We Have Ways of Making You Bolster Our Erroneous Preconceptions
Now here’s a good reason to torture someone. As explained by Jonathan Landay one important use of torture to the Bush administration was to force detainees to cough up “evidence” of the Iraq/al-Qaeda ties that Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, etc. already “knew” existed:
A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under “pressure” to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.
“While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq,” Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. “The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.”
There’s much more in the article. And note that when people say that “torture doesn’t work” as an intelligence-gathering method, the point isn’t that it never produces an accurate piece of information. The point is that its application doesn’t systematically enhance the quality of your intelligence. In this case, for example, not only does torture appear to have vastly eroded key elements of America’s strategy of self-presentation in the world, it contributed to our undertaking a massive policy blunder that led to much more loss of innocent life than occurred on 9/11.
87 Responses to “We Have Ways of Making You Bolster Our Erroneous Preconceptions”
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April 22nd, 2009 at 10:45 am
Did they know it existed, or did they want to fool other people into thinking it did?
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:48 am
NotoriousPAT: They knew it in their gut, because their guts wanted to invade Iraq, and had always wanted that. The gut wants what the gut wants.
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:53 am
Have you ever been in a long term relationship, ended it, and then later discovered your former partner was somehow a sick, twisted nutjob? A pedophile, escaped bank robber, serial dog killer, something unimagineable. You think back to your time together and get cold, creepy chills at the thought of the person you had under the same roof as yourself. As a nation I can see many people coming to the realization they were being led by a crew of sick, crazy people. Eight years of twisted fucks at the helm. And now you look back and get the same creepy chills you’d experience finding out your husband or wife burned down churches or screwed donkeys while you were at work. All manner of conflicted emotions come to fore, stuff you can’t reconcile, stuff that bothers you all the time. Finally something has to purge those feelings, a cleansing and coming to terms. Failing that the less stout among us facing such problems go just a little mad. Personally I think a few people need to hang for all of this. I guess rotting in jail would do failing erection of some gallows.
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:54 am
In this case, for example, not only does torture appear to have vastly eroded key elements of America’s strategy of self-presentation in the world, it contributed to our undertaking a massive policy blunder that led to much more loss of innocent life than occurred on 9/11.
Contributed is the wrong word, since they were going to do it no matter what. When they couldn’t get anything real they showed themselves perfectly capable of making shit up.
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:55 am
According to the “senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue” quoted in the article:
That sounds plausible to me. Basically, Chalabi and other interested parties told Cheney and Rumsfeld what they wanted to hear, and then Cheney and Rumsfeld tried to get “confirmation” through torture.
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:57 am
Saddam hated the US, understandably since we kicked him out of Kuwait and encouraged the majority Shiites and Kurds to revolt against him. Then there was the UN sanctions and “humiliation” of the weapons inspectors.
Al Qaeda hated the US as evidenced by 9/11. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that they would link up.
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:58 am
Kruggs writes that there’s a word for torturing people in order to gin up a bogus justification for an immoral invasion: Evil. Let’s not pretend otherwise. That’s evil.
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:58 am
I agree with TJ. I’d emphasize in particular that the fact that their torture failed even for this purpose helps explain the increasing brutality of their torture as they became increasingly frustrated. That is one of the many important things to understand about torture: when it fails, it tends to encourage more and more, and worse and worse, torture.
April 22nd, 2009 at 10:59 am
Building on NotoriousPAT’s point, I’m beginning to suspect the administration knew exactly what it was doing adopting SERE techniques. They needed ‘confessions’ of links between al Qaeda and Iraq, and if they couldn’t get real ones, well…. All of the evidence coming out about the administration telling people at Gitmo that they needed more intelligence out of detainees is starting to sound like a not so subtle message to the folks at Gitmo to hand over the right kind of intelligence. In retrospect, it’s actually amazing they didn’t get more of what they wanted.
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:12 am
In retrospect, it’s actually amazing they didn’t get more of what they wanted.
I think they were likely tripped up by their own delusions.
It probably wouldn’t have been too hard just to get people to simply state there was a connection, or to sign a paper to that effect, including in the text whatever factual claims they wanted to see. It is an entirely different thing to get people to volunteer a detailed and plausible, let alone verifiable, story about a connection that didn’t exist. And yet I think it is likely they believed a connection really did exist, again thanks to Chalabi and friends. So they weren’t content just with simple statements and signed confessions, and instead wanted those detailed, plausible, and preferably verifiable, stories.
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:13 am
Not that this needs to be said, but hang them all.
