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US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

intelligence.senate.gov

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Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#381

Post by anigbrowl »

__d wrote: post #348
kilroy123 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My little sister just got into with me on facebook about how it is perfectly ok to torture our enemies. That's just the last straw for me. I would never have someone in my life, family or not, who would think raping people is acceptable. This is even worse. Even our enemies shouldn't be raped/tortured.

But killing them is ok?

I'm gonna say yes - not killing them in cold blood execution style but in the sense of them being a valid target. If you're in a position to torture/rape someone, you've already neutralized them as a threat by capturing them. Shooting or bombing someone is not necessarily OK, but while the person is at liberty they could in theory be about to shoot your or engineer some other sort of attack - the operation to assassinate Admiral Yamamoto in WW2 being a good example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Vengeance

On the other hand, torture isn't something that people do because they feel they have to, but rather because they can. Since all the accumulated evidence to points to it being a poor way to to gather intelligence information, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that it's just way of being vindictive or sadistic instead, something that we find deplorable in other contexts. I think it's considered deplorable because such feelings are quite common but the majority of us make the effort not to act upon them.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#382

Post by dang »

mikeash wrote: post #378
dang wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you deliberately trying to sound like an idiot? I understand the frustration, but please do not violate the site guidelines like this. The comment would be appropriate and stronger with just the first question.

Fair. Edited to attack the words rather than the person. I imagine this thread is all sorts of "fun" for you right now....

You know, the thread is not as bad as it could easily have been. It's problematic, of course, but not off the scale.

Thanks for respecting the guidelines. It matters a lot for established users to set good examples.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#383

Post by CWuestefeld »

patronagezero wrote: post #373
Loughla wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This man literally tried to chew through his own body, to bleed out, to avoid having his food forcefully shoved up his ass, for no reason whatsoever. He further attempted to kill himself on several occasions to avoid this as well. That is the cold truth of that statement. This is fucking disgusting, and someone needs to be held accountable.

> and someone needs to be held accountable. The citizens of the United States need to be held accountable. Sorry, someone has to start looking at the root of the problem.

Yes. We can't just keep whining "come on, guys, you really ought to stop" to our leaders. This is happening in our names, and our hands are dirty. Stopping this is our own responsibility.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#384

Post by Confusion »

chroma wrote: post #328

It's a shame the report is so partisan. The democrat and republican sides disagree on basic facts, such as whether torture worked in extracting information, and whether that information helped to save lives. Both sides accuse the other of cherry-picking to bolster their cause. Since the primary records are unavailable to us, there's no way to get a more trustworthy opinion on the program. The CIA's behavior is probab…

  The democrat and republican sides disagree on basic facts, 
  such as whether torture worked in extracting information,
That is not a 'basic fact' that any of the people involved in the report is qualified to determine from the records.

Whether torture 'works' is highly subjective. Why was certain information given? How correct was the information? How relevant was the information to preventing (further) criminal activity? And even if you could assess the upside, there is still the downside to compare to it.

Do you want to live in a country where hundreds of people may be detained for years without trial, without recourse, while being tortured, because one of them may at some point give up some information that may prevent some future criminal activity?

You say

  Torturing one known criminal to extract information that could save dozens 
  (or hundreds) of innocents is unsavory to say the least, but it's better 
  than the alternative.
but that's a false dichotomy. In actual fact you would have to torture many criminals to extract information that saves lives. And the torturing, and having the ability to torture, has a cost. How do you quantify that cost and judge it less than the lives saved? Because if you allow torture, police will use it on every criminal. If you ever get arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, you will get tortured, because you may know something about other people that were there. And they won't believe you if you say you don't know them. And it could take a while to sort that out.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#385

Post by sliverstorm »

rqebmm wrote: post #176
sliverstorm wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about waterboarding or what have you. I guess I'm just puzzled that things like threats & slaps are being rolled in with waterboarding. Maybe threats & slaps are not the most effective method, sure- that doesn't really matter. It just seems like people are shocked to find fundamentally abusive/manipulative behavior going on at all. Virtually any form of extracting information from an unwilling informa…

Hanns Scharf would disagree. "Scharff was opposed to physically abusing prisoners to obtain information. Learning on the job, Scharff instead relied upon the Luftwaffe's approved list of techniques, which mostly involved making the interrogator seem as if he is his prisoner's greatest advocate while in captivity." And this guy was successful as well. "Scharff's approach has been admiringly cited by top US interrogato…

Those are still abusive relationships, that he established with his prisoners. Just not physically abusive.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#386

Post by anigbrowl »

debacle wrote: post #49

Fellow parents, how do you teach or plan to teach your kids about this? I was discussing this with my son last night, but I really couldn't explain to him the prejudice and fear that people use to justify these types of acts, or the "otherness" that the perpetrators try to construct around the victims in the media. It's just not something he's experienced yet. There's no way to put it into context.

