CIA waterboarded individual suspects up to 183 times
Fee sez, "The BBC and Guardian report that despite claims that waterboarding leads to people confessing all quickly, some suspects were subjected to the torture hundreds of times.
I was already appalled by the idea of civilised countries using torture... this level of torture enacted upon individuals is inhumane and unspeakable. I hope they are prosecuted."
The CIA waterboarded two al-Qaida terror suspects a total of 266 times, according to a report that suggests the use of the torture technique was much more extensive than previously thought.CIA waterboarded al-Qaida suspects 266 times (Thanks, Fee!)The documents showed waterboarding was used 183 times on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who admitted planning the 9/11 attacks, the New York Times reported today.
The US Justice Department memos released last Thursday showed that waterboarding, which the US now admits is torture, was used 83 times on the alleged al-Qaida senior commander Abu Zubaydah, the paper said. A former CIA officer claimed in 2007 that Zubaydah was subjected to the simulated drowning technique for only 35 seconds.
the latest
latest episodes
Therefore, each waterboarding session was around 0.4217 seconds long. Simple math!
I really wonder what they thought he'd say that he didn't already say after 182 rounds of torture.
It's becoming more and more clear that information gathering was never the point in all this (which is fitting, because the last thing you want to do is rely on information gained through torture). This was petty, infantile revenge.
After they're done confessing to terrorism, maybe the CIA can get them to confess to witchcraft as well.
This leads to the question: if the CIA thought it wasn't torture, why did they keep doing it?
So much for the moral high ground.
Once you get over THAT I guess the rest comes pretty easy.
Arrest John Yoo. Impeach Jay Bybee. And then keep going up the ladder as far as justice demands.
Wow, 183 times to get that confession just right? That's an insane level of perfectionism. Phil Spector's "Be My Baby" only took 42 takes. Of course, if they didn't actually tell Khalid Sheikh Mohammed why he was being waterboarded, it may have taken him that many sessions to guess which "confession" would get the CIA to stop.
If it was really torture Obama would prosecute....unless he wants to either continue it or keep the option open.
Otherwise he's not the honest new change he pretended to be.
Let's not forget that those compulsive sadists are our heroes in this war against... what war is it this week?
Coming up next week:
How Khalid Sheikh Mohammed confessed nuking Mars and planning to destroy Venus after having wiped out all life on Earth. Oh, and the 9/11 attacks. How very credible his confessions sound now!
Iaminnocent, #7:
According to the Obama administration, the "War on Terror" is over - what's actually going on are the "Overseas Contingency Operations".
Redefinition accomplished! - to quote Jon Stewart.
just a note to my future torturers: I will confess to ANYTHING if you waterboard me 183 times.
yes, yes, it was me who caused the extinction of the Dinosaurs.
President Obama says we're sorry and we're not going
to do it anymore, but we won't prosecute the torturers.
I hope that sets a precedent for me to be able to say I'm sorry and I won't do it anymore if I commit a crime.
You know what they say about doing the same thing, over and over again, and expecting a different result.
There is a theme among conservative circles that "we dare not question Obamessiah", clearly they are pretending not to notice that there is quite a lot of criticism (all from the left) of Obama's decision not to prosecute CIA torturers, nor delve into Bush's torture policies.
Well, they weren't sure if it was torture, so they had to keep doing it to see.
Breaking News: Khaled Sheikh Mohammed admits to actually being XENU, former galactic ruler and tormentor of Scientologists everywhere.
This should be common knowledge to all people of at least average intelligence: some people confess easily, some under threats, some when in pain, and some never. I bet the biggest percentage is at the (credible) threat level, but either way there is no doubt that even innocent people will often say almost anything to avoid pain.
The only possible conclusion is that the CIA persons responsible are either morons or lying.
I've never understood myself why some people find comfort in the execution of the person who killed their loved one, let alone an unrelated person lumped into the same category.
The point that everyone seems to be missing is that if the CIA was allowed to waterboard KSM 184 times, they might have been able to get some information that could have saved American lives.
Damn them liberals, taking another weapon out of the US of A's arsenal.
Capt'n Squiffy
183 times!?! Wow, he must have been just chock-full of valuable information. At that point they're waterboarding him out of habit.
How are you literally not driven to absolute insanity after the first few waterboardings? How could you be in any state of mind to give reliable info?
Well, the first 182 / 265 times they didn't get it right. Practice makes perfect.
they also used the children of those they questioned against them. So not only did America torture under Cheney, America tortured children as well.
