For Dems only.

[Mplssoxfan]

No real answer?

 

Serious question here.

 

The US captures someone who they know has information regarding an imment terror attack on US soil. They have no idea who, what, or where. What is the most effective way to get the information from him? I always here about what doesn't work, but what actually does work? What is the US government missing?

I'm not an expert in this field, hardly, and I don't have any links for what I'm about to write, since I've read it all over a long time frame, so take it FWIW.

 

Interrogators like to say that everyone has needs, doesn't matter who you are, or where you come from, we all have psychological needs. What a skilled interrogator does is identify his subject's needs and exploit them. This is why they use tricks like leaving a light on (or off) for extended periods of time. When the lighting returns to a more acceptable cycle, the interrogator plays off that "favor" and speaks to the subject some more. The subject identifies the interrogator as someone he can trust, and the relationship can and will often bear fruit.

 

This approach may not work as quickly as some of you might like, but it does work. Torture? Well, torture was used by totalitarian regimes to extract confessions. Usually, the confession was already written by agents of the regime and the person being tortured had but to sign it, but that is what torture has been used for historically. Well, that and sadism.

 

Many of our professional military interrogators are displeased at the tactics used by CIA and portrayed on "24". In fact (sorry, no link, but I'll try to dig one up), military intelligence honchos had a meeting with the producer of "24" to try to educate him on tactics and to try to get him to stop the ridiculous way torture is used in the series. One of their arguments was that they had to put in another layer in their instruction curriculum to teact the "24" syndrome out of their students.

 

That's at least an attempt at a real answer, I reckon.

 

Here's a link to the "24" thing. It's a pretty interesting read.

Edited November 8, 2007 by Mplssoxfan

[kapkomet]

Let's not lump every administration policy into the argument here and just talk about the torture issue at hand. Can you really be suggesting that America can torture in your name and that it can be justified?

 

Not in my name. That is not my America.

 

We prosecuted Japanese military officials as war criminals for waterboarding POWs in WWII. But now it's a gray area?? As a nation, we have previously stood against imperialism and faschism and communism without having to compromise principles regarding the ethics of torture. But now that global terrorists are the proclamed enemy, torture is on the table?

That is a good point. And to a large extent, I agree. I guess what I cannot understand is at what point is anything "acceptable", and where do you draw the line? I have a hard time with this issue, because I realize the need to get information, but at what cost/price (depending on how you look at it)?

 

[southsider2k5]

That is a good point. And to a large extent, I agree. I guess what I cannot understand is at what point is anything "acceptable", and where do you draw the line? I have a hard time with this issue, because I realize the need to get information, but at what cost/price (depending on how you look at it)?

 

I smell another thread...

[Balta1701]

That is a good point. And to a large extent, I agree. I guess what I cannot understand is at what point is anything "acceptable", and where do you draw the line? I have a hard time with this issue, because I realize the need to get information, but at what cost/price (depending on how you look at it)?

Is it possible that there is no firm line, but that one must actually be drawn discussing certain techniques? I think the blanket Geneva convention type rule that anything that causes psychological or physical harm on a patient is a good guideline for starters, as that obviously rules out 95% of the potential issues, so you can't like beat, shoot, punch, etc. a prisoner to start getting a confession. Beyond that, with that description, sometimes it seems you do need to legislate specific techniques to actually define the line; because what causes permanent psychological harm in one person may not do so in another. One person who is waterboarded may suffer lifetime scars from being broken that way, another might not. So, you sort of draw the line in the law as well as you can.

 

Is waterboarding torture? Well, if I were writing the laws, I'd sure define it that way, and hopefully Congress will too. Beyond that though, you get even murkier, and you get into the realm of sleep deprivation, loud music, and direct humiliation (i.e. the ol trash the Koran in front of a Muslim). I think that the latter should probably be banned, I'd say that stressful positions are probably beyond my limits (that's the ol lock a person in a box for a few days technique), and sleep deprivation probably isn't helpful either. But it's hard to say that 100% of the time those cross that first line, but it's also not 0% of the time, and so legislation specifying those techniques as inappropriate seems like the correct solution.

[Balta1701]

I can't find a full transcript of his testimony today, but right now there is an actual Army interrogator testifying before Congress on what techniques work and what ones do not. He's actually been water-boarded during his training. He's arguing that the procedure is useless, and that a careful and intelligent interrogator will be able to get vastly more information quicker simply by being smart about how he questions people. The Republicans are trying to hammer him on the ticking time bomb scenario, and he keeps coming back and saying that they're simply wrong

 

You can at least get a summary over at this blog, which has had its eye on the testimony today.