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:17 am
It should also be noted that sometimes you do NOT want people to REVEAL information. From this morning’s news:
———-
“WASHINGTON (AFP) – A top executive of the troubled US mortgage finance giant Freddie Mac was found dead in his Washington area home Wednesday of an apparent suicide, police said.
David Kellermann, acting chief financial officer and a senior vice president of Freddie Mac, was found dead at his home in Vienna, Virginia around 5:00 am, Fairfax County Police Department spokeswoman Shelley Broderick said.
“His death is under an active investigation. It was an unattended death and there are no signs of foul play,” she told AFP.
————–
Well, there wouldn’t be, would there?
Ref: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090422/ts_alt_afp/financeeconomyusfreddiemac_20090422145547
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:20 am
Al Qaeda hated the US as evidenced by 9/11. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that they would link up.
Could you move the goal posts any farther? Given that Al Qaeda’s primary mission is to overthrow governments just like the one Sadaam had in Iraq, and given the lack of any empirical corroboration at all, it was as close to “out of the realm of possibility” as one can get.
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:20 am
The way I use the language, if you can’t reliably trust “information”, it’s not information, it’s just words.
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:26 am
One of the claims the Bush administration likes to throw around is that they received bad information from the intelligence community. However, this just further proves that they were responsible in creating an environment that produced this erroneous information.
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:26 am
Interrogator: Zap
Suspect: Guldarn BullSht
Interrogator: Zap
Suspect: Guldan Horsesht
Interrogator: Zap
Suspect: SomeDamn Hussy
Interrogator: Zap
Suspect: Saddam Hussein
Interrogator: I told you so!
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:28 am
And thus we see the problem with the “ticking bomb” justification.
What if there is no bomb? What if the particular guy you’ve captured doesn’t know where the bomb is?
This is the difference between a vague statement about torture being “justified” in certain situations, and believe it is right or wise to use it. We will never know, with any degree of certainty, all the things we’d have to know for certain in order to get to the circumstances that people engaging in an intellectual exercise need to stipulate in order to conclude that torture would be justified.
And as we see, being wrong about those things as going ahead with the torture as if you were right about what you thought you knew has severe consequences, even above and beyond the torture itself.
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:29 am
So does anyone know if the information that Cheney was talking about (showing the program’s “success”) was maybe the same information they used to bolster their case to go into Iraq?
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:39 am
It is not out of the realm of possibility that Al Qa’ida linked up with a time-traveling Genghis Khan who was recruited by a John Wilkes Booth from a parallel universe.
In fact, if you hook a some thug’s nuts up to several hundred volts for a while and simultaneously stick his head in a cage of non-venomous but really deadly looking scorpions, he might be willing to verify the story.
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:42 am
A real man would bomb Iraq back to stone without all this ‘validation’ pussyfooting.
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:42 am
“And thus we see the problem with the “ticking bomb” justification.”
Ever since this has become the accepted rationale for torture, I’ve wanted to ask the rationalizers why, if there was a ticking time bomb set to kill thousands, wouldn’t any hardened terrorist worth his salt let you torture him until the bomb went off (even until death), or just keep giving you bad information that you had to chase down until you discovered the lie, and went back to torturing?
I mean, how long do these “bombs” “tick” for in these apologists’ scenarios, anyhow?
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:46 am
Of course we now know the real ticking clock–it was the clock that started, not stopped, ticking on 9/11. Specifically, that clock was counting down the time left in the period of panic caused by 9/11, a panic that somewhat briefly made it possible for the Bush Administration to get authorization for a hasty invasion of Iraq.
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:57 am
brewmn,
Right. The only plausible scenario in which torture might work for intelligence purposes is if you have lots and lots of time. In such a case, you might be able to torture a person, take the claims they give you and attempt to verify them, come back and torture them some more if they lied, take the new claims they give you and attempt to verify them, come back and torture them so more if they are still lying, and so on until it appears they are giving you reliable information.
Of course in the real world, the value of the information they have to give to you is likely to be quickly degrading with time. So, that is why the small bits of valid information sometimes gotten from torture tend not to be very valuable in the greater scheme of things.
April 22nd, 2009 at 11:57 am
Maybe they should reboot that Sliders show and have Bush and Cheney travel to alternate universes looking for one in which Iraq and AQ had teamed up.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:07 pm
I don’t like al Qaida. I didn’t like Saddam. Cheney doesn’t like al Qaida and hated Saddam. It’s perfectly plausible Cheney and I are working on a plot to choreograph a wonderful new Broadway dance show. Nathan Lane is going to play Cheney. I want Sean Penn to play me but since he’s a covert al Qaida operative (he told Cheney he was, under threat of forcible sex with Babs Bush) that might not work out.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:12 pm
Saddam hated the US … Al Qaeda hated the US as evidenced by 9/11. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that they would link up.
