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

Sunil Ramalingam sunilramalingam at hotmail.com
Sat Apr 25 14:32:33 PDT 2009


I'd like to read the accounts you reference.  What are the names of these individuals?

And again, how and when do you think torture should be used?  

A new question: Wouldn't it still be illegal?

Sunil

From: jampot at roadrunner.com
To: sunilramalingam at hotmail.com
CC: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] "Harsh" Interrogations -As ye sow, so shall you
Date: Sat, 25 Apr 2009 06:21:10 -0700










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 
  Cc: vision 2020 
  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 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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