But do they work on net? How much BS does the torturer hear because they simply tell him what they think he wants to hear? That is the point that John McCain makes. The use of torture makes it more difficult to tell fact from fiction.
How effective is water boarding if you have to do it to someone 180+ times?
Also - we aren't Nazis. We shouldn't act like we are. I am amazed that ANY Americans would come out in favor of torture. I guess we can see how it happened in Germany...
the following is the continuation of the initial post.
Remember Admiral Blair is Barry's guy. Admiral Blair's assessment that the interrogation methods did produce important information was deleted from a condensed version of his memo released to the media last Thursday. Also deleted was a line in which he empathized with his predecessors who originally approved some of the harsh tactics after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past," he wrote, "but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given."
Why was this stuff cut from the press release earlier?
A spokeswoman for Admiral Blair said the lines were cut in the normal editing process of shortening an internal memo into a media statement emphasizing his concern that the public understand the context of the decisions made in the past and the fact that they followed legal orders.
Yea right! If you believe this whopper I am sure that I can sell you some swamp land to build your home on as well.
The logical inference is that the current administration wants to release information that they think will smear the Bush administration, but does not want the American public to be fully informed about the benefits that were gained from the Bush administration's policies. The Obama administration purports to pride itself on its transparency. Normal editing? More like extraordinary redaction. In this case, the only transparency involved is the transparency of the administration's lie.
Blair's public statement differed from his letter to colleagues in another way. The letter included this language: "From 2002 through 2006 when the use of these techniques ended, the leadership of the CIA repeatedly reported their activities both to Executive Branch policymakers and to members of Congress, and received permission to continue to use the techniques." Blair's public statement made no mention of the permission granted by "members of Congress"--permission that came from members of Obama's own party. Are these guys going to be prosecuted as well?
And then there are the memos themselves. Sections of the memos that describe the techniques have been declassified and released. But other sections of those same memos--the parts that describe, in some detail, the value of the program--have been redacted and remain hidden from public view.
Marc Thiessen, a speechwriter for George W. Bush, had access to the full memos and read them to prepare a speech for Bush in 2006. When Thiessen looked at the redacted version released by the White House last week, he noticed something strange.
He writes: "But just as the memo begins to describe previously undisclosed details of what enhanced interrogations achieved, the page is almost entirely blacked out. The Obama administration released pages of unredacted classified information on the techniques used to question captured terrorist leaders but pulled out its black marker when it came to the details of what those interrogations achieved."
So they release the classified information about the techniques but redact the information that would weaken their case. Didn't the Feds perform this same feat in the trial against Senator Steven's in Alaska?
It wouldn't be the first time the Barry Hussein administration has politicized intelligence. Back in the earliest days of the administration, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer wrote an article about Obama's decision to ban some of these interrogation techniques. She spoke with White House counsel Greg Craig, who described the deliberations.
During the transition period, unknown to the public, Obama's legal, intelligence, and national-security advisers visited Langley for two long sessions with current and former intelligence-community members. They debated whether a ban on brutal interrogation practices would hurt their ability to gather intelligence, and the advisers asked the intelligence veterans to prepare a cost-benefit analysis. The conclusions may surprise defenders of harsh interrogation tactics. "There was unanimity among Obama's expert advisers," Craig said, "that to change the practices would not in any material way affect the collection of intelligence."
That's interesting: "top CIA officials have argued for years that so-called 'enhanced' interrogation techniques have yielded lifesaving intelligence breakthroughs," but the team of "expert advisers" from Obama's presidential campaign apparently knows better.
All of this leads to one obvious question: Who needs intelligence professionals when you have campaign advisers?
So the same people who were criticizing the Bush adminstration concerning the Iraq War, claiming that they lied and cherry picked information is engaging in lying and creatively redacting information to make their case to the American public. This is "change we can all believe in"? This is the new transparency that was promised?
