Bush Lawyers Used U.S. Military Training to Justify CIA Interrogation Techniques
Reader Comments
Terror of this PC war.
OK, so while there are those who just gasp at the methods used to get information, they have had the luxury of being informed by a biased very left media who lives for sensationalizing pain for the chance to get a rating hike or sell another subscription. The days of moral journalism have been long gone since Nam. If it's got a lack of morality or blood and guts then it can be spun into a golden web of out ethic and subjective rant which is mostly dramatized for profit. The problem with war nowadays is that it's no longer fought with spirit. Before any mission is approved, I wonder if there isn't some politician running it by a publisher for impact value in the marketplace!
Our men and women are giving their best and there lives so that they can be scrutinized? As far as I am concerned the middle east has existed long before we came on the scene. I don't think I have any of the answers, but the thought of "imposing" the current perverted version of democracy on ANYONE is really doomed to fail from the onset. I used to think that we, as Americans, could make a difference on any landscape, but now the true American is a person without a country, because this one has turned into nothing more than a neopolitan blend of off world cultures that have blurred the very soveriegnty and way of life that was once the world's crown jewel.
I sincerely hope that people realize that placating the American people, while making deals with the countries who's ideologies encourage the unconditional hatred and disdain they have for us, is going to end badly for Americans. We should withdraw and let them fight it out between themselves. If the ROE are dictated by public pressure then the military should not be there, as political and public opinion has tied their hands and painted targets on them.
As the media gives it to us, they tell us that the enemy reported "x" number of women and children as majoroty casualties. Guess what? Women and children are participating and they believe in what they are doing. Remember, they believe they are on a mission from God. To them, they fight in a Jihad (Holy sanctioned war), they don't care about anything but death to the enemy as being honorable. I believe that if Islamic fundamentalists are behind this, then Islam should be responsible for their own. Instead our troops wind up being their beast of burden. And to top it off, a muslim gets elected to be OUR leader. So, the fox guards the henhouse.
What needs to happen is this needs to get settled from "on high", half a dozen strategically placed 50 kiloton messages delivered simultaniously should do the trick. But instead, in true Modern American fashion, our politicians will make nice and continue to turn the other cheek until there is no face left. If you take what Obama's up to right now, we are there already:
The economy is all but stalled. The middle class has been replaced by illegal aliens supported by liberal welfare.
America has lost her soveriegnty...
funny
your country's criminal interrorgatin methods are inhumaine so stop using the techniuges okay!!!!!!
The ends without the means
This is what people want, the ends without the means. The problem is that none of this is close enough to home. It's an abstract media circus which is easy to apply innefectual philosphy to. Now try this: Pick your parent, spouse or child. Someone kidnaps them. Four of your neighbors saw "Man A" stuff your loved one in a trunk of a vehicle driven by "Man B." It drives off. A day later, the police catch Man A and take him to the station but he's not talking. They bring you and your family down to the station and the police tell you that they have ways to make him tell them where your loved one is, but you have to authorize it.
You honestly give a crap if they're going to put this guy on a board with a towel over his face and simulate drowning him to find out where your kid is? NO! NO you don't. Lie to yourself if you like. In fact, if they gave you a list of methods, to include giving this guy a manicure with pliars and acid, you probably couldn't sign the authorization fast enough. See at this point YOU'RE at war. Now it's close to home. You suddenly have a vested interest. Our government has a vested interest in protecting its people. Don't worry, you'll probably have a chance to taste this when your beloved Obama releases tons of terrorists from GTMO into our populace and pays them.
This is why some people could never enforce law, be in the military or protect anything other than their own self-indulgent, ridiculous notions of right and wrong. When the rubber meets the road they are nothing more than sheep.
why afghanistan not progress
Please give information about how can we make peace in afghanistan.
Torture is against the law?
Hey Apostasy-
I'm a retired veteran and was in Desert Storm and OIF. Ever heard the saying "All is fair in love and war"? Remember Vietnam and their torture tactic used on our Americans? You see any Americans sueing the Vietcong government for torturing Americans? NOT!! Terrorists-use any method to get info out of them. Cut their privates off for all I care. You liberal idiots don't understand that terrorists are just that-terrorists!!! They hate us and will do anything to see us die! I have no mercy for any of them. Kill them all and let God sort them out!!!
Survival
I don't remember being asked to volunteer for a part in the national suicide pact the Left is organizing in DC. As a veteran I have paid my dues and just ask that my government perform its primary duty; to protect its citizens. Now is that such a difficult task? Apparently so when we have decided so often in war since Vietnam to play the good guy to the point of endangering our own citizens and military. From not using napalm and instead having to send troops into trenches or as was finally decided to use bulldozer equipped troops to bury the enemy alive (1991 in Iraq) or in Iraq/Afghanistan to not kill unless the terrorists are shown to be armed when they are out after curfew; the Polish snipers do not have that ROE. Now the Left has enlarged the scope of PC warfare by giving the enemy our modus operandi with captured terrorists.
Once upon a time in Iraq, just mentioning to a terrorist that he would be sent to GITMO could cause the captured enemy to spill his guts. The international uproar over GITMO served our purposes; now with the release of the interrogation memos and the statements that we will not use such methods, we have told the enemy they have nothing to fear about being captured and keeping quiet, even though they are not covered under the Geneva Accords.
