Director Brennan: CIA Won't Waterboard Again, Even If Ordered By Future President (msnbc.com) 319
An anonymous reader quotes a report from MSNBC: CIA Director John Brennan told NBC News in an exclusive interview that his agency will not engage in harsh "enhanced interrogation" practices, including waterboarding, which critics call torture -- even if ordered to by a future president. "I will not agree to carry out some of these tactics and techniques I've heard bandied about because this institution needs to endure," Brennan said. The CIA used waterboarding and other techniques on terrorist suspects after the 9/11 attacks. But in January 2009, President Obama banned the practices in his first few days in office with an executive order. When asked specifically about waterboarding Brennan could not have been clearer. "Absolutely, I would not agree to having any CIA officer carrying out waterboarding again," he said. Donald Trump is a staunch supporter of torture, saying he would bring back waterboarding and "a hell of a lot worse" to retrieve information from potential terrorists. Ted Cruz says he would "not bring [waterboarding] back in any sort of widespread use" by rank and file soldiers and agents, but as President he would "use whatever enhanced interrogation methods to keep this country safe."
Time for a new job (Score:5, Insightful)
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I'm sure they'll just come from the FBI.
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I'm sure they'll just come from the FBI.
Or the NYPD. I hear they're replacing Stop and Frisk with Stop and Waterboard.
Re:Time for a new job (Score:5, Insightful)
If Brennen refuses an order from a Republican president, however repugnant, he's out the door. There will be any number of qualified sadists that would be happy to torture people, in the name of freedom, for the US government.
Probably true, but the order itself is illegal, so the President would need to have a defense against that, because Congress and the Attorney General are going to want an answer.
Re:Time for a new job (Score:5, Insightful)
Probably true, but the order itself is illegal, so the President would need to have a defense against that, because Congress and the Attorney General are going to want an answer.
I didn't hear much complaining when the US executed a US citizen without due process.
Re:Time for a new job (Score:5, Interesting)
Plame's official CIA job title was "operations officer":
OOs clandestinely [emphasis mine] spot, assess, develop, recruit and handle human sources with access to vital intelligence.
[source [cia.gov]].
What's more, she posed as a energy consultant when she traveled abroad. In other words Plame was what in the spy trade is called a "knock" -- No Official Cover. This means that unlike agents who pose as diplomats she was not covered by diplomatic immunity and was potentially liable to legal and other actions taken by target countries. The identities of NOC agents is one of the most sensitive pieces of information there is.
Robert Novak, the columnist who outed Plame, later started the meme that she was a mere analyst. This is a self-serving claim; had he believed that then he wouldn't be guilty of a felony under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Movak was in effect pleading stupidity because the biographic references he admitted using listed a front company as her employer rather than the CIA. In fact in the column in question he correctly identifies her as an "operative", not an "analyst" -- a distinction which he was well aware meant that her job was clandestine.
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Re:Time for a new job (Score:5, Insightful)
If Brennen refuses an order from a Republican president, however repugnant, he's out the door. There will be any number of qualified sadists that would be happy to torture people, in the name of freedom, for the US government.
Probably true, but the order itself is illegal, so the President would need to have a defense against that, because Congress and the Attorney General are going to want an answer.
The order was illegal back in the 2000s, too, but Congress and the AG had no problem then.
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... Congress and the Attorney General are going to want an answer.
Well... Congress only seems to want answers to things they think will politically help those doing the asking, otherwise they don't really care - at all.
When the Secretary of State says it's not secret.. (Score:3)
That means that it is not secret.
References:
Hillary Clinton's apologists (she knows better than telling her own lies).
Re:Time for a new job (Score:5, Insightful)
I would certainly accept the argument that a president or any other leader who orders torture violates natural rights and voids his authority.
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Welcome to the watch list, citizen!
I'm glad to hear that my opposition to torture and other human rights violations is officially recorded.
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Turnover across presidential administrations. (Score:4, Interesting)
There are some traditions. Certain instruments of government are considered more independent of the Presidential administration than others, and thus the terms of their directors are intentionally not supposed to coincide with the Presidential terms.
