[Vision2020] "Harsh" Interrogations -As ye sow, so shall you

[Andreas Schou]

Gary --

Absolutely. I am attempting to shame you: support of torture is not a topic
for reasonable disagreement. It is shameful.  You are apparently incapable
of shame.

In order to believe what you do, you have to actively discard information
from the State Department, the US Military, the FBI, the Washington Post,
the New York Times, the law and the historical record. Do you just not
believe the FBI interrogator that reported the filth-covered detainees
chained to the floor? Or the medic that reported that they were treating
detainees for hypothermia after interrogations?  Do you wonder why the FBI,
our primary counterterrorism agency, first withdrew under protest from
interrogating detainees and then was denied access to those detainees? Or
why the CIA destroyed the tapes of interrogations before the change of
administration? Or why the OLC tried to round up and destroy contrary legal
opinions? Explain why you believe that waterboarding -- a practice
recognized as torture by US law, international law, and historical sources
-- is comparable to showers or not providing a barcalounger?

Over the years, I've seen you defend Abu Ghraib as being like a fraternity
initiatition, Guantanamo as being a beachside resort, and attack the Geneva
Convention as a tool of terrorists. You first claimed that we couldn't
possibly have waterboarded and then that waterboarding was acceptable, even
morally. You're like a Holocaust denier in miniature: you believe, against
all evidence, that terrible things didn't happen, but simultaneously carry
the contrary belief that terrible things should've. These are beliefs about
which you should be ashamed.

And yet you're not.

So, tell me, Gary. What are the facts as you believe them to be? Did we
waterboard? Did we leave detainees shackled to the ceiling, stewing in their
own shit? How about week-long periods of sleep deprivation over years of
detention? Did we do that? Do you think this is consistent with our values?
Do you think we should be ordering US servicemen to do this sort of thing?

-- ACS

On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 6:42 AM, g. crabtree <jampot at roadrunner.com> wrote:

>  And once again you miss the point, attempt to attach me to positions I
> have not taken, hurl invective, and do your best to demonize and silence a
> point of view with which you disagree.You are as predictable as a paperboy
> with OCD. You deliver on time, every time.
>
> g
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> *From:* Andreas Schou <ophite at gmail.com>
> *To:* g. crabtree <jampot at roadrunner.com>
> *Cc:* Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com> ; lfalen <lfalen at turbonet.com>;
> bear at moscow.com ; vision2020 at moscow.com
> *Sent:* Thursday, April 23, 2009 10:31 PM
> *Subject:* Re: [Vision2020] "Harsh" Interrogations -As ye sow, so shall
> you
>
> Gary --
>
> From the FBI report on abuse at Guantanamo Bay under Geoffrey Miller, the
> general later brought in to "Gitmoize" Abu Ghraib:
>
> "on several occasions, witness ("W") saw detainees ("ds") in interrogation
> rooms chained hand and foot in fetal position to floor w/no chair/
> food/water; most urinated or defecated on selves, and were left there 18, 24
> hrs or more. Once, the air conditioning was so low that the barefoot d was
> shaking with cold. Another time, it was off so the unventilated room was
> over 100 degrees, d was almost unconscious on floor with a pile of hair next
> to him (he had apparently been pulling it out throughout the night). Another
> time, it was sweltering hot and loud rap music played - d's hand and foot
> was chained and he was in a fetal position on the floor. Upon inquiry, W was
> told that interrogators [military contractors] ordered this treatment. Took
> place in Delta Camp"
>
> The report goes on to substantiate that more than one detainee (d) was
> brought into the infirmary with hypothermia after an interrogation session.
> Detainees pissing and shitting all over themselves. Being sexually assaulted
> by female guards. Forced to stay awake for longer than the human body can
> stand. Being partially drowned. Being stuck in a coffin with what you're
> told are scorpions.
>
> These are not conditions you will find any Hilton other than the Hanoi.
> They are not on the continuum of acceptable behaviors any more than a knife
> is on the continuum of 'comfortable objects' because, like a knife, it's
> also an object. These are techniques we reverse-engineered from North Korean
> torture techniques in order to create SERE, and then reverse-reverse
> engineered in order to create GTMO and the "black sites." This is despite
> the fact that we -- as in, our country -- prosecuted Japanese soldiers for
> waterboarding, and even Israel, no friend of terrorists, has abandoned it
> because it produces bad intelligence. Indeed, if I were just a little more
> cynical than I am, I'd say that that's quite the point: we waterboarded KSM
> for information on the nonexistent Iraq-al-Qaida connection, and Abu
> Zubaydah for information on confabulated terrorist plots he had no reason to
> know about.
>
> You're wrong about the facts. You're wrong about the law. I could go on
> about that, but I'd just be arguing with the tinny little noises escaping
> from the echo chamber you pretend will replace journalism. I'm waiting with
> bated breath to find out why you think the FBI is infiltrated by ACORN or
> how George Soros is dictating the legal conclusions of Republican appointees
> at Foggy Bottom. That's just your intentional ignorance, plus arrogance,
> tribalism, and smug self-satisfaction at your clever turns of phrase. I can
> tolerate that.
>
> What gets to me -- why I'm provoked to respond -- is that you're willing,
> even eager, to sell out our country's honor in order to soothe your rank
> cowardice. Or maybe it makes you feel like a real man to hear that some punk
> Afghan teenager with an AK-47 was awake for a week, stewing in his own shit,
> shackled to the floor. Whatever the impulse is -- tribalism? sadism? fear?
> -- it's not anything I recognize as American. What third-world tinpot
> dictatorship did you grow up in that you think this is acceptable?
>
> We consent to abide by certain principles. It's that common consent that
> keeps our country from being a collection of miscellaneous foreigners on
> someone else's land. I have disagreements with conservatives about the metes
> and bounds of those principles, sure. But here you are, disputing whether
> America should have principles at all.
>
> Americans, by which I mean FDR and Eisenhower, Reagan and JFK, held off the
> Soviets and Nazi Germany, nations that both posed a dire existential threat
> to our country, while banning torture, expanding the protections of the
> Geneva Convention, and abandoning the pretense that it's okay to attack
> civilian populations. These are tempting tactics. Some of them work. Torture
> produces words rather than silence. The Geneva Convention bans effective
> tactics for making war. Killing civilians forces submission. We stepped away
> from these things. We won. Twice. Over the two most belligerent,
> technologically advanced, and staggeringly immoral nations ever to exist,
> one armed with enough weapons to destroy the world several times over.
>
> But then 9/11 made you wet yourself. A crime of unimaginable scale happened
> to people in New York City; people whom you don't even accord the privilege
> of being called Americans. The crime was carried out by guys carrying
> weapons you can buy at Home Depot. Somehow, that uprooted your sense that
> America stands for anything. But how deep were those roots, Gary, that fewer
> deaths than those caused by the flu could pull them up?
>
> Our soldiers make a commitment. They tell us they'll uphold the
> Constitution. But there's a reciprocal side to that commtiment: we tell them
> that they're the good guys; that they're not just protecting American lives,
> but American values. That they're fighting for liberty, mom, and apple pie.
> Because 9/11 made you wet yourself, you're asking those soldiers to sit and
> play Minesweeper while some dumb Afghan redneck shits his pants in Arctic
> cold, chained to the ceiling of a lightless cell. If you tell his President
> to tell our soldiers to do that, you've reneged on our commitment to make
> our soldiers the good guys. Our moral purpose doesn't come from who we are;
> it comes from what we do.
>
> I don't know whether there's going to be a reckoning for the people that
> authorized this. But you're the reason there should be: to put the rudder
> straight and make people like you -- who actively argues for torture -- too
> ashamed to speak up in public. Anything you just said should be enough to
> make any decent person drop their beer, walk out of the room, and go find
> another locksmith. I'm looking forward to the day when it is.
>
>
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