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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

#491

Post by thret »

Cushman wrote: post #138
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.

Are you familiar with Jane Elliott's "Blue eyes/brown eyes" experiment? It's a good kind of ultra-lite introduction to racism/discrimination if you've literally never come across the concept before. (Comes up a lot in Holocaust curriculum.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQAmdZvKf6M Though I wonder if small children aren't closer to understanding this than most of us. They're such a jumble of implicit biases at the…

For a wonderful fictional piece on the same theme, try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wave_(novel)

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#492

Post by rhizome »

rayiner wrote: post #460
coldtea wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@rayiner > Oh my god they were quite chilly And abducted, held without trial, tortured, waterboard, anal raped, threatened, beaten againast a wall, and other things besides. A lot of them while also being totally inoccent (and in any way, without trial). What exactly have you suffered besides a comfy middle class existance that gives you the moral superiority to laugh at that? Would you also laugh at jews in Dr. Meng…

Keeping in mind that we disagree as to how many, if any, of the detainees were "totally innocent" (as opposed to procedurally innocent), are you really going to compare our treatment of terrorists to the Germans' treatment of jewish civilians?

The CIA themselves admit that some of the detainees were innocent, so I don't know where you get that.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#493

Post by rhizome »

karmacondon wrote: post #447
anigbrowl wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being disingenuous here. It's like the difference between a police officer shooting an armed criminal on the street (which may be a matter of necessity, though recent examples highlight just how problematic such a standard can be) and beating them up in jail when they're already in a custodial situation and thus present no threat to the public. It's true that is the scale of awful behavior, the CIA's program w…

rayiner isn't the one being disingenuous. CIA interrogation techniques are not the equivalent of the police beating up someone in a cell, the purpose is to gain valuable information. It isn't done for revenge or in situations where the stakes are anything less than the life and death of innocent people. Someone who has information on a literal ticking time bomb is the very definition of a threat to the public. So is…

It's unpleasant, but it sure as hell beats the alternatives.

Actually, it doesn't, as the CIA admits. So much so that they had to lie about its effectiveness.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#494

Post by nickbauman »

rhino369 wrote: post #462
nickbauman wrote: post #452

Reading the report leaves me slack-jawed considering my own history. My great uncle was an officer of the Geheime Feldpolizei, a secret state security organization developed to combat native resistance against Nazi occupation during WWII. His job was to infiltrate and destroy Maquis French and their supporters (the resistance). The means they used were mass betrayal, example executions, torture, even the wholesale de…

America did a hell of a lot worse than this stuff during WWII. In fact, this stuff is child's play. We loaded up air planes with incendiary bombs and flew over Toyko purposely igniting their wooden homes to purposely cause a firestorm that killed .1 million people in a single night. Pretty fucking brutal. Pooring ensure up a guys ass is pretty bad, but we instead of letting our B-52's bomb Taliban villages into nothi…

I won't argue with you on this. I think if we're at the point of comparing effects against intent in the discussion, nobody proves anything much anymore. Shades of darkness are less important now than working together to change the direction towards light, peace.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#495

Post by thret »

DanBC wrote: post #404
jstrate wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you really not make a distinction between cold shower and televised beheading/castration. I agree there is something very wrong with this country if that is the case. I've spent enough Karma today.

I ask you the same thing I asked Rayiner above: try it for yourself. Take a letter size piece of paper and put it on the floor. Strip naked. Have a "cold shower", then stand on that piece of paper for just two hours. Bonus points if you manage to stay standing with a wet cloth bag on your head. Extra points if you manage this after having been on reduced calories and no sleep for 48 hours. In your case nothing happen…

I don't know that you should really suggest this. I've had hypothermia, it is quite unpleasant. And you don't know the state of his health, a myriad of bad things could happen.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#496

Post by rayiner »

mikeash wrote: post #466
rayiner wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't trying to convince anyone of anything. Was mocking a sentence I thought was ridiculous.

I don't buy it. You've repeatedly brought up that one item to the exclusion of all the others in contexts that use it as part of an actual argument. Unless your entire participation in this thread is just an elaborate and vast attempt to mock people?

If you search my post history, you can see I mentioned the cold room three times, besides the original mention.

One was in a hyperbolic rhetorical context, to exaggerate the distinction with killing someone, which we consider acceptable in war:

> So you're saying we shouldn't engage in torture because it's "bad"? It's okay to blow these same people up in the battlefield, but god forbid we throw water on them and put them in a slightly cold room?