During today's hearing in the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), fresh off an intellectually stimulating comparison of torture to abortion (he questioned why the committee isn't concerned about abortion, even though some abortion techniques torture the woman), asked about the so-called "ticking" bomb case -- that is, an uncooperative detainee has surefire knowledge of an imminent attack. Should you torture him then? Franks himself said several times this morning that he's against torture, by the way.

 

Now, the ticking-bomb case -- depending on where you sit on the torture question -- is either the hardest test of someone's sense of balance between human rights and national security or a rhetorical trap designed to box opponents of torture into saying that it's better for Sheboygan to be nuked than someone be waterboarded. But the question was handled by U.S. Air Force Reserve Colonel Steve Kleinman, a longtime military interrogator and intelligence officer. He said that even in the ticking bomb case, torture would be the wrong call. "'I'd say it'd be unneccesary to conduct our affairs outside the boundaries," Kleinman replied. His experience "proves the legal and moral concerns to be almost immaterial, because what we'd need to do to be operationally effective" wouldn't involve torture.

 

Which makes sense, considering that U.S.'s SERE instructors teach their students that torture just "Produces Unreliable Information."

 

Rep.Trent Franks (R-AZ) won't let it go. During today's House Judiciary Committee hearing on torture, he asked Colonel Steve Kleinman whether it would be irresponsible -- as Alan Dershowitz recently argued in an op-ed -- not to torture someone if all else fails in an interrogation. Kleinman replied that Dershowitz "clouds the issue" and his op-ed "reflects a lack of understanding of the intelligence process." But then he offered a brief explanation of that process that sheds light on why torture is counterproductive for a professional interrogator, leaving aside questions of morality and law.

 

It's not just what a subject says in an interrogation that an interrogator needs to watch for clues, Kleinman said. The way in which he expresses himself is significant: does the subject fidget? Does he shift in his seat? Does he gesture, or suddenly stop gesturing? All of these non-verbal clues -- "clusters, groupings of behaviors," Kleinman called them -- provide interrogators with valuable information to observe what a detainee is like when he's lying, when he's being uncooperative, and when he's being truthful, or a combination of the three.

 

But if a detainee has his hands tied, or if a detainee shivers because a room is chilled, then "I don't know whether he's shivering because the room is cold or because my questions are penetrating," Kleinman said. That degree of abuse "takes away a lot of my tools." It's one of the clearest explanations in the public record about what torture costs professional interrogators in terms of actionable intelligence, as the debate is so often set up as what a lack of torture ends up costing national security.

If anyone finds a better summary of this guy's testimony I'd be happy to post it. He appears to be getting at the entire heart of this matter; that torture actually makes getting reliable intelligence harder than simply following the standard procedures outlined in the interrogation manuals. Edited November 8, 2007 by Balta1701

[Rex Kickass]

George W. Bush, saying with a straight face "you can't be President and head of the military at the same time".

 

 

That's ummm kinda funny.

[Rex Kickass]

That is a good point. And to a large extent, I agree. I guess what I cannot understand is at what point is anything "acceptable", and where do you draw the line? I have a hard time with this issue, because I realize the need to get information, but at what cost/price (depending on how you look at it)?

 

Except for the thousandth time, techniques like waterboarding don't really work. You think you're going to die when it happens - and the only way you might be able to make it stop is to say whatever it is that the interrogators want to hear. It doesn't matter to you if it's true or if it's not true if it gets you to stop dying.

 

For all this talk about being at war, we're really at a lot less risk than we were in the Second World War. And yet, there we didn't feel the need to allow systematic torture.

Tens of thousands of Americans fought, died and were captured in Vietnam. We never thought it acceptable to allow systematic torture.

What changed between 1975 and now that makes this kind of torture acceptable to people? If it wasn't considered effective then, why is it effective now?

 

Southsider, you've been asking the wrong question this whole time. The question shouldn't be why is this procedure or other forms of torture not acceptable, the question should be: What changed that made this technique effective or acceptable? (And 9/11 is not an acceptable answer, not even for Rudy Guiliani.)

[Balta1701]

Al Gore makes an appearance on "30 rock".

 

His exit line is near-Manbearpig quality.

