The Democrat Thread

[StrangeSox]

I know the other thread was locked, but there's full video available of the Tamir Rice shooting:

 

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2...cer_shot_1.html

 

What stands out to me, similar to the knife-wielding guy in Missouri a few months back, is that the police put themselves in danger with little options from the start. They allegedly didn't receive the information from the caller that it was "probably" a fake gun or that it was just a kid. So why on earth would you drive directly up to the suspect you think is armed and put your partner on the passenger side about two feet away? They shoot and kill this kid within a couple of seconds of arriving on scene. Why not stop farther away (say, in that conveniently located parking lot?) and, using your vehicle for cover, address the kid directly or through the PA speaker on the car?

[Jenksismyhero]

I know the other thread was locked, but there's full video available of the Tamir Rice shooting:

 

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2...cer_shot_1.html

 

What stands out to me, similar to the knife-wielding guy in Missouri a few months back, is that the police put themselves in danger with little options from the start. They allegedly didn't receive the information from the caller that it was "probably" a fake gun or that it was just a kid. So why on earth would you drive directly up to the suspect you think is armed and put your partner on the passenger side about two feet away? They shoot and kill this kid within a couple of seconds of arriving on scene. Why not stop farther away (say, in that conveniently located parking lot?) and, using your vehicle for cover, address the kid directly or through the PA speaker on the car?

 

Do they know where he is when they pull up? If not, I guess that's your justification. But it does look like they created the problem by driving and parking where they did.

[StrangeSox]

Do they know where he is when they pull up? If not, I guess that's your justification. But it does look like they created the problem by driving and parking where they did.

Here's an overhead shot of the park.

 

 

The yellow lines are the camera FOV and the blue box is where the police car stopped. I believe that they had pulled into the parking lot first. They took a really bizarre route, having to drive around the bollards blocking vehicle access to the gazebo. So either they didn't see him and just decided to start driving around the grass, or the driver made a really stupid decision that potentially placed his and his partner's life in jeopardy.

 

The story told by the police also doesn't match what the video shows. They claimed that he was seated at the gazebo with several other people. He was standing when they pulled through the grass, which means they must have seen him sitting there as we see on the video before they pulled around. There also weren't any other people there, so it's kind of hard to credit that statement either way. They also claimed they told him to put his hands up three times, but they appear to shot him about 2 seconds after arriving.

 

edit: the two officers involved also neglected to provide Tamir first aid for 4 minutes. An FBI agent who was working a case nearby arrived and administered first aid.

Edited December 3, 2014 by StrangeSox

[Jenksismyhero]

I mean I could see them saying they were coming from the southwest there and knew he was around the gazebo but didn't know exactly where. When they pulled up he was literally next to them. But you're right, that seems weak. And it's doubly s***ty that they didn't perform any kind of first aid, although is that typical in a shooting situation?

 

 

[StrangeSox]

But the SW side is a bunch of trees and some grass. They would have been coming in to either the parking lot on the west side right next to the gazebo or the other one ~100 feet away. Either one has a clear view of the gazebo, and they still have to go out of their way to drive around those bollards. If your first instinct is to rush right into a potentially deadly situation, then something wrong with your decision making process and/or your training. Plus, you know, the blatant lying about him being around a bunch of other people in the gazebo.

 

As far as first aid, I would sure as hell hope that it's typical for officers to provide first aid to someone that's been shot once it's clear that they're no longer a threat. At that point, they are in police custody and the police are responsible for their well-being.

[StrangeSox]

"He could not follow simple directions, could not communicate clear thoughts nor recollections, and his handgun performance was dismal," according to the letter written by Deputy Chief Jim Polak of the Independence police.

 

The letter recommended that the department part ways with Loehmann, who went on to become a police officer with the Cleveland Division of Police.

 

"I do not believe time, nor training, will be able to change or correct the deficiencies," Polak said.

In an interview with the Northeast Ohio Media Group, Loehmann's father said that his son left Independence to pursue a job with Cleveland police because he wanted "more action."

 

http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2...t_most-comments

[StrangeSox]

Justice Department: Cleveland Police have a pattern of excessive force

 

Not only did the investigation reveal a practice of unreasonable use of force but "in some cases unnecessary force in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution."

 

That includes unnecessary shootings and "head strikes with impact weapons," the report says. It also includes "excessive force against persons who are mentally ill or in crisis, including in cases where the officers were called exclusively for a welfare check."

