Breaking! A Month of Interrogation Works Better than Waterboarding Someone 183 Times
As Admiral Mullen just testified to Congress, Underwear Bomber Umar Abdulmutallab has been cooperating with the FBI.
The blood-thirsty right, of course, has been screaming all month that Abdulmutallab wasn’t taken immediately to a military facility to be tortured interrogated harshly.
That blood-thirst has always felt rather weird to me. Unlike all the others that the torture industry has made an exhaustive effort to sufficiently dehumanize such that we (or rather they) could all cheer torture, I have a tougher time doing that with Abdulmutallab. I know that Abdulmutallab is at this very minute less than twenty miles away from me (and for two days, he was just a few miles from my house). And even with that proximity, he just doesn’t feel like that big a threat to me right now.
Maybe that’s one reason they’ve been screaming for his torture, to make sure we don’t start to normalize the thought of these people in normal prisons.
Or maybe, they wanted to prevent precisely what has occurred. That is, in response to–presumably–normal FBI interrogation, Abdulmutallab has resumed cooperating with investigators.
They didn’t need to waterboard him!
Surprise, surprise. A month of interrogation works better than a month of waterboarding.
it is generally well-known
the chemicals used,
how stored in his underwear,
what the trigger mechanism was to be used (go ahead, laugh:),
what the likelihood of a successful explosion of any size,
and
what the likelihood of a damaging (for an airplane) to severely damaging explosion.
Next thing you know we’ll have to bail out the torture industry.
I’d be willing to have them put up in some government housing for the rest of their lives. Heck, I’d even toss in government health care and three square meals a day, plus free gym privileges.
But did any of the Congresscritters point out precisely this aspect of Admiral Mullen’s testimony, EW? Or are you, once again, the first to grasp and publicize something of great importance to us all?
Heh. I wonder if Susan Collins wants to retract the speech in the YouTube embedded in my diary from today. She claims that Abdulmutallab was only interrogated for 50 minutes and that it was a horrible decision by the Obama Administration to Mirandize him and provide an attorney. She never actually said it, but it was pretty clear to me that she really wanted him waterboarded.
That rant that she spit out awhile back was pathetic
they just want obama to torture somebody so that it’s normalized across party lines.
Yeah, bipartisan.
Does this put the breaks on this wingnut editorialist in North Carolina:
h/t ondelette
jim white @4
I can sympathize with the senator, I’m sure she would feel horrible about his having his Miranda rights read to him
And having been Provided with an attorney.
The senator is entirely correct.
Doing so not only treats the bomber as an American citizen (with an Arab last name)
But worse,
makes it possible to try him in a federal court.
Thus doing away with the black box of permanent military detention and military trial.
Without that very special black Box,
from which republicans were able to draw boogeyman stories with which to amuse the ms media, enrich limbaugh and beck, and frighten the population,
Republican politicians will have to gin up a completely new boogeyman after so many years of telling their beloved terrorism fables.
AP reporting that the FBI flew to Nigeria and have been working with Abdulmutallab’s family to gain his cooperation.
“AP reporting that the FBI flew to Nigeria and have been working with Abdulmutallab’s family to gain his cooperation.”
Apparently they then flew some of the family members to Detroit to talk with Abdulmutallab, and convince him to cooperate.
I think I see a pattern here. When Wingnut Right Wing Terrorists take after Senator Landreau’s phones, The Obama Administration sends the perps home to stay with Daddy till trial time.
If you get arrested on terrorist charges to trying to blow up a plane, Obama calls in Daddy to convince his alienated son to turn states evidence.
How many Republican Senators have living Daddy’s? They might prove to be useful.
I loved the way that Hari Srinavasan on the PBS NewsHour tonight misreported the chronology.
He said that Abdulmutallab had stopped cooperating back in December after his Miranda warning.
As opposed to: his rights were read to him after he had stopped cooperating.
It’s getting to the point where the only point in watching the NewsHour (and listening to NPR)
is to engage in media criticism.
Not true. Ari Shapiro has done some excellent reporting. Unfortunately, he’s about the only one.
Bob in AZ
Shocked. Now the only really good reason to torture is for fun.
Next thing you know they’ll let DFHs have Miranda rights….
OT: CNN reporting on Al Awlaki’s father writing a letter to Obama disputing terrorist charge.
Yes, yes, yes. But waterboarding 183 times is so much more fun! Interrogations are sooo boring.
Bring on the lighted cigarettes, Yoo idiot.
I don’t know if anyone saw this in the Washington Post back on Jan. 30, by Michael V. Hayden:
You have to hand it to Hayden for clearly enunciating the positions of the other side. However, his idea of “hope” is certainly not mine. He’s a scary person, and the fact that this country has a number like him in high places is enough to dampen my own hopes for this country.
I wish I could have faith in the FBI to be some kind of white knight in the field of interrogations, but their entire history — including episodes I detailed recently when discussing David Margolis’s dubious past — demonstrates that if they are not as bad as the CIA, they, too, are people to fear.
“I wish I could have faith in the FBI to be some kind of white knight in the field of interrogations, but their entire history — including episodes I detailed recently when discussing David Margolis’s dubious past — demonstrates that if they are not as bad as the CIA, they, too, are people to fear.”
I think FBI history provides some guidelines for when to more or less trust them, and when to be very skeptical.
They measure their worth, and their agents’ worth on the number of successfully closed cases in any given year, office, or agent career. Virtually everything is based on this criteria, raises, promotions, demotions and all the evaluation of individual Field Offices.
Given this, I think you can more or less trust if most aspects of a case moving toward successful closure and thus adding to good stats, has relatively few obvious problems. They won’t take the risk of messing up a promising good stat with an out of order interrogation. Where they get into problem areas is when they have a case that is not properly closing, and they have a significant investment in it that is fairly public. I think for instance of the Wounded Knee trial or the saga of Bolger in MA.
