Waterboarding

Ticomaya wrote:

Cycloptichorn wrote:
His opinions are settled as unconstitutional, unfortunately for torture supporters. His reading of the Constitution is not supported by any known law or precedent; in the absence of some ruling supporting his radical departure from known law, there is no real basis for his opinion.

Cycloptichorn

As you might recall, I disagree re your assertion that his opinions are settled as unconstitutional. And I suspect I shall be shown to be correct, again, before all is said and done.

Your intuition betrays you.

T
K
O

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Most Gitmo detainees freed after transfer
Four-fifths of ?'vicious killers' released after return to home countries

The Pentagon called them "among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the Earth," sweeping them up after Sept. 11 and hauling them in chains to a U.S. military prison in southeastern Cuba.

Since then, hundreds of the men have been transferred from Guantanamo Bay to other countries, many of them for "continued detention."

And then set free.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16227791/ Four-fifths freed after transfer
But through interviews with justice and police officials, detainees and their families, and using reports from human rights groups and local media, The Associated Press was able to track 245 of those formerly held at Guantanamo. The investigation, which spanned 17 countries, found:

Once the detainees arrived in other countries, 205 of the 245 were either freed without being charged or were cleared of charges related to their detention at Guantanamo. Forty either stand charged with crimes or continue to be detained.
Only a tiny fraction of transferred detainees have been put on trial. The AP identified 14 trials, in which eight men were acquitted and six are awaiting verdicts. Two of the cases involving acquittals ?- one in Kuwait, one in Spain ?- initially resulted in convictions that were overturned on appeal.
The Afghan government has freed every one of the more than 83 Afghans sent home. Lawmaker Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, the head of Afghanistan's reconciliation commission, said many were innocent and wound up at Guantanamo because of tribal or personal rivalries.
At least 67 of 70 repatriated Pakistanis are free after spending a year in Adiala Jail. A senior Pakistani Interior Ministry official said investigators determined that most had been "sold" for bounties to U.S. forces by Afghan warlords who invented links between the men and al-Qaida. "We consider them innocent," said the official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.
All 29 detainees who were repatriated to Britain, Spain, Germany, Russia, Australia, Turkey, Denmark, Bahrain and the Maldives were freed, some within hours after being sent home for "continued detention."
Some former detainees say they never intended to harm the United States and are bitter.

"I can't wash the three long years of pain, trouble and humiliation from my memory," said Badarzaman Badar, an Afghan who was freed in Pakistan. "It is like a cancer in my mind that makes me disturbed every time I think of those terrible days."

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blueflame1 wrote:

Most Gitmo detainees freed after transfer
Four-fifths of ?'vicious killers' released after return to home countries

The Pentagon called them "among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the Earth," sweeping them up after Sept. 11 and hauling them in chains to a U.S. military prison in southeastern Cuba.

Since then, hundreds of the men have been transferred from Guantanamo Bay to other countries, many of them for "continued detention."

And then set free.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16227791/ Four-fifths freed after transfer
But through interviews with justice and police officials, detainees and their families, and using reports from human rights groups and local media, The Associated Press was able to track 245 of those formerly held at Guantanamo. The investigation, which spanned 17 countries, found:

Once the detainees arrived in other countries, 205 of the 245 were either freed without being charged or were cleared of charges related to their detention at Guantanamo. Forty either stand charged with crimes or continue to be detained.
Only a tiny fraction of transferred detainees have been put on trial. The AP identified 14 trials, in which eight men were acquitted and six are awaiting verdicts. Two of the cases involving acquittals ?- one in Kuwait, one in Spain ?- initially resulted in convictions that were overturned on appeal.
The Afghan government has freed every one of the more than 83 Afghans sent home. Lawmaker Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, the head of Afghanistan's reconciliation commission, said many were innocent and wound up at Guantanamo because of tribal or personal rivalries.
At least 67 of 70 repatriated Pakistanis are free after spending a year in Adiala Jail. A senior Pakistani Interior Ministry official said investigators determined that most had been "sold" for bounties to U.S. forces by Afghan warlords who invented links between the men and al-Qaida. "We consider them innocent," said the official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.
All 29 detainees who were repatriated to Britain, Spain, Germany, Russia, Australia, Turkey, Denmark, Bahrain and the Maldives were freed, some within hours after being sent home for "continued detention."
Some former detainees say they never intended to harm the United States and are bitter.

