WOW! Watch Fox News' Shepard Smith

[wkmac]

I agree that we need full, unequivocal transparency on this, but you're mistaken if you think that the torture debate is a left/right issue. There are plenty of principled conservatives who oppose torture, including republicans who served in the Bush administration and know a lot of the not yet released details about what happened. Shepard Smith is not alone by any stretch. In addition there are plenty of people on the left who believe torture is justified in certain situations. Alan Dershowitz, for instance.

On so many levels we need transparency and you are correct about this not being a left/right issue. Some voices of interest might be well served on this issue.

As a JAG in the Nevada National Guard, I used to lecture the soldiers of the 72nd Military Police Company every year about their legal obligations when they guarded prisoners. I'd always conclude by saying, "I know you won't remember everything I told you today, but just remember what your mom told you: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you." That's a pretty good standard for life and for the law, and even though I left the unit in 1995, I like to think that some of my teaching had carried over when the 72nd refused to participate in misconduct at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.

After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. At the trial of his captors, then-Lt. Chase J. Nielsen, one of the 1942 Army Air Forces officers who flew in the Doolittle Raid and was captured by the Japanese, testified: "I was given several types of torture. . . . I was given what they call the water cure." He was asked what he felt when the Japanese soldiers poured the water. "Well, I felt more or less like I was drowning," he replied, "just gasping between life and death."
Nielsen's experience was not unique. Nor was the prosecution of his captors. After Japan surrendered, the United States organized and participated in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, generally called the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Leading members of Japan's military and government elite were charged, among their many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The principal proof upon which their torture convictions were based was conduct that we would now call waterboarding.
In this case from the tribunal's records, the victim was a prisoner in the Japanese-occupied Dutch East Indies:
A towel was fixed under the chin and down over the face. Then many buckets of water were poured into the towel so that the water gradually reached the mouth and rising further eventually also the nostrils, which resulted in his becoming unconscious and collapsing like a person drowned. This procedure was sometimes repeated 5-6 times in succession.

Waterboarding Used to Be a Crime


An then there's Gene Healy, VP of the Cato Institute which is no bastion of left wing liberalism by any stretch.

Of Course It Was Torture


And then the Reagan Adminstration prosecuted a sheriff who used waterboarding.

Under the Reagan adminstration, we not only signed but lead an international effort to ban torture and cruel treatment and here is the transmittal with Reagan's own words in full support of this international ban. Article 1, sec. 1 reads as follows:

PART I
Article 1
1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Article 3
1. No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

But let's just cut to the chase, why the need for waterboarding and especially in excess? Protect America from another atack? Well on the face of it, I'd tend to agree with that thinking or at least it would be easy to convince most common sense thinking people that was the case. But maybe there is another darker side to this whole matter and why such excesses were taken.

When I testified last year before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties about Bush interrogation policies, Congressman Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) stated that former CIA Director Michael Hayden had confirmed that the Bush administration waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zabaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashirit for only one minute each. I told Franks that I didn’t believe that. Sure enough, one of the newly released torture memos reveals that Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times and Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times. One of the 2005 memos written by Bush-era Justice Department official Stephen Bradbury asserted that “enhanced techniques” used on Zubaydah yielded the identification of Mohammed and an alleged radioactive bomb plot by Jose Padilla. But FBI Supervisory Special Agent Ali Soufan, who interrogated Zubaydah from March to June 2002, wrote in The New York Times that Zubaydah produced that information under traditional interrogation methods, before the harsh techniques were ever used.
Why, then, the relentless waterboarding of these two men? It turns out that high Bush officials put heavy pressure on Pentagon interrogators to get Mohammed and Zubaydah to say there was a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 hijackers, in order to justify President Bush’s illegal and unnecessary invasion of Iraq in 2003. That link was never established.

Torture Was Used to Try to Link Saddam With 9/11

How Interesting!

Lastly, here's Glenn Greenwald and one of his latest missles on the subject.

 

[wkmac]

Article 3
1. No State Party shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.

Reading this I couldn't help but wonder about the above.

 

[wkmac]

I love the Southern Avenger

and then you just have to love this.

