Gary --<br><br>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.<br><br>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?<br>
<br>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. <br>
<br>And yet you're not.<br><br>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?<br>
<br>-- ACS<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 6:42 AM, g. crabtree <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jampot@roadrunner.com">jampot@roadrunner.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div bgcolor="#ffffff">
<div><font size="2" face="Arial">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.
</font></div>
<div><font size="2" face="Arial"></font> </div><font color="#888888">
<div><font size="2" face="Arial">g</font></div>
</font><blockquote style="border-left: 2px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); padding-right: 0px; padding-left: 5px; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 0px;"><div class="im">
<div style="font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;">----- Original Message ----- </div>
<div style="background: rgb(228, 228, 228) none repeat scroll 0% 0%; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial; font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;">
<b>From:</b>
<a title="ophite@gmail.com" href="mailto:ophite@gmail.com" target="_blank">Andreas Schou</a>
</div>
<div style="font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;"><b>To:</b> <a title="jampot@roadrunner.com" href="mailto:jampot@roadrunner.com" target="_blank">g. crabtree</a> </div>
<div style="font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;"><b>Cc:</b> <a title="godshatter@yahoo.com" href="mailto:godshatter@yahoo.com" target="_blank">Paul Rumelhart</a> ; <a title="lfalen@turbonet.com" href="mailto:lfalen@turbonet.com" target="_blank">lfalen</a> ; <a title="bear@moscow.com" href="mailto:bear@moscow.com" target="_blank">bear@moscow.com</a> ; <a title="vision2020@moscow.com" href="mailto:vision2020@moscow.com" target="_blank">vision2020@moscow.com</a> </div>
<div style="font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;"><b>Sent:</b> Thursday, April 23, 2009 10:31
PM</div>
<div style="font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; font-size: 10pt; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal;"><b>Subject:</b> Re: [Vision2020] "Harsh"
Interrogations -As ye sow, so shall you</div>
<div><br></div></div><div><div></div><div class="h5">Gary --<br><br>From the FBI report on abuse at Guantanamo Bay
under Geoffrey Miller, the general later brought in to "Gitmoize" Abu Ghraib:
<br><br>"<font size="-1" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">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</font>"<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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. <br><br>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?<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br><br>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?<br><br>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.<br><br>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.<br></div></div></blockquote></div>
</blockquote></div><br>