Well, they were water-bored.
I can tell you from personal experience that being waterboarded once is good enough to get piles of information.
Addendum: Even though waterboarding "can" be effective, I don't agree with its use.
Horrible.
It seems like after a hundred times, you'd get at least somewhat desensitized to it. I know getting "used" to drowning is impossible, but still you know what's coming, what to expect, etc. My point isn't to minimize what the tortured individual went through, but to further discredit those doing the torture! They have to think, okay, this guy has had this done a lot already, it's probably not something unexpected any more. How pointless.
In this day and age, I just can't help but feel suspicious about any 'secret' information coming to light.
I simply don't believe in objective news gathering anymore.
Which source leaked this information to the BBC and The Guardian?
Just how long were the BBC and Guardian aware of this?
Why is this information disclosed at this time?
Does this source have more 'secret' information at his/her disposal, like, for instance, the exact number and locations of secret CIA detention centres, and their occupants, and the practices performed upon them?
Shit man, everything is politics nowadays.
With all this 'secret' stuff around, I have no choice but to assume the worst, and proclaim that in fact, there is no authority to respect but my own.
Americans have a very deep-seated belief that is taught to us from birth that we as a people are right and just. This is incredibly dangerous b/c it puts us in place where even when we see undeniable evidence that our government was brutally torturing people, most Americans are unable to find the space in their brains to believe it so they turn it off or side-step thinking about it. B/c we generally don't believe we can do wrong it makes us unable to prosecute when our leaders really do awful things b/c to do so would violate our fundamental belief that we only do good in the world.
Hitler said it quite nicely...
"... in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.
—Adolf Hitler , Mein Kampf, vol. I, ch. X[1] - quoted in wikipedia)
so Dbarak, you would have said ANYTHING. Right?
Comment to #10 Mitch:
We shouldn't prosecute the torturers, because they were told it was legal (yeah, yeah, Nazis just following orders, etc.) We should prosecute Bush, Cheney, Gonzales, etc. for perverting the legal system and Geneva convention. But that isn't gonna happen because every President gives a free pass to his predecessors and their cronies.
how many Americans believe America only does good in the world today?
This wasn't torture, this was the US helping folks perform ablution. Just forcefully.
http://www.islamicity.com/mosque/salat/salat6.htm
Ok, so they messed up some of the details, but it was all out of the kindness of their hearts.
The torturers knew damn well it was illegal and immoral and unethical and wrong.
We must have them, and those who ordered it, prosecuted.
Marcel, you would not need to resort to such a counsel of despair if you would only follow the links.
The Guardian article linked to says:
And then there's a link to the article at emptywheel, which in turn links to a pdf of the document from Bradbury to Piazzo.It's all there, perfectly legitimate and clear, no extrapolation or invention. Is anyone even disputing the facts? Then why are you doubting it? Because you don't want to believe that Americans raised in freedom and democracy can do such a thing?
It seems like after a hundred times, you'd get at least somewhat desensitized to it. I know getting "used" to drowning is impossible, but still you know what's coming, what to expect, etc.
Nope. The part of your brain that can reason like that absolutely shuts down during being forcibly drowned, as far as I'm aware. You might be able to resist it some if you know for sure that they are going to withdraw- but an enemy doesn't know that. People who have experienced it as part of military training within their own forces might handle it alright.
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=25088
In other news, this article scares the shit out of me. Not because it goes against my point of view- that waterboarding is torture, plain and simple- but because someone can be so determined that what they are doing is right that even after enduring it themselves they are still convinced we should do it to the enemy.
And some of the comments are even scarier.
I've decided that on the earliest occassion I'm going to use my friend's tilt table and we're going to figure out what waterboarding is like. Wish me luck! (And oxygen.)
@ #25 posted by Takuan
I think I might have said anything to get it to stop, however we were taught to not give out false information, as we would likely be caught in the lie eventually.
In the case of suspected terrorists (insert your own phrase for them here), they likely wouldn't have had that training, and so they'd probably say anything to get it to stop.
#27 posted by Takuan
Has the US EVER only done good in the world? (Rhetorical question.)
Tenn: no need to risk an aneurysm for idle curiosity.
#32 posted by dbarak
Has any nation ever only done good in the world? (RQ2)
I just read the article referenced in #30, and it says that in emails received by the author, all from aviators, and all in favor of waterboarding.
Count me among the dissenters in that group. I believe that in a training scenario, it IS useful in order to prepare people for what may face them in a hostile situation, but in the case of training, the waterboarding is over in just a few minutes.