As “The Naked Gun” shows us, leaders of all nations with grievances against the US meet together around a table to plot against us. The Legion of Doom is also a good example in which those who share a common enemy — The Justice League — join together and collaborate. I believe they also made use of a large table to conduct their meetings, as well.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:18 pm
I agree there was no evidence of a link up.
However you’re being obtuse and ideological if you think there was no possiblity whatsoever.
And if you you think Iraq has nothing whasoever to do with al Qaeda, you’re a moron.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:25 pm
I think that if you think I’m a moron that this has no weight whatsoever.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Could you move the goal posts any farther? Given that Al Qaeda’s primary mission is to overthrow governments just like the one Sadaam had in Iraq, and given the lack of any empirical corroboration at all, it was as close to “out of the realm of possibility” as one can get.
Well after Saddam fell, Al Qaeda in Mesopatamia and the former Baathists faught on the same side against Americans. So you’re wrong and it’s not unimaginable.
Your argument is just typical anti-war obtuseness. I’ll agree there was no evidence and that the torture was wrong and illegal.
But if the CIA was legally interoggating some terrorist, I don’t see why looking for links is so ridiculous. Saddam had a grudge and the enemy of my enemy and all that.
Al Qaeda’s main beef was the US-back Saudis who allowed US troops in the holy land.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:29 pm
It also wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that Goody Martin and Goody Wildes were really witches, and, just to be on the safe side, they had to be tortured until they confessed to their sorcery.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:31 pm
If you think slaughtering innocent Iraqis somehow contributed to our national security you aren’t just a total fucking moron, you are also a bloodthirsty asshole who has the blood of the untold thousands of dead Iraqis on your hands.
There was no reason to start planting bombs in Iraqi cities. It was an evil act and killed men, women, and children. Almost all of whom were innocent of any acts against the United States.
While you don’t bear legal responsibility as a war criminal, every dim witted thug who even suggests that it was okay to torture people in order to start this unprovoked aggression against the, again innocent, Iraqi people should be forever barred from both polite conversation. In fact, such people should refrain from voting as they have demonstrated a worldview so warped as to mark them as severely mentally disabled.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Re joe at 17: “What if there is no bomb? What if the particular guy you’ve captured doesn’t know where the bomb is?”
—————-
Well, then he had damm well better come up with some GUESSES, hadn’t he?
heh heh
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Evil.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:46 pm
The fucking Commies followed Sun Tzu and LET us capture their spies.
Who had been unknowingly prepped with FALSE info giving clues to all kinds of moles within the CIA. They drove CIA’s Counterintelligence Chief James Jesus Angleton batshit insane with their games –and induced him to destroy several loyal officers and almost destroy the Clandestine Service. Director of CIA William Colby finally had to have Angleton put to sleep –which convinced Angleton that COLBY was the mole. hee hee
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Angleton and also
“The Circus” by Nigel West.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:53 pm
The links between Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and Al Qaeda were tenuous, and mostly after-the-fact. The group already existed under a different name, made a show of loyalty to Osama bin Laden, then traded on the Al Qaeda name to gain recruits.
They did not work with the Baathists. While the Baathists worked to weaken the provisional government and the American occupying force, AQI worked to foment civil unrest.
AQI indiscriminently murdered large numbers of Shiite civilians in order to provoke retailiation against Iraqi Sunnis. They did this in hopes of provoking a large Sunni rebellion. This worked, though one of the actions of the Sunni rebellion was to accept American money in exchange for destroying AQI.
The Baathists hated AQI. They may have been predominantly Sunni, but they realized that Nationalism was their only path to success. The sect-based violence which AQI brought to a fever pitch destroyed the little hope they had for success. Many of them gravitated to positions of power in the Sunni militias that comprised the “Anbar Awakening”. They were happy to accept money to be rid of AQI.
April 22nd, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Bush letting Dick Cheney micromanage intel analysis was like letting Homer Simpson perform brain surgery. Just look at how Chalabi led us down the garden path for the benefit of Iran — although Cheney was happy to go because Big Oil CEOs thought the roses smelled so sweet.
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:02 pm
The Baathists hated AQI. They may have been predominantly Sunni, but they realized that Nationalism was their only path to success. The sect-based violence which AQI brought to a fever pitch destroyed the little hope they had for success. Many of them gravitated to positions of power in the Sunni militias that comprised the “Anbar Awakening”. They were happy to accept money to be rid of AQI.
