Dick Cheney’s Stunt Double Does Another Pratfall
Stephen Hayes, dutiful chronicler of Dick Cheney’s greatness, has now twice attacked yours truly for describing the enhanced interrogation techniques as “Bush/Cheney torture policies.”
Hayes asks: “Why call the EITs `Bush/Cheney torture policies’ when they were conceived and executed by senior CIA officals?” Uh, Stephen? Here’s how Cheney described EITs in the statement from him that you posted:
The activities of the CIA in carrying out the policies of the Bush Administration were directly responsible for defeating all efforts by al Qaeda to launch further mass casualty attacks against the United States.
D’oh! Separately, Hayes now thinks he’s caught me in a big screw-up, and he’s stamping his feet for a correction. He points to my post accusing him of cherrypicking a passage in the 2004 CIA I.G. report while omitting that it said “it is difficult to identify why exactly” a key detainee volunteered more info. He says he addressed that in a previous post.
Uh, Stephen? My point was that you cherrypicked from the report in the same post that accused me of cherrypicking. Dude, come on, this is reading comprehension 101. On the substance of this, Hayes is pushing many of his chips onto this passage from the report:
Because of the litany of techniques used by different interrogators over a relatively short period of time, it is difficult to identify why exactly al Nashiri became more willing to provide information. However, following the use of EITs, he provided information about his most current operational planning and [redacted] as opposed to the historical information he provided before the use of EITs.
Hayes claims that this proves EITs were effective. But for God’s sake, the report’s chapter assessing torture’s “effectiveness” just doesn’t explain whether the “litany of techniques used” were only EITs. And it doesn’t say what specific life-saving information was produced specifically by EITs, if any.
I don’t know how to make this clearer. Cheney didn’t merely say torture was vaguely “effective.” He said these reports would put to rest the question of whether torture saved many, many lives. The following sources have now concluded that the reports don’t prove what Cheney claimed: The New York Times, The Washington Post, ABC News, Newsweek, former Bush terror adviser Frances Townsend, and…the author of the I.G. report himself!
Is there anything that can persuade Hayes to tilt his lance in the direction of those sources, rather than at this poor, beseiged blog? Please make it stop…
This blog’s homepage is here. RSS feed here. Twitter feed here. Email me here.
O Greggy – I’m developing a whole new crush on you. {{{{MWAAH}}}}
You’ve gone after their master. Better arm yourself with garlic and silver bullets for this one and pray there is no full moon this weekend.
@Greg: You promised us that you wouldn’t be posting about this anymore!
I’d better get out the mosquito netting. I’ve got a feeling there’s a swarm of Dubya-Cheney-Rove trolls about to come our way.
Or maybe I’d be better off with duct tape?
oh, noez. we can expect that whiner (and dodger) scott here any minute now crying for whambulance.
Greg, these repug poutrage attacks indicate you’re rattling their cage in a way that hurts their a$$es. Keep it up.
“Or maybe I’d be better off with duct tape?”
That’s what I’d recommend, but keep the silver bullets and the garlic handy just the same.
“I don’t know how to make this clearer. Cheney didn’t merely say torture was vaguely “effective.” He said these reports would put to rest the question of whether torture saved many, many lives.”
One way you could make it clearer is to provide the actual quotation from Cheney that you say is a proven lie. You always use a paraphrase (never consistent) without a link or source. So prove it.
Fortunately full moon will be next weekend, not this one.
jzap – ahem – me, I’m looking for that portable microwave…
Greg: You’re letting this Hayes bozo have a lot of power over you. Fine, as long as it’s fun, but remember, you can’t argue with a sick mind. . . .
O jzap, not you too – you really see this as Hayes having power over Greg.
Jeez, man, you really missed a lot not being around back in the day when Atrios was getting cease and desist letters from lawyers for people just like Hayes. That’s what this is all about – this internet thingy, ya know?
I don’t think there is any way to convince them of anything else Greg. sbj says it best, just quit talking about it. That’s really what they want. Don’t give it to them.
Sargent apparently can’t find the Cheney statement he paraphrases that has been proved a lie.
Perhaps one of you toadies can help him out.
I’d like to see it so we can evaluate. So far, I haven’t.
Chris the fold – Word straight up!
Goddamn – if the last 8-9 years haven’t already taught us that…
Cheney nat’l security speech:
“In top secret meetings about enhanced interrogations, I made my own beliefs clear. I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program. The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed. They were legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do. The intelligence officers who questioned the terrorists can be proud of their work and proud of the results, because they prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people…
“As far as the interrogations are concerned, all that remains an official secret is the information we gained as a result. Some of his defenders say the unseen memos are inconclusive, which only raises the question why they won’t let the American people decide that for themselves. I saw that information as vice president, and I reviewed some of it again at the National Archives last month. I’ve formally asked that it be declassified so the American people can see the intelligence we obtained, the things we learned, and the consequences for national security.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22823_Page2.html#ixzz0PUqwlPQL
@quarterback – the language, tch, tch ? bitter too much ?
*kapow* *splat* *shabang*
Sorry to boost your balloon, but the quote Greg provides does not support his paraphrase.
O sure it doesn’t support his paraphrase.
If you read it upside down and backwards it doesn’t.
If you read it like normal people do, it actually says what it says and Greg is right on.
Actually – in that quote Cheney does not even come close to Greg’s paraphrase:
“Cheney didn’t merely say torture was vaguely “effective.” He said these reports would put to rest the question of whether torture saved many, many lives.”
sbj, you are the champion commenter ever when it comes to parsing words, splitting hairs and taking things literally to a degree not previously seen among humans or trolls.
That explains why sbj is so confused. I didn’t think illiteracy was a problem in this country, but I guess NCLB had far greater consequences.
Patches – LOL!
Greg, re: yelp from Hayes. Don’t bother with him. He is a dutiful scribbler of Cheney talking points. No need to apologise to a manure spreader.
Cheney on Fox News in April:
We — with the intelligence programs, the Terror Surveillance Program, as well as the interrogation program, we set out to collect that kind of intelligence. It worked. It’s been enormously valuable in terms of saving lives, preventing another mass casualty attack against the United States.
One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn’t put out the memos that showed the success of the effort. And there are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified.
I formally asked that they be declassified now. I haven’t announced this up until now, I haven’t talked about it, but I know specifically of reports that I read, that I saw that lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country.
And I’ve now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos so we can lay them out there and the American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was, as well as to see this debate over the legal opinions.
Just ignore the people telling you to stop, Greg. They wouldn’t be if you weren’t hitting your target 100% of the time.
Just keep the good work right up.
Why is the efficacy of TORTURE being debated.
It makes no difference, if it worked, or not.
It is still TORTURE, and only Barbarians support the use of torture. Ergo, Cheney, and his Stephen Hayes Sock Puppet are BARBARIANS.
Liam, and about 30%-40% of the U.S. has been convinced in the last 5 years torture is a good thing and is how advanced civilizations conduct themselves.
See, we live in a big cycle. Soon, females will be put back into caves, laws will be non-existent,foods containing trans fats will be the main food source again and we will forget science exists and the earth will become flat once again.
@Greg: I understand your effort here, but I believe Cheney has simply been too smart. He refers to the TSP, not EITs, and the CIA IG report does, indeed, show that lives were saved. The Cheney-requested memos detail a Karachi Airport plot that was thwarted.
I’m afraid that even the second quote you provide does not support your paraphrase.
@tena: “You are the champion commenter ever.”
I win again!
Are you going to apologize for calling me a racist? That was really not cool…
If Greg is going to parse the CIA IG report (and the Cheney-requested memos) to the extent that he has, then I see no reason at all that a little *** for tat is not in order.
