@ Wordsmith

I bet you’re ticklish. C’mon fess up!

Kitchy kitchy koo!

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CRAP said: Mata my response to your #15

right from the horses MOUTH!!! That would be the former HEAD of the FBI…

check out this!!!

Can you possibly be this reading challenged, CRAP? What the heck are you responding to? Let’s reiterate, shall we?

You said:

Apparently you didn’t read the article… The FBI says that information would have been forth coming with conventional interrogation techniques.

Now if my reading ability remains in tack… as well as intact… the subject you, yourself, brought up was whether intel would have been more readily given up with conventional interrogation techniques instead of coercive EITs. And to cite this, you mentioned that a lone agent writing an op-ed in the NYTs was proof of this… crediting the entire FBI.

When I point out the flaws of your dementia – i.e. the opine of one lone agent, predicting future parallel alternative paths (i.e. palm reading), and not the Agency – you come back triumphantly with three articles about whether waterboarding did, or did not foil terrorist plots.

Hardly the subject you broached.

I might as well have asked you for a recipe for roasted pork butt, and you came back to me with today’s weather report. I’d thank you for playing, but obviously you haven’t even shown up to participate….

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My favorite line in the NYTimes linked by RAP:

Mr. Obama and his allies need to discredit the techniques he has banned. Otherwise, in the event of a future terrorist attack, critics may blame his decision to rein in C.I.A. interrogators.

The political credibility stakes are running high.

Standing by Cheney’s assertions:

Four successive C.I.A. directors have made similar claims, and the most recent, Michael V. Hayden, said in January that he believed the methods “got the maximum amount of information” from prisoners, citing specifically Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief 9/11 plotter.

Many intelligence officials, including some opposed to the brutal methods, confirm that the program produced information of great value, including tips on early-stage schemes to attack tall buildings on the West Coast and buildings in New York’s financial district and Washington. Interrogation of one Qaeda operative led to tips on finding others, until the leadership of the organization was decimated. Removing from the scene such dedicated and skilled plotters as Mr. Mohammed, or the Indonesian terrorist known as Hambali, almost certainly prevented future attacks.

But which information came from which methods, and whether the same result might have been achieved without the political, legal and moral cost of the torture controversy, is hotly disputed, even inside the intelligence agency.

About this….

On Mr. Mohammed, the record is murkier. The memorandum says that “before the C.I.A. used enhanced techniques,” Mr. Mohammed “resisted giving any answers to questions about future attacks, ‘Simply noting, ‘Soon, you will know.’ ”

But the same memorandum reveals in a footnote that Mr. Mohammed, captured on March 1, 2003, was waterboarded 183 times that month. That striking number, which would average out to six waterboardings a day, suggests that interrogators did not try a traditional, rapport-building approach for long before escalating to their most extreme tool.

….the “rapport-building” approach takes time; if KSM responds to my inquiry into future plots by threatening, “soon you will know”, that sounds like a ticking bomb to me; in which case, I’m all for the Jack Bauer doctrine where time may be of the essence.

But we wussed out on the Jack Bauer approach and merely waterboarded the bastard….

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@Mata – Thank-you, I’m truly honored and flattered!

@RAP – Did you read the links you posted? Mueller said he didn’t “believe” that to be the case. Who cares what he believes? The CIA says it did. CIA Says It Helped

Thanks for calling the game for everyone. But before you leave, answer the real intent of Scott’s post. Obviously from your post, you believe we should do nothing and let people die in another attack. If not, and since you obviously know the answer, what do we do?

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Mata my response to your #15

right from the horses MOUTH!!! That would be the former HEAD of the FBI…

check out this!!!

http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/probes-of-bush-administration/flashback-bushs-fbi-director-said-torture-didnt-foil-any-terror-plots/

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/us/politics/23detain.html?_r=1&hp

http://www.taylormarsh.com/2009/04/23/cheney-torture-lies-continue-to-unravel/

NICE try and “Thanks for Playing”

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mynameis said: Sounds like some folk round here are saying we owe the japanse a posthumous pardon..

Yeah… about as much as we owe Al Capone an apology for convicting him of tax evasion instead of murder and racketeering.

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Happens to us all mon ami! I’m just happy to see people reading this-thanks! & have a great weekend!!!

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Good point Scott. I apologize for being off topic.

Ron

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Ron, perhaps you’re looking for some other discussion, but the piece I wrote above isn’t about whether or not coercive interrogations are torture or right or wrong. THIS conversation is my plea to NOT do anything that can be misconstrued as torture. Next time-when “traditional interrogation methods fail” just stop. Let the attacks happen & let the people die.

If you have a better solution, I invite/beg its presentation. Till then, I say let em die. Right?

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I have a question about harsh interrogations in general and not limited specifically to Water-boarding. If there is nothing wrong with the use of these techniques then why did so many members of the US military object to their use?

http://documents.nytimes.com/report-by-the-senate-armed-services-committee-on-detainee-treatment#p=20

Once you click on the link, wait a second and the cover page of the report becomes a list of legal advisors and military personal who objected to the legality of such techniques.

It seems when I raise objections about harsh interrogation techniques I’m accused of being naive or lacking intellectual ability, and yet so many other agencies including the FBI objected to the use of such tactics.

Ron

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