Now the Obama Administration wants to release people captured at a terrorist camp into our country and provide them with living expenses because everyone else suspects they are terrorists and does not want to take them or would execute them. Let's see how many who support this move will take such a suspected terrorist in their home. The Bush Administration appealed their release in October 2008 by a federal judge and now the Obama Administration will release them without a court order. And these people have not even touched the shores of America as was required under previous SCOTUS rulings. Such stupidity!
Defining Torture Down
To the "Former SERE Instructor": Yes, you probably could get someone to confess to anything so does that mean you wouldn't verify what you're told? If the answer is no, then you would be waterboarding people for the sake of waterboarding them. If the answer is yes, and the intelligence is verified and actionable then the validity of the technique cannot be dismissed.
Simply because someone passionately screams "Torture" doesn't actually make something torture. Saddam's rape rooms are torture. Pulling out someone's fingernails is torture. Scaring the crap out of someone is not torture... it is war.
All of this moral certainty by those who claim that anything they don't like is torture is so much intellectual laziness. Would you be more happy if we used potentially harmful drugs to pry information loose? No, I am positive you would not.
Passion is a wonderful thing, but when it supplants logic and reason... it becomes useless hysterics.
Those of you who are so certain you're right on this issue... could you please offer ANY alternatives? If we can't scare someone by using a technique like waterboarding, how would you like us to go about gathering time sensitive intelligence? Seriously, what do you suggest? Ask them nicely? Beg? Refuse to buy them a soy-latte? If it works (and apparently is has worked) and it is not dangerous, then why not use it? Time to provide a REAL alternative, as opposed to simple hysterics and denial.
Defining Torture Down
To the "Former SERE Instructor": Yes, you probably could get someone to confess to anything so does that mean you wouldn't verify what you're told? If the answer is no, then you would be waterboarding people for the sake of waterboarding them. If the answer is yes, and the intelligence is verified and actionable then the validity of the technique cannot be dismissed.
Simply because someone passionately screams "Torture" doesn't actually make something torture. Saddam's rape rooms are torture. Pulling out someone's fingernails is torture. Scaring the crap out of someone is not torture... it is war.
All of this moral certainty by those who claim that anything they don't like is torture is so much intellectual laziness. Would you be more happy if we used potentially harmful drugs to pry information loose? No, I am positive you would not.
Passion is a wonderful thing, but when it supplants logic and reason... it becomes useless hysterics.
Those of you who are so certain you're right on this issue... could you please offer ANY alternatives? If we can't scare someone by using a technique like waterboarding, how would you like us to go about gathering time sensitive intelligence? Seriously, what do you suggest? Ask them nicely? Beg? Refuse to buy them a soy-latte? If it works (and apparently is has worked) and it is not dangerous, then why not use it? Time to provide a REAL alternative, as opposed to simple hysterics and denial.
Torture is against the law. All other arguments are weak.
What is also weak is the ever insulting influence of the superficial viewpoints of the military-industrial complex. Trying ever so desperately and endlessly to control the opinions of the people and those in power, so that we too will be Americans that are stupid enough to shoot first and not ask questions at all, accept those questions with answers we hope to hear gurgled through the voice box of some water suffocating prisoner.
So should I suppose Republicans are proud of us torturing people?
We Americans tortured people LOOKING for a justification to invade IRAQ. Now 4100+ US service men and women are dead and countless Iraqi civilians because Bush Inc. needed to get some oil and give Halliburton something to do. I can't believe that some Americans are OK with that. Talk about spending....how about a trillion+ tax dollars down the drain for some failed corporate hacks.
Republicans have become Marxists, in the sense that they support propping up our economy with constant defense spending.
The Blue Sky Tribe has not left the building......but they do want you to hate somebody.
"What happens at SERE, stays at SERE?"
That mantra I heard when completing the program in 1978 appears to have gone the way of a similar expression re what happens in Las Vegas (as if that were ever true). Having said that, I feel compelled to point out some inaccuracies in the article. First, "combined techniques" (without going into specifics) WERE used in the SERE course I completed; second, the program was NOT "purely voluntary" for those apspiring to service in military aviation (at least some parts of it) or special operations. Failure to complete SERE meant going "somewhere else" (supply corps comes immediately to mind).
Since we started capturing terrorists shortly after 9/11/2001, my own thinking is that, given certain specific criteria (like preventing a repeat of that awful day, or worse), we should not have any more recriminations about using the same techniques against these illegal enemy combatants (operating outside the law of armed conflict) than we do in using to train some of our own folks in SERE. It appears the Bush Administration has followed that same logic, and we are safer for it, despite what some may say. History is proof.
In making this information public, the Obama Administration has leaked specific details of ongoing military and intelligence programs in time of war. They have made 300 million Americans a bit less safe and a bit more vulnerable to the next attack than we were on 1/19/2009. When that next attack takes place, I hope they will find comfort in their exquisite consciences. (Different subject, but in a most curious juxtaposition, many/most? of Obama's supporters seem quite prepared to deny a "right of conscience" to those who object to abortion on demand).
Once again, liberals have compromised our efforts to protect the innocent by extending the protections of the Constitution to those who would destroy the Constitution. Lastly, I guess that old expression I heard 30+ years ago isn't true any more, either -- I suppose that's just part of "change" we're supposed to believe in.