Depends how old the kid is. If he's four then all you can say is that some grown-ups were really mean to each other when they shouldn't have been. If he's a bit older, maybe you can relate it to some other questionable behavior, like why do criminals commit crimes instead of being good, or conversely why do we bother going through a trial before throwing bad people in prison or shooting them. There's a psychological theory that violence often results from the psychological distress encountered when the real does not confirm with the imaginary, but the very length of this thread shows that these things are difficult to process for adults, never mind children.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#387

Post by rayiner »

mikeash wrote: post #370
rayiner wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intelligent people who support the government actions aren't afraid of specific terrorist acts. They're afraid of what a failure to stop terrorist movements could lead to. I imagine there were a lot of people sitting in the cafes of Rome who said: "I can't believe you think those germanic barbarians could possibly ever pose a threat to us!" And of course, it doesn't help that the folks who are captured are mostly…

That really doesn't answer my question at all. I asked why so many people are terrified of terrorism, and all you tell me is that they're afraid of some nebulous future. Well yes, obviously they're afraid of the potential future, as it would be pretty odd if they were afraid of the past . But why does terrorism get so much emphasis compared to other potential dangers?

Partly it's the immediacy. In the long term, China poses a threat to American hegemony, but they're not actively trying to blow things up at this very moment. The other part is the narrative. Environmental disaster should rank higher in peoples' minds, but people are intrinsically drawn to narratives that involve other people. Terrorists are like comic book villains as far as narrative goes. Not only do they behead people, but they brutally oppress women!

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#388

Post by nickbauman »

patronagezero wrote: post #373
Loughla wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This man literally tried to chew through his own body, to bleed out, to avoid having his food forcefully shoved up his ass, for no reason whatsoever. He further attempted to kill himself on several occasions to avoid this as well. That is the cold truth of that statement. This is fucking disgusting, and someone needs to be held accountable.

> and someone needs to be held accountable. The citizens of the United States need to be held accountable. Sorry, someone has to start looking at the root of the problem.

While I disagree in particular (because it is believed the agents of the US using this torture practices acted in secret) there is an overarching logic that is sound: to the degree a society is democratic is the same degree its citizens are ultimately responsible for the actions of their government officials.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#389

Post by xxxyy »

olifante wrote: post #340
[deleted] wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

1. The crimes of others do not excuse your own. 2. There is abundant proof that the US engaged in a deliberate, not occasional, policy of torture, whitewashed as "enhanced interrogation techniques". 3. There is so far no proof that other western nations have recently had a policy of deliberate torture, except for the sad cases where the US creatively outsourced some of its torture needs to Poland and perhaps a few ot…

These tortures were only happening in Poland, just like the Holocaust was merely happening in Poland. I hope that this is what you mean by 'creatively' - i.e. just changing the place, not the people.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#390

Post by afterburner »

exelius wrote: post #172
cyorir wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"we would have more friends in the region" This seems to be thrown around a lot. You hear things like, "if we didn't go into Iraq/Afghanistan, we would have more friends in the region," "if we didn't prop up Mubarak or the Saudis or someone else, we would have more friends in the region," "if we gave more support to the Palestinians, we would have more friends in the region." I think this is the wrong way to think ab…

The friends we've chosen in the region also don't help us. Neither Saudi Arabia nor Israel are particularly well-liked in the region (and that's putting it lightly), but both are seen as US puppets. Honestly I don't think we really care much anymore what the Saudis think; the regime has fantastic wealth but very little real power beyond holding the purse strings for hyper conservative terror groups. I think eventuall…

"The friends we've chosen in the region also don't help us"

The recent OPEC decision declining to reduce production in the face of falling oil prices, thus screwing over Russia hard, means that Saudi Arabia is most certainly a useful US ally.

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