"I can't wash the three long years of pain, trouble and humiliation from my memory," said Badarzaman Badar, an Afghan who was freed in Pakistan. "It is like a cancer in my mind that makes me disturbed every time I think of those terrible days."

Like I said before: "This country doesn't stad for anything anymore." What a shameful thing to be a part of our history.

T
K
O

0 Replies

blueflame1 wrote:

Most Gitmo detainees freed after transfer
Four-fifths of ?'vicious killers' released after return to home countries

The Pentagon called them "among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the Earth," sweeping them up after Sept. 11 and hauling them in chains to a U.S. military prison in southeastern Cuba.

Since then, hundreds of the men have been transferred from Guantanamo Bay to other countries, many of them for "continued detention."

And then set free.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16227791/ Four-fifths freed after transfer
But through interviews with justice and police officials, detainees and their families, and using reports from human rights groups and local media, The Associated Press was able to track 245 of those formerly held at Guantanamo. The investigation, which spanned 17 countries, found:

Once the detainees arrived in other countries, 205 of the 245 were either freed without being charged or were cleared of charges related to their detention at Guantanamo. Forty either stand charged with crimes or continue to be detained.
Only a tiny fraction of transferred detainees have been put on trial. The AP identified 14 trials, in which eight men were acquitted and six are awaiting verdicts. Two of the cases involving acquittals ?- one in Kuwait, one in Spain ?- initially resulted in convictions that were overturned on appeal.
The Afghan government has freed every one of the more than 83 Afghans sent home. Lawmaker Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, the head of Afghanistan's reconciliation commission, said many were innocent and wound up at Guantanamo because of tribal or personal rivalries.
At least 67 of 70 repatriated Pakistanis are free after spending a year in Adiala Jail. A senior Pakistani Interior Ministry official said investigators determined that most had been "sold" for bounties to U.S. forces by Afghan warlords who invented links between the men and al-Qaida. "We consider them innocent," said the official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.
All 29 detainees who were repatriated to Britain, Spain, Germany, Russia, Australia, Turkey, Denmark, Bahrain and the Maldives were freed, some within hours after being sent home for "continued detention."
Some former detainees say they never intended to harm the United States and are bitter.

"I can't wash the three long years of pain, trouble and humiliation from my memory," said Badarzaman Badar, an Afghan who was freed in Pakistan. "It is like a cancer in my mind that makes me disturbed every time I think of those terrible days."

Like I said before: "This country doesn't stand for anything anymore." What a shameful thing to be a part of our history.

T
K
O

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Someone opined that waterboarding is not torture.
Then waterboarding is

A Kiss
by Mandy K.Silverlain

A kiss so soft
it made me speechless.
So gentle
it rendered me still.
A touch so sweet
my thoughts were foggy.
Far falling,
it strengthened my will.
And eyes so deep
I thought I was floating.
So dreamlike,
I knew I was taken.
Surrender so true
as you pull me to you
and my soul would finally
awaken...

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Torturing the Language of Torture
by Sheldon Richman, December 17, 2007

Is waterboarding, known during the Spanish Inquisition as tortura del agua, really torture or not? The question seems to answer itself, but the Bush administration says No. Its critics disagree, noting that the "interrogation technique," which makes a subject physically and mentally react as though he is drowning, has long been regarded as torture by international agreements and outlawed in the United States.

The Washington Post reports that the Army investigated U.S. forces for using the method on a North Vietnamese in 1968. Moreover, "Twenty-one years earlier, in 1947, the United States charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian," the Post reported. Asano was sentenced to 15 years' hard labor.

Despite all this, the Bush administration and its knee-jerk supporters incoherently maintain (1) that waterboarding is not torture, and (2) that it's effective at getting hardened terrorists to spill their guts with useful information that enables the U.S. government to save innocent lives.

