Does Torture Work? The C.I.A.’s Claims and What the Committee Found

The tortured excuses being made here for the use of torture by the Bush administration are a dismal thing to read. They would have America "stand for torture," which is an abomination. And I'll add this. If Bush wasn't fully aware that prisoners were being tortured under his watch, he should have been, and I suspect he knew more than some would have us believe. The man isn't stupid. In the main, he was an awful president, in my opinion, but he was a decent Texas governor, and had some real accomplishments during his two terms as president. This was not an accomplishment. It was selling out America's reputation for some highly dubious and immoral methods of interrogation proven to be of little value for the reasons they were used.

I hold Bush responsible because it happened under his watch, and if he didn't fully realize what was going on, he should have had some curiosity. Bad enough that he gave a blow to this country that we may never recover from with his mad adventure in Iraq. To "look the other way" and pretend this wasn't going on speaks to Bush's character, and not in a good way. True ignorance, if that is indeed the case, points to a president with an amazing lack of knowledge about what was happening under his nose, and that doesn't speak well of the man, either.

Naturally, in my humble opinion.

 

Cannot wait until someone wants to Torture a Pedophile 'to find the kid'
or a Kidnapper . .. etc etc . . . aka . . . An American Citizen

And don't you DARE believe "It could not happen here"
Cause if a Cop tortured someone and got a good result [i.e. found the baby before the guy could killer type stuff]
He'd get a slap on the wrist publically but a job well done behind closed doors


Rocket River
There is always a Good Reason to do a Bad Thing

 

I'm absolutely shocked to find there was torture going on.

 

LOL. How much resource, time and money required to validate it's authenticity? You willing to do that on all the info being provided? And if you get false info, you going to torture that person again hoping that get a good one next time?

Try to picture yourself being tortured and you know that if you provide the information they want, it will place your loved ones at risk. I don't know you personally but I have to think that you won't give up any useful info or sacrifice your life for them.

 

That second paragraph is irrelevant. Everyone breaks under torture eventually. In the face of pain, there are no heroes and all that.

Whether it's the appropriate thing to do is another matter, though I will point out that recent polls seem to show that the American public is fairly comfortable with the idea of torture. My objection hasn't been so much the contents of the report but instead that releasing this report was partisan hackery on the part of the Democrats, probably in retaliation for their 2014 defeats. It's not as stupid or as petty as half the **** the Tea Party's pulled over the years, but it's the same principle of politics for the sake of politics as opposed to thinking about the good of the nation.

 

LOL, the report isn't about it being appropriate - and it has nothing to do with elections. Things that have to do with elections tend to be made public before elections, not at the furthest possible point from the next election.

The report is about illustrating that the lies that the torture defenders have told us for years are in fact lies. and that there was a substantial part of the CIA felt the same way. The most damning thing about the report was the CIA's own indictment of the ineffectiveness and the ****-show nature of its stupid torture program (which of course, was substnatially larger in scope than we were lead to believe).

When things are right for our elected officials to do, you do them. Outing the torturers and exposing the lies they told, in order to conduct more illegal torture, is about as great a punishment as they will ever receive, sadly, and is the right thing to do, regardless of who is doing it, or what elections just happened.

 

I don't agree.

Our elected officials are not there to do what's right, or what's moral. Our elected officials are there to do what is necessary to protect and serve the United States.

What the CIA did was a mistake. A big mistake, and things must change so that mistakes like this do not happen again. Better oversight/communication between Congress and the CIA, better policies, better governance, and so on. For example, a major reason for this problem was the fact that the CIA didn't really have any truly trained interrogators on 9/12/01. Under the pressure that existed after 9/11, they implemented ad hoc measures because they weren't prepared and so things happened. A problem exists, and so it must be fixed.

Releasing this report to the mob doesn't do that at all. If anything, it is actively detrimental to such efforts. By making it blatantly partisan, the Democrats will ensure that the Republicans will dig in their heels, rally around the CIA ( as you are witnessing Bobby and others doing in this very thread), and now nothing will be done. Well, maybe the Republicans could take a look at this report and see what recommendations were made to prevent this from happening again.

Oh wait. There actually weren't any in this report. Certainly shows how committed this report was to solving a problem as opposed to moral grandstanding.

And on top of actively hampering efforts to reform the CIA, this report also hampers the CIA's normal intelligence activities - not least because are any of the other countries who were listed as helping us in this report going to help us again? I wonder.

So, congrats to the Dems. They get to beat up on a soundbite and fight a message which had not been relevant for years( and some pundits chattering about it for a week when Zero Dark Thirty came out is like presupposing that blood diamonds are a relevant political issue when that Leonardo DiCaprio film about it came out), and thus in return actually hamper any effort at real change. Hope they hang onto that feeling of being "right" which you think is so important, Sam. Hope it lasts.

 

Bull****. Releasing the report makes it less likely that this will happen again because it demonstrates that the use of torture can be exposed. It also creates the possibility that enough people will be outraged by what was done in their name that the political momentum to make some changes will build. I don't think that's likely, but it's possible.

You are completely deluded if you think oversight reforms or any other legislation or policy would be more likely to occur without the pressure created by this report, or something like it.

 

Just curious, how was the poll phrased? Does it only mention enemies or did it also include Americans being tortured?

 

The two key findings were:

1. The torture campaign was a monumentally ineffective waste.

2. The actors who conducted that campaign lied/were willfully blind abut it in order to perpetuate it, mostly because they didn't think they'd get caught .

In your universe, knowledge of these 2 findings should be concealed because it will help prevent it in the future. There is of course no logical reason why this would be true aND the argument that secrecy and a complete lack of accountability is somehow going to lead to better oversight is absurd here.

 

So according to conservatives, trying to find something out of nothing in the Benghazi senate hearings was not for partisan reasons yet releasing documents to the public about torture crimes is the Democrats going after conservatives for election purposes.

 

Yes, the Democrats are true masters of election politics, waiting until exactly right after the election to do this and to enact immigration measures.

They're so devious that they can now deny it's election related 2 years from now. It's called the long game, and they are absolute masters.

By not reaping any benefit at al, they will now be able to reap benefits- do you understand?

 

Those of us paying attention at the time knew this. But of course we were called traitors.

 

That right wing talking point, Americans are comfortable with torture, like most right wing talking points, is wrong.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/11/no-americans-arent-fine-with-torture-they-strongly-reject-it/

 

you are so stupid it hurts. please stop posting

 

Bush specifically told the CIA to not tell him what they were doing so that he could play dumb, so technically he didnt know what was going on.

 

Refs have money on kings +1

 

why do you think you know more than people who are trained in interrogation and do it for a living?

nope. and you cant elaborate b/c you obviously dont know what you are talking about. are you really unaware of the fact that the bush administration changed the definition of torture? i suggest you study up on this issue a little better. and there is nothing "partisan" about my comments...im not a democrat or an obama supporter.

 

its really not interesting at all, and that was my point.

after all my comments regarding your "question" is there still any uncertainty as to how i would answer it? it should be pretty obvious, but if you are that dense i will give you a yes or no answer.

no, it is not appropriate to torture...as virtually all experts in the field of interrogation say, torture is not an effective way to gain intel and is actually counterproductive...your scenario is a bulls*** fantasy with a billion-to-one odds of ever going down in the way you think...again, 24 is a fictional tv show.