSLATE a book they don't agree with and they think it's ok to kill you. Be different from them and they think it's ok to kill you. Now, we aren't free from guilt here (the US.) We have oil interests, we have money involved, we have conflicts of interest, and we have shitty behaviour. We want a piece of the natural-resource pie for ourselves. Is that wrong? Sure. We should extend an open hand to the Islamic culture of the region.. But one doesn't have to search very far to find quite a few treatise on how unlikely reconcilliation between our cultures is.
But in all seriousness? Fuck these detainees. Fuck their "rights." Fuck their ability to choke and gasp and wheeze and die. If you could hand over these jihadist leaders that convince others to spread misery and death in the name of martyrdom (which is false anyway, martyrs sacrifice willingly something they cherish, most suicide bombers don't cherish their life, so it is against the principles of martyrdom ANYWAY) to the families of people that died in suicide attacks, then you'd see some goddamn torture boy howdy.
"But we're stooping to their level." No, we're not. We are sophisticatedly trying to maximize the efficiency of our ability to destabilize the islamic extremist movement by the gathering of intelligence from extremist individuals to take down power-mongering assholes that train children to be weapons and practice acts of murder against non-combatants under the banner of religion.
I'm sure those guys that translated "the satanic verses" into other languages (TRANSLATED A BOOK!) and got stabbed to death in the streets by muslim zealots sure tried to "dam the runoff" of their blood onto the fucking pavement
As long as Islam holds as self-evident their ability to prevent free speech and press and carries out the belief of their righteousness by indoctrination and demonstrations against non-combatants indiscriminately, then fuck the rights of her extremist sons.
So, to answer your question, if I believed that these waterboardees were terrorists, I could totally see myself signing this memo. Three or four times. Because I'm pretty sure if the situation was reversed, they would do worse. Thank god I'm not a headless reported, eh?
Posted by: Awwthepoorterrorists:( | March 15, 2010 11:59 AM
Headless reporter. Works better if you spell it right.
Posted by: Awwthepoorterrorists:( | March 15, 2010 12:02 PM
@Keanus #9,
That must be because you're human and still have a conscience. The sooner you learn to ignore that voice, the sooner you will be qualified for high public office, or to advise those in high public office.
I bet on the latter. The only time Bush or Cheney or Rumsfeld or Rice or Yoo or Bybee or Addington will see the inside of a courtroom as a non-officer will be if they get called for jury duty. And that's a tragedy. You would think that shooting someone in the face would carry some penalty, also, but that's only because you would think the law applies to everyone, when it evidently doesn't.
Posted by: Shawn Smith | March 15, 2010 12:11 PM
@10
Hold on- what the fuck are talking about?
Sure. Torture is OK because they're bad people. We know because we tortured them until they confessed to being bad people. Of course, when the enemy tortures our soldiers or bombs a subway station and justifies it by saying the victims were bad people that's different.
Posted by: DaveL | March 15, 2010 12:14 PM
Translation of Awwthepoorterrists:(
Given that:
1) Torture has been empirically revealed to have failed as an effective interrogation device. Secondly it's proven to be an inferior method of extracting intelligence techniques relative to successful professional interrogation methods used by the professionally trained and experienced interrogators from the FBI and Military.
Couple these empirical facts to:
2) The fact that our torture policy resulted in the number one primary motivation for Arabs to join al Qaeda fighting our troops in Iraq, thereby increasing our expenditures in both blood, time, and treasure.
I can only conclude the following:
Awwthepoorterrists:( has absolutely zero desire that America both maximize our results and minimize casualities to our troops, but instead fulfill some sort of juvenile fantasy of his. The demonstrated results of his advocacy has resulted in more dead and wounded American soldiers, an increased number of al Qaeda members, while America gained less valuable intelligence. At best I find his argument less than compelling and illustrative of countless examples regarding why conservatism is an ungovernable political ideology.
Posted by: Michael Heath | March 15, 2010 12:24 PM
@10
No, it didn't, not a bit.
Posted by: Scott Hanley | March 15, 2010 12:24 PM
"Awwthepoorterrorists:(" is just a shill for Big Tu Quoque.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | March 15, 2010 1:31 PM
Seconded. As a physician.
Posted by: Orac | March 15, 2010 1:59 PM
Makes you wonder how they found out that their prisoners could die this way... I wouldn't be too surprised (horrified, but not too surprised) to learn they found out the hard way.
@Awwthepoorterrorists: if this isn't some failed attempt at satire, you'd better get some therapy for those revenge fantasies of yours.