“Let’s review. Abu Zubaydah gave up some information before the use of EITs. But “since the use of the waterboard…Abu Zubaydah has appeared to be cooperative,” and gave up even more intelligence. Al Nashiri provided mostly historical information in the short time before EITs were employed. “However, following the use of EITs, he provided information about his most current operational planning…” And “accomplished resistor” Khalid Shaykh Muhammad provided mostly useless information before the application of EITs. Afterwards, he “provided information that helped lead to the arrests of terrorists” – so much information, in fact, that he was regarded as the “most prolific” intelligence source.
Reasonable people can – and do – disagree about the morality of using EITs. But only the most accomplished resister could continue to claim that they were not effective.”
Now, time for you to say, “But torture is still illegal!”
sbj, if Cheney wants to clarify and say straight out that he has not been saying EITs specifically have saved lives, and has only been talking about the broader interrogation program, I’d be the first to print it.
Again:
Why is the efficacy of TORTURE being debated.
It makes no difference, if it worked, or not.
It is still TORTURE, and only Barbarians support the use of torture. Ergo, Cheney, and his Stephen Hayes Sock Puppet are BARBARIANS.
@sbj: could you clarify wtf/whom/where you’re quoting in your last post? You’ve got quotation marks floating everywhere and it’s next to impossible what you’re trying to prove/say/quote.
“Why is the efficacy of TORTURE being debated.
It makes no difference, if it worked, or not.
It is still TORTURE, and only Barbarians support the use of torture. Ergo, Cheney, and his Stephen Hayes Sock Puppet are BARBARIANS.”
I totally agree – I’ve said that myself all along. Every time the subject comes up publicly, the response should be: so what if it works? It’s illegal. It’s barbaric. It’s unAmerican.
@Greg: “If Cheney wants to clarify and say straight out that he has not been saying EITs specifically have saved lives, and has only been talking about the broader interrogation program, I’d be the first to print it.”
That’s fair. I think that Cheney has purposely used very precise phrasing, and he has done this precisely for the reason that it is quite impossible to draw a straight line from EITs to saved lives.
I think that I can say, perhaps without offending you, that you have been hoodwinked by the Dark Master? He literally claims that the interrogation program worked, you write that he said that torture works, the reports show that interrogation worked. The whole thing ends up a mess and no one is sure what has been proved and who is right or wrong. All we do know for sure is that the “interrogation program” worked. That fact, perhaps unfortunately, does have the net impact of making Cheney appear correct. We are even left with a vague impression that torture worked, even though Cheney never literally said that, and the reports can’t reach that conclusion.
Greg
yup. let darth pull his own lying a$$ out of the frying pan.
Tena: I think you’ve taken my advice to Greg differently from how it was intended.
Greg seems to be having fun with this, so more power to him. And it certainly is entertaining for us readers.
But if Hayes starts to get under Greg’s skin and evoke genuine anger, well, that’s a burden Greg doesn’t have to carry. It’s just a caution to not get consumed by this. And, probably, it’s nothing that Greg doesn’t already know.
“Is there anything that can persuade Hayes to tilt his lance in the direction of those sources”
Yeah, we could waterboard him. But it’s difficult to tell if it would actually work
The problem Liam is that those who support torture keep moving the goalpost. First, it’s “what we did was not illegal” then it’s “what we did was not torture”….then it becomes “it doesn’t matter what you call it because it was effective” and then when THAT’s called into question we get back to where we started with “well, it doesn’t really matter because it wasn’t illegal”. Then when they get really desperate they pull a Nathan Thurm from SNL and do the “This is just something you’re saying. I never said that….it’s so funny that you think I would say that”.
We are all caught in this endless cyclical argument that is just ridiculous….and you’re right, the only thing that matters in the end is that it was TORTURE and TORTURE is WRONG legally and morally.
Those authoritarian lovers on the right seem to think it’s okay because they can justify it. But don’t they realize that every dictatorial regime that has used torture justified it to themselves as well? Don’t they think the Japanese justified it? Don’t they think Saddam Hussein justified it? What about the Nazis? The inquisition? Stalin? It’s sickening.
The Verities: According To Dick Cheney.
We suspected that she be a witch.
We threw her into the river, and she did not float, but instead she did drown.
Therefore our witch purging methodology has been proven to work, and saved many from the future spells of that drowned witch.
Throughout history torturers have always sought to justify their use of torture. No torturer has even admitted on the record that they tortured because it was fun or empowering, torture was always done in order to protect the citizens from something bad (Catholics, brown people, Sunnis, Muslems, POWs, etc.).
The fact that we are even having to parse terminology in this discussion is not only a permanent black eye on the United States, but an absolute indictment on Cheney, the CIA, the DOJ and the entire Bush administration (I won’t even bother including the supporters of the administration, since they are either clueless lemmings or complicit in the abominations done in our name).
“Tena: I think you’ve taken my advice to Greg differently from how it was intended.
”
Sorry.
This whole thing though reminds me very much of a major blog war between Atrios and I can’t remember who – but the who got his lawyer to threaten Atrios with outing his real ID, and this was about 3 years before he revealed who he is. So we all had bumperstickers made that said: I am Atrios.
This is just so very much like it was when we first started seriously pushing back. And it worked. It worked then and it still works.
Still waiting, Sargent. You’ve now posted two excerpts from Cheney, each containing measured statements about interrogation and intelligence, but, strangely, neither contains the statement you attributed to him and and couldn’t make “any clearer.”
Was this his big lie:
“The intelligence officers who questioned the terrorists can be proud of their work and proud of the results, because they prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people…”
Oh wait, that doesn’t say what you said he said.
Was this it:
“And I’ve now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos so we can lay them out there and the American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was, as well as to see this debate over the legal opinions.”
Guess not.
By the way, didn’t it give you pause in calling Cheney a liar that he publicly called for release of the memos? So your claim here is that he lied about what the memos say while asking that they be released so the public could evaluate for themselves.
The crickets are chirping, sir. We await your correction and apology.
one more time, quarterback:
If Cheney wants to clarify and say straight out that he has not been saying EITs specifically have saved lives, and has only been talking about the broader interrogation program, I’d be the first to print it.
Politico’s Ben Smith:
I asked a person close to Cheney, who agreed to be identified only that way, about whether that implication was deliberate, and am told that no distinction was intended.
“As the vice president has said repeatedly, the Enhanced Interrogation Techniques provided critical intelligence that saved lives and prevented terrorist attacks. The documents released yesterday demonstrate that conclusively. Anyone who doubts that hasn’t read the documents,” said the Cheney source.
Politico interview with Cheney:
He expressed confidence that files will some day be publicly accessible offering specific evidence that waterboarding and other policies he promoted — over sharp internal dissent from colleagues and harsh public criticism — were directly responsible for averting new Sept. 11-style attacks.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/18390.html
greg: “Uh, Stephen? My point was that you cherrypicked from the report in the same post that accused me of cherrypicking.”
That is a weak defense, Greg. And false, to boot. Hayes originally accused of cherrypicking in his first post, which included the full passage that you cite him for dishonestly excluding. It was only in the second post, in which he reiterated his original criticism, that he shortened the quote. And even in that post, he liinked to the original, where the full quote could be found.
Why not be a man, step up, and just admit you made a mistake? Doing so would do much more for your credibility than this weasely response.
And this characterization: “he’s stamping his feet for a correction.”
…is difficult to justify. The only thing Hayes said about a correction is that he will leave your (as yet still missing) correction to be the last word. How does this qualify as “foot stamping”?
Weak, Greg.
One more time quarterback: Dick Cheney is a liar. Everything he says is a lie including a, and, and the.
No, Sargent, you aren’t going to get off the hook by moving the ball. You spefically accused:
“Cheney didn’t merely say torture was vaguely “effective.” He said these reports would put to rest the question of whether torture saved many, many lives.”
“This couldn’t be clearer: Cheney vowed that these reports would settle the question of whether torture saved many, many lives.”
“But let’s be clear: Cheney said repeatedly that the CIA docs would settle the question. And even a top terror adviser in his administration is now admitting that this isn’t the case.”
