In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up!
NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action.
3) Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was NOT, I repeat NOT, a member of Al Qaeda (he says we have known for a long time) and the US has removed related charges from the list of charges at Guantanamo.
On it's face it looks a lot like they were torturing him to make him say what they needed to, in order to justify whatever they wanted to do.
Even supposing torture was effective, I find this notion terrifying: that a government can indefinitely hold and torture prisoners without proper trial (CSRT's, not withstanding.) It seems utterly contrary to habeas corpus, even if it is towards non-citizens. And it is a rather frightening precedent: if the government can categorize you as an enemy combatant and a threat to state and then strip you of citizenship (the sort of thing my government has considered regarding terrorists)... well good luck to justice. And then if it ends up you weren't part of the terrorist organization after all...
I can possibly see holding off trials in the face of crisis/ war... maybe. But not if you are going to torture him. Then there's the matter of torture- I don't think it's effective. But even if it was, I am fundamentally opposed to it ethically.
On December 16 2014 13:04 IgnE wrote: You are ignoring my question Dangles
Now now, don't be sad. We can reimagine ourselves growing up in orthodox Muslim households in some other thread. But for now, my compatriots didn't kill several thousand Americans in a day's terrorist attacks, and we can discuss US Politics like usual. If you were wondering, no, I don't think our treatment of captured terrorists somehow condemns us to moral equivalency.
On December 16 2014 11:52 GreenHorizons wrote: What the?! I just watched a segment from Anderson Cooper where a man, who was presented as one of the members of the first interrogation team for Abu Zubaydah , said some mind-blowing stuff (mostly because it's 'straight from the horses mouth').
1) Abu Zubaydah broke immediately and gave up Khalid Sheikh Mohammed along with the majority of actionable intelligence rapidly.
2) Abu Zubaydah didn't "stop talking". Government contractors said he wasn't giving up all the information to the CIA and they needed to step in. So they pulled out the original CIA interrogators, locked him solitary with no human contact for 40+ days. Then started the torture.
3) Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was NOT, I repeat NOT, a member of Al Qaeda (he says we have known for a long time) and the US has removed related charges from the list of charges at Guantanamo.
On it's face it looks a lot like they were torturing him to make him say what they needed to, in order to justify whatever they wanted to do.
I'll add a print source when I find it.
Haven't found it from the interview but I did find this Taken just before he disappeared:
Syed Saleem Shahzad (November 3, 1970 – 30 May 2011) was a Pakistani investigative journalist who wrote widely for leading European and Asian media.
He was found dead in a canal in North-east Pakistan, showing signs of torture, two days after he was kidnapped. Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused the Pakistan intelligence services of being behind his killing, and US government officials later announced that they had “reliable and conclusive” intelligence that this was the case. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) denied the accusations.
SHAHZAD: You have to appreciate two things when you would investigate the 9/11 plot. Number one, the broader ideas. The broader ideas actually came from Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, who actually wanted a friction between the West and the Muslim world on very broad lines. And for that, he actually wanted a flashpoint to be created. And the second element was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was not al-Qaeda's member. He was a standalone jihadi. And he came up with this idea of 9/11. And then he proposed that idea to Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden. Ayman al-Zawahiri was the most happy person. And if you study Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri's personality, you would be knowing that he is a silent manipulator. He cunningly manipulated Osama bin Laden's mind, and that way he made sure that 9/11, like, even would happen in America, but because it would guarantee a massive friction in the world, and massive polarization in the world, and would divide the world on ideological lines, and that is what he was precisely looking for. So I don't think that there is any question of the Saudi involvement, Saudi establishment's involvement or the Pakistani military establishment involvement. No matter how close they were to the Taliban or Osama bin Laden or any other personality--even Osama bin Laden was very well manipulated by Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri.
This article in Guardian seems to also paint the effectiveness of torture in very questionable light : Link
On December 16 2014 13:48 oneofthem wrote: these guys were enemy combatants. it's a collective war action, not an individual criminal offense.
yes, they should be protected under geneva etc, but they are not civilians.
Tell it to those guys whose lifes were destroyed and were tortured by mistake. Guys picked up in Europe (no war-zone thus no enemy combatants so they should be treated as civilians) and flown to torture sites in third world by CIA, tortured and released when they realized they had wrong guy.