Ashame Obama doesn't believe enough in transparency to step up and get to the bottom of all of this! If he continues to block, IMO at some point he becomes as criminal as the other law breakers that he now protects. I believe the term is obstruction of justice!

 

[tieguy]

I love the Southern Avenger

YouTube - SA@Takimag - Support the Troops: Prosecute Bush/Cheney for Torture

and then you just have to love this.

Ashame Obama doesn't believe enough in transparency to step up and get to the bottom of all of this! If he continues to block, IMO at some point he becomes as criminal as the other law breakers that he now protects. I believe the term is obstruction of justice!

violate our national security and executive privledge in the process? If we could all step back into time and debate this subject during late september of 2001 there would be very little debate. The methods captured the mood of that time. we can only change direction we should not go back and try history with a changed perspective.

 

[toonertoo]

not sure we will reveal our intelligence gathering results enough to assess the quality of the information recieved via torture.

but it does seem like we have gotten some good info from someone. I wonder what the guy told us about Osama bin laden while he thought he was drowning. It might be why we are concentrating our efforts in remote areas of pakistan.

And we have been able to twart any further reoccurances of 9/11 when our intelligence gathering abilities were blamed prior to that attack. Just a thought.

So True, Now we just need to have Obama keep Air Force One in the hangar, and away from ground zero. How very insensitive, among many other things.
Of course he didnt know. Very scary.

 

[over9five]

They spent half a million on that.
Has the Obama administration not heard of "Photoshop"?

I bet Passyouby could have made a picture of Air Force One and the Statue of Liberty in about five minutes. Cost ZERO.

 

[wkmac]

Conyers, Nadler request special prosecutor on torture


Truth commission to proceed despite Obama’s wishes

 

[tieguy]

partisan politics continues. Should we waste our tax dollars (what little we will have) trying the last administrations policies. Will this now take us to a new level of partisan politics where the new administration looks to embarass the previous one. Mr. Conyers should be carefull what road he chooses to take us down. Payback is always around the corner.

 

[stevetheupsguy]

violate our national security and executive privledge in the process? If we could all step back into time and debate this subject during late september of 2001 there would be very little debate. The methods captured the mood of that time. we can only change direction we should not go back and try history with a changed perspective.

Well said!

They spent half a million on that.
Has the Obama administration not heard of "Photoshop"?

I bet Passyouby could have made a picture of Air Force One and the Statue of Liberty in about five minutes. Cost ZERO.

You ain't kidding. I could of photoshopped it to look like the Statue of Liberty was King Kong, and she was swiping at Air Force One.

 

[moreluck]

I wonder if the idiot on B.O.'s staff will lose his/her job. They should !

 

[wkmac]

Torture ‘to Achieve a Political Objective’

And there's Glenn too

Mainstreet Media, Propaganda Arm

 

[tieguy]

Actually, we've gotten better information doing that.

Read the history of the soldiers who played chess and ping pong with the German war criminals after WWII.

The old saying 'You catch more flies with honey, than with vinegar', seems to be based on fact, unlike the beliefs and fears of many here.

Here we are telling the experts of intelligence gathering the most effective means of gathering that intelligence.

I'm sure we would use the buddy buddy system to gather intelligence if that was the most effective means of doing so.

Otherwise your argument would seem to be that the nicer approach is most effective but we choose the least effective means torture because why?

 

[ajblakejr]

Actually, we've gotten better information doing that.

Read the history of the soldiers who played chess and ping pong with the German war criminals after WWII.

The old saying 'You catch more flies with honey, than with vinegar', seems to be based on fact, unlike the beliefs and fears of many here.

Along with playing chess and ping pong; they also shared the same bible and prayed together.

I wait silently for your flaming response to my post. I do thank you for reminding me of the history my great uncle passed down in the family bible.

I will add that I can not reference any names on the family letters since the Bible is with my oldest cousin.

Kindest Regards,

AJ

 

[wkmac]

How often do we hear the term "then and now" when someone wants to make a point about comparing the past to the present. This is no more true when reading the obituary of a Korean War US Air Force Colonel (then a Captain) who was shot down and held captive.

Is human nature to become what once was despised?