Only later did the Sunnis turn against AQI and that was because AQI behavior became intolerable.
“The Baathists hated AQI.” The Baathists hated Shia, although Sadr helped the Sunnis against the Americans, like in Fallugah. My enemy’s enemy.
“The Baathists hated AQI.” Right. My point is that it’s not beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s amazing to me the leaps in logic the doves will take. It’s Bush hate.
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:05 pm
And it’s lovely to see you bend over backwards for the Baathists, the minority Sunnis who lorded over the majority Shia and Kurds.
I’m sure the Baathist meant nothing but the best for the Shia and Kurds.
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:13 pm
But if the CIA was legally interoggating some terrorist, I don’t see why looking for links is so ridiculous.
But why “look for” that link in particular? It seems to me what you should be doing is just trying to find out what real working relationships they actually had. If it turns out they had working relationships with the Iraq government, then OK, but I don’t see any reason to make establishing such a relationship a top priority of your interrogation.
Which is, according to the source, exactly what happened.
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Yeah, here we still are for the dumbass, pants-pissing hawk: just because we’re a bunch of idiot morons making shit up, the fact that our enemies are bad mean we should do whatever war and torture we want, and if not it makes you a Saddam Hussein boot-licker.
Again, I’m going to say this very clearly: Please stop trying to ‘protect’ me, my family, my loved ones, and my country by being a much of ignoramus, pants-pissing morons. You dumbasses are only making it worse, and fuck you for thinking that your bullshit about ‘DUH IF YOU AINT WIF US YOU IS A TERROR LOVER’ works for anyone except you idiot pants-pisser America-hurters.
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:47 pm
In Syria, the Baathists are primarily Shia who use the party to maintain power over the Sunni majority.
Baathism is secular, socialist, nationalist and anti-democratic. It isn’t Shia or Sunni. I have not “bent over backwards” in any way to defend them.
Pedro, you really don’t know anything at all about what has been going on in Iraq. If you want to comment intelligently, you may want to take a few days to familiarize yourself with the various organizations, their histories, the timelines of events etc.
April 22nd, 2009 at 1:48 pm
We will never know, with any degree of certainty, all the things we’d have to know for certain in order to get to the circumstances that people engaging in an intellectual exercise need to stipulate in order to conclude that torture would be justified.
Huh? What are “all the things we’d have to know for certain” for the use of torture to be justified? Why would knowledge of all these things be necessary for torture to be justified? If we don’t need to “know with certainty” that dropping bombs on enemy targets during a war will achieve our military objective in order for the bombing to be justified, and we don’t need to “know with certainty” that a convicted murderer is guilty in order for imprisoning or executing him to be justified, why do we need to “know with certainty” anything about torture for torture to be justified?
Ever since this has become the accepted rationale for torture, I’ve wanted to ask the rationalizers why, if there was a ticking time bomb set to kill thousands, wouldn’t any hardened terrorist worth his salt let you torture him until the bomb went off (even until death), or just keep giving you bad information that you had to chase down until you discovered the lie, and went back to torturing?
Because giving you bad information would prolong the torture.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:01 pm
“Because giving you bad information would prolong the torture.”
You are truly, truly stupid, “charles”.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Obama’s own Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, now admits that torture “works”::
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us/politics/22blair.html
But never mind that. Just keep clicking your heels three times and repeating your mindless mantra “torture doesn’t work, torture doesn’t work …”
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Because I have an accurate view of events in Iraq, I hate Bush?
It was a reasonable course of action for intelligence agencies to look into possible connections between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, as unlikely as that would be. One connection was found. Al Qaeda agreed to stop trying to kill Saddam Hussein; in return, he agreed to stop persecuting radical Sunni clerics. That’s hardly cooperation.
It is not reasonable to assume significant connections exist, and pursue finding only evidence that supports the assumption.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Torture works very well. Cheney and Bush wanted justifications with which to use to invade and occupy Iraq. They tortured captured suspects, they got the war they wanted, hey, it must have worked.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Charles (aka Mixner),
As DTM noted several hours ago, Blair said:
Using C4 to pull the engine of a car with a thrown rod also works, but is, on the whole, a net negative.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:14 pm
Well after Saddam fell, al Qaeda in Mesopotamia began working with former Baathists, so it’s not unimaginable that Saddam and al Qaeda were working together?
WTF are talking about? If only FORMER Baathists were willing to work with al Qaeda, and only when Saddam had been dead for years, then those facts tell us absolutely nothing about the Saddam government working with al Qaeda.