Which is it?

If you want a good laugh, listen to right-wing talk radio on this subject. To hear the conservative show-biz people talk, you'd think waterboarding was something you can do at the local health spa. But then they contradict themselves by saying that the technique is used in training CIA operatives so that they can withstand interrogation if captured. I don't see how both positions can be true.

The Post noted that at one time U.S. special forces used waterboarding during training. But it "proved so successful in breaking their will, says one former Navy captain familiar with the practice, ?'they stopped using it because it hurt morale.'" That sounds like torture.

The word games played by the Bush administration in this matter are beyond Clintonesque. These guys, including the new attorney general, Michael Mukasey, take evasion to new heights. What else is there to say about public (mis)leaders and (self-)servants who declare, "We don't torture," and then refuse to say whether waterboarding is used? Mukasey can't even make up his mind whether waterboarding is torture.

That the CIA destroyed tapes showing the interrogation, and perhaps waterboarding, of al-Qaeda suspects only reinforces the image of the Bush administration as lawless and ruthless. Despite what Bush apologists say, it is no defense to point out that Democratic members of Congress were notified about the interrogation techniques. The relevant points are that the American people were not told and that no one who favors strictly limiting the power of government could countenance such a policy.

This last matter is totally lost on the right wing. Despite lip service to limiting government, the most prominent right-wing spokesmen cheer the administration's policy of torture and secrecy. Invoking a bizarre theory of executive power, they believe the president possesses expansive powers as head of the executive branch of government and as commander in chief of the armed forces. It takes a highly selective reading of the Constitution to get to that position, but neoconservative legal theorists and their talk-show followers have no problem with that. Suddenly the strict constructionists find implied presidential powers everywhere. We'll see whether they sing the same tune should Hillary Clinton become president.

Is torture necessary to protect the American people? Even if it were, there's a far better method available: ending the imperial foreign policy that has provoked people into plotting against us.
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0712e.asp

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I think this argument is taking place in the wrong forum (pun intended). I think the debate should find its way into the supreme court, and offer up some consequences for those who have participated or ordered it to be done.

However, the current regime doesn't really acknowledge the other two branches of the government or their authority, so this will just remain a fantasy.

TKO - Is that you in your avatar? I always imagined you as being really old.

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I Stereo wrote:

TKO - Is that you in your avatar? I always imagined you as being really old.

Yeah it is. Like two years ago. Long time no see. Where have you been?

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Intelligence Chief Couches Reference to Waterboarding as 'Torture'

Associated Press
Sunday, January 13, 2008; A06

The nation's intelligence chief says that waterboarding "would be torture" if used against him, or if someone under interrogation was taking water into his lungs.

But Mike McConnell declined for legal reasons to say whether the technique categorically should be considered torture.

"If it ever is determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it," the director of national intelligence told the New Yorker in this week's issue, released today.

As McConnell describes it, a prisoner is strapped down with a washcloth over his face and water dripped into his nose.

"If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can't imagine how painful! Whether it's torture by anybody else's definition, for me it would be torture," McConnell told the magazine.

A spokesman for McConnell said the intelligence chief does not dispute the quotes attributed to him. McConnell was interviewed by Lawrence Wright, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for "The Looming Towers," a book on al-Qaeda and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

McConnell said the legal test for torture should be "pretty simple": "Is it excruciatingly painful to the point of forcing someone to say something because of the pain?"

White House spokesman Tony Fratto refused comment yesterday on waterboarding and McConnell's remarks.

"We don't talk about interrogation techniques. And we are not going to respond to every little thing that shows up in the press," he said. "We think McConnell is doing an incredible job heading up the intelligence community, reforming it and making it incredibly effective in being able to provide the president the best intelligence on threats to the nation. We think it's vitally important he and the intelligence community have all the tools they need."

[A CIA spokesman yesterday noted McConnell's acknowledgement in the article that the agency's detention and interrogation program had saved lives and provided information that could not have been obtained through other means. "What he is quoted as saying is a very strong endorsement of the value of the CIA's detention and interrogation program," spokesman Mark Mansfield said in a statement. "It also is worth noting that DNI McConnell is quoted as saying the United States does not torture."]