Precisely Dbarak. I've given off my military aspirations, but everyone I've ever spoken to whose undergone ANY sort of POW training says its hell. And when you're waterboarding, deep down, you know these people are your friends, they want to make sure you make it out of whatever you might stumble into alive. They may be complete assholes, but- they're your fellow Americans.
"As Wages can attest, waterboarding is the ultimate mind game. And, it is one that needs to be played with terrorists hell-bent on causing the loss of innocent human lives."
why then, is not the Bush Family , Cheney, various oil company executives, the entire board of Halliburton and all the other authors of the rape and destruction of Iraq on false pretences not now being waterboarded to get their confessions and prevent a recurrence? That's a million dead Iraqis and counting. A few thousand American soldiers too. Are their lives worthless?
There is no doubt at all there was a criminal conspiracy to make a war with lies. Torture them, get the truth.
TAKUAN @17,
Yep. Actually, the two most well-known cases of Canadian citizens (of Arab descent, natch) treated most egregiously by the American War on Terror are related in a bizarre way:
A kid has been in Gitmo since he was 15 (he's 21 now) Why? For the horrendous crime of surviving a firefighter in Afghanistan where all the Afghanis but him, and one American soldier, died. His father, who died in that exact battle, is who the Americans were really after.
Then they created the other 'terrorist' by forced testimony from the kid. *That* guy was sent to Syria. The kid is still in Gitmo, and our idiot prime minister won't help him.
Fox News is apparently defending this because "torture saves lives" (just like this magic rock I have in my pocket protects me from tigers).
I would SO like someone to ask the Fox News talking heads "I'm sure you love the USA, but do you think you could continue to insist that you loved the USA if you were waterboarded 183 times with the interrogators demanding that you admit you didn't love the USA? And if you did finally "admit" you didn't love the USA, would that make it true?"
What I want to know is this: Who killed Daniel Pearl?
AOSS was convicted for beheading DP. Then KSM "confessed" that he beheaded DP. AOSS was appealing his conviction on the grounds that KSM has confessed doing the crime that AOSS was convicted of.
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2007/03/militant-convicted-of-pearl-killing-to.php
Prosecution is explicitly required by the anti-torture laws: which were not drafted to be easily circumvented. Or is the CIA of such importance, that it can with impunity undermine the US Constitution, and the Laws made thereunder?
Prosecute: and then Pardon, if need be.
Prosecute: and regain the high ground as to other Nations.
Prosecute: and re-examine the need/role of secret organizations nestled in the bosom of democracy, paid for (with adequate oversight/accountability?) by your tax dollars.
Prosecute: and see where the loopholes were, or are, and then close them up.
Prosecute: or others may well do it for you.
oooh! LOTS of background links:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-shearer/the-torture-debate--its-a_b_188814.html
OPne article I saw gave a timetable for the waterboading and listed at something like 3 months. Meaning that this guy was likely waterboarded many times on single days.
THat spurs me to a couple of questions. First is the desensitizing. So even is torture were to work than waterboarding has one big flaw. you can't answer questions with water in your mouth. So you would theoretically have to say things after they stopped. And after 30 or 40 times you get the idea that you aren't going to die or have any lasting damage and despite the terror you feel every time I would imagine that terror is more and more limited to the time the water is actually pouring on your face.
That said, this is just clearly torture for tortures sake. They need to convict someone.
The administrations "looking forward" line sounds like president ford. His Pardons and excuses are the source of so much lawlessness in government today. Cheney and Rumsfeld and the Bushes all came from that era and rather then going to jail have all been pissed about getting caught. Overlooking clear violations of the law could send us on another 30 year cycle.
183 times?
i guess its not so terrible as you people made it out to be.
#44 posted by Hawley
Just because he survived 183 sessions, doesn't mean it's easy. All it says is they didn't kill him. If you'd like, I can demonstrate the process on you.
@29: Because you don't want to believe that Americans raised in freedom and democracy can do such a thing?
I think any American who went through the public school system knows just how much delight bullies take in torturing their fellow students. Plenty of the assholes I went to school with would waterboard a bound prisoner without a second thought.
The funny thing is it's 20 years later now and they're finding me on Facebook and trying to apologize for things I've long forgotten about. Interesting that they've been tormented for 20 years about their actions.
Don't do it, Tenn!
I drowned when I was a child, and although they got me out and emptied me pretty fast it was still horrible enough for some bad dreams afterwards.