In fact, your theory suggests just the opposite: al Qaeda and the Saddam government has a big motive for working together – mutual hostility to America – and yet they didn’t, which means they had an ever bigger motivation not to work together.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:16 pm
Because I have an accurate view of events in Iraq, I hate Bush?
You don’t have an accurate view. You and other doves bend over backwards rhetorically for Saddam and the Baathists.
Maybe it isn’t Bush-hate, but I really don’t understand it. Anti-war types flip out over the Bush Aministration torturing terror suspects, and meanwhile Saddam and the Baathists were torturers par excellence even to the extent Uday would torture the soccer team for performing poorly. And yet you guys defend them rherorically even better than they defend themselves. Torture’s okay as long as it’s not by the government we pay taxes to?
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:18 pm
In fact, your theory suggests just the opposite: al Qaeda and the Saddam government has a big motive for working together – mutual hostility to America – and yet they didn’t, which means they had an ever bigger motivation not to work together.
Pure obtuseness. You’ve never heard of the enemy of my enemy? Like Churchill and Stalin working together against Hitler? Are you stupid?
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:21 pm
You useless, pants-pissing prick. You and other hawks love propping up whatever cheap tyrant you can and then when they’re no longer your puppy you all stain your diapers and run around screaming Hitler! Hitler! Hitler!
We put the lot of you in charge in the election of 2000 and you couldn’t even get off your asses to investigate all the warnings of imminent terrorist attack, and you’re all so utterly ashamed of the complete failure of your guy to protect this country from the largest-ever foreign terrorist attack on our soil that you think screaming and pissing your pants about the liberals being surrender monkeys is going to make people forget it.
You couldn’t keep your own diapers safe, much less this country.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:22 pm
The elements of the ticking bomb scenario – the only that most people say justifies torture. Knowing there is a bomb about to go off, not knowing where the bomb is, knowing you have a captive who can tell you where the bomb is, and knowing you can distinguish between true and false confessions in time to defuse the bomb.
I shouldn’t have to explain this to you, but your soul is a hard, shriveled little thing as this point and your moral reasoning is predictably degraded, so I will: because torturing a human being without knowing that there is just cause, without knowing that doing so will result in a greater good, is pointless sadism.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Pedro,
Provide an example of any dove defending torture by the Saddam regime, or STFU.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:27 pm
I will give you that Saddam should have been upset with Al Qaeda.
Al Qaeda’s main beef was the stationing of troops in the holy land (because of neighboring Iraq’s tendency to annex UN members)
After 9-11, Bush took the troops in Saudi Arabia and moved them out and next door to Iraq. So Saddam had a right to upset about that.
But it’s a fact that during the 90s and under sanctions, Saddam became more religious going so far as adding a Koranic saying to the flag and writing the Koran in his own blood.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Ah, of course, “the enemy of my enemy”!
So, should we have worked with Saddam against Al Qaeda, or with Al Qaeda against Saddam?
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Jesus, Pedro, learn to fucking read.
Here’s what I wrote. I’ll bold the part that you couldn’t understand the first time:
Here’s what you wrote. I’ll bold the part that makes you look like an idiot:
Did you follow that time, champ? Here, let me put them right next to each other. It’s clear that remembering a point from one sentence to the next is a challenge for you:
Please, lecture me more about my intelligence.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Njorl (aka DTM),
Yes, Blair also thinks that, on balance, our use of torture did more harm than good. That doesn’t alter the fact that he admits that torture “worked” at producing “High value information.”
Why aren’t you demanding the impeachment of President Obama for ruling out prosecution of CIA torturers, in violation of the Convention Against Torture?
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Pedro, you sick bastard, no one here is defending Saddam torturing people. Not one person. Stop lying.
Now, guess what, when it comes to a choice between Saddam Hussein torturing people and the United States killing tens or hundreds of thousands of innocents you know what/ I’m going to come down on the side of torture. It’s not because I like torture, it’s because I hate the massive death toll that is objectively much worse than torture.
What the hell is wrong with you?
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:30 pm
So, Pedro, are you going to provide any evidence of any doves defending torture by Saddam, or are you going to STFU?
Or are you just utterly without any honor and decency?
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:31 pm
Torture’s okay as long as it’s not by the government we pay taxes to?
Good god you’re a moron.
OF COURSE ITS NOT OK.
Jesus. The two things have fuck all to do with each other!
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:31 pm
I have seen DTM answer this question a half dozen times a day for the past week. Never once have you offered a rejoinder to his answer.
Just the same “Hey, look over there!” partisan bullshit, to change the subject. Clearly the behavior of someone confident in the power of his ideas and ability to defend them.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:32 pm
F*@%. It’s a spoof troll. We’ve been had. Well played!