CIA interrogators were given permission by the White House in 2002 to waterboard three prisoners deemed resistant to conventional techniques. The CIA has not used the technique since 2003; CIA Director Michael V. Hayden prohibited it in 2006.

Last summer, President Bush issued an executive order allowing the CIA to use "enhanced interrogation techniques" that go beyond what is allowed in the 2006 Army Field Manual. Waterboarding is among those techniques.

Wright disclosed in his article that the government has eavesdropped on his telephone conversations with at least two sources: a relative of Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda's second-ranking leader; and a lawyer of several men interviewed for "The Looming Towers."

It is unclear under what authorities those intercepts were conducted.

"It may be troublesome; it may not be," McConnell told Wright. "You don't know."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/12/AR2008011202286_pf.html

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Romney: It's not torture unless you admit it by Nick Langewis and David Edwards
Published: Sunday January 13, 2008

CNN's Wolf Blitzer assails GOP presidential candidate and former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney over his lack of a definite opinion on whether the widely debated interrogation method known as "waterboarding" is torture.

Even as competitor and Arizona senator John McCain, along with United States Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, define "waterboarding" as torture, Romney remains strategically undecided.

"I just don't think it's productive for a president of the United States to lay out a list of what is specifically referred to as 'torture,'" he responds.

Citing "ticking time bomb" scenarios, Romney disagrees with the notion of admitting that a particular practice could violate the Geneva Convention, thereby preventing its utilization by the United States in the event of an urgent need to extract information to, for example, prevent a nuclear attack.

Romney touts the element of surprise, which, in addition to the deliberate creation of a legal grey area on what breaches international treaty, leaves a detainee at a disadvantage when it comes to preparing for what acts one can expect an agent acting on behalf of the United States to perform once one is captured.

Says Romney, "We have found it wise in the past not to describe precisely the techniques of interrogation that are used here in this country--also, so that people who are captured don't know what might be used against them."

The President, Romney concludes, is responsible for orders handed down to an interrogator, but also has the right to determine what is an appropriate interrogation technique to order an agent to perform.

The exchange can be viewed below, as aired on CNN's Late Edition on January 13, 2008. video

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Sounds sorta like Hillary's position.

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Mukasey and Hayden's statements on waterboarding have been reprehensible.

Hayden lied about the waterboarding destruction; he had previously claimed that there was no impetus for their destruction based on court cases. Turns out that this was untrue; they were being asked for by the judge in the Moussassi trial at the time they were destroyed and then reported to him as having been destroyed.

Mukasey refused to look into who ordered the DoJ to produce a document claiming waterboarding was legal. He took a position that, because the DoJ had previously authorized its' use, he couldn't possibly look into any aspect of its' use.

Amazing. It's also been revealed that Bush signed off on the waterboarding in all three times it was used (and probably every other time that it has been used to which they haven't admitted yet). And yet he still claims that we don't torture. Unbelievable.

Cycloptichorn

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Turns out only three prisoner were water-boarded. All were high level members of Al Qaeda, and one boasted of cutting of Daniel Pearl's head.
They gave quite a lot of important information and at least one only required two minutes of the technique.

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Regardless; if the WH uses waterboading now; it is likely to be illegal since the 2006 Supreme Court decision and new laws on the treatment of U.S. detainees have been clarified. It is a statement to our times that we even needed clarification.

Laws are made even for times in crises; either we have standards we live by or we do not. For years we ourselves condemned and even prosecuted the use of waterboarding.

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George claims we got important information from the prisoners, He also claimed that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I have heard others say the information we received was what we wanted to hear. If someone was breaking my fingers or pushing tooth picks under my finger nails I would tell them whatever I thought they wanted to hear.

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Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Turns out only three prisoner were water-boarded.
Turns out we only tortured three prisoners with this method. Not bloody likely, Finn but regardless, there was torture. That is criminal behavior.

