You know the Republican's hatred for Obama is irrational when...

So it is alright for you to do it, but not for someone else to do it. Typical liberal "logic"!?!?!

And somehow you seem to feel that killing people is OK? Would you care to explain that? @JoeNation

 

Torture is only effective in getting the tortured to say what the torturer wants to heard. Think about it. How many witches, warlocks, and devil worshipers confessed under torture in the middle ages and yet the US program failed to find even one. Why, because they were looking for terrorist and plots, and just like in the middle ages, the tortured told the torturers what they wanted to hear. It's a case of incentives. Let's say Jahaddi John works for Group B. The torture goes something like this..........
Q: Who do you work for?
A: Group B
Ouch!
Q: Who do you work for?
A: Group B
Ouch!
Q: Who do you work for?
A: Group A
Q: OK, now we're getting somewhere, Who's your leader?
A: Ralph
Ouch!
(rinse and repeat)
Any real actionable intel came from asking questions that we already knew the answers, or at least had a clue as to what was going on. Torture also produced or more likely re-enforced bad intelligence.
As for the moral aspects, I have no problem with it, if it would save lives. However it doesn't, and in the process makes us a lesser people.

 

Honestly, how are we different than ISIS? We have no moral authority to tell any country or group that they are acting immoral thanks to these mad men. This incident has taken the entire world's moral compass down several notches. The Republicans have lowered the bar of decency for the planet. Think about that. The entire planet.

 

10 appalling findings in the Senate’s torture report
Senate Intel Committee releases report on use of torture against detainees. Here are some of the worst findings
LUKE BRINKER F

George W. Bush, Dick Cheney (Credit: Reuters/Jason Reed)

The Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday unveiled the much-anticipated summary of its report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of torture against terrorism suspects, providing often-harrowing insight into U.S. interrogation practices in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks and offering a damning look at the CIA’s pattern of giving false information in its defense of the practices and stonewalling lawmakers and executive branch officials responsible for overseeing the agency’s actions.


The 524-page summary released today is less than a tenth of the length of the committee’s full, 6,700-page report. This spring, committee members voted to release only the summary and a Republican rebuttal.

While the summary doesn’t tell the complete story, it nonetheless presents a wide-ranging survey of the CIA’s use of torture, or “enhanced interrogation techniques” in the euphemistic parlance of Bush administration officials and, at times, the committee report itself. Even before reading the report, Bush veterans — including the former president himself, as well as former Vice President Dick Cheney — dinged it ahead of its impending release. Reading the committee’s findings — which depict what Cheney infamously referred to as “the dark side” of the U.S. war on terror — it’s easy to see why the former officials weren’t happy about its unveiling. Here are 10 of the most revolting findings in the committee’s summary.

1. The CIA misled executive branch officials, members of Congress, and the public about torture’s effectiveness.

While Bush and Cheney steadfastly defended the CIA as the release of the report approached, the committee found that agency officials — including former directors George Tenet, Porter Goss, and Michael Hayden — misled the White House and lawmakers about the effectiveness of U.S. torture techniques like waterboarding and sleep deprivation.

The committee examined 20 reported “counterterrorism successes” cited by agency officials who claimed that the use of torture was essential to thwarting terror plots. In some of the cases, the report states, there was “no relationship” between the counterterrorism success and the use of torture. Meanwhile, in the remaining cases, the information CIA interrogators obtained from detainees either simply corroborated information the CIA already had or was extracted from detainees prior to the use of torture.

2. Interrogators would deprive some detainees of sleep for more than a week.

According to the report, detainees at CIA facilities would be deprived of sleep for days on end — in some cases for up to 180 hours. During sleep deprivation, the report says, detainees were usually kept “standing or in stress positions, at times with their hands shackled above their heads.”

The CIA Arsala Khan, an Afghan detainee, to 56 hours of sleep deprivation, the report finds. Khan could barely enunciate words by the end of his deprivation, while he was “visibly shaken by his hallucinations depicting dogs mauling and killing his sons and family.”

3. Detainees underwent waterboarding until they were unresponsive.

Among the most notorious torture techniques employed by the CIA was waterboarding, which simulates drowning. The committee report states that 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times and that the waterboardings eventually turned into “a series of near drownings.”

Abu Zubaydah, the CIA’s first detainee, also underwent waterboarding, once to the point that he became “completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth.”

Other detainees experienced “convulsions and vomiting” when waterboarded. According to the report, the CIA used the technique on more than the three prisoners the CIA previously copped to waterboarding.

4. The CIA force-fed detainees through their rectums.

Agency interrogators forced at least five detainees to undergo “rectal rehydration” or “rectal feeding” even in the absence of any “documented medical necessity,” the report finds. Among the most prominent prisoners subjected to rectal feeding was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

5. Interrogators threatened to harm the families and children of detainees.

In at least three cases, CIA interrogators threatened to harm detainees’ families — including threats to harm a detainee’s children, to commit sexual violence against a detainee’s mother, and to slit a detainee’s mother’s throat.

6. An interrogator threatened to sodomize a detainee with a broomstick.

In at least one instance, the CIA chief of interrogation placed a broomstick between the knees of detainee while the detainee was in a stress position — suggesting that the detainee was at risk of being sodomized.

7. The chief of interrogations described one facility as a “dungeon.”

The CIA’s Cobalt facility, one senior officer quoted in the report says, was a so-called enhanced interrogation technique by itself. With detainees often kept in “complete darkness,” loud music blaring, and detainees allowed to use only a bucket to relieve themselves, the chief of interrogations said that Cobalt was a “dungeon.”