Posted by: Deen | March 15, 2010 2:08 PM
The famous oath to Apolo god of healing is a red herring in this context. What matters is that doctors have a moral obligation not to harm those under their care and should know this whether they took an oath or not.
Posted by: Matty | March 15, 2010 2:11 PM
"The detainee might aspirate some of the water, and the resulting water in the lungs might lead to pneumonia," Bradbury noted in the same memo. "To mitigate this risk, a potable saline solution is used in the procedure."
Dr. Mengele would be proud of this kind of medical judgement. Awwthepoorterrorists would get along with him splendidly.
Posted by: Rob Jase | March 15, 2010 3:23 PM
13
Correct. You summed that up just about right. Hypocrisy in this case is a statement of judgement of value: I value not-terrorists more than I value terrorists. The rest is just details, pragmatic, uncomfortable and self-serving sometimes, but still just details. Details like, they probably DO have more extremist crazy islamic detainees that wanted to blow up your children then they have nice moderate muslims that believe you shouldn't be able to draw mohammed (you dirty infidel.)
14
1) We don't employ morons. You'd like to think we do, I suppose. Whatever techniques get the info, they're getting the info. Your keyboard-jockey knowledge of interogation techniques is eclipsed by miles by those whom our government employs, therefore you shouldn't make the assumption that interogation starts and ends with the shit that showed up on CNN. That I approve of the shit that shows up on CNN because I believe any effort should be taken to ensure the eradication of Islamic extremism (not the coddling, or the attrition-based apathy in the long term, or some other touchy-feely method that does not grasp immediately the truth depth of extremist hatred for all things non-Muslim) does not preclude my approval to the other things that we, the people, don't know about yet. There are probably some congressmen and generals sitting there going "oh thank god this is all that leaked out."
Couple that logical fact with
2) Sorry, what? Our *invasion of iraq* *twice,* our *training counter-government agents,* our *absolutely insane oil policies and colonial corporate techniques,* *ties with a more or less unpopular regime in Saudi,* *al'Queda propaganda machine,* *early-life indoctrination thereof,* *fundamental Islamic precepts,* and so on, are not the primary stimulations to join al'Queda, it's our waterboarding of some extremists? Nokka please.
I can only conclude the following: You either believe we should all convert to Islam to avoid the issue or put a giant wall up around the middle east excluding israel to avoid the issue or really we should just put all suspected terrorists in jail forever and avoid the issue or we could pretend it's really our fault completely and if we all just died we could avoid the issue.
15
You see, it's a reference to beheading reporters whom are ransomed or executed by various militant groups that have no significant military knowledge (the reporters, that is.) It is meant as an analogy attempting to explain why I fundamentally do not believe that the Islam religion in its current incarnation has the capacity to respond to other cultures, at a base-of-the-pyramid level, positively or constructively and why I think it is folly for other more "enlightened" (defined here as those with freedom of speech and expression, for my own purposes) cultures to ascribe inalienable rights to Islamic extremists that those persons are not willing to give to the infidel. The problem is systemic: The proletariat of the middle east are power-mongering clergy who are attempting to keep their power base entrenched whilst foreign ideas such as the separation of church and state and freedom of speech sneak in during the pilfering (by the west) of the region for oil. I think we just saw a positive election result in iraq directly in the face of this opposition. Bravo, I say, for the people of Iraq to do that. It is shitty the way it came about, but.. that's life.
So, my analogy? We interogate "terrorists" to glean information to fight the "war on terror," they execute reporters to "punish the infidels." Similar result and maybe even purpose.
The old saying may be if you fight fire with fire we all get burned, but you can't extend the olive branch when the Glory of Allah requires that your hand be cut off for doing so.
16
لا أحب عدوك فقط لأنك سامحه
Also, is 10 shillings enough for you Tu suck my Big Quoque?
17
Regarding the hippocratic oath: I wonder if you (as a physician) ended up captured in some village somewhere, if your asclepius badge and frenzied concillatory gestures would keep your head attached?
I do think that doctors shouldn't be taking part in this. We have plenty of mean, nasty evil corporate american soldiers to torture all these poor brown people that were really in camps learning about fertilizer to go home and grow rice.
Posted by: Awwpoorterrorists:( | March 15, 2010 4:40 PM
I can only conclude the following: You either believe we should all convert to Islam to avoid the issue or put a giant wall up around the middle east excluding israel to avoid the issue or really we should just put all suspected terrorists in jail forever and avoid the issue or we could pretend it's really our fault completely and if we all just died we could avoid the issue.
I can only conclude that whoever wrote the above nonsense is totally dominated by emotion and wishful thinking, and is totally incapable of forming, or understanding, a coherent thought. Seriously, you think experienced interrogators support torture, therefore we should all do the same? Guess what -- you're wrong about what the experienced interrogators think, therefore your entire thesis -- to the extent that such incoherent self-righteousness can be called a "thesis" -- fails.