[Balta1701]

And we'll follow that up by some video fun from CNN.

 

[Balta1701]

A detailed, worth-your-time piece on medical innovation and how it would react to a single payer health care system.

[Balta1701]

The video from PBS's episode of NOVA on the Dover, PA Intelligent Design decision is now available online.

[mr_genius]

The video from PBS's episode of NOVA on the Dover, PA Intelligent Design decision is now available online.

 

It's been playing on PBS stations a lot lately. It's a very good Nova episode.

[StrangeSox]

The video from PBS's episode of NOVA on the Dover, PA Intelligent Design decision is now available online.

 

I'm about half-way through, and its been excellent so far.

[Balta1701]

Bob Herbert devotes an article to some of the worst parts of the lending mess; the practically insane loans that some of these lenders pressured people into. It's at least worth thinking about where the lines should be drawn in what banks are allowed to do with people and how much responsibility should fall on the people to understand the terms of a loan.

[NorthSideSox72]

Bob Herbert devotes an article to some of the worst parts of the lending mess; the practically insane loans that some of these lenders pressured people into. It's at least worth thinking about where the lines should be drawn in what banks are allowed to do with people and how much responsibility should fall on the people to understand the terms of a loan.

There are certainly some predatory lending stories out there, and the banks do deserve some blame. More importantly, some laws need to be tweaked. But ultimately, the single biggest factor was stupid decisions made by people with their homes. You want to fix that? Make basic finance a required course to graduate high school. You'd have a lot few victims of all types of fraud, and a lot fewer bankruptcies and foreclosures, if everyone got the basic tools to survive in the modern financial world.

 

[FlaSoxxJim]

Quite a shame that Scotty only found the courage to not go along with the lies after he spent all that time parroting them to the press and the nation.

 

McClellan’s tell-all implicates Bush in Plame scandal.

 

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan will publish a memoir in April titled “What Happened.” In an excerpt posted by his publisher, McClellan implicates “the President himself” in the Valerie Plame scandal:

 

“The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

 

“There was one problem. It was not true.

 

“I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the president himself.”

[Rex Kickass]

Congressman David Obey (D-WI) today:

 

Democratic House leadership drew a line in the sand over Iraq War funding today, setting the tone for a messaging battle that will likely play out over the Thanksgiving break.

 

Speaking in front of a press gaggle, Reps. David Obey, D-WI, and Jack Murtha, D-PA, reasserted that there was enough money to fund the war through February, and that if the President wanted the additional $50 billion passed by the House of Representatives, he merely had to tell Republican leadership -- which filibustered the measure in the Senate -- to change its stance.

 

"Let me repeat," said Obey, "the money has already been provided by the House of Representatives. If the president wants that $50 billion released, all he has to do is to call the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, and ask him to stop blocking it. That phone number is (202) 224-2541, in case anybody's interested."

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2007/11/20/d...ng_n_73506.html

[Balta1701]

Quite a shame that Scotty only found the courage to not go along with the lies after he spent all that time parroting them to the press and the nation.

Link

McClellan doesn't suggest that Bush deliberately lied to him about Libby's and Rove's involvement in the leak, said Peter Osnos, founder and editor-in-chief of Public Affairs Books, which is publishing McClellan's memoir next year.

 

"He told him something that wasn't true, but the president didn't know it wasn't true," Osnos said in a telephone interview. "The president told him what he thought to be the case."

Scottie's book got the press it wanted by releasing the most damning quote without putting the context in there. He's still just as loyal as ever, and they played the media like a violin.

[Texsox]

There are certainly some predatory lending stories out there, and the banks do deserve some blame. More importantly, some laws need to be tweaked. But ultimately, the single biggest factor was stupid decisions made by people with their homes. You want to fix that? Make basic finance a required course to graduate high school. You'd have a lot few victims of all types of fraud, and a lot fewer bankruptcies and foreclosures, if everyone got the basic tools to survive in the modern financial world.

 

We had comsumer ed in High School which covered this, is it no longer being taught? That would be a shame. My kids played the "Stock Market Game" but I do not remember them studying loans.

 

BTW, youngest son and his partner won for their school one year. He decided to buy Timberland stock because he loved the boots he was wearing and couldn't think of any other stocks.

[jackie hayes]

So, I'm sure I'm not the only one who's followed the case of Maher Arar, the Canadian citizen who was grabbed by U.S. authorities at an airport in 2002, held without charges, and shipped to Syria to be tortured as an ally of terrorists.