One was self-referential:

> I'd be pretty happy if HN could muster the same uniform moral outrage about rape jokes involving non-terrorists (e.g. gamergate) as it has shown in response to my comment about terrorists being cold.

One was in response to 'reitanqild saying: "Most of us would much rather prefer to be shot dead or blown up in a split second than being even slightly tortured and locked up indefinitely."

> Throwing water on someone and leaving them in a 59-degree room is worse than shooting them dead? Keeping someone awake until they hallucinate is worse than shooting them dead? Really?

The cold room and the sleep deprivation were in response to the "slightly tortured" part of that comment.

At no point did I ever try to make the argument that "what the CIA did wasn't so bad because they just put people in cold rooms." I actually have no interest in trying to convince anyone that what the CIA did wasn't bad. This is not an issue that people are going to approach rationally. It's about gut-feelings--either you have a visceral reaction to these interrogation techniques or you don't.

You said elsewhere: "I don't think torture is ever justified, under any circumstances. No exceptions."

Well I strongly disagree. If it would actually save innocent lives,[1] I'd have absolutely no qualms about any number of Al Qaeda terrorists being tortured. It's an unspeakably evil organization, promulgating ideologies that are at their best barbaric and backward. I think even the people that are receptive to their message and associate themselves with the organization, even if they do nothing more, are morally culpable.

And I imagine polls will show about half the country or more agreeing with me: http://mic.com/articles/106084/two-charts-show-why-the-cia-s.... Now of course the majority of people can be on the wrong side of history, but I don't think this is one of those situations.

[1] I've noted elsewhere that I don't think the techniques are effective and that we shouldn't be engaging in them for that reason.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#497

Post by lotsofmangos »

rayiner wrote: post #394
lotsofmangos wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed worse than blowing up some sap who just showed up to work on the wrong day? Yes. Waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is viewed by the vast majority to be morally far much worse than bombing a munitions factory. That is why doing it costs the tremendous political capital.

I dunno about that, at least in the U.S.: http://mic.com/articles/106084/two-charts-show-why-the-cia-s... .

Now ask the same group if there are ever circumstances where it can be acceptable to bomb an ammunition factory. Can you imagine that even being up for debate?

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#498

Post by refurb »

tormeh wrote: post #66
grecy wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder when the UN will stand up and impose trade bans on the US for such deeds.

The UN does not impose trade bans. You know why the Secretary General, the UN's leader, is called that? Because he is a secretary for the people who actually have power, the leaders of nation-states.

You're getting down voted, but your comment is true. The UN itself has no power, it relies on the member states to enforce decisions.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#499

Post by refurb »

pluma wrote: post #455
leroy_masochist wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why does terrorism frighten people so much that they're willing to throw away basic principles like "innocent until proven guilty"? Great question, and one we should always keep in mind. The death toll from terrorism on US soil since 9/11 is indeed very low. That said, the people plotting against us are intelligent and adaptive and wish to do us harm. If they succeed, they might destroy the free society which we've…

They won. They won when the US gave itself the license to enter into a perpetual state of universal war, three days after 9/11. Look at what the US has done. Really, look at all the things it has done -- the surveillance, the drone strikes, the infiltration of civil protests, the use of military equipment by the police force, the lies to justify the war in Iraq, the lies to justify the torture, the violations of inte…

You're cherry picking examples. Every country in the world has done horrible things. I'm certainly not excusing the torture the US has committed, but it's not alone in the world.

Re: US Senate Report on CIA Detention and Interrogation Program

#500

Post by refurb »

cyorir wrote: post #296
mikeash wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You (like so many others, sadly) assume torture is actually effective, and that objections to its use rest solely on immorality. I object to torture on moral grounds. I also object to it on practical grounds. It doesn't work. Since both of those objections point in the same direction, the solution is completely clear.

Certainly, I accept your objection on practical grounds, but cannot quite accept the objection on moral grounds. If something doesn't work, then don't do it. Hiroshima was an extreme example of that. By August the political establishment in Japan was split, with consensus moving rapidly to peace out of the war because by mid 1945 the industrial centers of Osaka and Tokyo were ruined by fire bombings. It just so happe…

It just so happens that at the same time the government is moving to surrender, we use two bombs to vaporize more people.

They were so close to surrendering that the US had to drop two atomic bombs on Japan?

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