Sara,
You make an excellent point. I’ll only add that in the FBI, “closing a case” requires following the law and obtaining a conviction. The CIA and JSOC have a rather different definition for closing a case. Furthermore, I saw Muller on the TeeVee machine bragging about how much information they were getting by *following the law* and NOT resorting to harsh interrogation methods. The look on his face said, “Oh what fun to get such good results without resorting to despicable techniques! Yes, we can!”
Bob in AZ
CIA & JSOC, esp the latter, are still doing plenty of torture, as democracynow covered yesterday.
Let’s see Mr. Hayden who should never be allowed to wear a uniform – do you mean an expert like Deuce Martinez was when the torture crew sent him to que up torture sessions for KSM? An expert like Mitchell and Jessen where, when your torture boys kicked out Soufan in favor of “knuckle-draggers” to direct where KSM’s confessions went. Oh, no, you must mean the guys who figured out that al-libi was a member of al-Qaeda’s ruling council – no, no, let’s see, probably you meant the guys who figured out that if we only tortured al-Libi right, we could get him to confess to the training camps in Iraq that YOUR experts already knew all about. Nope, that’s not it, you must mean the experts who never figured out that there might be two different guys in the whole wide world named Khalid el-Masri – good thing you had those experts available when you kidnapped a German national from Macedonia and scheduled him for your stripping and anal assaults.
yeah -Mikey Hayden, the self-proclaimed expert on the 4th Amendment (as long as you never get to probable cause and warrant clauses) who oversaw the biggest government run felony program every even contemplated, much less pulled off by a man shaming his uniform, a Mikey Hayden who managed to lose track of al-Libi before he was suicided in Libya, Mikey Hayden who helped make 2 million people refugees and killed countless others – the “expert” who after 8 years and a mass felony program involving huge telecomunication services and a torture program achieving rare heights of depravity never even came close to getting Bin Laden – – Mr. Elemer Fudd meets Darth Vader – Mike Hayden is worrying about “experts” being around for the interrogation.
Hayden appears to be worried that Cheney will be all alone in his private circle in Hell, so Hayden wants to make sure he can be there to keep him company.
More prosaically, the torture policymakers understand that they have to stay on offense to fend off trials in the Hague. Not that that’s likely, but they are 1%’ers after all.
OT: apologize if this has been brought up in one of the other threads.
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=878C3C72-18FE-70B2-A81EDA6D629BFA12
So if these gents are worth better than a plug nickel then why did the CIA need to torture? Couldn’t afford to bring them in for a national security issue?
Also, why don’t We the People have a report from them from each session of Congress? Would be interesting to see how a “deception detection” expert rated each floor speech.
I should add that I originally found article linked at naked capitalism.
Allan @10
A nice way to put it .
Nor are you alone in listening
And then asking,
whoa, does this fit with what I’ve learned from other sources?
The dying of mainstream journalism’s credibility in reporting on
Political matters
Has been a long, slow, sad dying,
Sadder still because it has been obliviously generated and arrogantedly denied from within mainstream media organizations.
External technology may have doomed media corporate profit,
But this long dying of trust and credibility has been internally generated.
Dick and Liz sure have been keeping their traps shut recently. Wonder what they have up their sleeves? Why the silence?
Maybe they are planning a breakout from the bunker.
Argentina?
Probably want to take along their track shoes.
O/T, and uh-oh. wikileaks is having financial troubles.
Peterr @23
Your’s is a thoughtful suggestion.
In the interests of establishing civility where it has not previously existed,
Perhaps our miscreant american toturers could be given Their free housing (in desperate economic times, don’t you know)
In the same carcels as those vile a-rab Terrorists.
This would , of course, be done to encourage the establishment of a meaningful dialogue between those who deserved torture and those who gave terrorists what they deserved.
Thus, the ground would be set for thoughtful personal Interchanges between terrorists and torturers.
Of course, there would have to be some ground rules set up
for this social interchange ring about a closer understanding of each
Other’s pov.
I really want someone to ask Darth Fudder what he thinks will happen to leads like Abdulmutallab’s father and the parents of the kids now held in Pakistan if they know that their children get turned over to torture as soon as their parents contact anyone in the US gov.
Army vet and American citizen held by ICE in detention without trial for 7 months sues
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2010/02/us_citizen_held_at_immigration_center_sues_feds.php?ref=fpc
I wish him good luck – and maybe Hayden can rise up on his haunches and slaver over whether or not there were any *experts* on American citizenship around when Castillo was black holed for 7 months.
Part of the Republican gig is that “terrorists” must be subhuman– and if subhuman, then we don’t need to treat them humanely (Q.E.D.) And of course, if they are detainees, then obviously they’re the “worst of the worst” (and therefore subhuman).
And of course, Step 1 in depriving them of their humanity is that They Are Not U.S. Citizens (except if they are, but that’s another story). Step 2 is that they are the “worst of the worst”. After all, why else would we have detained them?
It is appalling to me that so many Americans (not just Republicans!) have so little regard for human rights. The progress made in this regard over the second half of the 20th century (Nuremberg trials, Civil Rights legislation, International treaties) has gone right out the window.
We have descended into Barbarism.
Bob in AZ
Ding ding ding!
Black people aren’t really human, so we can enslave them.
Gay people aren’t fully human (after all, to be fully human means that you try to procreate; if you’re not trying to propagate the species, you must hate it), so we can single them out for discriminatory treatment by law.
On the other hand, we’re not the only ones who do it. For example, according to one segment of the Israeli population, Palestinians aren’t really human, either, so whatever is done to them is justified.