Posted by: Raging Bee | March 15, 2010 4:56 PM
Awwwpoo:
Have you ever heard of Malcolm Nance? He was "one of those whom our government employs", as you put it. He's got the credentials, and he's against torture. You can Google up his views. Also, he's got a new book out.
Posted by: Chris Winter | March 15, 2010 5:06 PM
It was parody.
So are our enemies just as justified in valuing "non-foreign-invaders" over "foreign invaders", "non-oil-imperialists" over "oil imperialists"?
How about "Non-torturers" over "torturers"?
Did you ever stop to wonder how we determined if detainees were terrorists in the first place? What standard of evidence needs to be met and to whom it must be demonstrated?
Posted by: DaveL | March 15, 2010 5:08 PM
Who's up for waterboarding Awwwpoo until he admits to being a terrorist, and then waterboarding him some more for being a terrorist? After all, there are some people out there who will kill you for drawing a cartoon of Muhammad.
Posted by: Gretchen | March 15, 2010 5:25 PM
The terrorists won (at least, they won over the commenter @ 10,21):
"Awwpoorterrorists'" comments above are designed to prove to the world that all that talk about being a nation of laws and civilization are just propaganda, a thin veneer over a society which just looks civilized, until it is stressed by the (undoubted) violence of an obscurantist religious movement in a dirt-poor developing country.
If Osama bin Laden would care about copyright laws, "Awwpoorterrorists" would soon get a request for reproduction of his rantings in the Al Queda recruiting literature.
Would the father of the 'Underwear bomber' have told the U.S. authorities about his son's problems, had he read the rantings above?
Also, I remember that a major purpose of the torture of some individuals was to get them to admit a (nonexistent)Iraq - al Queda connection; apparently the idea seemed so absurd to them, that they didn't agree to it even after 83(Abu Zubaydah) or 183 (Khalid Shaikh Mohammed) water boarding sessions.
We'd think that evil cannot happen here, in the U.S.; after all, the Great Depression was followed by FDR, not a facist government.
But perhaps it is closer than we fear, and it will come not by ravers and ranters like "Awwpoorterrorists," but in the form of banal-sounding bureaucrats, whose memos make evil acceptable and normal and 'safe,' and whose task is to make us feel safer.
Posted by: A | March 15, 2010 5:38 PM
Awwpoorterrorists:( @ 21 digs his hole even deeper by responding to my pointing out that torture was not effective as an interrogation tool and it served as the primary recruitment tool by al Qaeda for insurgents and terrorists to fight us in Iraq who cost us time, blood, and treasure in Iraq. He states:
Actually we did employ morons, that is a primary point. The facts are that these morons instituted policies they pulled out of their ass, these policies were not requested by functional experts in the chain of command. Those policies did lead to a breakdown in the chain of command that created the situation at abu Ghraib, reduced our ability to gain intelligence, and increased the number of American soldiers who died or were wounded in Iraq. Those are empirical facts that are not disputed within the CIA, FBI, or Military and which have been reported to the Congress*. Some agents in the CIA mainly outsourced interrogation to non-professionals who failed miserably to extract any actionable intelligence while professional interrogators that serve in the FBI and in the Military were largely successful and voliminously pointed out how those who were employing torture were failing. This is a matter of public record.
Awwpoorterrorists:( @ 21:
You have no clue how I've developed my understanding on this subject. Therefore, given your making a claim about which you couldn't possibly know anything about while making a popular conservative argument, my initial conclusion is you are merely projecting your own skills and [lack of] knowledge.
I didn't pull my points out of my ass as you clearly have (if I'm wrong, please validate so by citing evidence to support your assertions). I instead rely on those who have functional knowledge and expertise and very importantly, have not been discovered lying about the efficacy of professional techniques vs. torture like those who've been promoting torture have been discovered doing. One of my citable sources was the top military interrogator, "Matthew Alexander" in Iraq whose interrogation team located al Qaeda's Iraqi commander Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or the FBI agent Ali Soufan who, "successfully interrogated Abu Zubaydah, and by “connecting” with the detainee, he learned the identity of 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed."
In addition, most of our top military field commanders, such as General David Petreaus who now serves as CENTCOM Commander are also on the record regarding the efficacy of torture vs. professional interrogation techniques. A two link limit prevents me from citing him but I could easily provide one upon request.
