By
Via a reader tip comes this questions, was killing Osama Bin Laden a mistake?: John Yoo says President Obama is too afraid of the politics of Guantanamo Bay to capture and interrogate terrorists. The former George W. Bush administration lawyer, Yoo wrote the infamous torture memos used to justify the “enhanced interrogation techniques” that were a central legacy of Bush’s Global War On Terror. He now says that the killing of Osama bin Laden will go down in history as one of President Obama’s biggest national security fails. Yoo told CNN on Thursday night that the special forces team sent to kill bin Laden should have instead taken him alive and kept him as a source of future intelligence. Failing to do that, Yoo says, cost the U.S. a valuable asset. That was a mistake, Yoo says. “If they were going in with no options other than to kill him, then that’s a problem,” Yoo told CNN’s Eliot Spitzer. In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal Wednesday, Yoo wrote that shooting the unarmed bin Laden meant “one of the most valuable intelligence opportunities since the beginning of the war has slipped through our hands.” [CNN]
I have no issues with Bin Laden being killed because if he wasn’t and he was instead captured and put on trial, that we would run into a multi-year circus of ACLU lawyers defending him and giving him a platform to spread his message and incite more violence. I wouldn’t be surprised if an Al Qaeda group tried to launch a hostage taking operation with the ultimate goal of getting Bin Laden released in exchange for the hostages. So yes I think it is better that he is dead just to avoid all this nonsense. 
With that said though, Yoo does have a point. The CIA Director Leon Panetta has already confirmed with NBC News that enhanced interrogation helped lead to finding Bin Laden:
BRIAN WILLIAMS: I’d like to ask you about the sourcing on the intel that ultimately led to this successful attack. Can you confirm that it was as a result of waterboarding that we learned what we needed to learn to go after bin Laden?
LEON PANETTA: You know Brian, in the intelligence business you work from a lot of sources of information, and that was true here. We had a multiple source — a multiple series of sources — that provided information with regards to this situation. Clearly, some of it came from detainees and the interrogation of detainees. But we also had information from other sources as well. So, it’s a little difficult to say it was due just to one source of information that we got.
WILLIAMS: Turned around the other way, are you denying that waterboarding was in part among the tactics used to extract the intelligence that led to this successful mission?
PANETTA: No, I think some of the detainees clearly were, you know, they used these enhanced interrogation techniques against some of these detainees. But I’m also saying that, you know, the debate about whether we would have gotten the same information through other approaches I think is always going to be an open question.
Despite all the claims that enhanced interrogation doesn’t work, it is pretty clear that enhanced interrogation does in fact work though Panetta’s hedge at the end is a fair point. Would the Army Field Manual techniques have gotten the same information, which is what the intelligence agencies are limited to now? I doubt it but it is open to debate. It would be an interesting study if the CIA was able to compare intelligence gathered from enhanced interrogation compared to the Army Field Manual techniques they are using now against captured terrorists. Such a report is likely to never happen due to the political backlash it could cause, but none the less it world be interesting.
I think former CIA Director Michael Hayden summed up the whole enhanced interrogation debate the best with these comments:
I didn’t quite defend all the [enhanced interrogation] techniques. I certainly didn’t defend waterboarding. Remember, I said earlier [in the interview] that George Tenet made the tough decisions that I thank God I didn’t have to make. People ask me, “Well, what would you have done?” and I say, “I thank God I didn’t have to make that decision,” and that’s as far as I go. What I did was point out that whatever you may think of this, it worked and we did indeed get life-saving intelligence out of it.
So the point I would make to folks who say, “I don’t want you doing this, and it doesn’t work anyway,” I would point out, “Whoa. Stop. The front half of that sentence, you can say; that’s yours, you own that, ‘I don’t want you doing it.’ The back half of that sentence is not yours. That’s mine. And the fact is it did work. So here is the sentence you have to give. ‘Even though it may have worked, I still don’t want you doing it.’ That requires courage. That requires you going out to the American people and saying, ‘We’re looking at a tradeoff here folks, and I want you to understand the tradeoff.’” I can live with that tradeoff. I can live with the person who makes that tradeoff. Either way. That’s an honorable position. But I felt duty-bound to be true to the facts. [The Weekly Standard]
I think he is right that the honorable position to take is one of principal recognizing the tradeoffs each way of enhanced interrogation. Unfortunately most of the debate surrounding enhanced interrogation has always fallen back on whether or not you have an axe to grind against former President Bush instead of honestly debating the merits of the program. If there weren’t merits to the program than why did President Obama leave a loophole in place in his Presidential order banning enhanced interrogation? There are clearly merits to the program that even the President recognizes, but are they worth the costs?