I think that CIA, NASA, Federal Reserve, and FBI are in that category. Cabinet secretaries are, naturally, appointed by the President directly.
With respect to the current issue: CIA will not torture. But a contractor, or an agency of another government, will.
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Since the Nixon administration with exception of George Tenet (who served both the Clinton and Bush Administrations) the CIA directorship has changed hands with every presidency. There is some overlap in the early era, but modern day with each new administration there is a new director at the CIA within the year. NASA is the same way, some overlap, but typically each President appoints their own administrator for NASA.
The
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If he's true to his word, think of him as a Torture Canary.
In reality, though, the CIA is big enough to have factions within factions, and the CIA can torture people without him even knowing about it.
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If he's true to his word, think of him as a Torture Canary.
Torture Canary? Is he starting a rock band?
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If Brennen refuses an order from a Republican president, however repugnant, he's out the door.
Trump has some experience in saying, "You're fired!"
CIA: "We will never do it again, until we do it again."
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Not necessarily. It depends on the CIA's enabling legislation. There may be some wiggle room such as a clause stating "using the means to gather information at the Directors discretion to gather intelligence". Time and time again it has been shown torture is ineffective. This allows the director to say "no" under US law.
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Honest question, how would you categorize the practice of being jailed for contempt of court? Is that a form of torture?
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'Torture' doesn't work because it results in false confessions and bad data. Anything to make it stop.
But there are many 'enhanced interrogation techniques' that do, most of which have been redefined as 'torture'. Keeping someone awake for 4 days and playing good cop/bad cop works 100% of the time. They actually think the good cop is their friend by then, someone with no sleep for 4 days has the mental capacity of a toddler.
Re:Time for a new job (Score:5, Insightful)
It has also caused a lot of false confessions, making it about as useful as water boarding. It seems that toddlers and people functioning at that level will often just go along with what a 'friend' says. Worse, they will then no longer have a clear factual memory of the matter in question. That sort of "enhanced interrogation" also tends to leave lasting damage.
If you don't consider abusing an adult until their mental function drops to that of a toddler torture, I would hate to imagine what you would call torture.
Good rule of thumb, when the bureaucratic euphemisms like "enhanced interrogation" start flying, it means that deep down, even they know what they're doing is wrong. Otherwise they'd proudly call it what it is.
Too late (Score:5, Insightful)
In Iraq 1 war the Iraqi army surrendered because they knew they would be treated decently, Bush and his cronies with the last Iraq war changed everything, the message was now clear to the enemies, if we capture you we will torture you.
so now your enemies will torture the living fuck out of your soldiers and they can say quite honestly "well the Americans did it and they didn't get reprimanded, so now we do it, except we are worse"
the whole point of the laws of war was that prisoners on both sides would be treated decently, if the enemy did it you could say with dignity "we dont do that" and haul them in front of the warcrimes with the knowledge that you were better than that.
Bush and his chums threw it all away and today he still sits as free man sipping whiskey and rye, smiling with his millions of dollars and Americans are perfectly fine with that.
If you are caught in battle now, be afraid, very afraid.
Re:Too late (Score:5, Insightful)
And let's also not forget that the other side can now use such incidents as 'proof' that they are fighting a 'just' war, as it's against people who would torture. ... which helps them recruit and inspire their troops to do more viscous things, as obviously the ends justify the means. (which then inspires both sides to ratchet up the hostilities)
It'd be one thing if we could at least justify an atrocity as maybe we're trading problems down the road for some benefit now ... but there have been so many reports that harsh interrogation doesn't produce good or useful information, that there's no justifiable reason for doing it.
Maybe Cruz should spend more time reading the Butter Battle Book, rather than Green Eggs & Ham.
Re:Too late (Score:5, Insightful)
Atrocity is recognized as such by victim and predator alike, by all who learn about it at whatever remove. Atrocity has no excuses, no mitigating argument. Atrocity never balances or rectifies the past. Atrocity merely arms the future for more atrocity. It is self-perpetuating upon itself — a barbarous form of incest. Whoever commits atrocity also commits those future atrocities thus bred.