 

So, the Canadian government conducted an investigation into whether any charges or holding of him was appropriate, and here are the results.

 

So, based on an unconfirmed report that didn't even come from our own intelligence serivices, the U.S. used a "rendition" to send a man abroad for beatings and torture of all sorts.

 

Clearly, the President needs more of this power, otherwise, there may still be innocent people who aren't tortured.

Arar testified before Congress (via video conference, as Homeland Security refuses to allow his passage into the US despite specific requests by Congressmen). Link to his testimony:

 

http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/ara101807.pdf

 

13 pages, and worth every minute it takes to read.

[Balta1701]

For those who didn't know it was out there, there exists on these internets something called the "Conservapedia"...essentially a purely conservative thought version of Wikipedia. Things like throwing together all the doubt it can on Global warming, etc.

 

This has floated around for a few days...but the statistics page of that website is certainly, um, interesting.

[mr_genius]

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idU...ndChannel=10000

 

[FlaSoxxJim]

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idU...ndChannel=10000

 

 

Maybe they'll go with one of those cheesy Halloween fan-blown orange silk dealies.

[Balta1701]

There is something really, really funny, and really unsurprising about this.

The head of the federal agency investigating Karl Rove's White House political operation is facing allegations that he improperly deleted computer files during another probe, using a private computer-help company, Geeks on Call.

 

Scott Bloch runs the Office of Special Counsel, an agency charged with protecting government whistleblowers and enforcing a ban on federal employees engaging in partisan political activity. Mr. Bloch's agency is looking into whether Mr. Rove and other White House officials used government agencies to help re-elect Republicans in 2006.

 

At the same time, Mr. Bloch has himself been under investigation since 2005. At the direction of the White House, the federal Office of Personnel Management's inspector general is looking into claims that Mr. Bloch improperly retaliated against employees and dismissed whistleblower cases without adequate examination.

[scott Bloch]

 

Recently, investigators learned that Mr. Bloch erased all the files on his office personal computer late last year. They are now trying to determine whether the deletions were improper or part of a cover-up, lawyers close to the case said.

 

Bypassing his agency's computer technicians, Mr. Bloch phoned 1-800-905-GEEKS for Geeks on Call, the mobile PC-help service. It dispatched a technician in one of its signature PT Cruiser wagons. In an interview, the 49-year-old former labor-law litigator from Lawrence, Kan., confirmed that he contacted Geeks on Call but said he was trying to eradicate a virus that had seized control of his computer.

 

Mr. Bloch said no documents relevant to any investigation were affected. He also says the employee claims against him are unwarranted. Mr. Bloch believes the White House may have a conflict of interest in pressing the inquiry into his conduct while his office investigates the White House political operation. Concerned about possible damage to his reputation, he cites a Washington saying, "You're innocent until investigated."

 

Clay Johnson, the White House official overseeing the Office of Personnel Management's inquiry into Mr. Bloch, declined to comment. Depending on circumstances, erasing files or destroying evidence in a federal investigation can be considered obstruction of justice.

 

Mr. Bloch had his computer's hard disk completely cleansed using a "seven-level" wipe: a thorough scrubbing that conforms to Defense Department data-security standards. The process makes it nearly impossible for forensics experts to restore the data later. He also directed Geeks on Call to erase laptop computers that had been used by his two top political deputies, who had recently left the agency.

[chart]

 

Geeks on Call visited Mr. Bloch's government office in a nondescript office building on M Street in Washington twice, on Dec. 18 and Dec. 21, 2006, according to a receipt reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The total charge was $1,149, paid with an agency credit card, the receipt shows. The receipt says a seven-level wipe was performed but doesn't mention any computer virus.

 

Jeff Phelps, who runs Washington's Geeks on Call franchise, declined to talk about specific clients, but said calls placed directly by government officials are unusual. He also said erasing a drive is an unusual virus treatment. "We don't do a seven-level wipe for a virus," he said.

[FlaSoxxJim]

A novelty website is marketing a new toy figurine in the wake of this year's "toe-tapping" scandal involving Senator Larry Craig (R-ID).

 

. . . Stupid.com, selling the talking toy for $34.99, notes that its limbs are bendable, enabling one to pose the miniature Larry Craig into any number of positions, including the now famous "wide stance" Craig referred to during his June consultation with a Minneapolis police officer.

 

 

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