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SERE called their tactics "Torture" in 2002


Balta1701

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QUOTE (lostfan @ May 14, 2009 -> 08:07 AM)
If you're implying that there was pressure to get that information from detainees (when it wasn't actually there) then I have no doubt about that.

There have been more than a few reports since the memos came out that one of the things Cheney and Co were after in their "interrogations" was info that would give justification for the Iraq war, but that's not what he's going to be referring to.

 

This is. This guy, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, was captured by the U.S., and "rendered" off to Egypt for "Additional Interrogation". He rapidly did exactly what torture makes you do...confessed to everything the torturers wanted to hear. It then made up this block of text in Powell's speech.

And the record of Saddam Hussein's cooperation with other Islamist terrorist organizations is clear. Hamas, for example, opened an office in Baghdad in 1999, and Iraq has hosted conferences attended by Palestine Islamic Jihad. These groups are at the forefront of sponsoring suicide attacks against Israel.

 

Al Qaida continues to have a deep interest in acquiring weapons of mass destruction. As with the story of Zarqawi and his network, I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to Al Qaida.

 

Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story. I will relate it to you now as he, himself, described it.

 

This senior Al Qaida terrorist was responsible for one of Al Qaida's training camps in Afghanistan. His information comes first-hand from his personal involvement at senior levels of Al Qaida. He says bin Laden and his top deputy in Afghanistan, deceased Al Qaida leader Muhammad Atif (ph), did not believe that Al Qaida labs in Afghanistan were capable enough to manufacture these chemical or biological agents. They needed to go somewhere else. They had to look outside of Afghanistan for help. Where did they go? Where did they look? They went to Iraq.

 

The support that (inaudible) describes included Iraq offering chemical or biological weapons training for two Al Qaida associates beginning in December 2000. He says that a militant known as Abu Abdula Al-Iraqi (ph) had been sent to Iraq several times between 1997 and 2000 for help in acquiring poisons and gases. Abdula Al-Iraqi (ph) characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful.

It really is an amazing story here. We capture a guy, send him off to Egypt for torture, he tells the Egyptians exactly what we want him to say, the CIA declares his information unreliable because it's obtained under torture, it winds up in Powell's speech anyway (and is actually the last claim Powell makes before his summary portion, like this is the real slam dunk part), he recants easily in 2004 when someone bothers to ask him, he vanishes for a couple years, some members of the press find him a couple weeks back, and like a week later he's dead.

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QUOTE (StrangeSox @ May 14, 2009 -> 09:18 AM)
Morally repugnant and ineffective. Gotta love it.

Ineffective? It did exactly what it was supposed to do, down to the letter. I'd say it was remarkably effective.

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QUOTE (Balta1701 @ May 14, 2009 -> 04:57 PM)
There have been more than a few reports since the memos came out that one of the things Cheney and Co were after in their "interrogations" was info that would give justification for the Iraq war, but that's not what he's going to be referring to.

 

This is. This guy, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, was captured by the U.S., and "rendered" off to Egypt for "Additional Interrogation". He rapidly did exactly what torture makes you do...confessed to everything the torturers wanted to hear. It then made up this block of text in Powell's speech.

 

It really is an amazing story here. We capture a guy, send him off to Egypt for torture, he tells the Egyptians exactly what we want him to say, the CIA declares his information unreliable because it's obtained under torture, it winds up in Powell's speech anyway (and is actually the last claim Powell makes before his summary portion, like this is the real slam dunk part), he recants easily in 2004 when someone bothers to ask him, he vanishes for a couple years, some members of the press find him a couple weeks back, and like a week later he's dead.

 

this is why you are on the top 20 poster list. Yes, this is it. I bombed, bombed that final. GOD GDHWIOSFWO:EUIRSDHLKFJHWOERUI TSDJL it was torture lol

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ON another note, Lawrence Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell put this article out last night, arguing that coming up with a case to invade Iraq was a key motivation for the torture in the first place.

My investigations have revealed to me--vividly and clearly--that once the Abu Ghraib photographs were made public in the Spring of 2004, the CIA, its contractors, and everyone else involved in administering "the Cheney methods of interrogation", simply shut down. Nada. Nothing. No torture or harsh techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator. Period. People were too frightened by what might happen to them if they continued.