-- The Apocrypha of Muad'Dib
Re:Too late (Score:5, Insightful)
Quoting Dune? There may be hope for /. after all!
Arabic and Islamic themes in Dune ... (Score:3)
And for those of you who do not know, Frank Herbert used a lot of Arabic and Islamic themes in Dune [baheyeldin.com].
Coming full circle ...
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the whole point of the laws of war was that prisoners on both sides would be treated decently
There are many laws of war that might be interpreted in that way (e.g. providing adequate food and shelter for prisoners of war, releasing them when the war finished), and others that have nothing to do with that (e.g. wearing uniforms in order not to confuse civilians with combatants). The prohibition of torture does not fall in either category. Not to be tortured is really just a basic human right that no decent person would even consider to violate, no matter what the other side does.
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Not to be tortured is really just a basic human right that no decent person would even consider to violate, no matter what the other side does.
Donald Trump promised America a lot more of it - waterboarding and a lot worse (whatever that is). As you said, no decent person would even consider it.
Hijacking airliners, flying into skyscrapers (Score:4, Interesting)
There is a kernel of truth in what you say - the US should live up to a HIGHER standard. Our founding documents say this country exists for the purpose of justice, freedom, and liberty.
That said, are you thinking that Al Quaeda was following the laws of war until after 9/11, that hijacking civilian airliners and crashing them into skyscrapers is okay? To claim that Al Quaeda won't follow the laws of war because the US may not have is of course a bit silly.
Re:Hijacking airliners, flying into skyscrapers (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, are you thinking that Al Quaeda was following the laws of war
The thing most people fail to realize is that it's not (just) about the "elite" Al Quaeda fighters.
It's about those subsistence-level farmers in the Pakistani village, who see the US troops march through the village and have to make the calculation of whether to tell them that Bin Laden is hiding in that farm house over there, or keep their head down and their mouth shut. - It's about whether the US troops actually march through the village, or whether it's marked as a no-go zone due to the IEDs that locals are putting up to deter "extraordinary rendition" of their relatives to torture centers in midnight raids. - It's about the smuggler in Syria, who's just hoping to get his country back to some semblance of stability, and trying decide which group of fighters to run guns to. Which way does "they're working with the Americans" push him? Does that mean they fight for peace and stability? Or does that mean that they fight for a pro-torture puppet regime? - It's about the 18-year old boy who happened to be born in the wrong village, and is drafted to fight for ISIS. How does he treat American soldiers if he happens to capture some?
The extremists are extremists. But there's a wide swath of people who aren't extremists, but are involved anyway. Which way do these people in the middle swing? How do they act? If America isn't "doing the right thing", why should they? If America tortures because Al Quaeda tortures, what incentive do they have to favor the America-supported side over the Al Quaeda-supported one? Also, revenge is a powerful motivator. If your Uncle Ibrahim was tortured, you're going to be much more likely to go out of your way to abuse the side who did it, even if you didn't have any malice toward them beforehand.
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>It's about those subsistence-level farmers in the Pakistani village, who see the US troops march through the village and have to make the >>calculation of whether to tell them that Bin Laden is hiding in that farm house over there, or keep their head down and their mouth shut.
The above is no joke: there was a Frontline show from Afghanistan in ?2006-7, where the translator with the journalists and US soldiers forgot he was wearing a wire when local man came to the interpreter in a fearful frenzy:
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People like things simple, but as Albert Einstein observed:
... the supreme goal of all theory is to make the irreducible basic elements as simple and as few as possible without having to surrender the adequate representation of a single datum of experience.
This is often rendered more pithily as "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler."
It makes things simpler if you pick just one type of person to represent, say all 1.6 billion Muslims, but that's too simple because it makes it impossible to do basic things like tell friendly from unfriendly. Or if you really have no friends in some group pretending that group is a bunch of ideological robots makes it impossible to identify di
Re:Too late (Score:5, Insightful)
That is the worst thing about the whole war in Iraq. All the bad precedents that were set. When you have the country that describes itself as the beacon of freedom and democracy in the world invading another country under false pretext and then torturing prisoners and indiscriminately murdering civilians, how can anyone still be surprised nobody in the middle east cares much for western "freedom" and "democracy"? Many people there see western Democracy as a farce and instead flock to their faith and religious extremism, which they perceive as the last remaining vestige of hope and stability.
