Cheney Backs Full Disclosure?? »
Posted By tehranchik 8 months, 1 week ago in Political News
I can only verify this from the Drudge Report, but Cheney is apparently asking that the results of the torture sessions he approved be declassified and made public. I'll wait for the full interview, but this seems to me to be a real opportunity to set up the Truth Commission many of us have been asking for. Release all the data on the torture - all of it - alongside the intelligence we got from it. At least then we will have the data needed to see this in full perspective. It needs to be in context and it needs to be assessed by an independent panel - bipartisan and widely respected - along the lines of the 9/11 Commission. Decisions to prosecute could be made after all the material is laid out. This will take time - and should be done carefully and exhaustively. But it is vital if the US is to remain within the legal and moral bounds of Western civilization.
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tehranchik
Well, I'm from and live in the Pacific Northwest. I did live in the middle east during the late 70's and early 80 ...
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hyperbola8 months, 1 week ago
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Perhaps we should take Cheney at his word. After all, the "claims" he is making for the success of his torture have long been known to just as fabricated as his other lies. Here is a nice summary from an FBI agent and a CIA agent about Cheney's lies.
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'Justifying' Torture: Two Big Lies
Lie Number One
...“The administration’s overriding goal…was to do everything in its power and within the limits of the law…to keep this country safe from terrorist attack.”
His is merely the latest in a string of torture-exculpating statements adduced to document a myth; namely, that the Bush administration, having failed to prevent the attacks of 9/11, pulled out all the stops to keep us safe from a second attack; and that one of the necessary measures introduced was torture.
It was a situational thing, you see. But even that explanation does not survive close scrutiny.
First, for those with a strong stomach, a sample of recent statements; then proof of their transparency in aiming to create an exculpatory myth: .....
Lie Number 2: Torture Saves Lives
.... But what about the main contention of Lie Number Two? Has torture saved lives? Milt Bearden, a 30-year veteran of CIA’s operations directorate who rose to the most senior managerial ranks, doesn’t believe it for a minute:
“The administration’s claims of having ‘saved thousands of Americans’ can be dismissed out of hand because credible evidence has never been offered — not even an authoritative leak of any major terrorist operation interdicted based on information gathered from these interrogations in the past seven years. … It is irresponsible for any administration not to tell a credible story that would convince critics at home and abroad that this torture has served some useful purpose.”
Bearden said professionals he describes as the “old hands” in the CIA, the ones who know something of interrogation and intelligence, don’t believe administration claims. Worse still, they say, torture is counterproductive:
“This is not just because the old hands overwhelmingly believe that torture doesn’t work — it doesn’t — but also because they know that torture creates more terrorists and fosters more acts of terror than it could possibly neutralize.”.....
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/071808e.html
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myfairlady8 months, 1 week ago
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nostalgia8 months, 1 week ago
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"Release all the data on the torture - all of it - alongside the intelligence we got from it. At least then we will have the data needed to see this in full perspective"
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That won't happen under the Democrats
If they release information on the attacks prevented etc they will have to stop claiming that "torture" doesn't work-
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Dionys8 months, 1 week ago
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"That won't happen under the Democrats"
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Yeah. And the Bush Cheney administration was the paragon of tranparency and disclosure.
"If they release information on the attacks prevented etc they will have to stop claiming that "torture" doesn't work"
The Israeli intelligence service(s) have been torturing people for decades, but recently decided to abandon the vast majority of " enhanced" interrogation techniques because they don't work. Even the former head of the CIA says that there is only one circumstance where they do work (where you know the person is involved, heavily involved, without a single doubt and know exactly the right question to ask), and he says that it happens so incredibly rarely that the loss of respect in the world and ability to ask that others NOT torture, that it's never worth it.
I think I'll take their word over that of an armchair patriot. -
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hyperbola8 months, 1 week ago
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Well, we have already seen the incompetent and damaging lies the Bush/Cheney criminals "extracted" with their torture. In short, prooof positive that torture did not work. Of course, the bushies also destroyed much of the evidence of their failure by destroying the videotapes. The real question is why the "faith-basers" are still pushing "ideas" that were long ago shown to be dangerous lies. Are you a believer in israel-firster zionist Alan Dershowtiz's serial lies?