Kumbaya.
Well, dare I say that almost all violence against another human being requires this “belief”? It is THE invariant cognitive distortion. We minimize, deny and blame the violence on someone else. We must invalidate the “other”. This increases fear, anger and disgust…these emotions then cycle to distance us further from our prey and deeper into our own emotional cycle eventually, helping us create a paradigm in which we can find joy at the destruction of “other”. And the scary thing is that we all do it. Which is why it’s so hard for us to see it. One of my passions in life is to map the mechanisms of violence in humanity. Whether it’s a husband beating his wife, a mother smacking her child, a teen bullying another teen, a country attacking another country.
In fact sometimes it’s really, really hard for me to see republicans as human beings at all.
Umar tried to kill 300 people.
And you’re appalled that Americans have so little regard for human rights.
And you claim we have descended into Barbarism.
Odd.
As a consequence of 3000 American deaths on 9/11, the U.S. has been responsible for over a million deaths of Iraqis civilians & I haven’t remembered the estimates for Afghan civilians. Nope. No U.S. barbarism to be found.
The terrorists want to drag us down to their level, so they can beat us with experience.
IMO, we’ve arrived at their level. We’re fighting the game with THEIR rules.
We had our own rules before. I liked them. We’ve locked up and executed many terrorists with them, they worked well for us. I’m appalled at how far we’ve fallen.
Mass murders aren’t common criminals. But treating them like common criminals works pretty well. If 300 avoidable American deaths horrifies you (and it should), consider how many die each month from lack of health care. And realize that we can save a lot more lives for much less than the cost of two wars.
Boxturtle (Don’t think of it as war, think of it as pest control)
You appear not to be familiar with the American system of justice.
Umar is accused of trying to kill 300 people.
We have this quaint tradition in America of presuming the accused innocent until proven guilty. It is one of the things that makes our country great. I am proud of that tradition, and am willing to assume whatever risks such an approach might hold, which are pretty darn minimal.
You apparently have no confidence in the American system of justice, and would have us imitate the worst of our enemies in promoting an Alice in Wonderland system of sentence first, trial later. If that is what we do, then we have nothing to be proud of, and the USA does not deserve any one’s admiration.
Bob in AZ
I guess I’ll have to plead the Dan Rather defense.
I stated Umar tried to kill 300 people, because that’s what he did, regardless of whether it’s been proven in court.
You bashed America several times in your earlier post as having little regard for human rights and descending into Barbarism.
Then you try to twist my benign statement into an assault on the American justice system and make me look like the bad guy. You almost pulled it off until that last sentence when you couldn’t help but bash America one more time “we have nothing to be proud of, and the USA does not deserve any one’s admiration”.
Again, odd.
Your selective quoting conveniently left out the beginning of that sentence, i.e.,
Not odd at all. I am not interested in bashing America. I would rather live here than anywhere else. But I am gravely concerned about what America is becoming. Our ideals are important, and I do not want to see them diminished by fear-mongering and Constitution shredding.
Bob in AZ
Cheney and Bush did illegally and immorally kill on the order of 250,000 plus people in Iraq and yet I hear no cry from you for justice. Even odder!!
Bush Chaney…again you need a wakeup call, they are no longer in power….
Set your own wake up call ding dong; they could not, by law, be prosecuted while they were in power (at least Bush anyway). Oh, and by the way, is it your position that only criminals “in power” anywhere should be prosecuted? What an odd thought process
You’re still counting “chads” it’s 2010. Get a life!
Good point. If only the chads had been allowed to be completely recounted. Hundreds of thousands of people would still be alive, our economy would not be in such a fucking mess, we would have made huge strides in environmental policy, the middle east would not be so inflamed, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people would still be alive. But clearly you care less about those critical issues
I would like to hear you say “get a life” to some parent or family member who has lost a child in that fucking Bush and Cheney war based on that “pack of lies” Ass hole. I would really like to hear you say “get a life” to one of these families who have a family member injured for the rest of their lives based on a “pack of lies”
Go stand outside of Walter Reed Hospital with a sign that says “get a life” You chicken shit. Demonstrate your disrespect for those who put their lives on the line because of the lies that Bush, Cheney Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Condi Rice and the rest repeated over and over again and many of these often young soldiers believed.
Ew, Bmaz and many others here are committed to the “rule of law” and to accountability for the very serious crimes committed during the Bush/Cheney/Feith /Wolfowitz administration.
You obviously do not give a rats ass about accountability in regard to intelligence snowjobs, re written torture laws, torture etc etc.
Go find a blowjob to investigate
Start from the end, Put your dentures in and maybe we can get you some work, Remember Al Gore and the Dems requested that the counties in Florida in question, were the base he could count on….when you get those dentures taken care of, try some Lasik, and hearing aid devices. What a country!
Would surely bite down hard.
Again challenge you to go expose your disrespect for those who have lost their lives, been injured based on the Cheney/Bush “pack of lives” and stand in front of Walter Reed hospital with the words that expose that disrespect “get a life” “move on” no need to hold anyone accountable for your unnecessary injuries or the hundreds of thousands of deaths “get a life”
Easy to throw jabs at Bmaz and others who are working hard to uphold the law in regard to the huge pile of crimes committed by those in the Cheney administration.
Go say it to the people you are ultimately showing disrespect for. Those who have been seriously effected by the Bush/Cheney crimes
PoliticalCircusBlog,
“Chads”? How quaint! Since BMaz said nothing about chads, nor about how Bush was elected, I can only guess we’re seeing a little glimpse into the insecurities in your mind. Yes, it’s true Bush’s election was dubious.