I guess you embellished a little, is that it? If you had any honor, you would post a strong correction and retract your reckless accusations.
late to the party greg but just had to say–you are doing the work of truth here. good for you.
Tena, you are so profound and always well sourced. Did you just come up with that line? And have you found that place in the Constitution where the First Amendment applies to private citizens?
Oh, so he “expressed confidence,” Sargent? What an abominable liar he is.
Still waiting. Funny how you are scrambling to find some proof you didn’t lie.
@Greg” You are getting really close, but you still have not provided a Cheney quote that supports your paraphrase. Sorry. You seem to be merely providing more support to my theory that he is one smart cookie who never literally said what you say he did.
quarterback,
The above quotes confirm that Cheney said what I said he did. If Cheney wants to clarify that he hasn’t been saying that EITs specifically saved lives, and that he was only talking about the broader program, I’ll be the first to print it.
Any fair reading of the above quotes leaves no doubt about what Cheney’s saying.
I’m not scrambling, sorry to disappoint you. You are.
Only Barbarians support Torture. Dick Cheney supports torture. Ergo: Dick Cheney is a Barbarian.
The Verities: According To Dick Cheney.
We suspected that she be a witch.
We threw her into the river, and she did not float, but instead she did drown.
Therefore our witch purging methodology has been proven to work, and saved many from the future spells of that drowned witch.
Cheney on CBS, May 2009:
When you get rid of enhanced interrogation techniques for example or the terrorist surveillance program you reduce the intelligence flow to the intelligence community upon which we based those policies that were so successful. So I think before they do that sort of thing it’s important to sit down and find out what did we learn, why did it work.
One of things I did six weeks ago was I made a request that two memos that I personally know of written by the CIA that lay out the successes of those policies and point out in considerable detail all that we were able to achieve by virtue of those policies that those memos be released, be made public. … when you’ve got memos out there that show precisely how much was achieved and how lives were saved as a results of this policy, then they won’t release those or at least they haven’t yet.
No, Sargent, “any fair reading” doesn’t confirm what you repeatedly put in Cheney’s mouth — that he “repeatedly vowed” that the memos would “settle” the question. You have made a strong accusation, and a strong standard of proof applies. You repeatedly emphasized this language, which you made up, and said it could not be any “clearer.”
Yes, it could be clearer, as in if Cheney had ever actually said those words.
Why do you think he misstated the contents of the memos while asking that they be released so the public could read them and evaluate? Is he just that stupid? I thought he was supposed to be the malevalent mastermind behind everything.
Give it up, Sargent, you keep posting Cheney excerpts that, yes, certainly show he said he believed the EI program was valuable and successful, and that there were memos he asked to be released that he believed documented that success.
But your strident characterizations went way beyond that, and it was only from your gross exaggerations that you built your strident accusations.
And you deliberately wanted to hammer home your exaggerated rhetoric, which you did by repeatedly saying it couldn’t be clearer what Cheney said. You made stuff up, and you got caught.
quarterback, so Cheney never said the docs would prove that torture saved lives?
Which means the docs don’t prove that either, right?
Right?
“Any fair reading of the above quotes leaves no doubt about what Cheney’s saying.”
Any fair reading of the CIA IG report leaves no doubt about the effectiveness of Enhanced Interrogation.
sbj — “effectiveness”? what’s that mean?
@greg:
“Let’s review. Abu Zubaydah gave up some information before the use of EITs. But “since the use of the waterboard…Abu Zubaydah has appeared to be cooperative,” and gave up even more intelligence. Al Nashiri provided mostly historical information in the short time before EITs were employed. “However, following the use of EITs, he provided information about his most current operational planning…” And “accomplished resistor” Khalid Shaykh Muhammad provided mostly useless information before the application of EITs. Afterwards, he “provided information that helped lead to the arrests of terrorists” – so much information, in fact, that he was regarded as the “most prolific” intelligence source.
Reasonable people can – and do – disagree about the morality of using EITs. But only the most accomplished resister could continue to claim that they were not effective.
When one gives up more intelligence after the application of EITs then one can conclude that they are effective. Or one can pretend otherwise.
When one provides only historical information before the use of EITs but provides information about current operational planning after the application of EITs one can conclude that they are effective. Or one can pretend otherwise.
When one provides mostly useless information before the application of EITs but after the use of EITs provides information that helped lead to the arrests of terrorists then one can conclude that they are effective. Or one can pretend otherwise.
Actually, no, you haven’t produced any statement where Cheney said “the docs would prove that torture saved lives.” And for that matter it isn’t even what you repeatedly accused him of saying. He made a number of statements about his beliefs about the success of the program and the importance of the memos. But not this
Why is it that .you continually need to paraphrase him rather actual statements he made that you can demostrate were untrue? If it couldn’t be clearer that he said the words you attributed to him, you could produce them, but you can’t. When you accuse someone of telling falsehoods and trying to mislead, it is pretty important to get their words right. You deliberately didn’t.
You know, Sargent, the excerpts you have posted here tell quite a different story on the whole than you have been portraying. Don’t you think that is true? Cheney made a series of public statements asking that the documents be released, and he repeatedly said it was important for the public to see them in light of the ongoing controversy. It is pretty absurd for you to claim he was misleading when his whole point was to get them in front of the public to judge for itself.
Just feeding the trolls, Greg. SBJ and Quarterback wouldn’t concede without a copy of your birth certificate and the original of a signed affidavit from Cheney stating the exact words of your paraphrase.
Because they don’t understand what “paraphrase” means, and they don’t understand the Cheney’s political MO was to make direct statements via proxies, and only make his point by implication when he was speaking directly.
It is the MO of all of his great lies – the link between Saddam and 9/11, the WMDs, the torture. The direct lies are via proxies, followed by slippery innuendo from the Dark Genius in person – but always with deniability.
SBJ and Quarterback, will you just tell us your position on EITs? Should we use them? What is your position?
Wow Greg. You sure are patient with those who can’t quite get beyond “What the meaning of ‘is’ is” here. By the time someone’s position devolves to relying on such pathetic refusal to accept the English language’s defined meaning … by engaging them you really are simply addressing a gallery of fools.
But thanks for getting all those quotes together … could come in handy. You didn’t even dip in to the Lil’dick torture rehabilitation media tour!
Dollared,
If you are sued for fraud, is it okay for the court to accept a paraphrase of what you said, and one that substantially misstates what you actually said, like your hero did here?
Asking for the actual statement that Cheney that was false isn’t asking for Sargent’s birth certificate. 2 + 2 also doesn’t equal 5.
Sargent didn’t say that Cheney lied by proxy. Or didn’t you read the posts we are discussing.
Should we use EITs? That isn’t the point of the discussion, but probably some EITs in some circumstances. Only fools think otherwise.
kgb, if you could point out where Cheney said the “is” that Sargent claims he said, perhaps that would settle things. But Sargent couldn’t do that, and you can’t either. If you can, just post it here. Where is the “is”? Hmm?
What your hero did instead is post a number of excerpts and give the equivalent of a big arm-wave “here.” It’s the old, “everything in general, nothing in particular” defense. You can’t point to where Cheney actually said what is claimed, so you say the totality justifies your mischaracterization.
If you are going to go that route, then address the totality of what Cheney said. Can you explain why the point of all his statements was to get the documents released to the public? How does that square with your narrative?
“SBJ and Quarterback, will you just tell us your position on EITs? Should we use them? What is your position?”
Why would my opinion about that even matter to you?
@quarterback: Should we use EITs? That isn’t the point of the discussion, but probably some EITs in some circumstances. Only fools think otherwise.
There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. This treasonous jock can have no credibility whatsoever.
Which EITs are “torture,” fiddler? Do you even know what they were? Let’s hear it.
Do you have any clue what treason is? Thought not.