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:35 pm
your soul is a hard, shriveled little thing as this point and your moral reasoning is predictably degraded
Your soul is pure evil.
because torturing a human being without knowing that there is just cause, without knowing that doing so will result in a greater good, is pointless sadism.
You’re evading the question yet again. If “just cause” for dropping bombs during a war and executing convicted murderers does not require that we “know with certainty” that the bombing will achieve our objective or that the presumed murderer is guilty, why does “just cause” for using torture require that we “know with certainty” anything about the circumstances in which we use it?
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:39 pm
You useless, pants-pissing prick. You and other hawks love propping up whatever cheap tyrant you can and then when they’re no longer your puppy you all stain your diapers and run around screaming Hitler! Hitler! Hitler!
Typical. Face with logic and facts you devolve to ad hominem. I’m not a conservative. I support Obama.
My view is that it was possible that Saddam and Al Qaeda worked together since they both hated America. But the evidence said they didn’t so they didn’t.
Anti-war types who go out of their way to say that there was no possible way ever that Saddam and Al Qaeda would work together, that it’s absurd to even consider it, that they are totally unrelated, are full of it. Sorry.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:39 pm
Your soul is pure evil.
Who cares what you think about evil? You endorse torture. Ergo, nothing you say on the subject of morality matters in the least.
And it is necessary to know with certainty that a murderer is guilty to execute him. In case you didn’t notice, the country is in the midst of a large backlash against capital punishment, brought about by the exoneration of numerous prisoners by DNA evidence.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:45 pm
El Cid, you need to do your homework.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saddam_Hussein
“As a result, Saddam Hussein appealed to many people for the same reasons that attracted more and more followers to Islamic revivalism and also for the same reasons that fueled anti-Western feelings. “As one U.S. Muslim observer noted: People forgot about Saddam’s record and concentrated on America…Saddam Hussein might be wrong, but it is not America who should correct him.” A shift was, therefore, clearly visible among many Islamic movements in the post war period “from an initial Islamic ideological rejection of Saddam Hussein, the secular persecutor of Islamic movements, and his invasion of Kuwait to a more populist Arab nationalist, anti-imperialist support for Saddam (or more precisely those issues he represented or championed) and the condemnation of foreign intervention and occupation.”[23]
Saddam, therefore, increasingly portrayed himself as a devout Muslim, in an effort to co-opt the conservative religious segments of society. Some elements of Sharia law were re-introduced, and the ritual phrase “Allahu Akbar” (”God is great”), in Saddam’s handwriting, was added to the national flag.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/monitoring/media_reports/941490.stm
“President Saddam Hussein has taken delivery of a copy of the Koran written using his own blood.
Iraqi TV and newspapers reported that the Iraqi leader had the volume produced in thanks to God for bringing him safely through many “conspiracies and dangers” in his long political career.”
Since you were wrong about these things, maybe you don’t know that much after all….
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:49 pm
And “fail to advance our military objectives” isn’t the relevant comparison, because “failing to advance our military objectives” doesn’t, in and of itself, harm people, unlike torturing the wrong guy.
The relevant comparison would be bombing without knowing for certain that your target is military, and the US Army Field Manual as well as international law does, in fact, require target confirmation. Even this isn’t an entirely 1:1 comparison, since a pilot on a bombing mission doesn’t have any alternative way to hit the enemy except by bombing them, while an interrogator does, in fact, have the option of utilizing the types of non-torturous methods utilized by the FBI to gain information from a prisoner, as demonstrated by the non-tortuous by extremely effective debriefing of Saddam Hussein.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:52 pm
May have been doesn’t matter. We know for a fact that there wasn’t. We know that the only “evidence” we had for a connection was based on torture used to gin up such “evidence.”
In other words, the pro-murder types who supported the war have nothing.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:53 pm
Pedro, when you’re done providing a single example of dove defending torture by the Saddam government – which you have never once been able to do – please provide a single example of El Cid denying that Saddam Hussein utilized religious imagery to rally support during the 1990s.
Nobody is disputing that he did. We’re disputing the assertion that this demonstrates a likelihood of his government working with al Qaeda. You know which government utilizes frequent displays of Muslim piety to rally support among its populace? Saudi Arabia – you know, bin Laden’s primary enemy.
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:04 pm
It isn’t so clear-cut.
While the convention states:
If the interrogators were ordered to torture the prisoners, and they complied, they would be guilty. However, the interrogators were given written assurance from the OLC (the closest thing the executive branch has to supreme court review) that the actions were not torture. That clouds the issue to the extent that it arguably becomes a matter of prosecutorial discretion. To make the charge stick, a prosecutor would have to prove that the interrogators knew that the OLC was lying.