2 comments:
But do they work on net? How much BS does the torturer hear because they simply tell him what they think he wants to hear? That is the point that John McCain makes. The use of torture makes it more difficult to tell fact from fiction.
How effective is water boarding if you have to do it to someone 180+ times?
Also - we aren't Nazis. We shouldn't act like we are. I am amazed that ANY Americans would come out in favor of torture. I guess we can see how it happened in Germany...
Administrators edit.
the following is the continuation of the initial post.
Remember Admiral Blair is Barry's guy. Admiral Blair's assessment that the interrogation methods did produce important information was deleted from a condensed version of his memo released to the media last Thursday. Also deleted was a line in which he empathized with his predecessors who originally approved some of the harsh tactics after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past," he wrote, "but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given."
Why was this stuff cut from the press release earlier?
A spokeswoman for Admiral Blair said the lines were cut in the normal editing process of shortening an internal memo into a media statement emphasizing his concern that the public understand the context of the decisions made in the past and the fact that they followed legal orders.
Yea right! If you believe this whopper I am sure that I can sell you some swamp land to build your home on as well.
The logical inference is that the current administration wants to release information that they think will smear the Bush administration, but does not want the American public to be fully informed about the benefits that were gained from the Bush administration's policies.
The Obama administration purports to pride itself on its transparency. Normal editing? More like extraordinary redaction. In this case, the only transparency involved is the transparency of the administration's lie.
Blair's public statement differed from his letter to colleagues in another way. The letter included this language: "From 2002 through 2006 when the use of these techniques ended, the leadership of the CIA repeatedly reported their activities both to Executive Branch policymakers and to members of Congress, and received permission to continue to use the techniques." Blair's public statement made no mention of the permission granted by "members of Congress"--permission that came from members of Obama's own party. Are these guys going to be prosecuted as well?
And then there are the memos themselves. Sections of the memos that describe the
techniques have been declassified and released. But other sections of those same memos--the parts that describe, in some detail, the value of the program--have been redacted and remain hidden from public view.
Marc Thiessen, a speechwriter for George W. Bush, had access to the full memos and read them to prepare a speech for Bush in 2006. When Thiessen looked at the redacted version released by the White House last week, he noticed something strange.
He writes: "But just as the memo begins to describe previously undisclosed details of what enhanced interrogations achieved, the page is almost entirely blacked out. The Obama administration released pages of unredacted classified information on the techniques used to question captured terrorist leaders but pulled out its black marker when it came to the details of what those interrogations achieved."
So they release the classified information about the techniques but redact the information that would weaken their case. Didn't the Feds perform this same feat in the trial against Senator Steven's in Alaska?
It wouldn't be the first time the Barry Hussein administration has politicized intelligence. Back in the earliest days of the administration, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer wrote an article about Obama's decision to ban some of these interrogation techniques. She spoke with White House counsel Greg Craig, who described the deliberations.
During the transition period, unknown to the public, Obama's legal, intelligence, and national-security advisers visited Langley for two long sessions with current and former intelligence-community members. They debated whether a ban on brutal interrogation practices would hurt their ability to gather intelligence, and the advisers asked the intelligence veterans to prepare a cost-benefit analysis. The conclusions may surprise defenders of harsh interrogation tactics. "There was unanimity among Obama's expert advisers," Craig said, "that to change the practices would not in any material way affect the collection of intelligence."
That's interesting: "top CIA officials have argued for years that so-called 'enhanced' interrogation techniques have yielded lifesaving intelligence breakthroughs," but the team of "expert advisers" from Obama's presidential campaign apparently knows better.
All of this leads to one obvious question: Who needs intelligence professionals when you have campaign advisers?
So the same people who were criticizing the Bush adminstration concerning the Iraq War, claiming that they lied and cherry picked information is engaging in lying and creatively redacting information to make their case to the American public. This is "change we can all believe in"? This is the new transparency that was promised?
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