EIT is Cheneyspeak for “torture.” Torture is always wrong, it is always immoral, and it is ALWAYS ILLEGAL! These moral Lilliputians want to parse what the meaning of “is” is. I betting they howled when Clinton tried that same brand of obfuscation.
The plain fact is that the documents Cheney said would vindicate torture simply don’t. If torture is so effective, why did they have to employ it 193 times on KSM? If I have to take my car back to the mechanic 193 times, I am unlikely to define his methods as being “effective.” Not so Cheney and his incessantly yapping mongrel Stephen Hayes.
Do I sense a bit of fear from the Cheney camp. Could it be these cowards are coming to the realization that they could face prosecution for war crimes here in the U.S. or abroad?
EIT is Cheneyspeak for “torture.” Torture is always wrong, it is always immoral, and it is ALWAYS ILLEGAL! These moral Lilliputians want to parse what the meaning of “is” is. I’m betting they howled when Clinton tried that same brand of obfuscation.
The plain fact is that the documents Cheney said would vindicate torture simply don’t. If torture is so effective, why did they have to employ it 193 times on KSM? If I have to take my car back to the mechanic 193 times, I am unlikely to define his methods as being “effective.” Not so Cheney and his incessantly yapping mongrel Stephen Hayes.
Do I sense a bit of fear from the Cheney camp? Could it be these cowards are coming to the realization that they could face prosecution for war crimes here in the U.S. or abroad?
Same question, Gasman.
Which EITs were torture? Be specific, otherwise your ignorance will be established.
No reasonable reader of the reports can deny that the EI program was effective. Even the skeptical IG admits and gives specifics of how EI elicit much more cooperation and information. Did you actually read what the reports say about KSM? He was uncooperative before EI and cooperative and delivered much intelligence information after EI.
So, genius, was the ordinary interrogation used on him also ineffective? It elicited basically nothing, if the reports are accurate. If your muddle-headed view were adopted, you would ask one friendly question, get no answer, and stop, becaues it “didn’t work.” Good plan.
You are deluded if you think there will be war crimes prosecutions. Oh, you nutjobs would like to see it, but even Holder and Obama know how preposterous the idea is.
“Is there anything that can persuade Hayes to tilt his lance in the direction of those sources, rather than at this poor, beseiged blog?”
Hayes wants to talk about you, not the subject, because he knows he’s wrong.
Duh.
quaterback,
You have clearly established that you are the ultimate authority on ignorance, so I guess I should defer to you.
My definition of torture? I would start with what the Red Cross defines as torture, since according the Geneva Convention, it is that body whose definition counts. By that standard, waterboarding, as well as the most recent revelations in the recently released CIA IG report fit the definition of torture.
Aside from being a law abiding, patriotic American, I am a devout Christian who believes that torture is antithetical to the teachings of Jesus Christ. Whom would Jesus torture? I’d love to read your thesis on that topic.
Actually, you are either lying or simply misinformed in your assertions about KSM. His pre torture interrogators have stated repeatedly that all meaningful intelligence came about via the use of standard, legal, and humane efforts. They further stated that once the torture began, the actionable intelligence ceased. Your portrayal is simply fictional.
Thank you for conferring the title of genius upon me. You have no idea how proud it makes me.
When we succumb to our animal passions and engage in torture it debases us and makes us like those whom we say we revile. Up until the Bush administration, we did not torture. Now we are numbered among the nations that engage(d) in torture: Nazi Germany, Hirohito’s Japan, the Soviet Union, North Korea, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, apartheid South Africa, etc. These should not be whom we seek to emulate.
However, all other arguments aside, the biggest problem with your acceptance of torture is that it endangers our troops. The next time one of our troops is captured, you can bet that the likelihood that they will be tortured just went up exponentially.
Somehow, I don’t think you’ll change your mind. I am just glad that your position represents a small minority of the electorate. How hard it must be for you to realize that this country is moving toward the left politically. Suck it up. You will survive just fine. I promise that President Obama won’t engage in the wholesale suspension of civil liberties that President Bush did.
War crimes charges in this country may not happen. If more evidence of criminal behavior in the Bush administration continues to emerge, there may be criminal charges brought against someone. It would also not surprise me if war crimes indictments were not handed down in other countries. It might not mean much here, but it could keep these criminals from traveling.
I am content to have you simply torture logic to your heart’s content. However, our days as a nation that tortures is over; there are too many Americans who do not support this barbarity to allow it to continue.
Oh, I almost forgot: bite me.
Greg,
As to Hayes tilting his lance in your direction, why worry? I would hazard a guess that his lance is flaccid and especially dull tipped.
Gasman:
“Aside from being a law abiding, patriotic American, I am a devout Christian who believes that torture is antithetical to the teachings of Jesus Christ.
. . .
Oh, I almost forgot: bite me.”
Yes, I can see you are.
I didn’t ask your definition of torture. I asked which EITs were torture. In your diatribe, you didn’t answer that question. I doubt you even know what the techniques were that you are talking about. Your “reasoning” is a giant tautology. You assume everything is torture.
“Now we are numbered among the nations that engage(d) in torture: Nazi Germany, Hirohito’s Japan, the Soviet Union, North Korea, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, apartheid South Africa, etc.”
That is possibly the most ludicrous statement I’ve seen anyone make on the topic, which is a high achievement.
I assume you are relying on the testimony of a KSM interrogator to Congress. Apparently it escaped your notice that his narrative has been completely discredited by the documents released. If you read the reports, you know your statements are false.
“I am just glad that your position represents a small minority of the electorate.”
You are also obviously ignorant of public opinion. Polling shows a large majority support the use of harsh techniques you claim are torture. Right or wrong, that is public opinion. You are in the tiny minority who think that sacrificing American lives is worth not discomfiting a mass murderer.
“However, all other arguments aside, the biggest problem with your acceptance of torture is that it endangers our troops. The next time one of our troops is captured, you can bet that the likelihood that they will be tortured just went up exponentially.”
AQ terrorists cut off people’s heads with butcher knives and publish the videos. Nothing that was done in the EI program threatens to make the situation worse.
“War crimes charges in this country may not happen. If more evidence of criminal behavior in the Bush administration continues to emerge, there may be criminal charges brought against someone.”
Keep smoking the crack and entertaining paranoid delusions. You wouldn’t be able to demonstrate or even identify a war crime by Bush or Cheney if your life depended on it. Like the rest of the deranged left, you left sanity behind long ago.
“I promise that President Obama won’t engage in the wholesale suspension of civil liberties that President Bush did.”
Perhaps you though civil liberties were suspended because of the secured asylum you apparently were removed to for your BDS. If not, it appears you should be in one.
I won’t even go into Obama’s assaults on civil liberties, since your detachment from reality makes it impossible for you to process.
And, by the way, you also never explained how your standard for “effective” interrogation applies to traditional methods. Right, because what you said was totally absurd. Interrogation turns out not to be like getting your car repaired. Imagine that.
quarterback,
As to what I would enumerate as torture, what part of “waterboarding” don’t you understand? I would also add mock executions, threatened rape, and threatened death and/or rape of family members as clearly defined acts of torture. I don’t assume everything is torture, but do include the acts listed above. As you’ve done repeatedly in this thread, you demand answers and when they are provided you ignore them. You engage in the basest sort of sophistry, but do so in an ham fisted manner. Lame.
But, quarterback has spoken. QED.
“mock executions, threatened rape, and threatened death and/or rape of family members”
None of which are legally sanctioned EITs.
???
I have known Dick Cheney since he first came to Washington in December, 1968. He was a liar from almost that first day and in every circumstance that I have encountered him since that time he has continued to lie!
“mock executions, threatened rape, and threatened death/and or rape of family members” Gasman’s partial list of EITs.
“None of which are legally sanctioned EITs” sbj’s response.
Just what ARE the legally santioned EITs, if I may ask? Or do you have to kill me if you tell me?