The amount of damage the Bush administration has done with their heavy handed and misguided policies is insurmountable. ISIS and the catastrophe that is now Iraq and Syria would probably not have happened where it not for them. Under objective circumstances, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld would deserve to be put in front of a war tribunal, but of course that is never going to happen, which is yet another sting of injustice that many people across the middle east won't easily forget.
And someone like Bill Clinton almost got impeached because he fucked his assistant. The US is messed up.
Wonder if Obama knows American Exceptionalism now? (Score:2)
> When you have the country that describes itself as the beacon of freedom and democracy in the world ...
That reminds me, I wonder if any of Obama's aides ever took him aside and explained to him that what you just said is called "American Exceptionalism". If they told him that when he denies American Exceptionalism, that terms means he's denying that the US has a responsibility to act consistent with justice and liberty, because the country was founded explicitly to advance those ideals.
I'm sure he wou
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"Many people there see western Democracy as a farce and instead flock to their faith and religious extremism, which they perceive as the last remaining vestige of hope and stability."
Heck, I live under Western Democracy and see it as a farce. At least in the USA the rich and powerful get their say, and the masses get paid lip service. Bills are written by the companies they are supposed to regulate. Congressional districts are gerrymandered to a comical level. Party loyalty and scoring purely political
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Not quite, and not technically.
1) He was impeached, for perjury and obstruction of justice. He was acquitted of both charges.
2) The "justice" he obstructed was only about whether he fucked his intern. Being tried for perjuring yourself about something that was not, itself, illegal is about as perfect an example of a "technicality" as you're going to find.
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Kurdistan is the least democratic part of Iraq other than the Islamic State areas. Most stable, most tolerant, best place to live, but it's practically a Barzani family business.
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Not just in battle, it's just "if you're caught" or "captured".
Doesn't matter if you're an innocent bystander - if you're at the wrong place at the wrong time, you're fair game.
It's one reason why ISIS is as violent as they are - they're emboldened by the fact that it's been done, so they need to escalate to beheadings and worse.
"No CIA officer" (Score:5, Insightful)
Later heard mumbling under his breath, contractors and extraordinary rendition are just fine.
What about other government agencies? (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares what the CIA does when each bloody branch of government can run its own intelligence services essentially duplicating the other. You don't think that mercenaries, branches of the military, or even off the books intelligences agencies won't continue to water board?
One agency not water boarding, what hilarity.
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Give some examples of other agencies waterboarding, please. And by examples I don't mean from your imagination, and I don't mean something that happened in the 20th century.
How about "the Defense Department." Because tens of thousands of your fellow citizen soldiers and contractors volunteer regularly to experience enhanced interrogation techniques (including being waterboarded) as part of their training. Why? Because it's not actual torture, and it helps toughen them up for certain contingencies down the road. Not to take the fun out of your empty rhetorical question or anything.
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Yeah ok (Score:4, Interesting)
Ok (Score:2)
Of course, the head of the CIA is a political position, and serves at the pleasure of the president. But if he raises a fuss and threatens to resign...
Can we stop the "critics call torture" horseshit (Score:5, Insightful)
It is one of the total failures of journalism that they keep acting like the jury is out on whether waterboarding is torture. It is torture by the definition of multiple US courts -- ones that successfully prosecuted Japanese soldiers for torture in the 40s precisely for waterboarding. It is a long-standing precedent that waterboarding is very much torture in the eyes of the US court system. The promulgation of this phony sense of ambiguity is a lie perpetrated by the media for the benefit of the neocon establishment.
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Journalists seem to love acting like the jury is out on just about everything, because you should present BOTH sides of an argument even when one side is utterly batshit insane.
Sometimes, arguments only have one side.