On December 16 2014 13:04 IgnE wrote: You are ignoring my question Dangles
Now now, don't be sad. We can reimagine ourselves growing up in orthodox Muslim households in some other thread. But for now, my compatriots didn't kill several thousand Americans in a day's terrorist attacks, and we can discuss US Politics like usual. If you were wondering, no, I don't think our treatment of captured terrorists somehow condemns us to moral equivalency.
No, your compatriots killed hundreds of thousands of iraqis over ten years, continues to bomb civilian targets all over the muslim world, tortures people who are either civilians who deserve a trial or enemy combattants who should be protected by the geneva convention in secret prisons, put innocent people into prison in your own country because of a silly "war on drugs", and who knows what else.
Maybe if you stopped doing these things, you could legitimately claim that your country is a force of good in the world. If you torture people and invade other countries all the time, it is very hard to see how the US is better then the terrorists you so hate.
On December 16 2014 11:52 GreenHorizons wrote: What the?! I just watched a segment from Anderson Cooper where a man, who was presented as one of the members of the first interrogation team for Abu Zubaydah , said some mind-blowing stuff (mostly because it's 'straight from the horses mouth').
1) Abu Zubaydah broke immediately and gave up Khalid Sheikh Mohammed along with the majority of actionable intelligence rapidly.
2) Abu Zubaydah didn't "stop talking". Government contractors said he wasn't giving up all the information to the CIA and they needed to step in. So they pulled out the original CIA interrogators, locked him solitary with no human contact for 40+ days. Then started the torture.
3) Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was NOT, I repeat NOT, a member of Al Qaeda (he says we have known for a long time) and the US has removed related charges from the list of charges at Guantanamo.
On it's face it looks a lot like they were torturing him to make him say what they needed to, in order to justify whatever they wanted to do.
I'll add a print source when I find it.
Haven't found it from the interview but I did find this Taken just before he disappeared:
Syed Saleem Shahzad (November 3, 1970 – 30 May 2011) was a Pakistani investigative journalist who wrote widely for leading European and Asian media.
He was found dead in a canal in North-east Pakistan, showing signs of torture, two days after he was kidnapped. Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused the Pakistan intelligence services of being behind his killing, and US government officials later announced that they had “reliable and conclusive” intelligence that this was the case. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) denied the accusations.
SHAHZAD: You have to appreciate two things when you would investigate the 9/11 plot. Number one, the broader ideas. The broader ideas actually came from Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, who actually wanted a friction between the West and the Muslim world on very broad lines. And for that, he actually wanted a flashpoint to be created. And the second element was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was not al-Qaeda's member. He was a standalone jihadi. And he came up with this idea of 9/11. And then he proposed that idea to Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri and Osama bin Laden. Ayman al-Zawahiri was the most happy person. And if you study Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri's personality, you would be knowing that he is a silent manipulator. He cunningly manipulated Osama bin Laden's mind, and that way he made sure that 9/11, like, even would happen in America, but because it would guarantee a massive friction in the world, and massive polarization in the world, and would divide the world on ideological lines, and that is what he was precisely looking for. So I don't think that there is any question of the Saudi involvement, Saudi establishment's involvement or the Pakistani military establishment involvement. No matter how close they were to the Taliban or Osama bin Laden or any other personality--even Osama bin Laden was very well manipulated by Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri.
This article in Guardian seems to also paint the effectiveness of torture in very questionable light : Link
Yeah that's the guy from the segment.
For nearly the entire summer of 2002, Abu Zubaydah was kept in isolation. That was valuable lost time, and that doesn’t square with claims about the “ticking bomb scenarios” that were the basis for America’s enhanced interrogation program, or with the commitment to getting life-saving, actionable intelligence from valuable detainees. The techniques were justified by those who said Zubaydah “stopped all cooperation” around the time my fellow FBI agent and I left. If Zubaydah was in isolation the whole time, that’s not really a surprise.