All were high level members of Al Qaeda, and one boasted of cutting of Daniel Pearl's head.

This is not like you, to make excuses before you even know the facts, ... is it?

They gave quite a lot of important information and at least one only required two minutes of the technique.

Shameful, simply shameful, Finn.

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Waterboarding should be prosecuted as torture: U.N.

Reuters
Saturday February 9, 2008

The controversial interrogation technique known as waterboarding and used by the United States qualifies as torture, the U.N. human rights chief said on Friday.

"I would have no problems with describing this practice as falling under the prohibition of torture," the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, told a news conference in Mexico City.

Arbour made her comment in response to a question about whether U.S. officials could be tried for the use of waterboarding that referred to CIA director Michael Hayden telling Congress on Tuesday his agency had used waterboarding on three detainees captured after the September 11 attacks.

Violators of the U.N. Convention against Torture should be prosecuted under the principle of 'universal jurisdiction' which allows countries to try accused war criminals from other nations, Arbour said.

"There are several precedents worldwide of states exercising their universal jurisdiction ... to enforce the torture convention and we can only hope that we will see more and more of these avenues of redress," Arbour said.

The U.S. Congress is considering banning the practice, in which prisoners are immobilized and water is poured into their breathing passages to simulate drowning.

Arbour referred to an arrest warrant issued in 1998 by a Spanish judge for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who died in 2006, on charges of torture, murder and kidnapping in the years that followed his 1973 coup.

Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s were known to use waterboarding on political prisoners.

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Documentary: Military brass frequently viewed hooded, shackled detainees by Nick Langewis and Mike Aivaz
Published: Saturday February 9, 2008

I was kidnapped; abducted, forced imprisoned, tortured, threatened with further torture, without charge. Without trial.

Even many soldiers had said to me afterwards...if you weren't a terrorist when you came in here, by the time you leave, I'm sure you would be because of the way you've been treated.

--Bagram detainee Moazzam Begg

Flying in the face of statements members of the Bush Administration have made denying the use, and advocacy, of torture in their war effort, evidence of brutal treatment of captives continues to accumulate.

PBS' Bill Moyers delves into Oscar-nominated documentary "Taxi to the Dark Side," highlighting an Afghan taxi driver who was detained and beaten to death by American forces.

"Go see it," says Moyers. "Not in a while has the truth hit so hard."

In 2002, Dilawar, 22, and his passengers were stopped at Bagram Air Base and held under suspicion of involvement in a rocket attack. Five days later, his death from blunt force trauma would be ruled a homicide, as written on the death certificate, in English, given to Dilawar's family with his body.

Captain Carolyn Wood, overseeing interrogation at Bagram, would be awarded a Bronze Star for "valor" and tapped to begin similar operations at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison.

Prisoners were assigned numbers, which were written on sheets of paper hung outside the airlocks in which they were kept, and directly on their bodies.

"Detainees were actually chained with their hands above their heads in these airlocks," says Moazzam Begg. "His number, 421, was something that I could see often, because his back was towards me."

"There were always officers coming and going through the facility," says Eric Lahammer. "We kind of joked about it as being the 'greatest show on earth'; everyone wanted to come and look at the 'terrorists.'"

"[Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld's office called our office frequently," adds Pfc. Damien Corsetti. Very high commanders would want to be kept up to date, on a daily basis, on certain prisoners there."

"The brass knew," Corsetti continues. "They saw 'em shackled. They saw 'em hooded, and they said 'Right on. Y'all are doin' a great job.'"

The clip below was broadcast on PBS' Bill Moyers Journal on February 8, 2008.
link

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rabel22 wrote:

George claims we got important information from the prisoners, He also claimed that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I have heard others say the information we received was what we wanted to hear. If someone was breaking my fingers or pushing tooth picks under my finger nails I would tell them whatever I thought they wanted to hear.

Including what you knew.

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Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Turns out only three prisoner were water-boarded. All were high level members of Al Qaeda, and one boasted of cutting of Daniel Pearl's head.
They gave quite a lot of important information and at least one only required two minutes of the technique.

Did you burp after swallowing all that, finn?

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