I have always thought that waterboarding was to close to being torture to be authorized. At the same time it is important to realize it was only done on only 3 people; it wasn’t like everyone going to Gitmo was getting waterboarded. However, just waterboarding 3 people has done immense damage to the reputation of the US. Some of the other techniques such as stripping them down and using dogs I don’t think was worth the trade off either. However, some of the other techniques like making the detainees stand for a long time or playing rock music outside their cells I don’t have a problem with because it is just making life uncomfortable for them until they begin to cooperate. I also strongly believe that the military should have no place in the interrogation of these detainees; it should be solely done by professionals at the CIA under orders from the President. That would prevent some of the nonsense we seen where people were trying to prosecute CIA interrogators for doing their jobs. If interrogating someone is so important that it requires enhanced interrogation than the President should be the one solely responsible for that decision, no passing the buck.
So what do you think about Enhanced Interrogation should it authorized?
She hasn’t seen...
12:19 pm on May 7th, 2011 1
I voted against all enhanced interrogation. Whether bin Laden should have been killed depends on the exact circumstances, which I don’t know. If he had surrendered and if he then went on trial, of course that trial would be meaningless without a vigorous defense.
4:14 pm on May 7th, 2011 2
the trail and lead started as far back as 5 years ago so obvious that was enhanced interrogation and probably a large part of what they are actually letting on to be. i am sure many other standard intel analysis played its part as well but denying that waterboarding doesnt work is like saying the sky isnt blue!
6:43 pm on May 7th, 2011 3
“I have no issues with Bin Laden being killed because if he wasn’t and he was instead captured and put on trial…”
Trial? Are you kidding me? I would have made him disappear if I was Obama. No need for torture. I would have asked the help of the Russians. They have the drugs and the know-how to make people talk (do a search on SP-117).
6:54 pm on May 7th, 2011 4
No matter what happens the leftists in the media and other liberals will say it’s wrong. If the interrogators do their jobs and get valuable information that saves the lives of innocent people, the leftists in the media and liberals claim that the interrogators went too far. If a terrorist attack does take place they accuse the interrogators of not doing enough.
The interrogators know their jobs and they have saved lives. They don’t deserve all of the nonsense that has been thrown at them.
What the leftists in the media and other liberals refuse to acknowledge is that the terrorists want to kill us. They want to kill all of us and that includes civilians. There is an active element in the political left that seems to be more worried about protecting the “rights” of terrorists to kill innocent civilians.
It’s a big scary world out there. Time to grow up and stop worrying about hurting the feelings of those who have taken up arms to kill us.
7:17 pm on May 7th, 2011 5
Leon Panetta’s equivocating answer clearly is saying that enhanced interrogation probably including waterboarding was used to get the information that resulted in the operation that killed OBL. The Geneva convention & other protocols are good things & should be followed IF our enemies follow them also. But if our enemies DON’T follow those protocols such as not wearing military uniforms then we are being foolish if we follow them. For those who disagree with me please answer this question: If we knew for a fact that a certain terrorist is our custody knew of the location of a nuclear weapon that was going to be detonated if YOU were in charge of interrogating this terrorist would you use enhanced interrogation to find the weapon that could kill tens or hundreds of thousands of innocent people or not? If you say that you would NOT use those techniques then you would be complicit in those murders.
7:41 pm on May 7th, 2011 6
I forgot to add that GI Korea was exactly right that if we had captured OBL then hostage taking operations to free him would happen. The ACLU would be in the forefront of efforts to make sure that he had his rights protected. If he didn’t have his Miranda rights read to him they probably would have filed a lawsuit to have him released. As GI Korea correctly stated he would have used any trial as a platform to spread his ideology. While Mr Yoo is correct that eventually some good intelligence could have be retrieved, it would not have been worth the cost. OBL could have had a suicide vest on or had a grenade. He WAS trying to reach for a weapon. The SEAL who killed this POS had a fraction of a second to react. I wont second guess the man who WAS THERE. Good riddance Osama Bin Laden, sorry you were wrong about your 72 virgins now that you are burning in hell!
8:12 pm on May 7th, 2011 7
“The Geneva convention…”
You aren’t fighting a war against Al-Quaida since it isn’t a country. Get that shit out of your mind, enemy combatants and all that BS propaganda. And so, bringing up the Geneva convention is a moot point. Like I was saying, ship them over to the Russians. They’ll talk, no torture needed.
PS. Frankly, I wonder if Guantanamo Bay and all this talk of waterboarding are just a smokescreen, a diversion from the fact that the US may have sophisticated means to extract information as the Russians do.
8:15 pm on May 7th, 2011 8
Hell, it’s a documented fact that the US was experimenting on drugs to extract information from people (which it did successfully) as far back as the early 50′s.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKULTRA
8:18 pm on May 7th, 2011 9
Just look at the helicopter that crashed in the compound…It wasn’t supposed to exist. The funding for its development was supposedly stopped in 2004.
10:00 pm on May 7th, 2011 10
He might be alive and we could be interrogating him right now.
11:08 pm on May 7th, 2011 11
Serious question: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was supposedly received 183 “pours” during five waterboarding sessions.