Boarding is drowning, if just for a few seconds; and no one, pro or con, can convince me it isn't. That aside, I do not believe the number of drownings per person can reach two figures before you have a brain-damaged prisoner on your hands; and beyond that...?
How much "intelligence" can you get from a drooling idiot?
When the Obama administration released these memos they were immediately attacked by pro-torture members of the right who claimed this information would allow future detainees to "adapt" to our interrogation methods. (Possibly by growing gills?)
Babe, if you haven't "adapted" to withstand waterboarding after 183 times then you probably never will.
-Okay Khalid, you know the process, get on the board.
-Whatever.
*agent pours water.
-Anything new?
-Did I already tell you about 9/11.
-yes we went through that 180 sessions ago.
-Sorry.
-See you again tomorrow. Same time. Same board.
I don't know how anybody could go to work every day and torture people, much less the same person, over and over and over, and think there is nothing wrong with it; that it is all part of the career path. Like the old donut commercial, waking up every morning and thinking: "Time to torture the arabs..."
I know there is a certain desensitization that goes on in the mind of the torturer; justifications and such, but it is still hard to believe any human being could inflict such persistent pain and suffering on other human beings in this day and age without questioning it; without remorse. Yet here it is. This blood is on all of our hands.
Write your representative.
Write your senators.
Write the president.
Demand investigations and justice.
KSM and many other high-ranking Al-Q planners have apparently received training on how to lower their susceptibility to the interviewing and interrogation techniques used to elicit admissions and confessions from most suspected criminals. This renders ineffective several hallmarks of peaceful, low-intensity interrogations: theme developments, minimizing the crime, etc. Some of those techniques would be especially outlandish when applied to the KSM, the mastermind of 3,000 murders. I don't think we should hold up KSM as the litmus test for our civil liberties (which he would scoff at), or as the proving ground for civil interrogation techniques. The Muslim doctrine of taqiyyah - lying to the infidel for the sake of Islam - lends itself to the sort of psychological profile observed in interrogations of primary psychopaths (e.g., lack of empathy, engagement in anti-social behavior). The point of waterboarding KSM was presumably to completely overthrow the terrorist's pathology, personality, taqiyyah, insolent blustering, dopamine chemistry, etc., to force out information which could not be otherwise elicited.
Repeated waterboarding apparently caused Abu Zubaida to cooperate with investigators and yield information regarding the 9/11 attack. Given that, why do people fret about the number of times KSM was waterboarded? Wouldn't it be more useful to reduce KSM to the lowest, most childlike and apprehensive rungs of Maslow's hierarchy of needs after it's been established that standard, non-violent elicitation techniques have failed to create the same dynamic? The CIA endeavored to use techniques that no terrorist can immunize him/herself from, no matter how much training he/she receives. Aside from the issue of efficacy, the objective of the torture was to liquidate other affiliated terrorists and prevent future attacks which they had planned. So tell me, what is an acceptable level of terrorist violence and murder that we should abide in lieu of waterboarding?
...i don't like the 'simon says' approach to employing our defense people.
"It is your duty to follow orders. Unless they might be seen as amoral."
I can see this causing problems farther down the line. Can't you?
interesting watching Obama's address at the CIA now, he's getting them on his side by forgiving the crimes they committed under King George. He's also laying the groundwork for no more official approval on torture. Well played.
@ ikhwanelbanat:
The true test of a society is not how it behaves when all is well but how well it upholds its own ideals during times of strife. If all our high-minded notions of due process and human rights fly out the window as soon as we have a Really Bad Guy on our hands then they were nothing more than comfortable lies to begin with.
I would also point out that all we know about what information KSM did or did not give up under torture is what the CIA is telling us. The same CIA that secretly sold weapons to terrorists and channeled the proceeds to fund secret wars in the 80s. The same CIA that screwed the pooch on Iraq's WMDs. The same CIA that to this day continues to violate the Geneva Conventions on POWs. Of COURSE they are going to say waterboarding yielded valuable intel; otherwise they'd have to admit they've been torturing people for no reason whatsoever.
MHChein@~59:
1) People are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty in this country, and by its laws.
2) Can you prove that he "masterminded" anything?
3) Torture has never been found to produce consistently reliable information, because the tortured will tell you anything they think you want to hear to get you to stop.
4) If justice is not for all then it is not justice.
5) It's not about being "inconvenienced". It is about unlawful and amoral behavior being perpetrated on behalf of the people.