8. Agency interrogators forced detainees to stand on broken legs and feet.

At the same facility, some detainees who had sustained either broken legs or feet were made to stand in stress positions, the committee found.

9. Detainees experienced severe psychological problems.

While “[m]ultiple psychologists” warned that by shutting detainees off from human contact, interrogators risked fostering a wide range of mental health problems, the agency often ignored such warnings. Multiple detainees demonstrated severe mental health issues, the report finds, including “hallucinations, paranoia, insomnia, and attempts at self-harm and self-mutilation.”

10. The CIA lied about how many detainees were in its custody.

Even though the agency publicly maintained that it held 98 prisoners, CIA records indicated that 119 detainees were in its custody. A CIA official flagged this inconsistency in a 2008 email, only to be rebuffed by CIA director Michael Hayden.

“[K]eep the number at 98,” Hayden instructed.

 

And just who did they interview to get this information?

 

Now, now.. don't go on a tangent. Let's stay focused, shall we?

We've established the fact that you would torture someone. In fact, you would torture ANYONE if you deemed the circumstances appropriate. Please correct me if I'm wrong about this.

Now, please tell us the circumstances in which you would torture someone.

Also, please tell us what you mean by "torture the hell out of someone". In other words, to what level of torture would you specifically go to get the answers you want?

 

You must be the only person here entitled to ask and receive answers. How special. Now go back and answer a few of my questions if you can find the courage. Doubtful.

 

Darth Cheney throws Bush under the bus on Fox. Where is the popcorn? This is gonna get good.

 

You might even hear "The report's full of crap."

 

Well, you obviously don't want to answer the questions. I don't blame you; if I said I would "torture the hell out of someone" like you said you would, I wouldn't want to answer the questions either. But, in all fairness, you are the one who said it and I'm simply asking to you expand on your statement in the interest of having a civil discussion.

 

I really can't listen to idiots defend torture in the 21st century without just rolling my eyes and thinking, "What kind of morons does it take to defend a political party that has not only practiced torture but is now defending the practice?" One can only liken it to those that defended the Nazis final solution and the extermination of the Jewish people. The ends justify the means for morally vacant bottom feeders like those types throughout history and those today that can't see or don't care about other human beings to the point that they can actually defend torture. It's almost as if some branch of the human species went terribly wrong and these people are just an evolutionary mistake to be corrected through the process of natural selection or in their case, natural deselection. Let us hope these Neandrathals die off quickly.

 

But the Obama administration is defending it;


BTW;
And just who did they interview to get this information?
And somehow you seem to feel that killing people is OK? Would you care to explain that? @JoeNation

 

Uh.. oh.

 

Just checking in. I was wondering if there'd be even a peep from the righteous here (like CoinOKC, with whom I agreed that killing American citizens with drone strikes violated the Constitution and should be condemned) acknowledging that torture should never have been used by the United States. Nope.

It's clear now that the indignation about extrajudicial killing was not actually motivated by moral and constitutional considerations, but mere partisan hatred for the current president of the United States. I had a strong suspicion at the time that was the case. A good test would be if the same indignation would be expressed toward blatant and despicable violations of the law of the land and international law carried out under a president of the other party. The thought just crossed my mind that I could get a good reading on whether my suspicion was correct by seeing what was being said here about the revelations about torture. I have not been disappointed. I didn't have much respect for the righteous members of this site before, and have even less now. Carry on.

 

Since you referenced me specifically, I feel it's my obligation to address your concern.

You say that there hasn't been "even a peep" from the [so-called] "righteous people" here. I wonder why that is so. Unless one really likes the idea of torture, don't you think it's unnecessary to state a displeasure against it? I notice you haven't given an opinion one way or the other, therefore I assume you are against it. You've given me no reason to think otherwise. But, if you like the idea of torture, please feel free to say so.

Now, we have a person on this forum who readily admits he would commit torture given certain circumstances. For a person to have that attitude is certainly setting himself up as a self-righteous person; certainly more so than a person who has chosen not to chime in. But, I don't see you focusing on anyone else. Why haven't you focused on the self-righteous person who would readily commit torture? In my estimation, a person like that deserves any indignation more than a person who, so far, hasn't given an opinion.

 

What "I" would do is exactly the same thing YOU would do in the given circumstance. You just lack enough courage to admit it. That way you have a phony talking point. All you have is phony self-righteous screeds and partisan morals. To put it bluntly... You're a complete dumb ass.

 

How do you know what I would do? You're being presumptuous. But, hey, you're the one who said he would commit torture. So, why don't you go help save a victim by torturing someone or, better yet, indulge one of your favorite activities and kill some unborn babies? Or go violently protest in a street somewhere? Or burn down a State House? Or sit idly by while a young girl is raped?

You have the audacity to call me self-righteous? Are there no mirrors in your house?

BTW, in case you hadn't heard, the Republicans won the midterms. Overwhelmingly. Yes, the voters said "no" to all your liberal ideologies and dogma. You were wrong all along, you're still wrong and now you're just a sore loser.

 

I guess I can see a difference between cutting someone's head off because they are American and waterboarding a terrorist in an attempt to save innocent lives.

 

Yes, let's let ISIS be our standard for decency. This from the idiot that calls torture "temporary discomfort". The report says otherwise.

 

I guess the difference between the 2 of us is that I view the US as the good guys. Now, when we start beheading journalists I may look at it differently. Until then I am fine with waterboarding terrorist to save innocent lives.