Did they find the information they needed to capture Osama bin Laden from this?
I think one of the criticisms of waterboarding (and perhaps some other “enhanced” techniques) is that an enemy combatant will either (a) be trained to successfully resist or (b) say anything in order to end the torture. I think that was McCain’s argument, but he’s just a crazy foreigner.
11:10 pm on May 7th, 2011 12
Panetta fudged but other unnamed sources say that the detainees that mentioned the courier didn’t do so until some time after the enhanced interrogations were stopped.
The details are too incomplete.
11:15 pm on May 7th, 2011 13
As I stated before, he should have been sewn together with two of his friends as the middle man in the human centipede. Failing that, the other thing I know is everywhere they are in the street and mourning his passing should have become a hellfire missile target. We are at war. He never gave anyone a fair trial. He should have been dragged through the streets, wrapped in pig skin and buried in a cesspool. He got a lot better then he gave and a lot better than he deserved.We should also consider carpet bombing Pakistan.
11:16 pm on May 7th, 2011 14
P.S. Panetta is the head of the CIA. If, in his judgement, the facts were enough to exonerated their activities, he would have been more forthcoming.
12:37 am on May 8th, 2011 15
#11,
You’re basing your opinion under the assumption that they don’t have sophisticated interrogation techniques. If the US government was able to brainwash and drug Canadian mental patients in the 1950′s, just imagine what they are capable of doing nowadays. Torture is a cover-up aimed at distracting us from the secret drugs they are using.
1:07 am on May 8th, 2011 16
Kushibo #11, Your criticisms of waterboarding may be valid although I find it difficult to believe that someone could be trained to resist the lack of oxygen (the sensation of drowning that waterboarding creates) but I do know that enhanced interrogation successfully stopped a terrorist plot to blow up the Brooklyn bridge. I believe that such methods should only be used extremely rarely but as my example in comment #5 or let’s say a psycho had a girl buried in a box with a limited amount of air. In cases like that in my opinion when you have to have the information to save lives in a timely manner then you have to do what you have to do. Teadrinker, I’m sure that you are right that the CIA or MI have sophisticated interrogation techniques that the general public has no knowledge of, I’d bet you a case of Molson that those techniques would be classified as “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
1:30 am on May 8th, 2011 17
Tom Langley, do you have a link about waterboarding having stopped a Brooklyn Bridge attack?
What I’m finding online right now is that interrogation (enhanced or otherwise; it’s not clear) revealed that there had been a plot that was not carried out to sever the cables on the Brooklyn Bridge, not blow it up.
I don’t know if you’re referring to that incident, but it does not appear that enhanced interrogation foiled a plot about to go down or something.
And my understanding is people can be trained to resist waterboarding’s effect. If all goes well, one’s air passages are blocked by water and the water itself causes a gag reaction which involuntarily throws one into a panic, as if drowning. But if one can become inured to the gag reaction, it mitigates the effect, perhaps making it not effective at all.
Learning to resist one’s gag reaction or to endure it without panicking is absolutely doable. Would-be contestants on “Survivor” used to do it back when they had food challenges. I used to have a very sensitive gag reaction that threw me into a panic like I was choking back when I was a teenager getting braces: the plaster from the mold oozed onto my gag reaction, which went into overdrive and had me practically convulsing. It was terrifying and I was ready to slug Dr Chang when he said the following week they’d have to do them all over again. But I trained myself mentally for the event and got through it quite okay, even when it triggered the gag reaction again.
That doesn’t mean I could make it through waterboarding without revealing state secrets, but I do think I could endure for longer now than I might have back then.
3:11 am on May 8th, 2011 18
Spock said it best.. “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or one”. Pass me the bottle of evian..
5:58 am on May 8th, 2011 19
There seems to be a lot of misunderstandings about Enhanced Interrogation. They don’t use it to get specific information. They use EI to coerce detainees to cooperate. When using EI they only ask them questions that the interrogators already know the answers to, to judge their level of cooperation:
EI works the debate should be around if it is worth costs.
6:48 am on May 8th, 2011 20
The only people who are upset about ObL’s death are his friends and cow-workers.
The argument that waterboarding is “torture” is specious. It makes one very uncomfortable but does not cause physical harm.
By that definition, the USA tortures every aircrew member during training. By that definition, high school coaches torture their teams. By that definition, most parents torture their kids when they refuse to buy everything the kid wants at that moment.
The argument that it was illegal is equally ridiculous. The Conventions at the Hague and Geneva specifically EXCLUDE people like ObL who do not meet the definition of legal combatant. Read them. On your own time.
Happy Mothers’ Day.
12:32 pm on May 8th, 2011 21
setnaffa wrote:
I know a lot of people who are not at all upset about OBL’s death (except insofar that he might have been an intelligence asset if he were alive), but they have been dismayed by the celebratory mood. Rather than worrying about offending al Qaeda or Muslims in general (every Muslim I’ve talked to since is happy or relieved he’s dead), they are concerned that us as a nation being so gleeful about the death of a person — any person — means we have died a little.