One of the hardest things we struggled to make sense of, back then, was why US officials were authorizing harsh techniques when our interrogations were working and their harsh techniques weren’t. The answer, as the long-awaited Senate Intelligence Committee report now makes clear, is that the architects of the program were taking credit for our success, from the unmasking of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the mastermind of 9/11 to the uncovering of the “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla. The claims made by government officials for years about the efficacy of “enhanced interrogation”, in secret memos and in public, are false. “Enhanced interrogation” doesn’t work.
I just wonder if interviews with guys like this are as important to people like Danglers as the interviews from the people who seem to be provably lying.
The 'ticking time bomb' narrative that keeps being used to justify torture doesn't seem to square with the facts.
On December 16 2014 13:48 oneofthem wrote: these guys were enemy combatants. it's a collective war action, not an individual criminal offense.
yes, they should be protected under geneva etc, but they are not civilians.
Tell it to those guys whose lifes were destroyed and were tortured by mistake. Guys picked up in Europe (no war-zone thus no enemy combatants so they should be treated as civilians) and flown to torture sites in third world by CIA, tortured and released when they realized they had wrong guy.
and again no accountability. it's dangerous because of the disregard of "muslim" life. that line from Cheney alone will be a top headline for ISIS and all those similar minded and terribly misguided movements, the propaganda basically writes itself.
but not only that, if you deem anyone you, to your best knowledge(whatever that means in a lot of cases...) -think- is an enemy combatant, who says it won't be used in the future as something even more sinister? want to get your points and interests across some brown people nation anyone? deem their fighters enemy combatants!
that's not how the self proclaimed leader of the free world should go about its business. quite the opposite of it. and not awesome.
I can see how a nation can be in disarray for quite a while after such attacks, but damn start thinking WHY they attacked and WHY they will try again. it's not just because they hate your freedom, most muslims would love to live in a western style democracy.
it's the crazy fundamentalist and their bullshit that need to marginalized.
On December 16 2014 13:48 oneofthem wrote: these guys were enemy combatants. it's a collective war action, not an individual criminal offense.
yes, they should be protected under geneva etc, but they are not civilians.
Tell it to those guys whose lifes were destroyed and were tortured by mistake. Guys picked up in Europe (no war-zone thus no enemy combatants so they should be treated as civilians) and flown to torture sites in third world by CIA, tortured and released when they realized they had wrong guy.
and again no accountability. it's dangerous because of the disregard of "muslim" life. that line from Cheney alone will be a top headline for ISIS and all those similar minded and terribly misguided movements, the propaganda basically writes itself.
but not only that, if you deem anyone you, to your best knowledge(whatever that means in a lot of cases...) -think- is an enemy combatant, who says it won't be used in the future as something even more sinister? want to get your points and interests across some brown people nation anyone? deem their fighters enemy combatants!
that's not how the self proclaimed leader of the free world should go about its business. quite the opposite of it. and not awesome.
I can see how a nation can be in disarray for quite a while after such attacks, but damn start thinking WHY they attacked and WHY they will try again. it's not just because they hate your freedom, most muslims would love to live in a western style democracy.
it's the crazy fundamentalist and their bullshit that need to marginalized.
I think one of the problems is that people are still buying into the narrative that they attacked us "because they hate our freedom" or that they intended to 'cripple us' on 9/11...
It couldn't be more obvious that was not their intention. Their intention was to incite the US/West into offending/alienating the Muslim world in an effort to basically spark a religious war between the west and Muslims. They wanted us to invade their countries so they could rally more moderate Muslims against the West by showing the 'collateral damage' as evidence of America's evil. To point at the governments that the West installed into their country, and show how they didn't have their interests at heart. To point at hateful ignorant rhetoric about Islam and say "See they don't just hate us, they hate Islam"
They want people to think that their message is spreading and becoming more accepted. That random sick people are really 'Jihadists'.
It blows my mind to see the people who are the most vocal "opponents" of terrorists seem to be doing the terrorists every bidding.
More suicide attacks have been undertaken by secular organizations than jihadis since 1981. The overwhelming, vast majority of suicide attacks are in response to foreign occupation of homelands/sacred ground.
well, I too see a problem with religious extremism. however, keep in mind that in certain countries there is no separation of church and state we are so used to in the west.
religion IS the vehicle to reach political goals, and it's not nearly as clear cut as we would like it to be. or the article - rather the quoting of the institute for economics and peace - would have us believe.