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Waterboarding is a form of psychological torture. The problem is torture is a huge, arbitrary gray area: any form of coercion is uncomfortable, yet at some point we call it "torture". In other words: we know inflicting extreme pain is torture; and we know inflicting mild discomfort (e.g. a fucking prison cell?) is *not* torture; and somewhere in the middle we argue over where something goes from not-torture to torture.
To some people, torture must be physical; and to some, it must include physical pai
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All your points are decent ones. However most of what we did is so far over the line as to not being debatable. Sleep deprivation, ear splitting loud music while being held in stress positions, making someone sleep on a cold concrete slab until they died of hypothermia, and so much more are all so far beyond the line that we should not be still discussing whether there is any validity to the "might not be torture" point of view.
We tortured a bunch of folks. We have brought our selves down to the level of
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Some people might not call sleep deprivation "torture" because, while it sucks, we've all been tired and we've all had shitty jobs that made us work after we didn't get enough sleep. Many people have been in college while working a full-time job and spent weeks or months under chronic sleep deprivation. It seems like too common a thing and too common a tolerated thing for people to imagine it as the bloody evil they want to envision under such a damning term as "torture".
Loud music and cold temperature
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You get the Disney version of it in those cases. People you trust administer a very gentle version of it. You volunteer for it as well.
Compare that to getting waterboarded an average of 6 times a day by mask wearing thugs yelling and screaming at you as they take you to the limit of what a crooked doctor will allow.
It is like saying that since people willingly participate in MMA that repeated closed fist beatings cannot be torture.
In short, your logic is tortured.
Re:Can we stop the "critics call torture" horseshi (Score:4, Informative)
Ask the many journalists who deliberately had it done to them while writing (or broadcasting) about this very subject.
Sure, let's ask them! Guess what? They say that it is torture [vanityfair.com].
People who have, by your definition, been "actually tortured" - like McCain - say that waterboarding is torture.
In short, it is obviously torture.
And you're scum for repeatedly defending it here.
The CIA director changes from time to time (Score:2)
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He only said he does not want a CIA officer do waterboarding. Nobody said anything about the CIA cooperating with external persons to conduct the torture. Yeah the CIA officers will ask the questions and probably hold the victim down. But they won't pour the water over them, so they did not waterboard them.
So, this just leaves ... (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Waterboarding is by an overwhelming concensus a formal example of torture.
Then so is eating MREs. Military personnel undergo both, regularly, as part of their training.
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The healthcare reform plan you cite was passed when Obama's party had a majority in the House and Senate for 2 years, and a fillibuster
On a similar note... (Score:2)
I'm selling my beachfront property in Arizona.
Easy to say that now, but it's meaningless. (Score:2)
forget the water (Score:2)
He has the legal right (Score:2)
1. The US Constitution says that treaties count as law of the land.
2. In 1953, the Department of Defense adopted the principles of the Nuremberg Code as official
policy" of the United States. (Hasting Center Report, March-April 1991) - so he not only has
the duty to follow "lawful orders", but equally to "refuse to follow lawful orders" (the Nazis in
the camps were "just following o
Et tu, CNN? (Score:2)
Donald Trump is a staunch supporter of torture
Evidently CNN is too, based on how often they subject their viewers to him...
Re:That's a bold statement! (Score:5, Insightful)
at least they're talking about it.
Yeah, that's the problem. With torture there is nothing to discuss. A humane person and a civil society would never consider it.
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Yeah, that's the problem. With torture there is nothing to discuss. A humane person and a civil society would never consider it.
Then it's a good thing we're only talking about waterboarding. Thousands and thousands of military personnel go through it as part of routine training (as have many journalists!). Notice that the CIA director didn't say they'd forgo it because it was torture, he said they'd forgo it because that institution doesn't need the wear and tear of needing to continually talk about it. Because people like you can't tell the difference between something that people volunteer to experience on a regular basis and act
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Many people play Slug Bug and punch their buddy in the shoulder. That does not make beatings less of a form of torture.