Depending on which definition you use, it includes both physical and mental suffering. To wit: it doesn’t have to be just physical and it doesn’t have to inflict damage in order to be torture.
I think you’re the one who’s gliding into specious territory. Intent and purpose play a major part when separating an enemy combatant versus one’s own soldier or a player on one’s team. And yes, depending on how severe and for what purpose, it is conceivable that military trainees or kids on a high school sports team might be subjected to torture by an errant superior or coach.
As for the kids, you’re confusing irritation with anguish.
Okay, but are they illegal according to US law?
12:52 pm on May 8th, 2011 22
GI Korea (#19), thanks for that input. I have long been on the fence about this, and it’s nice to see people providing information that helps get to the heart of the matter instead of reading off talking points aimed at supporting an ideological or political viewpoint.
Gi Korea wrote:
Okay, that makes sense. But frankly, that seems to run counter to the argument on both sides.
That is, it seems to suggest that EI wouldn’t be effective in the “24″ scenario we’ve heard so much about — ”But what if a terrorist knows about some bridge that’s about to be blown up and you only have a few minutes to find out where?!” — and without the urgency argument, EI itself seems to lose a lot of its purpose.
That they use information they already know when they waterboard is interesting (and something I’ve heard before) and may go to the issue of the quality of the information obtained as a result of waterboarding or other EI. But I wonder if this is as effective as it’s made out to be. For example, in your quote, former Bush speechwriter Thiessen says…
… and it makes me wonder: If this was so effective and caused the high-ranking KSM to break so soon after his capture in 2003, why did it take us another eight years to find Osama bin Laden?
In other words, while it’s great that waterboarding got KSM to not fling chairs at his interrogators, how much substantive stuff came from his “conversation” afterwards?
It’s also important to weigh two other factors here. One is the ante-upping concept that is an important aspect of the various Conventions. If you do it to us, we’ll do it to you, maybe worse (and then they’ll do that worse thing to us and then we’ll do something even worse). It’s a form of self-protection as much as anything, even if it is imperfect in its application.
The other thing is that, well, some of these enemy combatants we enhancedly interrogate end up returning, eventually, to their homes when they’re released. (We can’t house everyone and we can’t kill them all.) I wonder (and I’m asking, not making a statement) what level of animosity they may (or may not) still have toward us at that time. More to the point: Would techniques that aim at winning hearts and minds, as opposed to those that conquer noses and throats, be more effective in defusing a would-be recidivist?
I remember reading stories of WWII soldiers playing chess and chatting with their captives who had been interrogated. Maybe that was all a fantasy, but after the war the Germans and the Japanese became our closest allies (and I don’t know if absolute defeat explains that).
2:45 pm on May 8th, 2011 23
After reading Mr. Thiessen’s explanation, I believe those in favor of enhanced interrogations were on firmer ground when they tried to rationalize it’s need with the Jack Bauer crisis scenario. But now, if you agree with Mr. Thiessen, we misunderstood it. It’s no big deal. It’s just part of the legitimate repertoire of procedures used to elicit “cooperation” before we get to the “debriefing.”
When I was in the military we were still taught, when captured, to only give name, rank and serial number. Always resist. Never cooperate.
I still recall that the first international crisis for the new administration in 2001 was not on September 11 but on April 1. It was then that our reconnaissance aircraft knocked down the Chinese interceptor and the plane and it crew were held by the Chinese for 10 days. We knew that the crew were being interrogated by the Chinese but were concerned about exactly what that involved. These crew members were trained to resist and be non-cooperative.
Now, according to Mr. Thiessen and the like, enhanced interrogations, professionally done, are legitimate means of obtaining cooperation. Do we really want that precedent established, the next time any of our members are captured by “civilized” adversaries, as justification to use those means?
Slippery slope …
2:57 pm on May 8th, 2011 24
JoeC, you and I seem to be on the same page with our questions and possibly our doubts.
In the interest of fairness to the pro-EI technique crowd: Mr Thiessen’s authority appears to be that of a former Bush speechwriter and NOT someone who has first-hand experience with acquiring or interpreting information that might have been obtained in this way (or am I missing some information from his bio). In other words, he may not really know what he’s talking about in terms of EI’s efficacy, and is instead trying to provide political cover for the Bush administration’s use of it.
3:17 pm on May 8th, 2011 25
#24
Thiessen did write on this last year.
4:27 pm on May 8th, 2011 26
Stop all interrogations and let’s do it the liberals way. Give all of the terrorists full boat college scholarhips where liberal profs can give them A’s for writing their “Death to America” essays and extra credit for marching in “Death to America” rallies alongside those same liberal profs.