The fact is, ALL of the methods mentioned by Gasman have been used by the CIA during interrogations; waterboarding was also used by the CIA. It and all the other methods are illegal according to the Geneva Conventions, to which WE are legally bound since all treaties, once approved by the Senate become, as per the Constitution, the law of land. Therefore, if the Geneva Conventions say it is illegal to waterboard someone or use the techniques mentioned by Gasman, then it is illegal and all the posing and posturing by Cheney, Yoo and the rest of that absolutist-loving troop of genitalia-impaired yahoos won’t make it legal.
As if they even care…
quarterback,
I forgot to ask. Do you identify yourself as Christian? If so, I would care you to answer my previous question as to whom Jesus would torture?
My saying “bite me” is not nearly the disqualification for Christianity that is your support of torture. However, I really would like to see your theological arguments in support of torture.
I find it curious that you rage against those who don’t answer the questions you pose to your satisfaction – as if we bore some requirement to do so – yet you feel fully justified in ignoring questions that are posed to you. Why the double standard?
Silly me. You won’t answer that.
sbj: “Reasonable people can – and do – disagree about the morality of using EITs. But only the most accomplished resister could continue to claim that they were not effective.
“When one gives up more intelligence after the application of EITs then one can conclude that they are effective.”
First, if you’re going to quote Stephen Hayes directly, as the first graph does, you should provide attribution. There are supposed to be rules about that…
Second, it’s simply not true that “only the most accomplished resistor” can claim that they were not effective. The “I did X, then Y happened, therefore X caused Y” is a causal fallacy. More is needed to reach that conclusion. Even the report itself says we don’t know if the techniques were the causal agent, or even if they were, which ones were. Hayes’s claim that no one can deny their effectiveness doesn’t make his claim true.
As to the main point regarding whether the memos back up what Cheney “said,” it depends on what one thinks he said. Greg has posted statements where Cheney strongly implies the efficacy of EITs. Others say that Cheney never explicitly said EITs produced the information.
But let’s work backwards from the memos. If the memos support whatever claim one thinks Cheney actually made, then what he said was so trivial that we shouldn’t be spending so much time on it. The memos don’t say much if anything about the efficacy of EITs. Cheney’s defenders point to a single line in the memo to create a timeline but cannot attribute cause–which even Cheney has not done.
Cheney’s own statement doesn’t say the EITs elicited the information. I’ll post it again: “The documents released Monday clearly demonstrate that the individuals subjected to Enhanced Interrogation Techniques provided the bulk of intelligence we gained about al Qaeda.” http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474977787488 Notably, he doesn’t claim that the EITs actually elicited the information. If he thought the documents said that, why wouldn’t he himself had said so?
But if he’s not making that claim but some far lesser one, then whatever his claim was was fairly trivial to begin with, and we’ve all been wasting our time discussing it.
Gasman,
I am fascinated that you brandish your devout Christian faith as a basis for your political position, especially in this forum. I suspect you wouldn’t tolerate a conservative similarly trying to impose his faith on the country. But in any event, my faith isn’t relevant to the discussion and isn’t your business. I didn’t ask you about yours; you volunteered as some vain badge of moral superiority.
I haven’t said anything about supporting torture. Some things you consider torture and “always illegal” I would definitely support in some circumstances. So would vast majorities of the public. But this discussion has been about whether EITs were effective. I know that sticking to the point isn’t a left-wing trait.
Your other question, who would Jesus torture, is a meaningless rhetorical indulgence. Just your moral vanity expressing itself, with all the forensic substance of a belch. Who would Jesus interrogate? Who would he handcuff? Who would he kill in battle? Who would he shoot to prevent a violent crime? They are meaningless questions. Jesus knew people’s secrets supernaturally, according to the Bible. I suppose he might use that power if he needed information from a terrorist. Is that what you are suggesting for our interrogators? No, I don’t expect and answer.
Your question is also fatuous because, as you have proved, you in fact don’t even know what practices you are talking about. Commenter sbj called it: When I asked you to identify the EITs you claim were torture, you named waterboarding and then a list of other methods that were NOT EITs. To the extent they were used, they were NOT part of the authorized EI program. You once again have no idea what you are talking about when you make wild accusation of war crimes and torture.
That is why I asked you the question — to probe the basis for your glib accusation that “EIT is Cheney-speak for torture.” You’re absolutely right, you don’t have to answer any questions at all. But when you show up and start hurling accusations like that and calling me a moral Lilliputian and obfuscator, you might have sense enough to expect questions about probe the basis for your claims. And if you choose to answer and reveal your ignorance, or decline to answer because you know you are caught, sorry but that is what happens when you speak before you think.
Here, it turns out you have no basis for your accusation because you don’t even know what the EITs were that you are condemning. It’s habitual with you leftists. Facts mean nothing to you. By the way, you also declared all the methods mentioned in the released reports torture and always illegal, meaning that you call being exposed to cigar smoke, among other things, torture.
Check yourself for hatred and rage, devout Christian. I didn’t judge you disqualified as a Christian. But I noted that your vulgar epithet wasn’t consistent with your claim that you are one. I question whether someone as filled with hatred and rage as you, and as prolific and vitriolic a false witness as you, really is a devout Christian, but that isn’t for me to judge.
I demolished the rest of your wild claims in my previous post. That reduced you to name calling. So I think everyone can see now what you are really made of.
dsimon,
For the record, my problems with what I believe are Greg’s misrepresentations of Cheney’s statements are just about and perhaps not primarily about whether Cheney said the EITs or the program as a whole was effective, etc.
Greg also repeatedly exaggerated or flat out misrepresented the strength of the statements Cheney made, i.e., how definitive the memos were. Now, this was a silly fabrication in my view, because, as I have said several times, Cheney’s whole point was to urge release of the memos to the public. So he lied about what they said? The whole accusation is a bit absurd.
And so, now, built on these exaggerations, Greg and you and others are claiming Cheney lied because the memos aren’t “definitive” proof. I have no intention of rehasing it any more, but you are really applying a totally unrealistic standard of “proof.” You seem to want something equivalent to a mathematical proof, or something excluding all other possibilities, showing that EITs, without any possible influence from any other factors, obtained critical information that directly prevented thousands of deaths, AND proof it couldn’t have been obtained any other way.
This is silly in my view, and the reports provide as much proof as anyone could expect about a matter like this. Cheney was right. You should accept reality.
meant to say “not just about”
“We’ve all been wasting our time discussing it.”
Precisely. I’ve got nothing better to do! Us crazy folk have simply been trying to correct Greg’s misrepresentation. You reiterate the point that I’ve been making repeatedly.
As far as the quote without retribution. Get real! I have repeatedly used the same quote – I don’t provide attribution every time. No one here thinks I tried to pass that off as my own. C’mon now!
dsimon – you, indeed, are a very accomplished resistor.
@doug: We are talking about EITs and folks here are repeatedly conflating the documented abuses with the legal procedures. Here they are:
1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.
2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.
3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.
4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.
5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.
6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.
After reading all the comments by Quarterback and sbj, I wouldhave to say that they are bigger liars than Dick Cheney. Hell, even Bill Clinton’s parsing the definition of “is” is reasonable compared to Quaterback’s illogical reasoning!
There I was, minding my own business, reading Andrew Sullivan’s blog, and wham! Now I’m caught in this gasman vs. quarterback fight! Such vanity! Such pathos! Now I have the urge to watch Ultimate Fight Club! C’mon, gasman, fire one back!
Hitting the sauce tonight, tom?
Heh, that gave me a laugh, tanstaaf. Don’t know your alliegances, but well played.
qb: “This is silly in my view, and the reports provide as much proof as anyone could expect about a matter like this. Cheney was right. You should accept reality.”