I actually think it’s nice to see a few trolls here, gamely interacting with the truth. I’ve done this before, argued the side I believed, sometimes fiercely, and then a month later realized that I had changed my mind because of the solidity of the argument of the other guy, which slowly seeped in.
Welcome, torture defenders. If you can try to put your little insecurities aside (chads) and argue rationally from evidence, we look forward to engaging you.
You ever hear of a thing called “the statute of limitations,” homeboy? You have? Well then you shouldn’t have too much of a problem understanding that there is no statute on the sorts of crimes we’re talking about here.
Next.
And our MSM has completely ignored the death, destruction and millions displaced in Iraq due to a Bush administration made disaster
Why have the numbers of dead in Iraq been reduced so easily. Lancet reports sure have taken a beating the last six years. Shoved down the rabbit hole
http://crookedtimber.org/2006/10/11/lancet-report-redux/
#PCB (politicalcircusblog) needs to get in contact with Cheney and let him know that he is no longer in control
Lancet report redux
by Chris Bertram on October 11, 2006
According to a new report (pdf) in the Lancet on post-invasion mortality in Iraq:
We estimate that as of July, 2006, there have been 654 965 (392 979–942 636) excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war, which corresponds to 2·5% of the population in the study area. Of post-invasion deaths, 601 027 (426 369–793 663) were due to violence, the most common cause being gunfire.
With a lower bound of 426,369 for violent deaths, maybe we won’t hear from Fred “This isn’t an estimate. It’s a dart board” Kaplan this time.
We all bitch alot about many things Team Obama gets wrong .
I am going to praise the administration for this outcome regarding the undiebomber.Good actionable intelligence is a very rare and necessary commodity to defeat those sure enough terrorist networks who would wreck havoc here and overseas.
Agreed.
While effective, interrogation would not have tittilated Decider Bush the way torture did.
Anyone who has watched “24” knows that torture always works instantly, and the information obtained is always 100% accurate.
Plus, its fun!
This is sort of interesting.
I just checked the docket on Abdulmutallab’s case. And even though his father is one of the richest men in Africa, it looks like he’s still represented by the public defenders.
That sounds like it might be just the sort of leverage a rich father would use on his son.
I wonder if the information is slow to update and there is a new attorney or if perhaps a plea deal already is arranged (but even then, I’d want the best lawyer I could afford representing my kid to see the process through…).
With electronic filing, as soon as the lawyer makes an appearance, it shows up on the docket. I assume that Abdulmutallab’s lawyer is present for the interrogation, and if there is a new lawyer, I don’t think the person would be allowed to attend until there was a formal appearance. Bmaz, any thoughts?
The docket at the court house, yes. But I suspect Marcy is using PACER, Lexis, or Westlaw. Once the info in entered by the court into ECF (Which might be a separate system from the courts system) it’s available to Pacer in minutes, the other two would have a delay no greater than 48 hours.
My bet is that the old man is being very careful who he hires. He’s from Nigeria, he probably doesn’t know much about US criminal defense lawyers with experience in this area. He knows bail ain’t happening, so there’s no hurry.
Boxturtle (Betting the big name lawyers have already offered their services)
You don’t get rich by wasting money on a lost cause; especially when the Fed PDs seem to be moving the matter quietly and intelligently.
Skateboard him.
Snowboard him.
Chairman of the board him.(endless Sinatra)
But you doesn’t have to water-board him!
Missing in all of the public discussion is the impact of the methodology on the families. There will be instances in the future where a diligent family can prevent a calamity. If we had unleashed the Ceneys and their
merry band of war criminals would the next family be reluctant to out their family member.
AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…
Citizen emptywheel and the Firepup Freedom Fioghters:
War,occupation, torture, economic collapse, targeting and killing our own citizens…any of these terrible crises would be difficult enough to deal with politically and as a society goin’ forward but taken together it makes me wonder if history is not such a relentless master that we will never recover either as a nation or as an idea. Think for a moment about all the institutions, lives and relationships that have been destroyed over the last 30 years and particularly the last 10 years…it is hard to believe that anything healthy and productive could ever be rebuilt with the corrupted rubble left of our Republic. But, to me, the worst thing to happen in the last 10 years is the death of the idea of America, the idea of a “rule of law”, the idea of equal protection, the idea of equality of opportunity and the idea of freedom from religion.
I hope that Obama really does want to solve the problems we face today and really does want to change the mutated monsters that have replaced the ideas of America…I hope because I must but unfortunately I have just enough brain cells left to understand probability.
So, Sister Marcy, let’s hope together that the experience of torture has not seeded itself in what remains of soil of the American idea.
KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, IT’S ALL ABOUT THE CORPORATE WARS, STUPID!
Interrogation for a month might work better than being waterboarded 183 times…but what about 184 times? That might have been the point at which a wealth of valuable intel began flowing. Now we’ll never know… /s
Its nice if you have a month to interrogate someone, but somehow I bet if another ‘underwear’ bomber succeeded in bringing down a airliner the following day, you would not be writing this piece.
How else would they have found out about the link between AQ and Saddam Hussein if they hadn’t used torture?
Fixed that for you to reflect what the first one really accomplished.
They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security
…and will lose both” – Ben Franklin.
Boxturtle (Would trade all the politicians in Washington for one statesman)
Thank you and I would trade them all in too!!
I agree with what you are saying, but we are not talking about police imposing on our liberties (IE going door to door), we are talking about a person, who through his version of Islam, has declared war against the United States. Through his actions, he has targeted civilian’s as his target of choice, thus he has no rights to marandize.
Jim White @ 54, would you be joking about this if he succeeded and didn’t “burn off his penis”? And to the rest of you joking about this, you act as if 9/11 never happened, that we haven’t had attempted attacks before and since. You guys are living in a world that is not based in reality. This is down right scary.