5:54 pm on May 8th, 2011 27
JoeC (#25), that piece also reads like a publicist carrying water for his (former) bosses and not someone who knows the stuff first hand.
Steve Austin (#26), yeah, you’re right. Because the alternative to EI is full-ride tuition at a university. There’s absolutely nothing in between.
I don’t know if you’re mischaracterizing or merely missing the argument.
9:07 pm on May 8th, 2011 28
Another consideration to take with the use of EI is that it may make it harder to convict said terrorists when we’re done interrogating them, perhaps even in a military court (?).
It provides the fall-back position that whatever they confessed to was coerced.
10:03 pm on May 8th, 2011 29
Kushibo,
It sounds like the first question should be…
Is this a war against a military force or a law enforcement issue against criminals?
10:09 pm on May 8th, 2011 30
Kushibo #28, If more OBL type operations are done then we wouldn’t have to worry about taking the terrorists to court. You don’t have to worry about taking a terrorist to court if he or she is dead.
10:23 pm on May 8th, 2011 31
ChickenHead wrote:
Frankly, it’s both, or at least has elements of both. And if this ideological divide is such a conundrum, then formulating a torture policy for each and then working outward from the overlap would be a good beginning.
Tom Langley wrote:
True that. But you have to worry about creating potential new terrorists when you run around with a shoot-first-ask-questions-later attitude which causes a lot of collateral damage and/or rounds up non-terrorists and then treats them as if they are.
12:41 am on May 9th, 2011 32
“The Conventions at the Hague and Geneva specifically EXCLUDE people like ObL who do not meet the definition of legal combatant.”
“Okay, but are they illegal according to US law?”
Yes, I agree with both of you. The whole “enemy combatant” label is BS and a means to get around American laws in the eyes of the general public. It’s ridiculously naive to think that any and all governments do not keep certain things secret, and curb their own laws, in the name of national security.
1:39 am on May 9th, 2011 33
ChickenHead – “Is this a war against a military force or a law enforcement issue against criminals?”
Kushibo – “Frankly, it’s both, or at least has elements of both. And if this ideological divide is such a conundrum, then formulating a torture policy for each and then working outward from the overlap would be a good beginning.”
It may have elements of both, but it seems to lean FAR FAR to a war against a military force. More often then not, any “extraction” of information is conducted by military/CIA individuals. This is perfect for keeping secretes and handing out misinformation.
1:48 am on May 9th, 2011 34
P.S. – Remember, the U.S. does not torture (at least not on U.S. soil)! I guess we could argue all day on whether waterboarding etc. is torture or not, but I believe this idea further validates my belief that the topic at hand is much more a military/covert phenomena than a “public” law enforcement one. There must be some “jurisdiction problem” when not conducting these tactics on U.S. soil and those in charge want to keep said tactics as quite as possible.
1:50 am on May 9th, 2011 35
ooops – as quiet as possible.
2:09 am on May 9th, 2011 36
#35 yes, quite.
6:27 am on May 9th, 2011 37
Dammit!
6:38 am on May 9th, 2011 38
#21, are they legal according to US Law? Yes. Or are you conveniently forgetting the Yoo Memo?
Geez. _All_ US Aircrews are waterboarded during training. Is that torture? No. Period.
Is it “mental suffering” for a kid who wants pizza and his mom gives him vegetable soup? Who gets to decide? Doctor Spock? Are the terrorists gonna get a warped psyche from our “mistreatment” of them? Does that really matter?
I think some of you folks are either stuck on stupid or stuck on troll.
And from where I sit it looks the same.
11:51 am on May 9th, 2011 39
The real photo has of what Obama was doing during the raid has come out.
http://www.rense.com/1.imagesH/obamgreatshotsplash.jpg
2:10 pm on May 9th, 2011 40
#38 – “Geez. _All_ US Aircrews are waterboarded during training. Is that torture? No. Period.”
Sure, but this is during training and more important, the mode in which it’s conducted is more friendly and controlled. Did you think the actual waterboarding of an enemy is more malicious and carefree? Like you said – “Are the terrorists gonna get a warped psyche from our “mistreatment” of them? Does that really matter?”. Which is really the point, if an enemy combatant dies or is “warped”, who cares.
We also do not know all the techniques used in the “enhanced interrogation”, nor should we. The public does not need to know, it should be a non-issue in my opinion. This is a covert, military issue and U.S. law should not enter into the equation.
2:42 pm on May 9th, 2011 41
setnaffa wrote:
First, the John Yoo memo was opinion on interpreting law, not the law itself. Second, it was repudiated by the current administration. Ergo, the John Yoo memo didn’t and doesn’t make anything legal (or illegal).
Context, willingness, purpose, and subject are all entirely different. Can someone opt out of waterboarding during training? I would imagine their career would suffer, but they do have the ability to opt out, don’t they? Did they volunteer for service, and therefore implicitly volunteer for what they would expect to come about as part of training? It’s apples and oranges, setnaffa, and you know that.
