House votes to outlaw CIA waterboarding

[grh]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Democratic-led House of Representatives voted on Thursday to outlaw harsh interrogation methods, such as simulated drowning, that the CIA has used against suspected terrorists.


On a 222-199 vote, the House approved a measure to require intelligence agents to comply with the Army Field Manual, which meets the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of war prisoners and prohibits torture.

Full Story http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071213/...usa_torture_dc

-----------------------------

I think that if I had seen something like this ten years ago, I would have been more morally outraged and shocked just to hear it had ever been going on in the first place.

But I saw something the other day about how some major guy had a visit from allah the night after this was done to him and he was told he should be cooperating.. that this was the right thing to do. Apparently the info he then gave up saved a ton of lives.

My current dilemma, you ask?

Can I trust the word of someone who participated in the act? Did the ends justify the means? If allah actually visited the guy, are our guys just allah's instrument to make these guys do the right thing?

I've already eliminated the 'what if it was my son this was done to?' question. I can't think of one thing that could be done to my son that I would be okay with, Geneva convention or not. But would I be outraged if they did whatever they(the enemy) thought they needed to, in order to get information from my neighbors son? How about if they justified it with the number of their folks lives that would be saved?

War is indeed Hell.

[Patrick]

I'm not okay with it. But that's just me. I'm not the one who makes that call. I'm just the one who votes every time there's an election.

Today the CIA is waterboarding terrorists. Tomorrow the cops are waterboarding bank robbers to find out where they stashed the money.

This stuff always comes back to bite us in the ass later. I guess America is comfortable standing three quarters up the hill called the moral high ground as long as it saves lives. The funny thing about being on top of that hill though is the view isn’t very nice looking down at terrorist attack that might have been prevented.

George Orwell said best… “People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”

It’s a lose/lose situation.

[Bryn Mawr]

Originally Posted by grh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Democratic-led House of Representatives voted on Thursday to outlaw harsh interrogation methods, such as simulated drowning, that the CIA has used against suspected terrorists.


On a 222-199 vote, the House approved a measure to require intelligence agents to comply with the Army Field Manual, which meets the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of war prisoners and prohibits torture.

Full Story http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071213/...usa_torture_dc

-----------------------------

I think that if I had seen something like this ten years ago, I would have been more morally outraged and shocked just to hear it had ever been going on in the first place.

But I saw something the other day about how some major guy had a visit from allah the night after this was done to him and he was told he should be cooperating.. that this was the right thing to do. Apparently the info he then gave up saved a ton of lives.

My current dilemma, you ask?

Can I trust the word of someone who participated in the act? Did the ends justify the means? If allah actually visited the guy, are our guys just allah's instrument to make these guys do the right thing?

I've already eliminated the 'what if it was my son this was done to?' question. I can't think of one thing that could be done to my son that I would be okay with, Geneva convention or not. But would I be outraged if they did whatever they(the enemy) thought they needed to, in order to get information from my neighbors son? How about if they justified it with the number of their folks lives that would be saved?

War is indeed Hell.

If you allow your (general / indefinite) guys to do it on the grounds that it saves lives then you have no grounds to complain when others do it to your soldiers when captured.

If you're happy with that then go ahead.

For me, the Geneva Convention was set up for a damn'd good reason and should be adhered to at all cost.

[spot]

Originally Posted by grh

But I saw something the other day about how some major guy had a visit from allah the night after this was done to him and he was told he should be cooperating.. that this was the right thing to do. Apparently the info he then gave up saved a ton of lives.

Can we have a quick look at " the info he then gave up saved a ton of lives" please? Where's it from, who said it, that sort of thing.

[grh]

Originally Posted by spot

Can we have a quick look at " the info he then gave up saved a ton of lives" please? Where's it from, who said it, that sort of thing.

I went and found it for ya.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=3978231&page=1

..........
"The next day, he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate," said Kiriakou in an interview to be broadcast tonight on ABC News' "World News With Charles Gibson" and "Nightline."