 

The investigation found that the department employs "poor and dangerous tactics that place officers in situations where avoidable force becomes inevitable."

[StrangeSox]

Ben Carson stands by his US-Nazi Germany comparison, insists he is not a crackpot.

[farmteam]

Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton slams idiots who think allowing transgendered males to play girl's high school sports means Clay Matthews will play girl's basketball and violently injure everyone on the court.

Edited December 9, 2014 by farmteam

[bmags]

Man this CIA doc is awful awful stuff. Awful stuff.

[StrangeSox]

Man this CIA doc is awful awful stuff. Awful stuff.

jesus christ

 

 

[bmags]

CIA needs to be brought into real parts of government. This "we know what's best" crap has bit us over and over for 60 years.

[StrangeSox]

CIA needs to be brought into real parts of government. This "we know what's best" crap has bit us over and over for 60 years.

Us, most of Central and South America, the Middle East, ...

[StrangeSox]

Keeping America safe!

 

In Nov. 2002, a detainee who had been held partially nude and chained to the floor died, apparently from hypothermia. This case appears similar to the that of Gul Rahman, who died of similarly explained causes at a Afghan site known as the “Salt Pit,” also in Nov. 2002. The site was also called ‘The Dark Prison’ by former captives.

 

The aide said that the Cobalt site was was dark, like a dungeon, and that experts who visited the site said they’d never seen an American prison where people were kept in such conditions. The facility was so dark in some places that guard had to wear head lamps, while other rooms were flooded with bright lights and white noise to disorient detainees.

 

At the Cobalt facility, the CIA also forced some detainees who had broken feet or legs to stand in stress-inducing positions, despite having earlier pledged that they wouldn’t subject those wounded individuals to treatment that might exacerbate their injuries.

 

[...]

 

At least five detainees were subjected to “rectal feeding” or “rectal hydration,” without any documented medical need. “While IV infusion is safe and effective,” one officer wrote, rectal hydration could be used as a form of behavior control.

 

Others were deprived of sleep, which could involve staying awake for up to 180 hours—sometimes standing, sometimes with their hands shackled above their heads.

 

Some detainees were forced to walk around naked, or shackled with their hands above their heads. In other instances, naked detainees were hooded and dragged up and down corridors while subject to physical abuse.

 

At one facility, detainees were kept in total darkness and shackled in cells with loud noise or music, and only a bucket to use for waste.

 

One of the central findings was that all of this torture was also ultimately completely useless, and waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed did not actually produce any useful intelligence in getting OBL.

[StrangeSox]

McCain's statement from the Senate floor:

 

FLOOR STATEMENT BY SENATOR JOHN McCAIN ON SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE REPORT ON CIA INTERROGATION METHODS

 

Dec 09 2014

Washington, D.C. ­–

 

U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) today delivered the following statement on the floor of the U.S. Senate on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on CIA interrogation methods:

 

“Mr. President, I rise in support of the release – the long-delayed release – of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s summarized, unclassified review of the so-called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ that were employed by the previous administration to extract information from captured terrorists. It is a thorough and thoughtful study of practices that I believe not only failed their purpose – to secure actionable intelligence to prevent further attacks on the U.S. and our allies – but actually damaged our security interests, as well as our reputation as a force for good in the world.

 

“I believe the American people have a right – indeed, a responsibility – to know what was done in their name; how these practices did or did not serve our interests; and how they comported with our most important values.

 

“I commend Chairman Feinstein and her staff for their diligence in seeking a truthful accounting of policies I hope we will never resort to again. I thank them for persevering against persistent opposition from many members of the intelligence community, from officials in two administrations, and from some of our colleagues.

 

“The truth is sometimes a hard pill to swallow. It sometimes causes us difficulties at home and abroad. It is sometimes used by our enemies in attempts to hurt us. But the American people are entitled to it, nonetheless.

 

“They must know when the values that define our nation are intentionally disregarded by our security policies, even those policies that are conducted in secret. They must be able to make informed judgments about whether those policies and the personnel who supported them were justified in compromising our values; whether they served a greater good; or whether, as I believe, they stained our national honor, did much harm and little practical good.

 

“What were the policies? What was their purpose? Did they achieve it? Did they make us safer? Less safe? Or did they make no difference? What did they gain us? What did they cost us? The American people need the answers to these questions. Yes, some things must be kept from public disclosure to protect clandestine operations, sources and methods, but not the answers to these questions.