Here’s another reality: you and co-religionist sbj have just spent hours dutifully carrying water for Stephen Hayes, who just so happens to dutifully carry water for Dick Cheney. Which makes you a sycophant torture apologist, once removed. There’s something to be proud of.
qb: “Polling shows a large majority support the use of harsh techniques you claim are torture. Right or wrong, that is public opinion. You are in the tiny minority who think that sacrificing American lives is worth not discomfiting a mass murderer.”
Here you reveal yourself to be a disingenuous partisan hack. The word “discomfiting” comes nowhere near describing waterboarding, extreme stress positions, prolonged sleep deprivation, lying in one’s own urine/feces, etc.
Furthermore, you posit the Hobson’s choice of either torturing or sacrificing lives to mass murderers. In making such a bold statement, it seems you would be willing to hold yourself to the same high standard of proof you demand for Sargent. Give us examples, or at least some evidence thereof. Alas such a standard is not present in your apparent ongoing endeavor to graduate to the level of online Cheney bootlicker.
As for your beloved public opinion polls allegedly endorsing torture by “vast majorities of the public”, this is surely a much worse misrepresentation than anything of which you’ve accused Sargent. At best, from the neocon pro-torture POV, a majority would support torture in extremely rare circumstances, like the oft-cited, never-happens ticking time bomb scenario. In actuality, much of the polling on the matter is ambiguous; it’s doubtful that majorities would approve of treatment which leads to severe psychological trauma, and in some cases death.
quarterback,
What hatred and rage have I displayed? I take exception with your vitriolic screed and that is evidence of hatred and rage? You flatter yourself. Why the inflated hyperbole to characterize any and all who have the unmitigated audacity to disagree with you? It is the height of intellectual sloth to so consistently demonize your opponents merely because of differences in opinion. You make assumptions about me that you cannot possible sustain via any available evidence. You don’t appear to be stupid, so I am wondering why the cheap and facile ad hominem attacks?
I reject your premise of referring to torture as EITs. You engage in this bit of self serving casuistry by refusing to call torture what it is. You can call murder, rape, or pedophilia by any other name, but that nullify the depravity of the acts and cannot justify those who countenance of such behavior. The parsing of nomenclature will not cleanse the underlying acts of their insidious dehumanizing violence for both the tortured and the torturer.
You assert that torture works. Not only do I contend that it doesn’t, I defy you to produce any evidence that supports your contention, from a source other than the Cheney/Bush administration, whose motives are not above reproach on this subject. Every single person with interrogation experience that I have heard on this issue – current or former CIA, FBI, or military interrogators unanimously deny the effectiveness of torture. Quite the contrary, they all said that it produces useless information of no measurable value because torture victims will say anything in order to make the torture stop. Consult Sen. John McCain’s testimony regarding his coerced “confession” at the hands of the North Vietnamese. The sole “evidence” of the effectiveness of torture comes from those within the Bush administration. Self serving indeed.
Again, if it is so effective, why did it have to be applied nearly 200 times to a single individual? That hardly seems to be a convincing argument as to its efficacy.
You trot out the reasoning that because it polls well, we should torture. If pedophilia or slavery polled well, would that justify their use? I also suspect that you would offer no such justification for any liberal ideas which happened to poll at even higher numbers than any supposed support for torture, say of a public healthcare option. I suspect that such supposed pro torture poll data would evaporate without euphemistic references – EITs – to torture. Call it what it is and you won’t get majority support. But simply stating that because it polls well, therefore, it justifies its use is ridiculous. I’ve got news for you: there was a time in this country when slavery polled extremely well. You could also argue as to its economic effectiveness. Neither scenario made it morally acceptable, however. Neither is torture ever acceptable. The fact that you cannot even call it what all but the most ardent Cheney/Bush apologists do – torture – makes me suspect that you recognize the untenability of your own argument.
I am more than content to abide by the judgement of history regarding my stance in absolute opposition to torture. Up until about eight years ago, no self respecting American would have ever condoned such loathsome barbarity. It took the the moral relativism of Cheney to abrogate more than 230 years of our sense of national decency and character. Not only has it not made us safer, it has made us demonstrably less safe. Military interrogator Matthew Alexander (pseudonym) stated that time and again detainees stated that their main motivation for taking up arms against the U.S. was because of the abuses of Abu Ghraib and our willingness to torture. We abdicated any sense of moral superiority that we might have been able to level against the Islamic extremists. And for what?
I bring up my faith merely because when discussing torture, I have heard far too many ostensibly good Christians loudly proclaim their support for this vile and odious practice. I can find no consistency between a proclaimed faith in the “Prince of Peace” and support of cruel and inhumane treatment of our fellow men. As a stated tenet of Christianity is the availability of Christ’s grace for all who are willing to believe, I find such support for terror to be a bit of cognitive dissonance that cannot be sustained with a professed belief in Jesus Christ. Given your evasion of my question, I suspect that I’ve hit a little close to home and you know that there is no way to square that circle.
But I guess that you make up the rules here. QED.
Bobsmith, I’m not even going to bother to respond to your incoherent rant.
Gasman, you are possibly the least self-aware polemicist I’ve come across. You really need to look in the mirror. Look at your own rhetoric. Look at your lies, more of which I will show you below. For someone with your penchant for vulgar put downs, rhetorical excess, and vituperation to “take exception” to a “vitriolic screed” is a supreme act of hypocrisy. Gasman, the “devout Christian” who closes his thoughtful entry bragging about his faith with that well-known Christian salutation, “Bite me.” Indeed. You are a fraud.
EIT is not my term. Since as we have established you are unfamiliar with the very documents you are here pontificating and declaiming about, let me fill you in. It isn’t a euphemism I made up. It was a term used for certain interrogation techniques authorized after legal review, and to which Dick Cheney referred in some of his statements. They include the “attention grab,” which is forcefully grabbing someone’s collar, in addition to waterboarding, and a few others, all with detailed parameters. You, without even knowing what you were talking about, denounced all EITs “torture” and anyone who would defend Cheney’s claims that they were effective as a moral Lillipution, etc. Again, very Christian of you. Then you proved you had no idea what EITs even were. You should go acquaint yourself with some relevant facts before you start making declarations and denunciations.
“You assert that torture works.” That is a lie, and you are a serial liar. I don’t think Jesus lied. The rest of your “it doesn’t work” tirade is just another recitation of talking points we have addressed before. They are simple-minded half truths that only betray an inability or unwillingness to confront complex issues or do so honestly.
“You trot out the reasoning that because it polls well, we should torture.”
That is another lie, made worse by your grotesque diversion into slavery and pedophilia. You condescendingly informed me that “I am just glad that your position represents a small minority of the electorate.” I corrected you: “Polling shows a large majority support the use of harsh techniques you claim are torture. Right or wrong, that is public opinion.” You are either incapable or unwilling to recognize basic logical distinctions. It really doesn’t matter to me which. Again, you are a liar who makes malicious and dishonest accusations.
I didn’t evade your question about my faith. I directly rejected it. You are entitled to whatever opinions you want about what Jesus’ position would be on EITs and Dick Cheney and terrorists. But I see you are not only serially bearing false witness, and demonstrating hatred and malice, but presuming to judge who can be a Christian, which turns out to depend on whether they agree with you.
No, Gasman, you haven’t “hit a little close to home.” If you believe nothing else I say, believe that the last thing in the world I would ever consider in examining myself would be anything that you have to say about Christianity or morality or anthing else. The Bible says Christians can be known by their fruit, right. What I have seen from you is fruit that is hateful, vengeful, vile, vain, pompous, and dishonest, just to name a few things. Maybe you are a Christian. Your words have nothing of Christ in them, and I shudder for all Christians that you are presenting yourself as their example.
I won’t respond further to you or likely even read another response, because your ravings are repulsive and disturbing.
If these techniques are so effective then why do we not use them here in the United States on all criminal suspects? Why are the police not allowed to strip all suspects, put them in a diaper, handcuff them with their hands above their head in a 50 degree room with the lights on and heavy metal blaring for 4 days and then question them? Why don’t we continue this for months until we get the answers we want? Think of all the crimes that would be solved.