"From that day on, he answered every question," Kiriakou said. "The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks." .......

[grh]

Originally Posted by Bryn Mawr

If you allow your (general / indefinite) guys to do it on the grounds that it saves lives then you have no grounds to complain when others do it to your soldiers when captured.

If you're happy with that then go ahead.

For me, the Geneva Convention was set up for a damn'd good reason and should be adhered to at all cost.

Even if the other guy flat out refuses to? I'm all for the 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you' rule of thumb, but what if they are already doing unto you? What if they could care less about Geneva or her Conventions? What if, like our folks apparently have in this case, they have their own definition of what constitutes 'harm'?

[spot]

Originally Posted by grh

"From that day on, he answered every question," Kiriakou said. "The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks." .......

There seems to be a measure of disagreement as to whether what he said was of any value. I take this from a Washington Post review of The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11" By Ron Suskind:

Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries "in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3" -- a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in numbing detail "what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said." Dan Coleman, then the FBI's top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, "This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality."

Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda's go-to guy for minor logistics -- travel for wives and children and the like. That judgment was "echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President," Suskind writes. And yet somehow, in a speech delivered two weeks later, President Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as "one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States." And over the months to come, under White House and Justice Department direction, the CIA would make him its first test subject for harsh interrogation techniques.

[...] Suskind's portrait of Tenet, respectful but far from adulatory, depicts a man compromised by "insecurity and gratitude" to a president who chose not to fire him after 9/11. "At that point, George Tenet would do anything his President asked," Suskind writes.

Which brings us back to the unbalanced Abu Zubaydah. "I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?" Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety -- against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...901211_pf.html

[Bryn Mawr]

Originally Posted by grh

Even if the other guy flat out refuses to? I'm all for the 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you' rule of thumb, but what if they are already doing unto you? What if they could care less about Geneva or her Conventions? What if, like our folks apparently have in this case, they have their own definition of what constitutes 'harm'?

Whilst you are refusing to apply the Geneva Convention you cannot complain about any treatment your troops receive.

They are only doing unto the US what the US are doing unto the prisoners it's holding.

The Bush administration has repeatedly refused to apply the Articles of the Geneva Convention so why should they?

[grh]

Originally Posted by spot

There seems to be a measure of disagreement as to whether what he said was of any value. I take this from a Washington Post review of The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11" By Ron Suskind:

Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries "in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3" -- a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in numbing detail "what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said." Dan Coleman, then the FBI's top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, "This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality."

Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda's go-to guy for minor logistics -- travel for wives and children and the like. That judgment was "echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President," Suskind writes. And yet somehow, in a speech delivered two weeks later, President Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as "one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States." And over the months to come, under White House and Justice Department direction, the CIA would make him its first test subject for harsh interrogation techniques.

[...] Suskind's portrait of Tenet, respectful but far from adulatory, depicts a man compromised by "insecurity and gratitude" to a president who chose not to fire him after 9/11. "At that point, George Tenet would do anything his President asked," Suskind writes.

Which brings us back to the unbalanced Abu Zubaydah. "I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?" Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety -- against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...901211_pf.html

Now, spot. We can't cite this as factual data any more then we could the guy who wrote the book last week in the canadian magazine. This guys motive would be trying to sell books. The CIAs motive - covering their ass.

I'd prefer the view of someone independent.

In any case, what one finds of value, another may not.

I think we have to simply take the approach that if it's not okay to do this to my son, it can't be okay to do it to anyones.

[grh]

Originally Posted by Bryn Mawr

Whilst you are refusing to apply the Geneva Convention you cannot complain about any treatment your troops receive.

They are only doing unto the US what the US are doing unto the prisoners it's holding.

The Bush administration has repeatedly refused to apply the Articles of the Geneva Convention so why should they?

Do you suppose if we beheaded someone or started butchering them up, folks would see the difference? Or better, the lack of difference between them and us?

Everyone seems to feel they can justify anything simply by not being 'as bad as' that other guy.