Were you making a valid point — that your side waterboarding you as part of set training is the same thing as an enemy who has captured you and repeatedly waterboards you until you break — then waterboarding would be far less effective and we wouldn’t be having the discussion, no?
Wow, just wow. You can not see how an easily codified purpose, degree, context, and situation divides these things?
I suppose in your mind if some psycho stabs a stranger with a needle, his defense can be, “Well, doctors prick us with needles all the time and they aren’t arrested!”
Speck seeker, see log. (Or if you prefer, Physician, heal thyself.)
How we conduct the war on terror matters a lot. The right actions win over populations, while the wrong actions embolden terrorists and sometimes engender new ones.
Policy has often far-reaching implications. One of the disasters of the Bush43 administration, I believe, is that so many of their decisions seemed to be based on the idea that after we act, the actors would not react. It just seemed not to be part of their planning process to consider likely repercussions and then choose wisely. Conquering throats and noses instead of winning hearts and minds may be one of those things.
2:47 pm on May 9th, 2011 42
“This is a covert, military issue and U.S. law should not enter into the equation.”
As far as I know, the military never officially authorized or approved of any enhanced interrogations. To the larger point of your statement, should there be any laws of war?
2:56 pm on May 9th, 2011 43
I go back to something president Bush II alluded to often after 9/11. ‘The terrorists want us to change who we are.’
9:04 pm on May 9th, 2011 44
@19 Right on the money
Basically all members of any armed force will be taught this,
“When I was in the military we were still taught, when captured, to only give name, rank and serial number. Always resist. Never cooperate.”
I’m all for EI provided there is a valid reason for what their doing and that it is not used against US citizens. Big line in the sand between using EI captured enemy combatants captured in another country to using them on US Citizens apprehended inside the USA or another allied country. The first being a routine Intel collection, the second being to close to George Orwell. It is entirely too easy for a nation to slip from using these things to collect enemy Intel, to collecting Intel from your own citizens to terrorizing your own citizens into complacency.
My whole beef with the previous administration was the moving of US citizens to secret foreign prisons then leaving them there and hiding the fact we had them. You can’t go around telling a man’s wife that he is having an “affair” and ran off on her when in reality you’ve got him locked up in a secret foreign prison somewhere. Yes this has actually happened and is currently legal under the Patriot Act.
11:02 pm on May 9th, 2011 45
Something that has always been nagging me in the back of my mind is this…
…where are all the terrorists?
Sure, there are a lot of people who chant Death To America but there aren’t many people actually working on it.
This latest plot to derail a train is laughable. With less than an hour of work, I can derail a train by myself with a cheap welder and some scrap metal… or a chop saw and a generator to run it.
It doesn’t take an international terrorist network with state funding to cause all sorts of real mayhem with off-the-shelf parts and a day of internet research.
I would like to believe that a tireless American government is capturing these people and stopping these well-organized plots before they happen… except, there is no way they could even know about such a simple-but-effective plot… and even if they stumble upon it, they aren’t bragging about it…
…which is quite out of character… since they DO brag every time the front-page headlines read that they stopped a “sophisticated terrorist operation”… which, according to the one-paragraph back-page follow-up a couple months later, mostly consists of an FBI snitch looking to reduce his sentence by finding a group of angry Muslim losers with crappy service jobs sitting around and bitching about how they are getting the short end of the stick… and then getting them to brag about what they would do if they could… and then arresting them for conspiring to blow up this or that… even though, apart from an FBI agent posing as a terrorist leader, they have no connections… and no money… and no plan… and no bomb… and no idea how to even build a bomb except for printing out some 16 year-old’s based-on-TV bomb recipe from a wishful-thinking anarchist website.
In fact the only real result of the War on Terror that I have seen is a militarization of American society which puts the screws on normal citizens without actually accomplishing anything that would stop a real terrorists.
I propose that, while there are many America-haters and attack-on-America-sympathizers, there are not nearly as many committed terrorists as we are led to believe… and certainly fewer than what should require the disproportionately large amount of attention and resources the United States is devoting to them.
Basically, it is all a scam… a scam to consolidate federal government control… a scam to enrich connected corporations and individuals… and, maybe, if we as Americans are lucky, a scam to insure the rest of the world is so disorganized and screwed up that America can continue its global influence on places with necessary resources and political importance.
In the end, it doesn’t matter if it is a war or a police action. The United States will do what it wants to do… and what it must do to accomplish its goals… some of which might trickle down to benefit average Americans.
And, the further reality is… probably… a globally dominate United States is better than a globally dominate China, Russia, Europe, or Middle East.
So…
12:07 am on May 10th, 2011 46
Kushibo #17, I guess you’re correct that someone can be trained to overcome their gag reflex, after all Linda Lovelace did, lol
1:45 am on May 10th, 2011 47
Joe c. – “As far as I know, the military never officially authorized or approved of any enhanced interrogations. To the larger point of your statement, should there be any laws of war?”