“EIT” is the right wing’s co-option of the Nazi term for the same torture techniques. The Nazi term (Verschaerfte Vehrnemung) was deliberately used to classify those techniques the Gestapo felt they could get away with because they left no physical scars.
That any American – ANY so-called American – could imagine our government adopting such measures is beyond belief. That Cheney would install such in our government as a standard protocol is testament by itself that he belongs in jail.
There is nothing more to be said.
quarterback,
Again with the “hateful,” and now “vengeful,” “vile,” “spiteful,” and “vulgar put downs” added for good measure. All this for “bite me?”
Dude, you are in need of some remedial education as to what does and does not constitute vulgarity. On a vulgarity scale rating 1-10, “bite me” registers at about 0.5.
Keep on posting. Your titanic overreactions are actually rather amusing. Make sure you’re up to date on your blood pressure medication, however. You appear to be coming unglued.
Greg, you’re in a pissing duel with skunks. F–k these lying,obfuscating wingnut troll retards. They’re trying to annoy distract you with their bullsh-t circular “logic” (yeah, right) from the important work you’re doing, and from the national service you provide. Don’t let ‘em. Again, F–K these ******* Cheney apologists and torture-loving POS’s. I hope them and every member of their families wind up being “enhanced interrogated” to within an inch of their miserable lives.
God, you’re ALL corndogs when you comment like this. But especially the two passive-aggressive sadists, who are all: “Oh, we don’t like torture, but we hope the bad guys get tortured, because they would torture us for sure if they could, eek, haven’t you seen the head-chopping videos???”
This is macho b.s. I’ve seen the head-chopping videos. They don’t scare me. Really, they don’t. THEY ARE NOT THE ATTACKS ON AMERICA, UNLESS WE LET THEM BE. Let’s talk about this over coffee, and see how long it takes you Cheney-heads to use the word “caliphate.” Oh, I’ve seen the head-chopping videos, and I don’t this they are as effective in the Middle East, even, as you think they are. (Please, AQ, more head-chopping videos. Sick, I know.)
But they do get Pam Geller worked up. Which, in turn gets the wackos hot.
I’ve also seen lots of evidence of what the detention environment was like for all manner of prisoners and detainees. It’s vile stuff. Not harsh, not wartime-harsh. Vile. VILE. What sticks out, but gets lost, is the lack of outrage from those in charge. They didn’t really care. I’m pretty sure they did worse than not care, but that’s really above my pay grade. Caring, in a politician, I have as my duty to judge.
Talking about specific details of secret programs in the comment sections of blogs does not interest me. Go ahead, scream about murky details in such a way as as to intimidate the compassionate, and make more room for your violence and fear. It’s a good idea, for you, to say that your violence is for the purpose of stopping greater violence. Go ahead, and if your political allies return to power, please go ahead and get ready for lots more war and torture. The alternative is unknown. And will always be.
Jesus, morality, law, blah, blah, blah. Whatever. I know this **** when I see it.
That is all.
quarterback: “Keep smoking the crack and entertaining paranoid delusions. You wouldn’t be able to demonstrate or even identify a war crime by Bush or Cheney if your life depended on it. Like the rest of the deranged left, you left sanity behind long ago….That is a lie, and you are a serial liar….Just your moral vanity expressing itself, with all the forensic substance of a belch.”
“For someone with your penchant for vulgar put downs, rhetorical excess, and vituperation to “take exception” to a “vitriolic screed” is a supreme act of hypocrisy.”
I think the quarterback doth protest too much the uncivil tone of others. Anyone else thinking passive-aggressiveness and projection?
tom: “Hell, even Bill Clinton’s parsing the definition of “is” is reasonable compared to Quaterback’s illogical reasoning!”
You won’t get much logic from those who vicariously lick Cheney’s boots by defending him online. You might, however, get some legalisms thrown in because this is how the monstrous brutality of torture gets watered down for mass digestion.
To sentient beings torture is an indefensible atrocity, along the lines of rape, murder, genocide, cannibalism, etc. It is so thoroughly dehumanizing that it cannot be rationalized, and the revulsion to it crosses nearly all cultural boundaries.
Torture is torture no matter it’s form, and to claim otherwise, once it is revealed that one has engaged in torture, doesn’t ameliorate or justify it’s application. IMO, it points to a tendency on behalf of those who torture to think of themselves as human, and to think of those they torture as being somehow a member of another species other than that of Homo sapien. This nation can either accept or reject that, under our national leaders in the previous administration, we tortured individuals. Doing the former could lead to a restoration of our reputation as a nation whose word can be trusted. The latter consigns us to a future of deserved derision and uncooperative behavior from the other nations of the world. The question here is not what Cheney said, but what are we going to do about it? We tortured people. Fairly easy to understand. The effectiveness of torture? Not as important as some in this country would like for us to believe. The U.S. violated national and international law. Plain and simple. Any endorsement for employing torture under any condition by any government official is a crime.
Dear Stephen Hayes,
Please continue to send your readers over here.
Thanks.
quarterback: “Greg and you and others are claiming Cheney lied because the memos aren’t “definitive” proof. I have no intention of rehasing it any more, but you are really applying a totally unrealistic standard of “proof.” You seem to want something equivalent to a mathematical proof, or something excluding all other possibilities, showing that EITs, without any possible influence from any other factors, obtained critical information that directly prevented thousands of deaths, AND proof it couldn’t have been obtained any other way.”
Not at all. I’m just looking at what the documents actually say, and examining whether they say what Cheney said they would say (if we can figure that out), and what Cheney says they say.
Again, Cheney’s supporters rest their defense on a single line that a detainee became more cooperative after waterboarding. But the report itself refuses to make a causal connection, saying there are other plausible causes. Taking the report at face value, all we know is that sometime after waterboarding, there was some degree of additional cooperation. But it evidently wasn’t after the first waterboarding, or the second, or the rest would have been unnecessary. So how do we know whether the waterboarding was the major factor? As the report says, the simple fact of being detained (in what were pretty surely uncomfortable circumstances) also may have had an effect over time. Or the continued application of regular interrogation techniques. Why privilege a preferred explanation over these others, which also seem quite plausible?
This is not a request for any kind of mathematical proof. It shows that one simply cannot conclude with any degree of confidence that EITs were a causal factor in whatever degree of cooperation that occurred during their application because there were a lot of other things going on at the same time. To conclude otherwise is, I think, to assume facts not in evidence.
The person with the most interest in drawing a strong inference is Cheney himself. But Cheney didn’t do it. So perhaps his defenders are claiming that Cheney doesn’t know what the memos say as much as the rest them do. That would seem to be an odd position, though, since his defenders would essentially have to argue that Cheney himself is wrong about what the memos say.
sbj: “As far as the quote without retribution [sic]. Get real! I have repeatedly used the same quote – I don’t provide attribution every time. No one here thinks I tried to pass that off as my own.”
I did a quick search. The quote was used twice in this thread without any attribution. I thought it was yours until I realized I had seen it before. I’m just advising more care; there are new people coming into the discussion all the time.
Also, please see my prior post on what we can “conclude” from the before/after argument. I just don’t think it holds up.
ahem. The Washington Post today published a story which agrees with Hayes and disputes Sargent. See: “How a Detainee Became an Asset”, Washington Post, Aug. 29. So there’s the major msm player Mr. Sargent first called for. What to say now?Like I said with Holder’s decision to kill the Richardson investigation while still pontificating about the rule of law, sometimes it appears these stories are timed to deliberately cut supporters off at the knees.Anyway, given that Mr. Sargent’s own paper concedes the point, it might be best to drop this.
arthurize, that’s all post hoc fallacy according to dsimon. But, yeah, if they can’t give it up after reading that, they are without hope.
dsimon, your last post speaks for itself in confirming what I said. Given the nature of the subject matter, no evidence could ever satsify you. In that case, you should just say that. Like today’s article says, “scientific” proof isn’t possible, and for you nothing else suffices. It has to exclude all other possibilities but EI.