So go buy another case of Depends and shout your warnings in the street. I prefer not to create even more terrorists by torturing people we arrest. I’m “quaint” that way and happen to believe that terrorists are criminals and should be treated as such. When you spot an al Qaeda aircraft carrier off Boston I might start listening to your rants. But until then, you got nothin’ but irrational fear.
One more point. Keep in mind that Abdulmutallab’s parents tried to warn the US before the flight and that they are reported to be playing a role in getting him to cooperate. Also note that his father is one of the richest men in Africa. If we had tortured him, can you imagine how much of his fortune Abdulmutallab’s father would have commit to funding revenge? Is that what you rally want? More and better funded terrorists?
When any person’s rights under the US Constitution are degraded and denied, we all are degraded and denied, and the great document is weakened and torn a little more. Furthermore, where is your direct evidence he “declared war” “through his version of Islam”? That is a pile of hocum propagated by self interested parties and propagated by the press. Could it be true, maybe; but you sure as hell don’t know and cannot establish that. Even if you could, please point out the exception for that circumstance in the Constitution.
A US Citizen has rights under the Constitution, this guy was not a US Citizen….he was trying to kill US Citizen’s.
You need to read the Constitution dude; it says “persons” and “person”, not “citizens”. Secondly, you might try reading any number of Supreme Court decisions from Boumediene recently all the way back to Yick Wo v. Hopkins. So, in short, you are peddling a bunch of wrongheaded bunk.
So, in short, you are peddling a bunch of wrongheaded bunk.
Much softer than I would have put it. On the other hand, you made it through the Mods. I probably would not have.
Hey, Kurt baby, we are signatories to various international treaties and agreements (such as the Geneva Accords) on the treatment of people captured during various kinds of hostile engagements. These treaties give detainees certain rights. We are, in case you hadn’t noticed, part of a WORLD. People who are not citizens of the USA are not mere animals, they too are human and have certain basic rights, by international agreements which we have signed and approved.
So please grow up and learn something about the world you live in.
Bob in AZ
Not only are people thoroughly aware that 9/11 happened, but also the inaction that allowed it to happen. And look at what has happened since: economic crises from which we do not recover, wars and more wars which drain our Treasury dry and pile up debt, destruction of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, destruction of the middle class and American dream, and on and on. Yes, there is major concern here and on many other sites about the origins of 9/11 and the terrible results beyond the initial horror in NYC, DC and PA on that date.
So, in your brave new world, the solution is to torture and invade?
Kurt,
That’s the best you can do? “If something that happens in the nightmares where I wet my bed had happened in reality …”
If Dick Cheney’s henchmen captured you, though you’re innocent of any connection to terrorism, and shipped you off to Syria to be tortured, you wouldn’t be writing anything.
The difference. Cheney’s men DID capture an innocent and ship him off to be tortured in Syria. Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen.
Bottom line, Kurt, you’re a coward. Come back when you’re no longer peeing your pants.
Nicely stated!
But if they had waterboarded he would have detailed at least 10 plots and implicated dozens of people, including the fathers of two former girlfriends who grounded them for going out with him, not to mention his bookie. This is IMPORTANT intelligence, and we cannot forgo the brief immersion in a swimming pool, as some have described the procedure.
Citizen Kurt:
Do you have the ability to understand how rediculous your comment is…that’s the danger of the terrible mess of war, occupation, torture and the terrorism it breeds. JEEzus, save us from ourselves, my God!!
Ew this video clip of Susan Collins ranting about Abdumultahlab and the “intelligence failure” fits in with this thread big time.
“one hour, less than one hour”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8j9lwTmiSA&feature=player_embedded
Minimize, deny and blame.
Minimize: just swimming pools, just a little water…no big deal.
Deny: We don’t torture.
Blame: They made us do it to them…they caused this…not us.
Yep…it’s there. Sociopaths and perpetrators. Invariant.
Firepup Freedom Fighters:
I have long believed that the reason the corporate fascists don’t want us to interrogate and investigate these acts of “terror” is because we would soon discover the direct link between the corporate oligarchy in the United SDtates and the acts of terror and the terrorists. Just as we have slowly been coming to understand the direct relationship between the Isreali government and Hamas, so will we come to understand the direct link between American corporations and the very well funded and organized “terrorists”.
I agree.
All justifications for these stupid criminal wars of aggression evaporate and disappear without fear. I suspect Abdulmutallab is a dupe whom JSOC set-up to get caught attempting to blow-up himself and the plane in order to stoke the fires of fear, which is an absolute and periodic necessity to keep fear alive.
The torture enthusiasts are an exceedingly irksome one-trick dog-and-pony show and we need to whack-a-mole them every time they cry “woof” until they finally learn to STFU. I suspect their indignant whining and crying about the FBI’s apparent use of conventional and effective interrogation and investigation techniques reflects a well-founded fear that the FBI will discover JSOC’s role as the instigator.
After all, how many cover-ups can the corporatocracy’s tools, Barack Obama and Eric Holder’s DOJ, reasonably be expected to handle?
I just saw another interview on TV about this. The man said “The FBI is a professional organization and has obtained very useful information in this case.” So they actually are reporting it.
Of course others who were listening but wanted to hear something else, they did not hear what I heard.
But it was said. At least. For a change.
The kid is the spoiled son of one of Nigeria’s neocolonial elite — from the same town as comatose “President” Yar’Adua. Maybe they took his i-pod away from him, that was enough.
It’s interesting to see what messages cause panic.
Cspan carrying Obama’s meeting with Dems. Just finished praising the outstanding job Harry is doing.
http://www.c-span.org/Watch/C-SPAN2.aspx
New post up…
Well, the “progressives’ singing the praises of the intel industry as if everything is just peachy-keen.