 

What I am saying is that no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009. So, if we are to believe the protestations of Dick Cheney, that Obama's having shut down the "Cheney interrogation methods" will endanger the nation, what are we to say to Dick Cheney for having endangered the nation for the last four years of his vice presidency?

 

Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.

 

So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa'ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.

 

There in fact were no such contacts. (Incidentally, al-Libi just "committed suicide" in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi....)

 

Less important but still busting my chops as a Republican, is the damage that the Sith Lord Cheney is doing to my political party.

 

He and Rush Limbaugh seem to be its leaders now. Lindsay Graham, John McCain, John Boehner, and all other Republicans of note seem to be either so enamored of Cheney-Limbaugh (or fearful of them?) or, on the other hand, so appalled by them, that the cat has their tongues. And meanwhile fewer Americans identify as Republicans than at any time since WWII. We're at 21% and falling--right in line with the number of cranks, reprobates, and loonies in the country.

 

When will we hear from those in my party who give a damn about their country and about the party of Lincoln?

 

When will someone of stature tell Dick Cheney that enough is enough? Go home. Spend your 70 million. Luxuriate in your Eastern Shore mansion. Shoot quail with your friends--and your friends.

 

Stay out of our way as we try to repair the extensive damage you've done--to the country and to its Republican Party.

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Since when is torture just pansy s*** like stress positions and water boarding? And why are so many of these detainees with outdated/useless information still breathing? Milk them for info, put a round in their head and drop them off the private jet/in the alley of the yemeni safehouse of the week. They are meat. Bad meat gets junked.

Edited by Nixon
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SOB, have another unexpected person going on record on what Cheney wanted to do to make his Iraq-AQ connection hold.

In his new book, Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq, and in an interview with The Daily Beast, Duelfer says he heard from “some in Washington at very senior levels (not in the CIA),” who thought Khudayr’s interrogation had been “too gentle” and suggested another route, one that they believed has proven effective elsewhere. “They asked if enhanced measures, such as waterboarding, should be used,” Duelfer writes. “The executive authorities addressing those measures made clear that such techniques could legally be applied only to terrorism cases, and our debriefings were not as yet terrorism-related. The debriefings were just debriefings, even for this creature.”

 

Duelfer will not disclose who in Washington had proposed the use of waterboarding, saying only: “The language I can use is what has been cleared.” In fact, two senior U.S. intelligence officials at the time tell The Daily Beast that the suggestion to waterboard came from the Office of Vice President Cheney. Cheney, of course, has vehemently defended waterboarding and other harsh techniques, insisting they elicited valuable intelligence and saved lives. He has also asked that several memoranda be declassified to prove his case. (The Daily Beast placed a call to Cheney’s office and will post a response if we get one.)

 

Without admitting where the suggestion came from, Duelfer revealed that he considered it reprehensible and understood the rationale as political—and ultimately counterproductive to the overall mission of the Iraq Survey Group, which was assigned the mission of finding Saddam Hussein’s WMD after the invasion.

 

“Everyone knew there would be more smiles in Washington if WMD stocks were found,” Duelfer said in the interview. “My only obligation was to find the truth. It would be interesting if there was WMD in May 2003, but what was more interesting to me was looking at the entire regime through the slice of WMD.”

(For the record on the source...the Daily Beast is another of those news-aggregator sites that have popped up lately like the Politico or the Huffington Post, which does some of its own original reporting as well. They don't have a long history of credibility to me yet for them to be judged by, but they do have some good names. The guy writing this story was hired away from NBC, for example).
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QUOTE (lostfan @ Apr 28, 2009 -> 10:05 AM)
I don't think so. It's not necessarily effective with everyone though.

 

oh you don't think it's torture huh. so i guess that means you are now volunteering to have bright lights and loud music outside your home at all times.

 

*ends Olbermann like logic*

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QUOTE (Nixon @ May 14, 2009 -> 02:35 PM)
Since when is torture just pansy s*** like stress positions and water boarding? And why are so many of these detainees with outdated/useless information still breathing? Milk them for info, put a round in their head and drop them off the private jet/in the alley of the yemeni safehouse of the week. They are meat. Bad meat gets junked.