President Obama has not ruled out prosecution of those who ordered or approved of the process. This is a more relevant passage:
It is arguable that people at the OLC violated this provision, and thereby exculpated the actual interrogators. They failed to ensure that all acts of torture were offences under US criminal law.
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Pedro, when you’re done providing a single example of dove defending torture by the Saddam government – which you have never once been able to do – please provide a single example of El Cid denying that Saddam Hussein utilized religious imagery to rally support during the 1990s.
El Cid said I was being troll for writing that Saddam wrote the Koran in his own blood and put a phrase from the Koran on the Iraqi flag.
I provided links backing up my claims so either you need to learn to read or need to stop being obtuse.
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Pedro, when you’re done providing a single example of dove defending torture by the Saddam government –
Joe am I wrong think you wish that mass murderer and chronic torturer Saddam Hussein was still in power? That his removal was the biggest mistake in human history? Because that’s what doves say day after day, that Saddam “wasn’t that bad.”
April 22nd, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Pedro,
Please provide that example of anyone defending the use of torture by the Saddam regime, or STFU.
Asking irrelevant questions as a distraction isn’t going to cut it.
I might as well ask you why you’re so happy that 4300 American service members are now dead, because you support the Iraq War. You might as well ask me why I celebrate the deaths of 100,000 children at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, because I supported World War II.
Low, dishonest, cowardly arguments generally come from people who can’t make their case.
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:08 pm
Pedro,
I’ll make this as simple as I can.
I am not a dove. I’ve been designing military hardware for about 25 years now. I wrote long posts in favor of invading Iraq, of which I am now ashamed. I still support military action in Afghanistan, and hope I am not ashamed of that someday. I think the initial CIA actions in the invasion of Afghanistan were incredibly well done.
I never defended the Baathists or Saddam Hussein. You dishonestly attribute such to me. I merely wished to set the record straight as to which organizations in the Iraqi civil war were trying to accomplish what, when. It is very complicated, and you obviously are severely lacking in knowledge in this area.
I haven’t defended torture. The closest I’ve come to that is arguing against other anti-torture posters who claim torture never produces results – I contend that it can, but still is not worth while.
You are reckless in your accusations and ignorant of facts. You make unfounded leaps of what I presume you think of as “logic”. You don’t read other people’s posts carefully, and instead substitute what you would prefer to have read.
This entire argument stems from your incorrect interpretation of the pursuit of intelligence regarding a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda. No one says it was an impossibility. It was highly unlikely. It was worth an honest appraisel by intelligence agancies. That is not what was done. Instead the assumption was that such a link existed and intelligence agencies must find proof of it.
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Pedro,
Do you support invading Russia? Or are you a defender of murdering journalists, you big Putin-lover?
See what I did there? Just what you did.
It requires absolutely zero support for Vladimir Putin or any of his crimes to oppose invading Russia. In fact, one can despise him and his evil works and still not support launching a war against him.
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Why don’t you google it. You’ll find page after page of right-wingers claiming that people say this, but nearly no people actually saying it.
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:28 pm
“See what I did there? Just what you did.”
No you didn’t. I don’t support war with Iran but I can admit that things will get bad when they get nukes and I don’t whitewash Iran as that apologist Juan Cole does on a regular basis.
See the difference?
Peaceniks whitewash Saddam Hussein all the time. They feel if you talk bad about a regime it’s warmongering. If you suggest maybe there was a possibility Saddam could have hooked up with Al Qaeda, you’re a warmonger.
I think people just see what conservatives say, then argue the opposite.
April 22nd, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Please provide evidence of this claim you keep making, or STFU.
No no, a moron. If you suggest maybe there was a possibility Saddam could have hooked up with al Qaeda, you’re a moron, but not necessarily a warmonger.
And also, please provide a single quote or link to any “peacenik” whitewashing Saddam Hussein, or STFU.
April 22nd, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Why is anyone bothering with Pedro? He has neither facts nor logic on his side, just a lot of baseless assertions and non sequiturs.
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:23 pm
Why is anyone bothering with Pedro?
Indeed. He’s Christopher Hitchens’ very own Jamie Kirchick.
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:24 pm
The fact that bin Laden repeatedly denounced Saddam as a socialist infidel was pretty strong evidence in favor of the proposition that an AQ-Iraq alliance wasn’t too likely.
Also, I have a question. Are Peter K. and Pedro the same person, or are there really two Hitchens wannabes who troll here when they’re not jerking off to the Euston Manifesto?