Just forget about:
and …
Just forget about those parts of the story.
http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/dennis-blair-and-the-intellegence-agencies-want-new-flexibility-to-detain-u-s-citizens/
Loman,
That link is incoherent. It compares flying two of Abdulmutallab’s relatives here for the purpose of getting him to testify about his connections to the flying of dozens of bin Laden’s relatives OUT of the country after 9/11, which was apparently done for their safety.
What’s the connection? That both flights involved people with Arabic-derived names?
In one month, hundreds of innocent people have died, what is in a liberals DNA that makes he or she soft on terrorism? Terrorists have no defense, ask Robert Gibbs, Press Sec. He’s already given KSM a death sentance. Why waste the money on Attorney’s and a trial?
So a kid gets shot in your neighborhood and someone says they saw you holding a gun … Would it be OK with you if we saved your town the expense of a trial and went straight to sentencing? But your “point” isn’t really about money at all, is it? It’s that some people don’t qualify for the fair treatment we expect for ourselves.
I think we’re done here.
Behindthefall, you are behind it all…..Obama, Holder and Gibbs have all chimed in…he’s guilty and should “fry!” Again using your silly analogy makes no sense. Keep trying…You are out of step on this one!
Good point, I have been very curious of this very thing. Why are we even bothering with legal proceedings here? Both Gibbs and the Prez said he is going to be executed, he’s apparently guilty.
And that “step” would be what, exactly? The “Goose Step”? “Lock step”?
You think that you hear people in power saying that something is so, and you apparently try to get “in step” with what you think you hear being pronounced by authority figures.
That is not how I have lived my life.
In this, it seems, we differ.
Not that the thought would affect my political views in any way, but it just occurred to me: if the pantsbomber had succeeded in bringing that plane down any time during the last hour of flight, you know where it would have come down? I’ve just been looking at the great circle route from Amsterdam to Detroit, and that plane was angling in right down the centre of the peninsula that is southern Ontario, not that far north of me, and then Petro. North of Toronto, cottage country. We would have been another Lockerbie. Who would have been in charge of the investigation then?
I still don’t understand why the right wing is so anxious to torture this would-be Nigierian terrorist, but said NOTHING when Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, was offered an attorney and not tortured during the Bush administration. Reid was also tried in a regular federal court, sentenced and imprisoned. This all occurred under Bush. The right wing ignores facts and shouts the loudest, unfortunately. When will Democrats learn how to counter this right-wing sound and fury, signifying nothing?
Whoa ot
Sarah and Progressives on same page? I am going to get sick. Tristrangulation strategies.
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2010/02/02/palin_vs_rahm?source=newsletter
War Room
Tuesday, Feb 2, 2010 12:30 EST
Finally, liberals and Palin agree on something: Fire Rahm
The former V.P. candidate issues a Facebook call for the White House to fire chief of staff Rahm Emanuel
By Mike Madden
REUTERS/Jim Young
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel
WASHINGTON — President Obama promised he’d find a way to unite often-warring political factions. Finally, some concrete proof arrived Tuesday that he’s managed to do just that: Sarah Palin has joined some prominent liberal bloggers in calling for Obama to fire his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.
Both Palin and the blogs were upset by comments reported in a profile in the Wall Street Journal last week. The paper quoted Emanuel telling a group of progressives at a strategy session on healthcare reform, held last August, that they were being “fucking retarded” if they carried out plans to run ads attacking conservative Democrats who opposed parts of the reform bill.
The MSM gets everyone all lathered up worrying about middle east terrorist types, while this is happening just across the border… Is this story getting any heavy-duty MSM coverage? Um….I haven’t seen it.
This person is mentally disturbed
That much was clear from this supposed attempt to blow up an aircraft by detonating 3oz of PETN in his lap. Even if it had detonated, it wouldn’t have accomplished anything but castrating the guy. Not that there was the least danger of it detonating, since you can’t detonate PETN by setting it on fire, and if that syringe was some attempt to creat overpressure — like I say, mentally disturbed. You have to remember that this person was not some illiterate who might have believed that this would work out of ignorance. He has a degree in chemical engineering. Maybe the University of London is not in the same rank as Oxbridge, but I don’t think that they grant degrees in chemical engineering unless you demonstrate some understanding of the subject matter, and some ability to use the empiric method. This person has to have failed so completely on both counts — for him to get on a plane with stuff that obviously had not been tested, and obviously had no chance of doing anything but getting him horribly burned, and convicted of a serious crime if he survived — that I don’t think anything but a serious mental illness could be responsible.
I haven’t seen the report from the interview his father gave at our embassy in Nigeria when he came in before the fact to give warning about his son. But it certainly makes sense to imagine that the father’s main concern was over his son’s mental illness. That would explain why this person was not deemed a high-priority threat after this interview. People who are incapable of sense and reason are a threat mainly to themselves. The outcome bears out the judgement that this person was no threat. This “attempt” really was quite insane, and had no chance of actually working, of accomplishing anything but getting the perpetrator burned.
Of course, getting family members to help get this person to talk was the only way you were gong to get anything coherent out of him. I have no doubt that you could get someone with chronic paranoid schizophrenia to say very interesting things if you instead tortured him. The things he said just wouldn’t have any relation to the real world. In that, the “intelligence” you would glean in this way would be much like this “attempt” to bring down a plane. This person has the excuse of a serious mental illness to say and do things that have no relation to reality. What’s our excuse for taking this “plot” seriously?