On December 15 2014 04:41 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: Dick Cheney is just an awful human being.
Dick Cheney gave an unflinching defense of he CIA's post-9/11 torture program on "Meet the Press" on Sunday, dismissing criticisms of the program's forced rectal feedings, waterboarding and deaths.
"It worked. It absolutely did work," said Cheney, a driving force behind the George W. Bush administration's use of harsh tactics in response to the 9/11 attacks.
The Senate report on the interrogation program details forced rectal feedings that were medically unnecessary. But on Sunday, Cheney said the feedings were done for "medical reasons." The former vice president showed little remorse for the dozens of prisoners who were found to have been wrongfully detained, for the man who died in the program, or for people like Khaled El-Masri -- a German citizen who was shipped off to Afghanistan and sodomized in a case of mistaken identity.
"I'd do it again in a minute," said Cheney. He also spoke repeatedly of how the program was justified to get the "bastards" who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks.
Cheney said he was more disturbed by the detainees released from Guantanamo and prisons in Iraq -- many under his own administration -- who have returned to the battlefield. He cited in particular the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was released from a U.S. prison in Iraq in 2004.
"I'm more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that, in fact, were innocent," Cheney said.
About the program's serious errors -- and the abuses that CIA Director John Brennan described as "abhorrent" on Thursday -- Cheney said, "I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective."
I for one am glad for people like Cheney that don't mince words about the effectiveness of interrogation to conform to modern fashions. Beyond that, I too would be appalled at released captives returning to fight American soldiers--fight the very same force that succeeded in the original capturing. At least his conscience can be clear that they did employ means at their disposal to glean valuable intelligence to help our soldiers in the fight. I can't say the same about the current crop of moralizing hypocrites. Their loyalties are decidedly on the pursuit of political power through leveraging biased reports, and not with the troops. These CIA heroes, currently cast as scapegoats, deserve medals of freedom for quickly exposing al Qaeda networks and saving lives after 9/11.
Richard Engel of NBC said it well,
When you look back, how are you going to remember this? Is it going to be remembered as the period in which the CIA, in secret while lying to the political leadership, beat some people to death and did horrible things and didn’t get any results, which is what today’s report is suggesting, or was it a period when the country was very nervous, the CIA was asked to do these horrible things, the practice stopped, and then you have the political leadership pretending that it didn’t know anything and trying to wash its hands of the problem.
Say he is libertarian.... Defend state in a torture scandal.
On December 15 2014 04:41 {CC}StealthBlue wrote: Dick Cheney is just an awful human being.
Dick Cheney gave an unflinching defense of he CIA's post-9/11 torture program on "Meet the Press" on Sunday, dismissing criticisms of the program's forced rectal feedings, waterboarding and deaths.
"It worked. It absolutely did work," said Cheney, a driving force behind the George W. Bush administration's use of harsh tactics in response to the 9/11 attacks.
The Senate report on the interrogation program details forced rectal feedings that were medically unnecessary. But on Sunday, Cheney said the feedings were done for "medical reasons." The former vice president showed little remorse for the dozens of prisoners who were found to have been wrongfully detained, for the man who died in the program, or for people like Khaled El-Masri -- a German citizen who was shipped off to Afghanistan and sodomized in a case of mistaken identity.
"I'd do it again in a minute," said Cheney. He also spoke repeatedly of how the program was justified to get the "bastards" who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks.
Cheney said he was more disturbed by the detainees released from Guantanamo and prisons in Iraq -- many under his own administration -- who have returned to the battlefield. He cited in particular the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who was released from a U.S. prison in Iraq in 2004.
"I'm more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that, in fact, were innocent," Cheney said.
About the program's serious errors -- and the abuses that CIA Director John Brennan described as "abhorrent" on Thursday -- Cheney said, "I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective."