Other that that, I have a problem with everything else you posted. Please check back after thinking your comments through.
don't forget the same CIA that installed Saddam Hussein and the same CIA that installed the Shah of Iran and the same CIA that trained Osama Bin Laden.
Actually, the CIA was shamelessly used by the Bush crime family, used and finally betrayed and insulted. I think a CIA firmly in Obama's camp is going to get around to playing some catch-up for the Bush betrayals. Clever man, Obama, but how hard is that when compared to a chimpanzee and an undead ghoul?
Comment zapped. I guess I wasn't the only one. (-Sincere thanks to the moderators!)
#50 posted by dbarak
congratulations, you just lost the moral high ground.
oh, and Ikh: I have said it before and I will say it again: Israel was supposed to have learned from the Holocaust. Never again. And never again included EVERYONE. Even muslims.
that's not what Dbarak meant, Hawley. Read the thread.
#64 posted by Hawley
Takuan covered it for me in #65, but I wouldn't waterboard anyone.
Actually, I DO favor a short waterboard session fore SERE students, a minute or two at most (with breaks for air of course). It's not pleasant, but I do think it provides valuable mental strengthening for those that might face worse later on.
When I went through it back in January of 1984, we were given the impression that it was something the US wouldn't use in earnest. I don't know of the SERE instructors of the time were mislead or not, but apparently SERE instructors were consulted for the recent use of waterboarding.
#34 Nelson C:
So somebody "accidentally" forgot to blank out a number on a memo from the Justice Department.
I'm holding on to my "counsel of despair" for the moment, if you don't mind.
@khwanelbanat
the one thing missing from your rational is morality.
@takuan
you look painfully desperate in your neet to justify Obama: really, getting a band of immoral, psychopathic criminals in your team is a feat of genius?
Greg @23, I'm sure you could have said that without the gratuitous insult.
IKH: Repeated waterboarding apparently caused Abu Zubaida to cooperate with investigators and yield information regarding the 9/11 attack
Read my link in #45. KSM confessed to beheading Daniel Pearl. But AOSS had already been convicted of beheading Pearl. So AOSS was appealing his conviction on the grounds that KSM confessed to committing the crime.
The only thing we know we got from torturing KSM is what the CIA tells us they got out of torturing KSM. Not exactly the most reliable source, given, oh, I don't know, the fact that their NIE to the US congress back in 2002 said with “high confidence” that Iraq “has now established large-scale, redundant and concealed BW agent production capabilities.” It said “all key aspects” of Iraq’s offensive BW program “are active and that most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War.”
[http://www.fas.org/irp/cia/product/iraq-wmd.html]
[http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1120-01.htm]
Oh, and what other awesome intellignece has the CIA gotten from torture?
2002-01-01: Captured terrorist Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi is tortured by US agents. During this time, al-Libi claims that al Quaeda sent operatives to Iraq to acquire chemcial and biological weapons and training. In Feb 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) states al-Libi “has been undergoing debriefs for several weeks and may be describing scenarios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their interest”. (Apparently, “debriefing” is code for “torture”.) Even though the DIA doubts al-Libi’s claims, CIA Director, George Tenet, authorized the use of al-Libi’s claims in Secretary Powell’s Feb 2003 speech to the UN.
[http://web.archive.org/web/20070517165922rn_2/www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5197853/site/newsweek/]
[http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/supporting/2005/DIAletter.102605.pdf]
Please. Spare me your bullshit about how torture did the world any good. We tortured Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi until he told the CIA exactly what they wanted to hear, that Iraq was working with Al quada before 9/11. Based on that totally fabricated intelligence, intel told by a man who was saying whatever would get them to stop waterboarding him, based on that lie that Bush wanted to believe, America invaded Iraq.
It's all a bunch of fucking bullshit.
I'm sure you could have said that without the gratuitous insult.
If you want something more accurate, substitute "fckng bllsht" with "fascist propaganda".
Avram, Greg's insult at 23 is directed at former CIA Director and current torture advocate Michael Hayden. Given that context, I think it was mild compared to what the man deserves to be called.
justify the unjustifiable? Barack Obama is a politician. A good one. As such, he will do anything, no matter how loathsome, to further his aims. I cannot tell you how pants-fillingly grateful I am everyday that he is not George Shoe-Boy Bush.
I don't know if he is an evil man or not, so far I am holding out for ordinary since he hasn't openly done wicked things just for the sake of doing them.
I'm still haunted by the sight of Bush's face during some of his more vile pronouncements. Gawds, I hope he contracts three kinds of cancer yet!