So your point is that the military does not make the laws it is restricted by. What any military or fundamentalist actually does is in many instances NOT within the laws governing it/them.
I guess ethical jargon written on parchment looks fantastic for the lawmakers and the masses, but what is effective and reality based, might be quite different.
Should there be laws? – Broad-based laws, YES. Micro-laws debating what is torture, which technique is more or less effective, what constitutes an illegal killing during combat, prisoner treatment, NO. These micro-issues should be left to the covert/military personel. It usually is anyway, despite what the books say!!
4:27 am on May 10th, 2011 48
ChickenHead 45, watch your step. Even if the terrorists can’t derail you, they can invoke djinns.
4:31 am on May 10th, 2011 49
#47
… so covert/military leaders are expected to use their discretion to decide which laws are necessary and which aren’t (aka micro-laws)? That must make it really tough on the junior personnel who are told they also have an obligation to only follow lawful orders.
Are you serving as an officer or senior NCO in the military?
Is that what happened at Abu Ghraib?
6:43 am on May 10th, 2011 50
Q: What’s the difference between allies of Iranian President Mahmoud and your Filipina juicy?
A: President Mahmoud’s allies don’t make an American GI buy an overpriced twist of lime and splash of tonic with their watered-down djinn.
7:07 am on May 10th, 2011 51
Of course it would have inflamed the entire Muslim world, but a fitting end would have been to feed him to the pigs and essentially turn him into pig shat. Dry it, varnish it, and then let them turn THAT into a shrine to worship. He got what was coming to him, and much more humanely than he and his followers have done to their victims. It would have been nice to have seen him in chains and then aggressively “questioned”, but how much more would we have spent prosecuting him? The military buys ammo in bulk. The cost per round is pretty cheap. The only way to deal with those people is to hunt them down and eliminate them. Our policy should be taking care of one and moving on. Like Floyd the barber says, “Next!”
9:27 am on May 10th, 2011 52
Like Dragonfly said. Without ignoring any important points or parsing sentences to change the subject.
1:59 pm on May 10th, 2011 53
#49 JoeC
Abu Ghraib – What most likely happened is that the “higher up’s” knew, directed or gave carte blanch to those below them and the rest was history. This example is pretty much the worst case scenario in abusing and outright ignoring the laws set forth in interrogation/prisoner treatment. I believe in most cases, if humans are left to their own devices, they act morally/correct in relation to the situation at hand.
Isolated events like Abu Ghraib are a dime a dozen during any war. We’ve all heard the stories of atrocities etc. The rules that governed were tossed out the window.
The topic at hand was debating “enhanced interrogation techniques”. We are asking if this idea is a public law or military covert one, with respect to interrogating Muslim terrorists. I don’t see these individuals as being in the public domain. This is still a military based operation. Public U.S. police authorities usually don’t use EIT’s. It’s a covert/military issue! The public does not need to know what exact techniques are being used.
5:23 pm on May 10th, 2011 54
http://www.chinasmack.com/2011/stories/osama-bin-laden-dead-chinese-netizen-reactions.html
Chinese reactions to Bin Laden death.
5:36 pm on May 10th, 2011 55
kangaji, interesting.
The Chinese netizenry must be torn. On the one hand, al Qaeda and the Islamists they inspired supposedly have wreaked havoc in China’s western region, but the United States is a foe whose victory must be questioned and criticized. (They’re sort of like certain Republicans and their response to Obama following Osama’s demise.
)
I guess in the end, “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” won the day for some of these folks.
The one person who says there are millions more like Osama… Well, I hope not. Osama killed thousands, so if millions more also kill thousands each, then they’ve killed billions and then we’ve run out of people.
But that, of course, is what the environmentalists want, amiright? Proving once again that environmentalists are communists.
4:20 pm on May 12th, 2011 56
John McCain says that abusive interrogation didn’t yield trail to Osama bin Laden:
Clearly, McCain takes this issue very seriously.
5:55 pm on May 12th, 2011 57
#56
He’d better be careful. If he starts getting too mavericky, his party will turn on him again.
6:05 pm on May 12th, 2011 58
@56,
*Cough* he gave it away when he stated
“We did not learn Abu Ahmed’s real name or alias as a result of waterboarding or any ‘enhanced interrogation technique’ used on a detainee in U.S. custody.”
As its common for the CIA to hand over individuals to foreign countries to be “interrogated”, for all we know information could of came from ripping the arms off some guy held by the Israelis (just example). McCain’s statement would still be true.
7:20 pm on May 12th, 2011 59
This operation could have been a disaster. Going in with only two helicopters and losing one, the Seals would have been in a difficult position. But, following President Obama’s field guidance, they used four helicopters.
7:23 pm on May 12th, 2011 60
Glans wrote:
A regular Kim Jong-il, our dear leader is.