I for one am glad for people like Cheney that don't mince words about the effectiveness of interrogation to conform to modern fashions. Beyond that, I too would be appalled at released captives returning to fight American soldiers--fight the very same force that succeeded in the original capturing. At least his conscience can be clear that they did employ means at their disposal to glean valuable intelligence to help our soldiers in the fight. I can't say the same about the current crop of moralizing hypocrites. Their loyalties are decidedly on the pursuit of political power through leveraging biased reports, and not with the troops. These CIA heroes, currently cast as scapegoats, deserve medals of freedom for quickly exposing al Qaeda networks and saving lives after 9/11.
When you look back, how are you going to remember this? Is it going to be remembered as the period in which the CIA, in secret while lying to the political leadership, beat some people to death and did horrible things and didn’t get any results, which is what today’s report is suggesting, or was it a period when the country was very nervous, the CIA was asked to do these horrible things, the practice stopped, and then you have the political leadership pretending that it didn’t know anything and trying to wash its hands of the problem.
I wonder. To the best of our knowledge the CIA torture program was almost completely ineffective. Why do you persist in asserting the opposite? I agree with Engel on one thing. The political leadership is trying to absolve themselves of responsibility by pretending they didn't know anything. Cheney, Bush, Yoo and co. should indeed be indicted for their crimes along with the CIA torturers.
One other thing: If one really cares about the troops it is a good idea to not send tem off to fight neo-colonial wars within some sectarian hotbed or other.
What a laughable claim. It's honestly as if you think by repeating that it was ineffective that it becomes ineffective. We're a two-party system here, and thus far one party has put its political propaganda in its best shot out there. If they had a prayer of proving it ineffective, they would've interviewed CIA agents, heads of department, chiefs ... but absolutely none of that was done. So much for wanting to know the results.
If, however, you think any or all of those methods should never be used under any circumstances, you have gained something by reading the report.
Interviews are a waste of effort if your trying to find the truth. Anyone who has anything to lose in this would lie to cover it up. The report is based on internal emails and reports from the CIA itself which are much more reliable.
Do you believe the bank statements that say money was removed or the accountant who says he didn't take anything?
Religious extremism has become the main driver of terrorism in recent years, according to this year’s Global Terrorism Index.
The report recorded 18,000 deaths in 2013, a rise of 60% on the previous year. The majority (66%) of these were attributable to just four groups: Islamic State (Isis) in Iraq and Syria, Boko Haram in Nigeria, the Taliban in Afghanistan and al-Qaida.
That's GLOBALLY
Even I thought terrorists were deadlier than that...Terrorists around the entire world can barely keep up with how many (only) Americans just our drug companies "accidently" kill.
Millions of people took Vioxx in the years after its risks to the heart became apparent. As a result, as many as 55,000 patients may have died from heart attacks and strokes induced by the drug, according to estimates by drug safety officials at the F.D.A.
It's confounding to me how the spectre of terrorism is enough to motivate conservatives to junk their core beliefs by borrowing billions from China, spending trillions of dollars on a fruitless war, imprisoning, torturing, and killing (different people, not tortured to death) innocent people, and encouraging a police state where our every move is observed by a big bad federal government agency. Yet the very real things that kill 100's of times more Americans than terrorists can barely get acknowledged let alone addressed and corrected. Not even getting to the very real threats of climate change that we still have to wait for the last few % of scientists to agree on before conservatives are willing to take aggressive action, while we know terrorists kill a fraction of the people that the problems we currently face do (as opposed to the ever so talked about dirty bomb or a critically unstable region down the road some day)
Yeah thats sad, society and politics is more about emotions than rational behavior. Imagine what would poeple say after 9/11 if someone would suggest going after GlaxoSmithKleine or Pfizer rather than Bin Laden? Even though that makes perfect sense number wise.
But that is only because of all of the CIA assfistings! Without that and the wars in iraq and afghanistan there would be zilllions of deaths every month due to evilevil terrorists, but the heroic CIA defends our freedom.
So irritating to keep hearing this "ticking time bomb" BS on TV as an excuse for torture after 9/11, and then the person representing an alternative viewpoint doesn't immediately ask "If the bomb was ticking, why did they leave the guy alone in the dark for 40+ days before torturing him to get that ticking time bomb intel?"
I guess ISIS and Boko Haram skew the figures in the last 2 years. It's debatable whether ISIS is a religious or a political movement. In any case ISIS is a response to "foreign" occupation.
EPT