By the same token, it follows from your position that it is impossible to reach any conclusions all why KSM or another detainee provided any information at any time. We are doomed to live in ignorance of how to obtain information. Indeed, from your perspective we must regard the flow of information as nothing more than random occurences we have no way to explain.
We know in KSM’s case that he is documented to have become a veritable encyclopedia of intelligence information after EI. Before EI, a very different story.
On your view, we can’t privilege any conceivable reason why he talked. It could have been EI, ordinary interrogation months earlier, duration of time, or an infinite number of other reasons. Perhaps he had a change of heart and repented from terror. Perhaps he thought he could persuade his captors to his cause. Perhaps he experienced a delusion that made him think he was talking to AQ. Perhaps he received a note from his mom telling him to talk. We can’t know. And we can go down that reductio path with your position forever.
Someone used the term solipsism in responding to you, and I think he was right. You are effectively just denying that we can know anything. If it isn’t that, it is an extreme form of epistemological pessimism that amounts to the same thing, and appears to me to be politically driven, because you want Cheney and Bush and whatever happened under them to be tarnished. If you are right, we should stop all interrogation, because we have no basis to believe it serves any purpose.
By the way, facts not in evidence is a technical evidentiary objection having nothing to do with this discussion. A jury would look at the facts of KSM and easily conclude EI “worked,” just as they would recognize 2+2=4. You have previously put full faith in juries to decide what was reasonable for interrogators to do, so you can’t really have any objection to that standard.
And, you keep saying “Cheney’s defenders” rely on a single line about a single detainee. Please, that is just not the case, and you know it isn’t. I previously posted a reference where anyone can go to read an example. I am not going to bother to go find it again.
I find it somewhat amazing that all of Cheney’s apologists, who seem absolutely frantic to get everyone else to acknowledge the efficacy of torture, have consistently ignored the statements of Matthew Alexander and other interrogators of the detainees in question. Nobody in this entire process had a better vantage point from which to judge the effectiveness of torture. To a man, they maintain that torture does not work, did not work, and will not work. They were in a position to witness what information emerged and when it emerged, and they still maintain that no actionable intelligence was obtained via torture.
Who disputes this? Only Cheney and those who lobbied hard for the use of this dishonorable practice or were themselves active in its application. They have a long track record to date of lying about the use of torture. Why should we believe them now? The very fact that they chose to lie about the practice from the start is a clear indication that they knew it to be morally inexcusable and illegal. If, as they now maintain, it was heroic and saved lives, why did they not openly lobby for torture? Why did they hide their “heroism?” Why did they seek to blame the lowest ranking reservists and National Guard enlisted personnel, the supposed “few bad apples?” Let us not forget the destruction of the videotapes of these torture sessions. If this was seminal to the defense of the nation, why destroy them? It simply does not add up. These are not the actions of people who believe their actions heroic.
It is clear that Cheney and his loyalists are desperately trying to evade responsibility for their criminal behavior. They have tried to cloak their actions and distance themselves from their handiwork for seven years. Now that it is no longer possible to deny their involvement, they claim that it was effective and heroic. Nonsense.
Cheney has displayed a consistent and deep abiding indifference to the Constitution, the rule of law, and the underlying assumption that “all men are created equal.” He has made a mockery of our core values and has cheapened our national sense of character. How anyone could spend time defending this loathsome traitor is beyond comprehension.
Gasman, your words are those of the Father of Lies.
quarterback,
I have no idea what you are talking about. I am quite glad that you represent a very small, very disturbed minority in this country. The torturing has stopped and it will not resume, no matter how frequent or irrational your bizarre rants. Thankfully, a greater measure of justice and respect for the law seem to have returned to our country.
Cheney certainly engaged in some rhetorical overreach today on Fox News Sunday:
Crediting EITs for saving the nation from further big attacks should be hard for any non-Cheney loyalist to accept.
SRS
Andy McCarthy puts it well:
“Obviously, there is still a principled argument to be made that the nation should not engage in such practices. But the burden of making it in a principled way should be to say: “While this is an excruciating choice, it would be better for thousands of Americans to be killed than to allow the CIA to use non-lethal coercive tactics (that cause no lasting physical or mental damage) on a terrorist who refuses to tell us what he knows about ongoing mass-murder plots.”
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NGRjODQ3MGIyMDA5OGUyNTE5ZmZmZjdiMzM4ZjAxNWY=
One way to describe the reactions of Hayes and others to the IG’s report is that they’re mistaking correlation for causation. Given all the stresses the prisoners were under, it’s simply impossible for anyone except a mind-reading telepath to know whether the EITs were necessary to gain the information from any given prisoner at a certain point in time. Pro-torture patriots can make all the inferences they want, but there will never be proof. There will never be controlled studies to test the efficacy of a given EIT, obviously, and there’s abundant evidence that, with detainees in general, the conversational approaches are more effective in gaining information.
Another thing to consider is the effects that EITs have on the interrogators. Over time, do they become numb to the effects that the EITs have on the detainees, do they begin to enjoy the effects, or do they rely on psychotherapy to deal with inner pain? The interrogators aren’t robots, and the possibility that use of EITs is creating a cadre or soulless sadists is troubling.
SRS
“There will never be controlled studies to test the efficacy of a given EIT, obviously, and there’s abundant evidence that, with detainees in general, the conversational approaches are more effective in gaining information.”
Complete fabrication.
Shorter Stahl: Rational conclusions about why any detainee gives information are impossible.
Necessary conclusion: There is no rational basis to interrogate.
Stahl, btw, your statement is self-contradictory.
quarterback: “Indeed, from your perspective we must regard the flow of information as nothing more than random occurences we have no way to explain.”
No, that’s not it at all. What I am asking is why one is privileging one explanation over other plausible explanations.
Cheney’s defenders who want to draw the causal connection between EITs and the elicitation of allegedly vital information. Those people are seemingly drawing on a before/after argument. But that argument, as the report itself states, could be applied to other factors as well. After all, waterboarding didn’t seem to work on the first several tries, otherwise it’s hard to see why they continued. So I’m simply questioning why one explanation should be privileged over the others. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable question to ask, and I don’t think it’s been satisfactorily answered.
“you want Cheney and Bush and whatever happened under them to be tarnished.”
If we broke our own laws, then yes. Wouldn’t you?
I’m perfectly willing to credit them with good things, such as the anti-AIDS initiative in Africa. The “war exception” to the Bill of Rights? Not so much.
I haven’t gone into your motives; I don’t think it’s productive. Let’s stick to the issues.
Getting back to the OP, what I do think is very possible, if not fairly evident, is that the memos don’t say what Cheney thought they would say. As I posted above, Cheney doesn’t always remember what he himself said, even when it was on a highly controversial topic at the time. (He said prior to the Iraq war that it was “pretty well confirmed” that a meeting had taken place between al-Qaeda and Iraqi operatives in Prague, and then a few years later denied ever having said that (though even I remembered him saying it)). I’m not saying he lied in his denial, only that he doesn’t remember everything accurately.
So it’s conceivable that he also didn’t remember what these reports actually said either, which is why his own statement on those reports made only the weakest inferences from them. Again, it’s speculation on my part, but it’s strange that others are trying to draw far stronger inferences than Cheney himself has.
If we can’t “privilege” one plausible reason over another, then we cannot conclude any was the reason, including those you would prefer. End of story. Information indeed comes randomly, and we have no rational basis for choosing methods.
If we are now at the point where Cheney stands accused of having an imperfect memory, or a different but reasonable interpretation, of what the memos say, then I have indeed won this argument, and Greg’s posts were sensationalized bunk.