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CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

theguardian.com

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Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#131

Post by api »

ganzuul wrote: post #122
mrtksn wrote: post #11

This is the kind of stuff that probably makes some people’s job down the pipe easier and at the same time undermines the Western civilization. Make no mistake, no US citizen outside of the political class benefits from this or other atrocities. The exact same goes for the surveillance programs. Losing the moral high ground degrades the whole society. The whole anti establishment movement rallies around stuff like thi…

Oh, this is far, far worse. It shows the CIA is just as rogue as the Kremlin, and given their history it is fairly clear now that within these two groups there is extreme collusion. The Western intelligence apparatus has been hijacked by a force that is getting instructions from the reptilian brain instead of the cerebral cortex, meaning they are now the enemy.

Putin and the modern day Russian regime is basically the KGB. The KGB took over Russia after the USSR collapsed. It's basically the same agency.

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#132

Post by paganel »

mrtksn wrote: post #11

This is the kind of stuff that probably makes some people’s job down the pipe easier and at the same time undermines the Western civilization. Make no mistake, no US citizen outside of the political class benefits from this or other atrocities. The exact same goes for the surveillance programs. Losing the moral high ground degrades the whole society. The whole anti establishment movement rallies around stuff like thi…

It has seriously been undermined for the last 20 years (I'd say even 30), that's why guys like Putin who fight in order to bring back a multi-polar world know what they're doing, they're not crazy or anything.

The West has lost its brightness, its shine, its power of attraction (if one ignores the material thing), the reasons for that are numerous and I don't see any way to bring back the "end of history"-times (i.e. the complete dominance of the West when it comes to its cultural and societal influence) many were dreaming about in the 1990s.

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#133

Post by foxyv »

joncp wrote: post #61
bogantech wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No president is going to do anything about it because the intelligence agencies almost certainly have blackmail material on them all

More like: "Hey boss, remember JFK? It would be a real shame if something like that happened to you. Or your family."

How long do you think the CIA would remain as a legitimate organization if something like that happened? All it would take is one public statement by a president that CIA had threatened them and the organization would come down like a house of cards. The entire leadership would be in handcuffs and trying to explain away treason to the FBI who would happily hand them over to military intelligence organizations to rendition their asses to their own prisons.

There are tons of competing military intelligence organizations that would be happy to take over from there. The CIA as we know it would cease to exist in a matter of days.

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#135

Post by philovivero »

adamsmith143 wrote: post #16
mrtksn wrote: post #11

This is the kind of stuff that probably makes some people’s job down the pipe easier and at the same time undermines the Western civilization. Make no mistake, no US citizen outside of the political class benefits from this or other atrocities. The exact same goes for the surveillance programs. Losing the moral high ground degrades the whole society. The whole anti establishment movement rallies around stuff like thi…

Is it possible for you to construct a scenario where torture is morally acceptable? E.g. you have a virtual certainty that a dirty bomb is going to be detonated in NYC and will kill 1M+ and potentially irradiate the city for decades. Is torturing one person who you know with certainty knows the location of the bomb defensible? Basically, how many lives would you be willing to sacrifice to prevent the suffering of a s…

I am appalled at your insinuation, but even more appalled at all the replies that take your premise at face value.

No. No, there is no such scenario. You can coerce the information out of someone who has the knowledge in other ways, if that is the problem, even though that problem never actually surfaces outside of bad TV show plots.

Torture is wrong. It does not work. It often, in fact, does the opposite of work. It debases our humanity, our civility, and society. It makes the world a worse place in so many ways, I find it sad that otherwise intelligent people are even pondering this.

No. Torture is not morally, legally, or ethically acceptable.

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#136

Post by philovivero »

spacechild1 wrote: post #43
adamsmith143 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible for you to construct a scenario where torture is morally acceptable? E.g. you have a virtual certainty that a dirty bomb is going to be detonated in NYC and will kill 1M+ and potentially irradiate the city for decades. Is torturing one person who you know with certainty knows the location of the bomb defensible? Basically, how many lives would you be willing to sacrifice to prevent the suffering of a s…

People keep bringing up these hypothetical thought experiments, but they are just wildly unrealistic. Also, they approach the topic from the wrong end: I shouldn't have to justify not to use torture. The abolishment of torture is a milestone of Western civilization.

Bringing sanity to the discussion. Thank you.

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#137

Post by Loughla »

dhosek wrote: post #66
NoGravitas wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obama ran for office on a pledge to close Guantanamo, and he could have done so by executive order. He didn't, and that should tell you all you need to know about the nature of the American presidency.

There was a HUGE faction in congress (they go by a name that rhymes with schmepublicans) that would have punished him severely if he had done that. The presidency is not as all-powerful as some people think it is, sometimes this is good, sometimes not so much.

Didn't the republicans stop him at every turn, no matter what, anyway?

Seems like he didn't really have anything to lose, so why not just do it?

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#138

Post by [deleted] »

mrtksn wrote: post #11

This is the kind of stuff that probably makes some people’s job down the pipe easier and at the same time undermines the Western civilization. Make no mistake, no US citizen outside of the political class benefits from this or other atrocities. The exact same goes for the surveillance programs. Losing the moral high ground degrades the whole society. The whole anti establishment movement rallies around stuff like thi…

[deleted]

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#139

Post by teakettle42 »

mywacaday wrote: post #105
mrtksn wrote: post #11

This is the kind of stuff that probably makes some people’s job down the pipe easier and at the same time undermines the Western civilization. Make no mistake, no US citizen outside of the political class benefits from this or other atrocities. The exact same goes for the surveillance programs. Losing the moral high ground degrades the whole society. The whole anti establishment movement rallies around stuff like thi…

Hard to see how the US can claim a moral high ground on anything when it continues to not be a member of the ICC and is even occasionally actively hostile towards individual judges and member countries by threatening sanctions.

I’m glad that my US constitutional rights cannot be abrogated by a supranational judicial system.

Re: CIA black site detainee served as training prop to teach torture techniques

#140

Post by chiefalchemist »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #116
chiefalchemist wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course, it's a significant error of degree to conflate these anomalies in US behavior with the standard behavior of Russia or China or whomever, Why so? Perhaps for Iraq you've forgot about the fact that VP Cheney's former company made significant gains from that lie? The idea that one side's lies and unjustified violence are better than the other side's is why the wars and hypocrisy continue. Either we - the on…

> The idea that one side's lies and unjustified violence are better than the other side's is why the wars and hypocrisy continue. First of all, I'm advocating for American behavior to remain beyond reproach and I favor prosecuting the American officials who misled the American public in the case of the Iraq war. That said, I heartily reject the binary categorization between unblemished and blemished countries because…

Stalin, Hitler, Mao, etc. are what happens when we start putting a rating on lies, justice, murder, etc. Yes, these are the extremes. But that doesn't justify a slippery slope that isn't - yet? - one of these historical extremes.

"Oh. Our lies and murders aren't as bad as {insert culture panic button here}" continue to work well for the elites, not so much so for the rest of us.

How about we put a cultural / sociopolitical price on say the USA's three-quarters of a trillion DoD budget? Certainly there's plenty of injustice that could be addressed with that type of $. But instead we buy into the status quo narrative?

That's not working. The point is, let's get our own house in order, instead of manufacturing a narrative that is bold-faced, shameless, hyprocricy.

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