As to the CIA: oh yes! it is a true feat of genius to bring that venom-dripping hydra to heel and even more to tame it. They may betray him yet, that is after all their business and nature, but in the Great Game, Obama has played yet another hand well.
Do you really understand that he is playing with people who ALWAYS play for keeps? Imagine your elementary school playground with handguns. I find it very useful to read the lives of Julius, Augustus, Caligula and Claudius.
In any case, Innocent, fear the CIA. They are a force unto themselves and will destroy any president or other person who truly threatens them. Time is on their side so they can wait for a king to pass on, no matter how any election goes, they will remain. If you want evidence of their power consider they (as a recent work so cogently put it) have nothing but a legacy of ashes to their name but yet they survive. Their kind exists everywhere and everywhen. Look at Putin who is still tsar, scratch a bit in China and see who knows who.
Does mankind need spooks? Probably not. Does every emperor? What do you think?
Slump said: "How are you literally not driven to absolute insanity after the first few waterboardings? How could you be in any state of mind to give reliable info?"
Not to condone the practice, but my question--and I don't know the answer--is, how many times do you experience "simulated drowning" before you stop thinking of it as "simulated drowning?" Is there a point where it's no longer "simulated drowning" but merely "Oh, this bullshit again..."
That might be true, Beedie, if waterboarding were simulated drowning. It is not. It is actual drowning stopped just before the point of death. You can't "get used to" that. It doesn't matter how you think about it. Your bodily reaction will overpower you and you will be in gasping, choking terror the hundredth time as you will the first.
Takuan, good argument for disbanding the CIA completely. Or, instead of prosecuting them, terminating the torturers with extreme prejudice (i.e. get the rest of the CIA to take them down like the filthy diseased animals they are).
the accounts I have read from torture survivors make it clear that you don't "get used to it".
My suspicion is that when a human being has been tortured over and over again, there is a point reached where what is being tortured is no longer human.
Interesting that this discussion is taking place in the context in the land of the free and the home of liberty.
I read something from an escapee from North Korea the other day. In the prison where he grew up with his mother, the closest thing he experienced to what you the reader know as happiness, love and trust was being told that he would not be immediately punished.
#75 posted by Beedie
"Is there a point where it's no longer "simulated drowning" but merely "Oh, this bullshit again...""
I would say not. A person's desire to breath usually doesn't leave, and they make sure to keep pouring the water until you need to breath, and then some.
#76 posted by Xopher
When I had it done to me, I had little or no water in my lungs. I'm guessing that was a result of the cloth being placed first over my mouth and then over my mouth and nose. I would say it's more a sensation of drowning. In the long run though, it's all the same to a victim's mental state.
Hmm. If you can't breathe, and it's because water is between you and the air, I call that drowning. I suppose you could argue that it's not really drowning unless your lungs fill up with water, but then you'd still have to say "partial suffocation via simulated drowning" at the very least.
"the rest of the CIA"? Of course they will throw any single element of their corpus under the wheels if expedient. What effect does that have on the overall?
Remember also a torturer does not have to have an indefinite life. If you are short on true psychopaths, you just order ordinary drones to carry out the articulated interrogations and discard them them when they are saturated. They are all bound by ruinous secrecy oaths, so what matter?
I hate to be so repetitious, but it says it all so well
http://books.google.ca/books?id=-XGKFJq4eccC&dq=the+wretched+of+the+earth&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=GA7tSdGhEpDGswO218HsAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4#PPR35,M1
Brainspore, I would argue that the best way to preserve our civil liberties, human rights, and dignity would be to preclude the sort of panicked conditions - namely, terrorism - that might lend themselves to declarations of martial law, when law enforcement is too overwhelmed to maintain our constitutional freedoms and due process anyway. Waterboarding a cretin doesn't imbue our society with the cretin's psychopathic tendencies. We can choose to preempt future terrorist attacks through whichever methods elicit intelligence from a mass-murderer detainee, or we can give terrorist planners a better chance to avoid surveillance and CT operations by banning techniques that make us cringe. But if I end up living under a martial-law curfew because law enforcement agencies failed to sort out the good guys from the bad guys when they had the latter in custody, you owe me a beer.
