Report: CIA holds terror suspects in secret prisons

aww poor guy.

i didn't have a chance to see the press briefing today. i wonder if there were any nice fireworks again.

 

*** NEWS FLASH FOR UTOPIANS***

These people want to kills us, ALL of us....

Its a freakin' war people, the only rules are to win at any cost. If torturing an Al Queda prisoner gets us some info and save lives go for it...

Torture has been going on for centuries. Nobody was freakin' out this bad when the Vietnamese were torturing out boys over there...

Back in the WWII era when this country actually had a backbone I know the response would have been quite a bit different, like the people would be attacking the anti-american press who are writing the drabble littered throughout this post...

 

What is anti-American isn't the press. It is throwing our values and principles out the window, and adopting the torture techniques of people like Saddam, and Al Qaeda.

Notice how people like Warner, and McCAin who were actually in the military are the ones against the torture. The Chickenhawks like Cheney are the ones saying torture is OK. My own father actually fought in WWII back when the country actually had a backbone, and at no time did he or would he ever condone torture.

Please ask Senator McCain whether he was freaking out when the Vietnamese were torturing him.

By the way he is the one who has vowed to attach ANTI-TORTURE amendments to every single major bill in the senate.

You blame people for not freaking out when the Vietnamese were torturing our soldiers, but then advocate using the same tactics.

You call what the press has written dribble, but fail to address even one single point of any article in the thread.

 

Hey mcmark,

What site did you get that off of? Looks pretty darn funny in print.

 

Several misconceptions and problems with your post....

1. Torture doesn't work. If anything it leads to false testimony because those being tortured tell what we want to hear. They fabricate stories in order to avoid the torture. Many high ranking military officials have come out and said torture doesn't work.

2. Yes people were freaking out about Vietnamese torture. Our own senator, John McCain, was a POW there who went through similar stuff which is why he's trying to ban it. It's a practice that not only has no actual benefit but also functionally throws out everything we stand for. We are reduced to the level of these islamic fundamentalists who in some cases condone these types of practices. People also used to engage in war crimes and criminal activity that even you would admit is wrong but thankfully there weren't people like you hanging around attempting to justify it.

3. On a practical level, it only breeds resentment. After we torture and get our info and then release these people, what do you expect they do. They'll probably hate us forever, tell everyone they know what terrible things they went through, and then stir up more radical dissent against the US. There's no point in just breeding more radicalism by engaging in such practices.

4. You can't hold an entire population responsible for a small radical minority. We detain and arrest thousands that many times are innocent. I think some of our practices are already questionable enough but to legalize the torture of these individuals is a fundamentally oppressive action that no sane person can and should condone regardless of the fact that this is a wartime situation.

 

wow, more gulags of our time ... outsourced

 

A betrayal of our most precious values
11/12/2005
By LEONARD PITTS

Well, I guess that settles that.

"We do not torture," President Bush said on Monday. Never mind all those torture pictures from Abu Ghraib. Never mind all those torture stories from Guantanamo Bay. Never mind the 2002 Justice Department memo that sought to justify torture. Never mind reports of U.S. officials sending detainees to other countries for torture. Never mind Dick Cheney lobbying to exempt the CIA from rules prohibiting torture.

"We do not torture," said the president. And that's that, right? I mean, if you can't believe the Bush administration, who can you believe? No torture. Period, end of sentence.

But . . . What does it say to you that the claim even has to be made?

Bush spoke in Panama on the last day of a five-day swing through Latin America to promote free trade. He was addressing controversy over secret CIA prisons in foreign countries. America, Bush reminded us in case it had slipped our minds in the 20 minutes since he last reminded us, is at war.

Guess that would explain all the dead people. And yes, war is not a nice business under the best of circumstances. It is less so when you fight a stateless enemy that strikes from shadows.

But we've been at war before, nasty, brutish wars, one war with civilization itself on the line, yet somehow we always managed to be the good guy. That is not to say our soldiers and sailors and fliers were always good, immune from committing atrocities. It is not to say our officials were always good, untouched by dirty deeds done in clandestine ways. Finally, it is not to say our cause was always good, free from the taint of imperialism or expedience.

But we - the collective we, the official we, the face shown in light of day we - were the good guys.

It occurs to me that maybe I've larded that statement with so many caveats as to drain it of meaning. I'm not trying to be cute. Rather, I'm trying not to sound naive while at the same time getting at something important:

We were the nation of moral authority, the nation of moral high ground, the nation that lectured other nations about human rights. And you know what? People believed us. They rush to our shores because there is freedom here, yes; because there is opportunity here, yes; but also because we stood for something, which was more than the tin-pot tyrants who ran their countries could ever say.

What a difference a presidency makes. "We do not torture," he says.

When I heard that, my first thought was a one-liner: he's been torturing me for years. But you know, this just ain't funny.

In the name of fighting terror, we have terrorized, and in the name of defending our values, we have betrayed them. We have imprisoned Muslims in America and refused to say if we had them, why we had them, or even to provide them attorneys. We have passed laws making it easier for government to snoop into what you read, who you talk to, where you go. We have equated dissent with lack of patriotism, disagreement with treason. And we have tortured.

Yes, Bush says we don't do that kind of thing but, to paraphrase Groucho Marx, who you going to believe, him or your lying eyes?

We ignore our lying eyes, I think, because we are afraid, because we saw what happened Sept. 11 and we never want to see it again. I'd never suggest we ought not fear terrorism. But we should also fear the nation we are becoming in response. We should fear the fact that we have abrogated moral authority, retreated from moral high ground, become like those we once chastised.

"We do not torture," says the president. I can remember when that went without saying.

Miami Herald

 

That's a damn good article.

 

Using the school of thought OddsOn just presented, Mohammed Atta's actions were not only acceptable, but also encouraged. Why? Because he was acting out of his political inhibitions and wanted to stop the perceived Arab persecution.

Or you could just laugh at the logic.

HA HA

 

What the hell does that mean? How is an unwillingness to preemptively toture terror suspects a sign of cowardice? If the government started torturing suspected gang members in an effort to clean up the city streets would that be justified? Your willingness to cast sacrifice any sense of humanitarianism or system of ethics on the altar of the state seems to be a lot more fascist than American in my view.

 

OK, thanks. I don't know if anyone else saw it, but on the Colbert Report they spliced Drew Rosenhaus answering the questions put to McClellan. It was hilarious.

 

Bush reveals existence of secret CIA prisons

true after all.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/4166759.html

 

W blew it again.

I would torture the f##$#$ out of these dudes.
Jules style.

"AFGHANISTAN AINT A COUNTRY EVER HEARD OF, SAY AFGHANISTAN AGAIN!"

 

the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. so as our case is new, we must think anew, and act anew.

 

That's some scary rationalization. It's inaccurate too.

 

Before it was a danger to national security to bring up the possibility that there were secret CIA prisons. Now the President brings it up himself.

 

We should act anew, but that should never include torture. It should never include lowering our values.

 

Except when you have a president that will spin it around and tell the people you are weak on national security if you don't pass his bills...