You wrote a lot there, let me ask what plots do we take seriously? I can honestly say if I was sitting across the isle from this guy, I would be taking it pretty damn seriously. So we don’t take this person seriously, we don’t take the person that was trying to light his shoe seriously, according to some of the posts here, we are not taking 9/11 very seriously. So my questions again….at what point do we take this seriously?
Consider the parameters
At the very low end of the threat spectrum would have to be the psych patient who wandered into the ER that I interviewed one night when I was a third year medical student. He had me going for a while when, in response to the standard question about suicidal/homicidal intention/ideation, he answered that, yes indeed, he had very definite plans and intention to kill his brother-in-law in Chicago. Of course, on further questioning, it turned out that he had absolutely no practical means of making his way to Chicago (he was basically in the ER because it was cold out that night trying to sleep under the overpass that was his only domicile), and that his very detailed and elaborate plan for doing his brother in, involved the use of brain waves.
Sure, somebody who lights himself on fire on a plane has admittedly moved himself somewhat to the right of zero on the threat scale. The fire could have spread. But really, the idea that he was going to detonate PETN by setting it on fire, and that’s ditto for the shoe bomber, is squarely in brain wave territory. No way should these people be taken at all seriously as any sort of orgnaized threat.
Whatever counter-measures are justified by the danger of randomly destructive behgavior, such as metnally disturbed people setting themselves on fire on a plane, needs to be completely separated from any threat posed by serious organizations, such as the folks who did 9/11. Mentally disturbed people, and I mean schizophrenic level disturbance, not perosnality disorder stuff, such as we saw with the VTech shooter (and probably most of these mass murderers), are incapable of organmized enough thought to be much of a threat, except to themselves, and that mostly by neglect, rather than positive harm. Their plans rest on brain waves, or detonating PETN with matches and a syringe, because they are incapable of clear thinking on the most basic, mechanical level.
The folks who did 9/11, by contrast, had things very much in hand in terms of their thinking on a purely mechanical level. You could, speaking loosely, say that their aims, and the means they chose to achieve them, were “crazy”, but they were all too clear-thinking in their ability to formulate and execute a fairly complicated and subtle plan to achieve that arguably crazed end. Where they differed most clearly from people with psychotic level thought derangements was precisely in their very clear understanding of how people would react to them. Most concretely, you see this in how their plan depended on their accurate assessment of how the plane crews would react to the way they presented themselves initially, as box-cutter hijackers. At a higher level, I think that time has made it quite clear that their aim was not just to kill Americans, but to get Americans to invade and occupy Islamic countries.
It’s brain wave level irrational to take the Underpants Bomber at all seriously. He, and other psychotics, can’t harm you with brain waves or with match-lit PETN. So I stand by my question about our response to him. He’s psychotic, he has an excuse to think that match-lit PETN is a threat. What’s your excuse for entering into his delusion?
No doubt that the 9/11 folks pose a different question. Yes, they did, and if there are more of them out there, still do, actually pose a threat to others. Now, one way of looking at that threat is that, though real enough, the scale of lives lost is so much less than other threats that we are quite blase about (Cigarrettes kill 400,000 Americans every year, yet we have somehow so far failed to send in the Mrines to deal with the tobacco companies.) But I would say, forget that objection for a moment. Suppose that al Qaeda actually did pose an existential threat to the US, and you and me personally, where somehow we fail to see such threat from the tobacco companies, despite the much greater death toll they exact. Instead of questioning why you would take them seriously enough to be worried about them, I have to ask why, when they have shown that they were so clever at manipulating our concern for the direct threat from them killing us, that they manipulated us into two incredibly stupid wars, that we are too stupid to extricate ourselves from even after recognizing the stupidity, you are not much, much more worried about their ability to spot the weaknesses in our way of thinking than about the direct threat of lives lost. You react to the threat they pose to take lives in exactly the way they want, ways that to drive our country to profoundly irrational and self-destructive behavior. Al Qaeda has crazed ideological ends they are trying, brilliantly, to obtain. What’s your excuse for helping them by magnifying and overreacting to the direct threat?
Continuing @1
The explosive was petn (see wikipedia).
The quantity was 80 grams, just under 3 ozs.
It seems to be accepted (though without details) That that quantity would have been sufficient to cause an airplane to crash.
The would-be detonator chemical is something no one wants to talk about – not that anyone connected with homemade bombs wouldn’t already know.
The detononator is the weak link in such efforts.
The problem of the suicide bomber on an airplane seems to me to present an exceptionally difficult security problem.
It seems virtually certain that one suicide will succeed sooner or later.
Objections to the FBI’s approach by co-ordinated republican rhetorical attack are extremely irresponsible and a genuine threat to public safety.
Sen Collins and that old republican death’s-head, chertoff, should be publically reprimanded for their irresponsible comments,
Since aBout the only way to deal with this suicide-in-a-haystack problem is thru meticulous evidence gathering that reveals the organization behind the attempted bombing.
Every bombing organization identified and put out of business by, e.g., patient interrogation, buys a little more safe time for airline travellers.
Collins and chertoff are irresponsible party operatives playing the most sordid politics with public safety.
Yes, at what point do we take seriously the need to increase the fear level yet again? Is that what you mean by “taking 9/11” seriously? Never attaining rational understanding, because you’d rather feed your fear of the guy “across the isle,” as you put it?
It is tragic that the ideals of the country were so quickly abandoned in favor of what dickie calls the dark side. It is tragic also how many people in the U.S. have internalized that puerile thinking.
37,000 die in traffic deaths each year. Guess you better “take that seriously” and stop driving Kurt, because the odds of a terrible accident (God forbid) are much much greater than those of your getting hurt by the guy “across the isle.”
Gtomkins @87
Mental illness is, or should be, a central issue for analysis for any effort to stop these very difficult to forsee attacks.