I grew up in Egypt in a Christian family. President Mubarak has kept the country under emergency law since Zawahiri and the ideological peers of KSM and Abu Zubaida assassinated Anwar Sadat. The Muslim Brotherhood might have easily come to power and murdered my relatives as "apostates" if it weren't for Mubarak suspending habeas corpus and basically becoming a dictator. Sadat's killers are heroes in most Arab countries, including Egypt, and their followers love to argue about how their rights have been violated, because gullible Europeans believe every word of it.I've also received training in the Reid interrogation program, and what works on the psyche of a petty criminal or child murderer would not work on KSM, who must know how to feign indignation and all the nuances of an innocent person. Be glad that you have the luxury of living in a country where this debate - civil liberties for terrorists - is just an abstraction. It's an existential threat in my home country.
Takuan, the point is to make the CIA operatives reluctant to torture, for fear their own colleagues will shoot them in the back in the dark. Their attitude toward the world has long been Oderint dum metuant; let it now be our attitude to them!
No, I'm not completely serious. But anything that makes someone reluctant to torture, even if it's sheer terror, isn't all bad in my book.
Bishoyg; hasn't Eygpt decided Iran's fomentation of internal terror makes Israel ally now?
Xopher; they just see themselves as plumbers.
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justify the unjustifiable? Barack Obama is a politician. A good one. As such, he will do anything, no matter how loathsome, to further his aims. I cannot tell you how pants-fillingly grateful I am everyday that he is not George Shoe-Boy Bush.
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Oh well, 'pants-fillingly' gets me into the ballpark which will do. :D
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I'm still haunted by the sight of Bush's face during some of his more vile pronouncements. Gawds, I hope he contracts three kinds of cancer yet!
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A tumor on a tumor on a tumor on a tumor (sic)? You are full of images tonight!
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As to the CIA: oh yes! it is a true feat of genius to bring that venom-dripping hydra to heel and even more to tame it. They may betray him yet, that is after all their business and nature, but in the Great Game, Obama has played yet another hand well.
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It's a loosing hand still IMO.
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Do you really understand that he is playing with people who ALWAYS play for keeps? Imagine your elementary school playground with handguns. I find it very useful to read the lives of Julius, Augustus, Caligula and Claudius.
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Some days, my greatest challenge is to guess for how long I should reheat my lunch in the microwave. So no, there is no way that I can truly comprehend what the life of a president is. Do I have to? Isn't my job as a citizen (well I am Canadian but still) to keep him honest regardless? By this don't we, in the end, give him the political support that he needs to achieve goals that are closer to his professed ideals?
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In any case, Innocent, fear the CIA...
(snip-snip)
...Does mankind need spooks? Probably not. Does every emperor? What do you think?
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I am not so sure that the CIA is de facto a State inside the State ATM. As for the military, which has mostly obeyed the president until now, my hope is that the presidency actually still means something and that the CIA will, ultimately, comply if asked to. If I am wrong what hope is there left?
I can't tell Obama's motive yet.
One possibility is he is simply afraid of the CIA, that he views them as akin to the Praetorian guard, the guard or the roman emporers who would sometimes kill an emporer they didn't like.
Another is that he is afraid of the Republican congress, afraid they will give him four years of obstructionism and he won't be able to get anything done.
And part of me wonders if he is just naive enough to think that it's more important for America to be united than to pursue the course of righteousnous knowing it will divide us, that it is better to be united and evil than it is to be divided and stand for what is right.
The fact that it could be any three of these, that obama hasn't made clear his intent, isn't a good sign.
The fact that he campaigned on a promise of returning the country to a nation ruled by law and has since the election turned into a president who rules by men and convenience, is probably a sign that things are worse than I want to admit.
If the DOJ decides to pursue prosecution, I'm not sure that Obama wouldn't come out and grant blanket pardons for everyone, and that's pretty sad.
Even more sad is that right now, about the only honest no-bullshit chance America has of having the criminals in its government held to the law is through some country like Spain pursuing war crimes investigations. That's just depressing.
When a government can't hold itself to account, can't hold itself to obey its own laws, I don't think there's going to be much hope for us for a long time.
think of them as slow executions, execution is legal , isn't it?
http://www.pubrecord.org/torture/845-cia-watchdog-report-says-detainees-died-during-interrogations.html
"Be glad that you have the luxury of living in a country where this debate - civil liberties for terrorists - is just an abstraction. It's an existential threat in my home country."
Democracy and Civil Liberties didn't just 'happen': generations upon generations have fought and paid the price to build our societies. I am sorry for the situation in Egypt but don't compare your history to ours and let us build, together, upon what we've inherited, not fret and fear.
they don't want to be a State or Government, Innocent, that is not how to survive. They just want to be left alone. And budgeted.
bishoyg/ikhwan,
I'm sorry for your upbringing, but we're not going to welcome Mubarak's totalitarian repression here in the US. We have this thing called the Constitution and your bad experiences don't outweigh it. Some people walk away from repression with an increased sense of compassion. You've absorbed only hatred and anger. Your Islamophobic crusade is made of the same stuff as the jihad.
