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

Fri Apr 24 18:13:42 PDT 2009

Gary,

You say, "What I have said and what I do think is that 
harsh interrogation methods can sometimes be necessary and can produce 
useful information. This does not give you license to infer anything 
else."

How do you know this?  Have you participated or observed these interrogations? Or are you relying on someone else's account?  What makes that account so credible?

For argument's sake if your first statement is correct, what's your point?  Are you saying such interrogations should be used?  If they cross the line into torture, should they still be used? How often? By whom? 

Sunil

From: jampot at roadrunner.com
To: ophite at gmail.com; smith at turbonet.com
Date: Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:13:38 -0700
CC: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] "Harsh" Interrogations -As ye sow, so shall you

With your very first sentence you once again 
mischaracterize what it was I said. I did not concede that the things 
you mention took place. Just because you've read something in the huffington 
post and/or the new york times and regurgitate it here doesn't make it a 
verified fact. You don't know for certain, you were not there, you are electing 
to take someone at there word. Show me evidence and I'll concede that those 
events occurred and not before.

What I did say was that I did not at any 
time defend or encourage those sorts of measures. Period. Your overused 
technique for taking what someone actually says and determining what they 
really mean and what they really think is tedious and 
annoying.

What I have said and what I do think is that 
harsh interrogation methods can sometimes be necessary and can produce 
useful information. This does not give you license to infer anything 
else.

But Lord knows you almost certainly 
will.

g

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: 
  Andreas Schou 

  To: a 
  Cc: keely emerinemix ; jampot at roadrunner.com ; vision2020 at moscow.com 
  Sent: Friday, April 24, 2009 3:17 
PM
  Subject: Re: [Vision2020] "Harsh" 
  Interrogations -As ye sow, so shall you

Gary --

So, what you're saying is that you concede that 
  abuses took place; you concede that interrogation techniques like uninsulated 
  30 and 100 degree temperatures; you concede that the same guy responsible for 
  Abu Ghraib was responsible for GTMO; you concede that any technique that did 
  not produce pain "equivalent to death or organ failure" was approved for use 
  on our GTMO detainees. And you claim that you don't support any of these 
  things: that these things are torture.

And then, conceding that we did 
  these things, you nonetheless bang the table and insist that our approach to 
  interrogation didn't constitute torture. The most charitable interpretation of 
  this is that you are merely incapable of drawing conclusion. However, having 
  corresponded with you over the years, I've found that you have a genius for 
  drawing incorrect and immoral conclusions. 

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? Is that consistent with a duty to protect 
  the honor of our servicemen and intelligenc officers?
-- ACS

  On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 1:32 PM, a <smith at turbonet.com> wrote:

    You're absolutely right. As a work of pulp 
    fiction it's right up there with the Left Behind series and any of the vapid 
    crap produced by Dan Brown.

    By the numbers:

    1. I have at no time tried to justify the abuses in 
    the FBI report to such as being chained with no access to food, water, 
    or toilet facilities.

    2. Exposing anyone to low temperatures to the point of 
    hypothermia (Although one wonders how many US soldiers were treated for the 
    same thing that night, no "torture" involved)

    3. Sexual abuse of any description.

    Pretending that these are my expressed views and then 
    vigorously taking me to task for them is dishonest in the extreme and is 
    exactly the sort of thing I have come to expect from Mr. Schou. Playing fast 
    and loose with the truth has allways been a hallmark of his debate style and 
    for him to hold himself up as a paragon of moral righteousness is laughable. 
    I believe that he would do well to climb down off his rustled moral high 
    horse and respond to what I actually write not what he concocts in his 
    fevered imagination.

    g

      ----- 
      Original Message ----- 
      From: 
      keely emerinemix 
      To: 
      ophite at gmail.com ; jampot at roadrunner.com 
      Cc: 
      vision2020 at moscow.com 

      Sent: 
      Friday, April 24, 2009 11:57 AM
      Subject: 
      Re: [Vision2020] "Harsh" Interrogations -As ye sow, so shall you

This is probably the finest post I've ever read on Vision 
      2020.  

Thanks, Andreas.  

Keely
http://keely-prevailingwinds.blogspot.com/

      Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 22:31:27 -0700
From: ophite at gmail.com
To: 
      jampot at roadrunner.com
CC: vision2020 at moscow.com
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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