Having your buddies, who you trust, give you a taste of this treatment is more in the Slug Bug category. Having a bunch of masked thugs bum rush you in your cell and drag you out of your cell and vigorously waterboard you 183 times in a month (6 times a day) is about as horrific a thing you can do to someone without leaving physical scars.
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Then it's a good thing we're only talking about waterboarding.
http://www.public-access-proje... [public-acc...roject.org]
http://www.historycommons.org/... [historycommons.org]
In the aftermath of World War II, Japanese officer Yukio Asano is charged by a US war crimes tribunal for torturing a US civilian. Asano had used the technique of “waterboarding” on the prisoner (see 1800 and After). The civilian was strapped to a stretcher with his feet in the air and head towards the floor, and water was poured over his face, causing him to gasp for air until he agreed to talk. Asano is convicted and sentenced to 15 years of hard labor. Other Japanese officers and soldiers are also tried and convicted of war crimes that include waterboarding US prisoners. “All of these trials elicited compelling descriptions of water torture from its victims, and resulted in severe punishment for its perpetrators,” reporter Evan Wallach will later write. In 2006, Senator Edward Kennedy (D-MA), discussing allegations of US waterboarding of terror suspects, will say in regards to the Asano case, “We punished people with 15 years of hard labor when waterboarding was used against Americans in World War II.”
Quite frankly, the easy way to make people understand this is simple: throw them in a cell for a few years, or decades, and waterboard them every few days. Sure you say that you've done nothing wrong, but we won't really be sure for another 10-20 years now will we. All these sociopaths and sadists who don't think it's torture will be singing a different tune pretty qui
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The training and demonstration waterboarding are like playing Russian roulette with a cap gun. Everyone knows nobody is likely going to die today. Even so, perhaps you should read what those volunteers have to say about it. From one of those reporters who volunteered for it:
Believe Me, It’s Torture
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Who said anything about "same exact experiences"? Waterboarding as used in SERE training, or on volunteers who want to see what it's like, is nowhere near as harsh as the real thing.
And, of course, there is a big difference between doing something (no matter what it is) to a volunteer as part of their training, with numerous safeguards in place (including the provision to stop immediately), and doing something to an unwilling victim to force them to divulge information - or, as some presidential candidates
Lesson learned (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lesson learned (Score:4, Insightful)
No, it's worse that that: what they learn is that it's bad publicity.
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"What body" you ask? That's the point. Having no information to give up should hopefully cause them to realize just how stupid torture is as a means of extracting information.
Re:Lesson learned (Score:4, Insightful)
torture is completely ineffective at yielding usable intelligence. Prisoners will say anything to make it stop, including making stuff up.
I once spoke to someone involved in military intelligence (not USA), so this is all hearsay. Apparently, interrogators are quite aware of the fact that people make things up (may be different in the USA...). Anyhow, the made-up narratives do provide a lot of useful insights into the "other side's" thought processes, planning, and intelligence about their opponents. It may narrow down locations deemed important or as bases, etc. Not directly "actionable" pieces of information, but quite useful background information nevertheless (if you don't get it via other sources, or want to fill in/corroborate what you've got already).
Until the next time it happens. (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:WHY IS THIS HERE????! (Score:4, Insightful)
If this isn't a "thing that matters", I don't know what is.
You're talking about a potential rift of current governmental process in the most powerful nation on the planet. There are also those in the military who are saying they would refuse blatantly immoral orders, such as "killing the families of terrorists".
If large chunks of both the military and civilian governmental agencies start refusing orders, the implications of that will reverberate in ways I don't think anyone can predict. Best case, somehow it ends up smoothed over. Worst case, it becomes a civil war. Most likely, somewhere in the middle, with unforeseeable consequences that could spread well outside the bounds of the US itself.
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It "matters", but Slashdot should not be the venue to discuss it!
If you want to get all riled up about political matters that are unrelated to science/tech/computing, then go to Huffington Post, or Drudge Report, or Gawker, one of the many other sites out there that cater to such matters.
Leave Slashdot for stories and discussion that are specific to science/tech/computing.