Then the comparison to a Pretorian Guard holds little water. Not that there is no pressure that they can apply: what secret don't they know which can help them obtain from most, if not any, politician's their full 'cooperation'?
Nonetheless, I completely agree with you that there is some very touchy politic to play here. I doubt that there will ever be any prosecution: among other reasons, this would start a tradition for the new administrations to take revenge on the preceeding one. There are better places where to spend one's such volatile currency as political capital. The goal of making sure that torture won't be used again is noble, its achievement essential. There is no going around outlawing it; to ensure that it those laws won't be reversed a Constitutional Amendment is the surest way to do it. Now, this is never going to happen. What's left?
Were not the only ones to wonder: in Salon.com
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/04/21/torture/?source=newsletter
The price of freedom is eternal vigilence.
(I wonder if I still have wing commander 4 somewhere)
mmmm, a poetic summation: remember Nicolas Cage in Lord of War? The final scene where he explains to his hunter what will happen next.
if you ever doubted Cheney was a psychopath, read this link. He just-doesn't-get-it. He clearly states torture is A-OK because "it works". He really is the type of person that would use surplus babies as sandbags, "because it makes sense". He desperately needs a fair trial and a small, secure cell.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8009571.stm
@#77 posted by Takuan,
re: the accounts I have read from torture survivors make it clear that you don't "get used to it".
In my own experience, your perception does change dramatically after enough time under distress. Essentially you become disassociative - everything is depersonalized.
For me this hasn't ever lasted very long and is actually an interesting experience. But over time, I'd imagine that you'd begin to lose identity and all the emotions that go with it. The irony here is that when you are dissociative you feel pain but it doesn't hurt - it's just a fact that is neither good nor bad. It just is. When you go dissociative, you aren't necessarily motivated to stop the pain, so going this hard isn't really where you'd want your subjects anyhow if you were an evil interrogator hell bent on gaining information regardless of the means.
in other words, people tortured far enough to break them will say anything you want them to, will say anything they want, will say anything at all. So why bother with the torture? Just pre-write the confessions and either execute them, warehouse them or let them go? The whole idea that torture reveals information useful to prevent an act is bullshit. The information you used to grab your torture subject almost certainly includes the information you want confirmed. Which you already have. It's all about the gratifying the perverted needs of the torturers. You can bet Cheney spent many a happy hour with box of kleenex and pants around ankles listening to interrogation tapes.
well now, this is an unexpected development
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/21/obama-administration-bush_n_189521.html
#35
That is an utterly terrifying story. It's how the professional soldier (a huge, tough man who boxes for fun and was deliberately holding out) was broken in seconds when his own friends and colleagues were doing it thinks it's not torture because it doesn't leave marks that makes it shocking.
I can't believe he hasn't privately considered the power that the little face cloth holds. I'd like to think he knows exactly how much power it has, even over him.
I am quite confused now: do they think that they can prosecute lawyers for giving their legal advices to the Bush administration?
Does it ever feel good to be the middle man, ever?
Oh...
Something which every American ought to think about signing: The ACLU Petition calling for the appointment of a Special Prosecutor:
https://secure.aclu.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=Nat_Petition_SpecialProsecutor_SEM&s_s=0416_GO
Antinous, I've noticed that you've equated fighting terrorism with Islamophobia on several occasions. How do you plan to prevent terrorist attacks? Is it with a bake sale, or do you have a real platform aside from character assassination of people that don't toe the BoingBoing 'party' line?
MxAllen:
Please don't start justifying barbaric treatment of Muslims based on some crazy shit in their holy screeds. We both know that there is equally barbaric guidance in the book that most American conservatives look to for inspiration.
mbogdanov,
When I've called someone an Islamophobe, it's because they've made comments (which you never got to see) saying things like "I hate Arabs" or "We should just nuke the Muslims." Critiques of Muslim/Arab governments or groups are sometimes drenched in Islamophobia just like critiques of Israel are sometimes frankly anti-Semitic. If someone makes a cogent critique appropriate to the post, it stays. Xenophobic bile gets mopped up.
Mod note: mbogdanov and various other identities are sock puppets of a single astroturfer, so some renumbering may occur.