April 22nd, 2009 at 8:50 pm
HA! And that’s exactly what they wanted you to think!
April 22nd, 2009 at 9:17 pm
[...] 22, 2009 · No Comments Here’s Yglesias on the dreadfully faulty logic of the Bush-Cheney Regime during their torture [...]
April 22nd, 2009 at 9:25 pm
And it is necessary to know with certainty that a murderer is guilty to execute him.
More nonsense from joe from Lowell. We certainly do not “know with certainty” that the people we execute are guilty.
And “fail to advance our military objectives” isn’t the relevant comparison, because “failing to advance our military objectives” doesn’t, in and of itself, harm people, unlike torturing the wrong guy.
You are utterly confused. In the case of wartime bombing, the act that harms people is the bombing. If bombing can be justified even though we do not “know with certainty” that it will achieve our objective, why can’t torture also be justified even though we do not “know with certainty” that it will achieve our objective?
If the interrogators were ordered to torture the prisoners, and they complied, they would be guilty.
The interrogators tortured the prisoners. So why aren’t they guilty of the crime of torture?
However, the interrogators were given written assurance from the OLC (the closest thing the executive branch has to supreme court review) that the actions were not torture.
Utterly irrelevant. There is no exemption in either the Convention Against Torture or the U.S. code for torturers who were told that torture is legal. Torture is a crime whether the torturer believes it to be a crime or not.
That clouds the issue to the extent that it arguably becomes a matter of prosecutorial discretion.
More nonsense. The Convention Against Torture requires the government to “submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution” Obama has ruled out prosecution in cases where the torturer tortured his victim in “good faith” on the basis of the legal advice in the OLC memos. There is no exception for such cases in the Convention Against Torture. As Nowak, Greenwald, the ACLU and others have pointed out, Obama is therefore in violation of the Convention Against Torture for ruling out prosecution in these cases.
April 22nd, 2009 at 9:38 pm
As further proof that joe from Lowell’s claim that congress didn’t know about the torture is a lie, Obama’s Director of National Security, Dennis Blair, explicitly stated in his memo last week that members of congress knew about and endorsed the use of torture:
.
In the same memo, Blair notes that the torture “worked” to produce “high value information” against al Qaida:
April 23rd, 2009 at 9:58 am
Who cares what you think about morality, charles?
You endorse torture.
I’m happy to have to denounce my moral reasoning. I hope everyone sees you do it.
We certainly do not “know with certainty” that the people we execute are guilty. Which is why I don’t consider the death penalty morally justified. You might remember, the question of whether something is morally justified being the subject of the debate? Odd that you dropped that, and changed the subject to how the law is executed.
The fact that you need to truncate my comments to the point of misrepresenting them is a nice touch, though. Clearly the act of someone confident in the strength of his argument.
Like here:
Yeah, that’s great, chief, except here’s what I actually wrote:
And “fail to advance our military objectives” isn’t the relevant comparison, because “failing to advance our military objectives” doesn’t, in and of itself, harm people, unlike torturing the wrong guy.
The relevant comparison would be bombing without knowing for certain that your target is military
Gee, explain to me again that I don’t realize that the bombing itself is what does the harm. I trust that if you could formulate rebuttals to the arguments I made, you would have done so. Instead, we get little stunts like this.
If bombing can be justified even though we do not “know with certainty” that it will achieve our objective, why can’t torture also be justified even though we do not “know with certainty” that it will achieve our objective?
For the reason I JUST EXPLAINED. No, I’m not going to repeat it for you, because you’ll just pretend not to understand again. I’d prefer to just call attention to the fact that you playing dumb because you have no reply to my point.
The rest of the quotes in your comment are from Njorl. I’ll let him, or her, defend his or her arguments to the best of his or her ability. You know, you can tell who wrote a particularly comment by looking at the name next to the little number.
April 23rd, 2009 at 12:15 pm
Is it a crime if the perpetrator does not believe it is torture?
The interrogators were not told, “Perform this torture; it is legal.” They were told to use methods that were not considered torture by the highest ranking legal authority of the executive branch of their government. To prove that they committed a crime, you must prove that they did not believe the OLC memos, which may be true, but is almost certainly unprovable. If a prosecutor believes that he can not win his case, he is negligent if he prosecutes. Jeopardy attaches and the subject is permanently untouchable.
The violation of the treaty lies on the part of the government. The treaty requires establishment and execution of laws to prevent torture. The OLC was the part of the government that compromised the law of the land. They violated the treaty, and are punishable by law. Proving that they did not believe the memos they wrote may be possible. They are lawyers with long paper trails of opinion that could be used against them.