 

“By providing them, the Committee has empowered the American people to come to their own decisions about whether we should have employed such practices in the past and whether we should consider permitting them in the future. This report strengthens self-government and, ultimately, I believe, America’s security and stature in the world. I thank the Committee for that valuable public service.

 

“I have long believed some of these practices amounted to torture, as a reasonable person would define it, especially, but not only the practice of waterboarding, which is a mock execution and an exquisite form of torture. Its use was shameful and unnecessary; and, contrary to assertions made by some of its defenders and as the Committee’s report makes clear, it produced little useful intelligence to help us track down the perpetrators of 9/11 or prevent new attacks and atrocities.

 

“I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners will produce more bad than good intelligence. I know that victims of torture will offer intentionally misleading information if they think their captors will believe it. I know they will say whatever they think their torturers want them to say if they believe it will stop their suffering. Most of all, I know the use of torture compromises that which most distinguishes us from our enemies, our belief that all people, even captured enemies, possess basic human rights, which are protected by international conventions the U.S. not only joined, but for the most part authored.

 

“I know, too, that bad things happen in war. I know in war good people can feel obliged for good reasons to do things they would normally object to and recoil from.

 

“I understand the reasons that governed the decision to resort to these interrogation methods, and I know that those who approved them and those who used them were dedicated to securing justice for the victims of terrorist attacks and to protecting Americans from further harm. I know their responsibilities were grave and urgent, and the strain of their duty was onerous.

 

“I respect their dedication and appreciate their dilemma. But I dispute wholeheartedly that it was right for them to use these methods, which this report makes clear were neither in the best interests of justice nor our security nor the ideals we have sacrificed so much blood and treasure to defend.

 

“The knowledge of torture’s dubious efficacy and my moral objections to the abuse of prisoners motivated my sponsorship of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which prohibits ‘cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment’ of captured combatants, whether they wear a nation’s uniform or not, and which passed the Senate by a vote of 90-9.

 

“Subsequently, I successfully offered amendments to the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which, among other things, prevented the attempt to weaken Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, and broadened definitions in the War Crimes Act to make the future use of waterboarding and other ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ punishable as war crimes.

 

“There was considerable misinformation disseminated then about what was and wasn’t achieved using these methods in an effort to discourage support for the legislation. There was a good amount of misinformation used in 2011 to credit the use of these methods with the death of Osama bin Laden. And there is, I fear, misinformation being used today to prevent the release of this report, disputing its findings and warning about the security consequences of their public disclosure.

 

“Will the report’s release cause outrage that leads to violence in some parts of the Muslim world? Yes, I suppose that’s possible, perhaps likely. Sadly, violence needs little incentive in some quarters of the world today. But that doesn’t mean we will be telling the world something it will be shocked to learn. The entire world already knows that we water-boarded prisoners. It knows we subjected prisoners to various other types of degrading treatment. It knows we used black sites, secret prisons. Those practices haven’t been a secret for a decade.

 

“Terrorists might use the report’s re-identification of the practices as an excuse to attack Americans, but they hardly need an excuse for that. That has been their life’s calling for a while now.

 

“What might come as a surprise, not just to our enemies, but to many Americans, is how little these practices did to aid our efforts to bring 9/11 culprits to justice and to find and prevent terrorist attacks today and tomorrow. That could be a real surprise, since it contradicts the many assurances provided by intelligence officials on the record and in private that enhanced interrogation techniques were indispensable in the war against terrorism. And I suspect the objection of those same officials to the release of this report is really focused on that disclosure – torture’s ineffectiveness – because we gave up much in the expectation that torture would make us safer. Too much.

 

“Obviously, we need intelligence to defeat our enemies, but we need reliable intelligence. Torture produces more misleading information than actionable intelligence. And what the advocates of harsh and cruel interrogation methods have never established is that we couldn’t have gathered as good or more reliable intelligence from using humane methods.

 

“The most important lead we got in the search for bin Laden came from using conventional interrogation methods. I think it is an insult to the many intelligence officers who have acquired good intelligence without hurting or degrading prisoners to assert we can’t win this war without such methods. Yes, we can and we will.

 

“But in the end, torture’s failure to serve its intended purpose isn’t the main reason to oppose its use. I have often said, and will always maintain, that this question isn’t about our enemies; it’s about us. It’s about who we were, who we are and who we aspire to be. It’s about how we represent ourselves to the world.