Given that Awwpoorterrorists:( maintains his argument in spite of his failure to provide any evidence while we have ample evidence of how Bush's torture policies led to a loss of blood and treasure in at least Iraq, I can only continue to conclude that Awwpoorterrorists:( doesn't give a flying fuck about the national interest or our soldiers relative to some juvenile fantasy he has for us to torture others.
Awwpoorterrorists:( - so far you proven you are a) an idiot given you make arguments which you neither support with evidence and can be easily refuted as I did here, and b) some kind of sick pervert given you'd prefer America compromise optimal outcomes in order that you can enjoy someone torturing others on your behalf. In addition you reveal yourself to be a pathetic coward given you'd rather cling to a falsified fantasy that torture works rather than defend our Constitution and its principals.
I quote a hero of mine and a great President, Ronald Reagan, who stated when signing one of the binding legal documents that arguably makes what Misters Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld illegal in his message to the Senate in May 1988 when he signed the U.N. convention on torture and mistreatment:
*See the Senate Armed Services Committee Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody, Executive Summary and Conclusions which can easily be retrieved by googling. I do not link here given I've already used my two link limit here. I'll link in a subsequent post if requested.
Posted by: Michael Heath | March 15, 2010 6:08 PM
Torture is easy to understand when you realize that most people of the ilk of awpoorterrrorists and Dick Cheney see it as an opportunity for vengeance against Muslims for 9/11 and for beheading Daniel Pearl.
They refuse to accept that this country was founded as a Republic "shining city on a hill" but is instead "The Fatherland." I also find it odd that they think we should trust the government on issues of torture, but not when it comes to paying medical bills. Just sayin'.
Posted by: Mike Haubrich, FCD | March 15, 2010 7:25 PM
It's no secret that most of our enemies don't follow the Geneva Conventions. But, only an infantile mindset would say that makes it OK for us the behave the same. Through the use of torture, we have defiled the moral high ground on which we once stood.
Al Qaeda and their ilk would carry on as they always have regardless of how we treat their captured. We have given them a recruiting tool with the torture and Abu Ghraib and it was completely unnecessary. That we got intel from the torture we wouldn't have gotten otherwise is unlikely, but debatable. That what we lost is greater than the gain, I think is beyond debate.
Another problem created by our torture policy and our abysmal record of properly categorizing detainees is that we tortured truly innocent people. We created a situation that could have come from Solzhenitsyn, Kafka, Orwell, or the creators of "Brazil." We imprisoned and tortured an innocent man and then forbade him under threat of arrest and imprisonment (and further torture?) to reveal what had happened to him because it would disclose classified methods.
My God, how low we have sunk as a nation that we could even have the ability to create such a situation?
Posted by: The Gregarious Misanthrope | March 15, 2010 9:23 PM
Gregarious @ 29:
I'm not sure its debatable anymore. VP Cheney's request certain documents be released was honored and unfortunately for him they provided convincing evidence he was lying about his claims regarding certain discoveries. And then a CIA spokesman who was used as a pro-torture source regarding certain discoveries admitted outright after that document was released that he had in fact lied to the media. So far we have ample evidence of professional interrogation experts developing a large body of actionable intelligence without using torture or inhuman treatment while I have yet to encounter any actionable intelligence that came through torture, just previous claims that have been subsequently falsified.
Posted by: Michael Heath | March 16, 2010 12:18 AM
I don't believe we got any intel we couldn't have obtained otherwise, but since not everything has been declassified and released, I couldn't say with absolute certainty there isn't a nugget or two. You are right, though, what has been released doesn't validate Cheney's distorted view of things.
I imagine Cheney still believes there is something in the classified files that can prove him right (delusion is funny that way). But even if there is one instance where he was correct in his assertions, unless the info obtained helped defuse an H-bomb in Disney World, the entire torture enterprise has been a giant negative for us.
Posted by: The Gregarious Misanthrope | March 16, 2010 1:43 AM
You people don't understand. They hate us for our values. You know, the ones we pay lip service to and promptly abandon when we get scared.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | March 16, 2010 5:06 AM
Fellow REAL American, Awwthepoorterrorists:(
Hon, don't let none of these LibTURDS get you down!
Everybody with a brain (which means us Christian-Conservatives ONLY :D ) knows that we as a country are destined for another terror attack cause Mr. Cut-n-Run, "President" Barack HUSSEIN Obama, ain't about to allow the MANLY PATRIOTS in the CIA to rough up his Islamo-fascist Trotskyite brethren!
What pansy LIEberals don't realize is we won't never be safe until we're willing to stoop LOWER THAN Moslem extremists!
Hence, two words: [Rape Rooms]!
-Norma Jean
Posted by: Norma Jean Hatfield-McCoy | March 16, 2010 8:09 PM