And every country has it’s surplus of mentally Ill and emotionally disturbed citizens.
In this country they gravitate toward actionable hate:
anti-abortion rhetoric, evangelical homophobic rhetoric, anti-government (usually federal)
rhetoric, white- supremicist rhetoric, and right-wing foreign policy rhetoric.
Don’t use “crazy” too loosely
Set your standards loosely enough, and we could all be fairly characterized as crazy, in that we have arguably irrational goals, and/or choose arguably irrational means to achive those goals.
The Underpants Bomber is in a different league. The guy who killed Tiller was able to think clearly enough to plan and execute a murder. The UP Bomber, despite his training as a chemical engineer, was not able to see his way to a plan had that had any real world possibility of working. Actual psychotics do pose some threat to others, because their delusions often lead them to be morbidly afraid of supposed ly deadly threats form others, but the saving grace is that their thought processes are so disordered, that they are unable to act effectively on the basis of their delusions. They may want to kill others, because they quite wrongly believe themselves threatened, but they use brain waves, or match-lit PETN, or other things that simply will not work, to accomplish these ends, and so they are rarely an actual threat to others. They’re a threat to themsleves mainly by way of self-inattention or self-neglect, not any positive harm they do even to themselves
Freep,
We need some cleanup on a few isles today/s
Bmaz, feel free to have at it!*g*
To all who still don’t get it:
1. Torture is never acceptable and there are no exceptions to this rule.
2. Enhanced interrogation techniques are torture.
3. Anyone who tortures another person commits a serious crime and deserves to spend many years, if not the rest of their life, in a maximum security prison.
Only if your family is not at risk! Reading some of these liberal comments is torture!
No one asked you to dump your load of stupid on us. There are plenty of sites where that kind of garbage is welcome.
Believe anything you want to believe.
But if you torture someone else and police identify you as the perp, no matter your reason for torturing, you will go to prison, and this is the way it should be.
Obama’s decision and acts to conceal and prevent the investigation and prosecution of the torturers and their enablers in the Bush administration makes him an enabler and co-conspirator. Therefore, he belongs in prison along with Bush, Cheney, Yoo, Bybee, and the rest of the torturers.
As a criminal law professor, I can assure you that I know what I’m talking about.
Cowards like you trembling in their tracks, wetting their little panties and shitting in their drawers are not what made this country; and, quite frankly, the Constitution, and the founding principles and ethos of this country, are a lot more valuable than you quivering wimpering jello squids.
Well, that didn’t take long. The trolls have degenerated to monkeys-at-typewriters. There’s no signal in that noise.
Cookies: Best interrogation tool ever. Seriously.
Later. Got to go pick up my new dentures.
With all due respect to Mason, the criminal law professor, let’s release all of our classified documents, give terrorists bent on killing Americans, the strategies we use for capturing them, and when we do prosecute, we get lawyers, professors of law (expert witnesses) and dig deep into our pockets to pay for their defense. The biggest problem we have in this country….there are too many lawyers in Congress. I rest my case!
Of course the Security State cheerleaders do not want us to remember that our laws work perfectly well with all criminals, including terrorist suicide saboteurs. If we remember this, it undercuts the alleged reasons for torture and risks exposing the real reasons.
It astonishes me that we keep having to revisit this questioning vs. torture issue, since we have known all about it at least since the founding of the Republic:
* Questioning (and listening to the answers) draws the truth out of a witness.
* Torture fabricates a falsehood and imposes it on the witness until the latter can repeat it.
Our legal procedures and rights were framed against this background. They aren’t technicalities that impede investigation and prosecution. They are part of the machinery of investigation and prosecution–the part that distinguishes truth from falsehood and deceit.
You use legal cross-examination when you want to know something, such as what happened. You use torture when you want to fake something, often for reasons that have little or nothing to do with what happened. That is why the fact that torture is illegal and immoral is no loss from a security point of view. Quite the contrary.
The revelations from the Undershorts Bomber are, however, a significant loss to the Security State. They undermine the atmosphere of fear, helplessness, and desperation that pave the way for ever more repression.
As an addendum, PCB, when you engage on the Gore thing — Gore’s (and his handler Daley’s) decision to opt against a full recount was indeed cynical, and it’s a salutary reminder that when a politician goes cynical, he may be hoist on his own petition, or petard. That’s what we’re about here is puncturing political cynicism, and I think many participants take a wide-ranging view of this. We can listen.
But then your argument veers off into weirdness – dentures, Lasik and “hearing aid devices” (sigh, you say “ATM machines” too, don’t you) … so anyway, I again want to stress, please try to keep your own insecurities out of this and speak rationally. We’ve already got Kurt explaining that history would be completely different if his nightmares came true. We need to keep this forum on a level keel and moving forward, and we can’t waste time on another clinically imbalanced poster. The denture/lasik/hearing aid devices comment has us all staring into our beers and wondering when the madman will go chat up a different table at the bar.
Gtompkins @122
Thanks. I’ve learned a lot.
I do feel, based on personal observation, that emotionally disturbed folk form a large part of right-wing
America .
I think your point is that the Xmas Bomber Was Psychotic.
That may be.
But he was able to negotiate reality up to close to time to
land.
Emotionally disturbed individuals, including depressed/siucidal individuals, a category
I am confident the Xmas Bomber fits into, are far more likely to harm,
and far more capable of harming,
others Than Psychotics.
This seems to have been the case with the VTech student.
The bottom line for security purposes is that emotionally distressed or emotionally disturbed
Folk are the ones tsa/FBI/CIA need to worry about most.
Excuse me, but there aren’t many people who haven’t been emotionally distressed or disturbed at some point in their lives and the mentally ill have enough problems in this society (which has thrown them away) without adding to their problems.