8:04 pm on May 12th, 2011 61
Kushibo,
That’s how I know Obama was not born in Hawaii.
Despite a forged birth announcement, there is no published story around that time of the heavens opening and a mulatto baby riding on the back of a singing tiger, carried by golden doves, being anywhere near the Kapiolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital.
That sound like something that would happen in Kenya.
2:02 am on May 13th, 2011 62
A thought-provoking cartoon by Clay Jones.
5:34 am on May 13th, 2011 63
Kushibo I don’t know if you read Glans link or not but Bob Somerby was basically saying that the left wing media is trying to make Obama out to be the Dear Leader. Like Somerby I seriously doubt the Special Forces community wanted to launch a raid that far into Pakistan without a back up helicopter especially considering the memories from Desert One.
What probably happened is that the President was presented with multiple Course of Actions or COA’s. In military planning, the staff usually presents the commander with three COA’s. One COA is usually a throw way leaving two more serious ones for the commander to look at.
I seriously doubt the President was not presented various COA’s developed by his military staff. The military just isn’t going to tell the President what they are going to do and not give him options for something as important as this. He likely chose the COA that made the most sense and the military executed it. However, such a narrative is not as Dear Leaderish for the left wing media to promote.
Instead as Somerby has pointed out the usual suspects have made it out to be that the all wise President overruled his bumbling generals to make them use backup helicopters which they sure enough needed demonstrating his incredible military planning knowledge. Maybe that is what happened but I’m not buying it. I can’t wait to read the next Woodward book to see what really happened with this raid considering all the BS story lines that have circulated around the media since the raid.
5:46 am on May 13th, 2011 64
No, I didn’t read the link yet. I had a 30-page paper which I turned in about 15 minutes ago.
To be honest, I’ve been avoiding reading or listening to narratives on the right or the left about this, so I’ve missed the Dear Leader proclamations on the left, and I’ve tuned out the bungling Obama rhetoric on the right. It’s been PBS and straight reporting from the LAT mostly.
My conclusion is that Bush43 deserves 80% of the credit and Obama deserves 20%, because 80% of the time we’ve been looking for Osama, Bush43 was president, while only 20% of the time we’ve been looking for him Obama was president.
2:12 am on May 18th, 2011 65
Did Santorum really say that?!!
According to Mr. Santorum’s superior understanding of the process, Senator McCain and his fellow captives should have become very cooperative with the North Vietnamese after the first few months.
4:40 pm on May 19th, 2011 66
Pakistan has other sources of comfort.
6:38 pm on May 19th, 2011 67
@63,
That’s usually how it goes. If anyone is willing to ignore the rhetoric from both left (he is our hero!!) and right (he is a commy bastard out to kill us all!!) and just look, PoTUS Obama is actually pretty moderate. IMO his biggest redeeming factor is that he actually listens to his advisers, and has filled his cabinet (or tried to anyway) with actual experienced people vs just throwing a bunch of yes men in there.
The Military presented him with several COA’s and he picked the one that was recommend to him after considering Pro / Con and all that jazz. Operation was a success, give credit to the Military that planned and conducted the event.
3:00 pm on September 14th, 2011 68
Republican congressman Peter King hates bad terrorists, but he loved good terrorists back in the day. He explains it to the UK parliament.
5:09 pm on September 14th, 2011 69
#67 You are either not paying attention or are delusional. Please, tell me who he is listening too. Not his military leaders. Not his business leader (does he even have any “business leader”. Solyndra just went belly up. He was warned. He didn’t listen. So who is he listening too? Harry Reid maybe. That’s about it.
He wants to reduce the troop levels to 3k in afganland. Military leaders say “no”. He plans to do it anyway!
But then again Obama is the “yes man” to Harry Reid. Obama is a “post turtle”. He didn’t get there by himself. Someone Put Him There.
6:12 pm on September 14th, 2011 70
Man, we need to hurry up and kill Mullah Omar.
7:09 pm on September 14th, 2011 71
With torture, we as a people have become tainted.
I doubt many of our fathers of WW2 experience would condone torture.
John Mcain is against torture because he was tortured, he knows what separates,….CORRECTION…what used to separate America from other countries.
I recall, that the Nazies gained more usefull information from Allied prisoners from “innocent nice guy” treatment than torture.
Torture is just for the sado masochistic pleasure of the applicator.
THINK ABOUT IT!!!
3:05 am on May 5th, 2012 72
The decision to send the Seals to Abbottabad was far from a no-brainer. Obama’s most seasoned advisors were against it. Peter Bergen explains at CNN.
If the mission had failed, Mitt Romney and the Republicans would be assuring us that he’s much to smart to make a mistake like that.
1:22 pm on May 5th, 2012 73
>>”Was Killing Osama Bin Laden A Mistake?”
No, I’m pretty sure they did it on purpose.