[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.
Rediscover Hotmail®: Get e-mail storage that grows with you. Check
it out.
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