 

“We have made our way in this often dangerous and cruel world, not by just strictly pursuing our geopolitical interests, but by exemplifying our political values, and influencing other nations to embrace them. When we fight to defend our security we fight also for an idea, not for a tribe or a twisted interpretation of an ancient religion or for a king, but for an idea that all men are endowed by the Creator with inalienable rights. How much safer the world would be if all nations believed the same. How much more dangerous it can become when we forget it ourselves even momentarily.

 

“Our enemies act without conscience. We must not. This executive summary of the Committee’s report makes clear that acting without conscience isn’t necessary, it isn’t even helpful, in winning this strange and long war we’re fighting. We should be grateful to have that truth affirmed.

 

“Now, let us reassert the contrary proposition: that is it essential to our success in this war that we ask those who fight it for us to remember at all times that they are defending a sacred ideal of how nations should be governed and conduct their relations with others – even our enemies.

 

“Those of us who give them this duty are obliged by history, by our nation’s highest ideals and the many terrible sacrifices made to protect them, by our respect for human dignity to make clear we need not risk our national honor to prevail in this or any war. We need only remember in the worst of times, through the chaos and terror of war, when facing cruelty, suffering and loss, that we are always Americans, and different, stronger, and better than those who would destroy us.

 

“Thank you.”

[bmags]

I'm really glad this was released. Not only does it put to bed any notion of "was it torture?", it exposes the bigger lie at the heart of the CIA, that actions carried out are done by a bunch of well-trained, brilliant patriots pressing hard when they know they need info for the country...and yeah, no, it is the keystone cops.

[bmags]

Let me refine that, many of the people sent their to do this were also morally injured:

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-cia-lie...hniques-2014-12

 

Those that were in charge, should no doubt be punished.

[Balta1701]

Literally the most interesting reaction to this report I saw was the ACLU's reaction - that the President should issue a blanket pardon for the criminals in the CIA and the last administration.

 

Their logic was that the country had decided not to prosecute clear lawbreaking, this should be a complete outrage but it isn't, and the only way that "not prosecuting them" could be squared with the US Constitution is for them to receive a pardon.

 

In that case, at least legal procedures would have been followed and no new standard would be treated as set by our decision to ignore these crimes and let the criminals in the CIA and in the last administration off the hook. In the more likely case of nothing happening, well, we all can feel proud that we allowed people to be sodomized in our name for freedom and expect more of the same.

[StrangeSox]

Wait, I've got it, we'll present both sides to a grand jury and let them decide!

[bmags]

More along these lines:

Remarkably, the black site teams regularly fought back against HQ, which kept demanding intel that didn't exist. (See, for ex, pp. 78-80). - Marc Ambinder Tweet

[bmags]

https://twitter.com/maxseddon/status/542380...3039488/photo/1

[Balta1701]

Rectal force feeding is exactly what it sounds like.

 

Congratulations America, you can stand proudly in favor of the years your country spent performing rectal force feeding.

[StrangeSox]

It's interesting where these techniques actually came from. They're largely borrowed and adapted from the NKVD Stalinist purges. These were methods that were designed and used explicitly to get false confessions to whatever the torturers wanted, and the morons in the CIA decided they'd be great intelligence-gathering tools.

[bmags]

Ugh, WGN morning news, which I watch because they are funny! But I knew this would be the segment:

Outline of torture report : "freezing baths" "forced feedings" "stress positions" (i.e. pulled out the parts largely known), no mention that it was done and killed several innocent people, and then followed up with their military analyst who says it is harmful to release their report.

 

I'm sorry, but they had 10 years of explaining why this wasn't bad and was actively helpful, they don't get more time after it clearly was not to say "why does this need to be said?".

[StrangeSox]

Senator Bob Kerrey reminds us all how terrible he is in his USA Today editorial condemning the report and making all sorts of excuses for torturing people. "But 9/11!!!!!!" still justifies torture in many people's minds.

 

edit: For example, there isn't a single sentence in this paragraph that is not some combination of a logical failure, wrong, contradiction of a previous sentence or an outright misrepresentation.

"It is important for all of us to remember how unprepared we were for the attacks of September 11, 2001 and how unprepared we were to do the things necessary to keep the country from being attacked again. There was no operating manual to guide the choices and decisions made by the men and women in charge of protecting us. I will continue to read the report to learn of the mistakes we apparently made. I do not need to read the report in full to know this: We have not been attacked since and for that I am very grateful."

Edited December 10, 2014 by StrangeSox