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Tortured Reasoning
George W. Bush defended harsh interrogations by pointing to intelligence breakthroughs, but a surprising number of counterterrorist officials say that, apart from being wrong, torture just doesn’t work. ....
.... In researching this article, I spoke to numerous counterterrorist officials from agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. Their conclusion is unanimous: not only have coercive methods failed to generate significant and actionable intelligence, they have also caused the squandering of resources on a massive scale through false leads, chimerical plots, and unnecessary safety alerts—with Abu Zubaydah’s case one of the most glaring examples.
Here, they say, far from exposing a deadly plot, all torture did was lead to more torture of his supposed accomplices while also providing some misleading “information” that boosted the administration’s argument for invading Iraq....
... Non-governmental advocates of torture, such as the Harvard legal scholar Alan Dershowitz, have emphasized the “ticking bomb” scenario: the hypothetical circumstance when only torture will make the captured terrorist reveal where he—or his colleagues—has planted the timed nuclear device. Inside the C.I.A., says a retired senior officer who was privy to the agency’s internal debate, there was hardly any argument about the value of coercive methods: “Nobody in intelligence believes in the ticking bomb. It’s just a way of framing the debate for public consumption. That is not an intelligence reality.”...
http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2008/12/torture...
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PsychoHosebeastComment removed: Spammer, Abusive3 Replies
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tehranchik8 months, 1 week ago
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Last night on fox
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http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/04/21/cheney-d...
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lovemylibs8 months, 1 week ago
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Marc Theissen had an article in the Washington Post that explains a possible reason why Cheney wants this:
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic...
FTA: " But just as the memo begins to describe previously undisclosed details of what enhanced interrogations achieved, the page is almost entirely blacked out."-
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tehranchik8 months, 1 week ago
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Sullivan had this to say a few days ago.
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http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_di...
They had all the information from Zubaydah before they started using 'enhanced techniques' and continued anyway.
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hefaa1Comment removed: Hard Banned
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mesodude8 months, 1 week ago
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But without the benefit of things like those millions of "missing" White House emails, there's no way in hell I believe this is in the interest of "full disclosure." I wouldn't do anything for Cheney. Period. This is just the disgraced Vice Criminal getting his girdle in a bunch because he's getting the smackdown for torturing.
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ChefEOD8 months, 1 week ago
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Interrogation is not cut & dry folks. Every person is different and no one technique works for everyone. A good interrogator learns who the prisoner is and what will work, and that does not take as long as you may think and the initial stages of the process are more for determining what will work and what won’t than getting usable information. Very few governments or people can agree what constitutes torture. To one anything other than making the person quite comfortable is torture, to another its anything that causes fright, to yet another it is nothing short of maiming and dismemberment. Perhaps these links will help put this into perspective.
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http://tinyurl.com/dkw44q
http://tinyurl.com/chqauu
But none of this is the real issue here, the real issue needs to be seen as, ‘is the threat posed by the Islamists a real one or is it not?’ Too many on the left underestimate the threat, they think that there is no way that these backwards people can pose any real threat to the US or the western world. Accompanying that is the belief that the hostility coming from the Muslim world is the result of American behavior; if only we will reach out to them they will embrace us in turn. That is not going to happen. One of the most troubling aspects of this whole thing is not the ability or killing power of this enemy but our increasingly effete view of warfare. The greatest advantage our opponents enjoy is an uncompromising strength of will, their readiness to “pay the price and bear ANY burden to hurt and humble us. As our enemies’ view of what is permissible in war expands apocalyptically, our self-limiting definitions of allowable targets, acceptable casualties, and permissible conduct continue to narrow fatefully. Our enemies cannot yet defeat us in direct confrontations, but we appear determined to defeat ourselves. While the Islamists may violate our conceptions of morality and ethics, they are also willing to sacrifice more, suffer more, and kill m ore (even among their won peoples) than we are. We become mired in the details of minor missteps, while fanatical warriors consecrate their lives to their ultimate vision. They live their cause, but we do not live ours. We have forgotten what warfare means and what it takes to win.
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