Re: WHY IS THIS HERE????! (Score:3, Insightful)
How about you just skip the articles that don't intrest you? Information is like bandwidth; it is always there but not always utilized. I appreciate the job the editors do, even if I don't click on every submission.
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So, question: you didn't even bother to log in to post the above. Exactly why should anyone here care what your story preferences are?
Re: WHY IS THIS HERE????! (Score:2)
Re:WHY IS THIS HERE????! (Score:5, Interesting)
My (admittedly layman's) understanding was that while actually having the issue come up is considered a bad sign(since something has obviously gone badly wrong on the executive or legislative side if the military is being issued unlawful orders); but that while disobeying lawful orders is somewhere between 'disciplinary problem' and 'coup d'etat', depending on how many people are involved and whether they are brought into line internally or not; it is no more a desired outcome for the military to execute an unlawful order than it is for the judiciary to rule according to an unconstitutional law; or the executive to act without legislatively granted authority.
The only real change here is that we have an actually-high-ranked-spook not weaseling around and claiming that waterboarding is just the sort of practical-joking fun that we all did when we joined a frat.
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in the noble land of theory; hasn't it always been the case that military agents are supposed to refuse to carry out unlawful orders
Only since 1946, and then only if you're on the losing side of a war. People on the winning side that disobey orders (lawful or unlawful) get to see first hand what the inside of a military prison looks like.
Re: WHY IS THIS HERE????! (Score:2)
I think it is even worse than that⦠"WE won't water board anymore⦠Because we are having other people do it for us now"
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I think it is even worse than that⦠"WE won't water board anymore⦠Because we are having other people do it for us now"
I wonder if they'll make the torturers train their replacements...Will there ne no end to outsourcing?!
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They always had other methods. Sleep deprivation is a time tested way to get the truth out of anybody. But it takes 3 or 4 days.
And the 'bunched pantie brigade' have declared it torture as well, so not much gained, might as well just get out the battery charger.
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And LSD. Where do I sign up?
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Acid while someone is fucking with you and has the resources to construct an 'acid nightmare house'?
Tripping balls while undergoing the 'Ludovico technique'?
Sounds almost as bad as being locked into an EDM festival sober. But whatever works for you.
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So here are two ACs lamenting what a shithole this site is. As I asked the guy above, why should your opinions count if you don't even bother putting a pseudonym behind them? Like it or not, "politics" has a rather large intersection between "the people who read slashdot have an interest in this topic" and "stuff that matters." As someone else (who did bother to log in) pointed out above: if you don't like these stories, don't read them. There's even a handy mechanism for helping you do this... if you bo
Re: (Score:3)
To quote my own post: why should your opinions count if you don't even bother putting a pseudonym behind them?
Trolls gotta troll, I guess.
Re:He speaks truth (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd torture them until they'll tell me whatever lies they think will make me stop, regardless of whether they actually know anything at all.
My family would be dead and I'd have wasted precious time chasing down dead-ends, but I'd feel good having acted out my vengeance.
Re:He speaks truth (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone had my family in a direct harm situation, then I shouldn't be the one put in charge of the interrogation.
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Actually, as I understand it, there ARE no Civil Service job protections in the Intelligence Community. So you can be canned at any time for any reason.
Not that they DO, from things I've heard, but they legally CAN. . .
Re:NOT TORTURE! (Score:5, Insightful)
Tell that to the US courts who have deemed waterboarding to be torture for decades. We know it doesn't work, yet some people (yourself included) are willing to overlook that for some good ol' fashioned vengeance, regardless of the demonstrable harm it causes the US.
You suck at being a human being.
Re: (Score:3)
And as for "Fighting the enemy with all means necessary is the
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I was going to post something like that too. Reminds me of the timeshare I visited a couple years ago, that convinced me to never trust any timeshare company, ever, no matter what. I went to a "presentation" from Wyndam, that promised us a "free" cruise (i.e. "you only have to pay for taxes and port fees, so probably about 80 bucks"). I figured, Wyndam is a huge company, right? So no matter how sleazy the presentation is, you just say you don't want it, they let you go after a couple hours, and now yo