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

Paul Rumelhart godshatter at yahoo.com
Sat Apr 25 06:57:00 PDT 2009


I have to admit I'm curious whether or not you'll find Andreas' sources 
credible: the 800th MP brigade, the FBI, and the US Department of 
Justice Office of Legal Counsel, among others.

Paul

g. crabtree wrote:
> Didn't you read the sentence? I chose to use the word "think" instead 
> of "know" because, unlike Mr. Schou, I realize that there's a 
> difference between the two. I base my opinion on reports from 
> accountable members of the former administration who have actual names 
> and faces, not anonymous sources, wack job web sites, Al Jazeera, or 
> the hysterical, foam flecked rants of Keith Olbermann.
>  
> g
>
>     ----- Original Message -----
>     *From:* Sunil Ramalingam <mailto:sunilramalingam at hotmail.com>
>     *Cc:* vision 2020 <mailto:vision2020 at moscow.com>
>     *Sent:* Friday, April 24, 2009 6:13 PM
>     *Subject:* Re: [Vision2020] "Harsh" Interrogations -As ye sow, so
>     shall you
>
>     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 r/eally/ 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 <mailto:ophite at gmail.com>
>         *To:* a <mailto:smith at turbonet.com>
>         *Cc:* keely emerinemix <mailto:kjajmix1 at msn.com> ;
>         jampot at roadrunner.com <mailto:jampot at roadrunner.com> ;
>         vision2020 at moscow.com <mailto: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
>         <mailto: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 <mailto:kjajmix1 at msn.com>
>                 *To:* ophite at gmail.com <mailto:ophite at gmail.com> ;
>                 jampot at roadrunner.com <mailto:jampot at roadrunner.com>
>                 *Cc:* vision2020 at moscow.com
>                 <mailto: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 <mailto:ophite at gmail.com>
>                 To: jampot at roadrunner.com <mailto:jampot at roadrunner.com>
>                 CC: vision2020 at moscow.com <mailto: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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>
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