Wow.

 

All I can say is...

 

America...

America...

America, f*** YEAH!

Coming again, to save the mother f***ing day yeah,

America, f*** YEAH!

Freedom is the only way yeah,

Terrorist your game is through cause now you have to answer too,

America, f*** YEAH!

So lick my butt, and suck on my balls,

America, f*** YEAH!

What you going to do when we come for you now,

it’s the dream that we all share; it’s the hope for tomorrow

 

f*** YEAH!

 

McDonalds, f*** YEAH!

Wal-Mart, f*** YEAH!

The Gap, f*** YEAH!

Baseball, f*** YEAH!

NFL, f***, YEAH!

Rock and roll, f*** YEAH!

The Internet, f*** YEAH!

Slavery, f*** YEAH!

 

f*** YEAH!

 

Starbucks, f*** YEAH!

Disney world, f*** YEAH!

Porno, f*** YEAH!

Valium, f*** YEAH!

Reeboks, f*** YEAH!

Fake Tits, f*** YEAH!

Sushi, f*** YEAH!

Taco Bell, f*** YEAH!

Rodeos, f*** YEAH!

Bed bath and beyond (f*** yeah, f*** yeah)

 

Liberty, f*** YEAH!

White Slips, f*** YEAH!

The Alamo, f*** YEAH!

Band-aids, f*** YEAH!

Las Vegas, f*** YEAH!

Christmas, f*** YEAH!

Immigrants, f*** YEAH!

Popeye, f*** YEAH!

Democrats, f*** YEAH!

Republicans (republicans)

(f*** yeah, f*** yeah)

Sportsmanship

Books

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If Roxana Saberi had been waterboarded (tortured, whatever) by the Iranians to have her "admit" to being an American spy, would we have so many right-wing bloggers and windbags talking about how this stuff works?

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QUOTE (lostfan @ May 15, 2009 -> 09:30 AM)
If Roxana Saberi had been waterboarded (tortured, whatever) by the Iranians to have her "admit" to being an American spy, would we have so many right-wing bloggers and windbags talking about how this stuff works?

You don't understand, ticking time bomb and all.

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QUOTE (lostfan @ May 15, 2009 -> 11:30 AM)
If Roxana Saberi had been waterboarded (tortured, whatever) by the Iranians to have her "admit" to being an American spy, would we have so many right-wing bloggers and windbags talking about how this stuff works?

You of all people should know that isn't even in the same paralell universe.

 

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QUOTE (kapkomet @ May 15, 2009 -> 01:00 PM)
You of all people should know that isn't even in the same paralell universe.

Tell me, why?

 

My same principle applies, unchallenged.

Edited by lostfan
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QUOTE (kapkomet @ May 15, 2009 -> 12:00 PM)
You of all people should know that isn't even in the same paralell universe.

 

It's always different. :lolhitting

 

Al Qaeda operatives have knowledge of plans to harm America or Iraq/AQ ties, therefore waterboarding is ok.

 

Saberi has knowledge of plans to harm Iran/ conspired to harm Iran (according to Iran), so why isn't waterboarding ok?

Edited by StrangeSox
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QUOTE (StrangeSox @ May 15, 2009 -> 12:28 PM)
It's always different. :lolhitting

 

Al Qaeda operatives have knowledge of plans to harm America or Iraq/AQ ties, therefore waterboarding is ok.

 

Saberi has knowledge of plans to harm Iran/ conspired to harm Iran (according to Iran), so why isn't waterboarding ok?

Comparing Al Qaeda to Saberi is ridiculous - I'm sure she was there to kill thousands of Iranians and even has stated that cause to the entire world!

 

Furthermore, Saberi is indeed a citizen, which is covered under Geneva Conventions, unlike some terrorist organization that is nebulous at best, who has no defined "country" to determine a nation under Geneva Conventions - they are an idealogue, not a "citizen" of any one nation that has rights under the Geneva Convention.

 

But to you all, it's the same. Whatever.

Edited by kapkomet
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