Top Dems Well Aware Of CIA Interrogations

Why is that this "torture" is an issue NOW and not when it was going on?

Why is it that Obama admin is blacking out all the info pertaining to the outcomes of the "waterboarding"?

 

Duh . . . perhaps because no one other than senior members of the Administration, the CIA, and the corrupt DOJ (Jay Bybee and John Yoo)) who allowed for such "enhanced" interrogation techniques were aware of this?

Just a guess.
Back to trading.

 

Think bout this Einstein.

Everyone...the press...the public, already think the Republicans are guilty of "torture". So what happens when it gets out, and it will, I can assure of that, that the Dems were in this thick as thieves.

I can't wait for the "hearings". I can't wait to see Pelosi et al squirm when it gets out they not only knew about this, they were just as complicit.

 

I seriously doubt that anything of "substance" ever becomes of these hearings, in the first place.

Moreover, I don't give a crap whose name winds-up coming out in the public light with knowledge of these interrogation techniques.

It's not about Republicans or Democrats.
In my mind, it never has been. It is about what our Founding Fathers envisioned for this Country.

I am amazed that there are so many people in these threads that are unable to see this.

For them and their "pea-brained" intellect, it's merely about taking political sides.

That stakes are much higher than that.

If you don't think that the FBI ( in principle given the memos out of the DoJ ) had the ability to do the very same things to U.S. citizens as the CIA did to enemy combatants, than you are quite naive.

 

Gee, how many times are you going to edit your own post and insert more ad hominem?

I know moonbats like you don't like to hear it, but waterboarding in fact has been effective in gathering critical intelligence:


Thursday, April 23, 2009

When waterboarding works
By Byron York

Posted: 12/13/07 05:47 PM [ET]

About a year ago, I had dinner with a man who played a key role in the U.S. war on terror.

The talk turned to allegations of torture. He said that our policy should be that we do not torture. And we should adhere to that policy.

Unless, that is, a truly special situation comes up and we decide that we have to violate that policy in an extremely narrow set of circumstances.

Then, we explain what we did — by that, I think he meant the executive branch would be open with members of Congress — and move on.

What he couldn’t understand was the determination, on the part of some lawmakers, to pass a law that would deal with any and all situations in the future. It’s just not possible.

I thought of that this week when John Kiriakou, a former CIA interrogator, went public with the story of how U.S. officials dealt with Abu Zubaydah, the logistical chief of al Qaeda and a top planner of Sept. 11.

Kiriakou told his story to ABC News’s Brian Ross, and the network posted the full, unedited text of the interview on its website.

Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan in 2002. Shot three times before being caught, his life was saved by U.S. doctors. When he recovered, Kiriakou was among the first to speak to him.

Zubaydah was talkative, but he gave the CIA no usable intelligence.

CIA interrogators tried a variety of techniques of escalating severity on Zubaydah. Each one had to be specifically authorized in advance at the highest levels of the CIA.

Still, Zubaydah resisted. Finally the interrogation worked its way up to waterboarding.

“Was it used on Zubaydah?” Ross asked Kiriakou.

“It was.”

“And was it successful?”

“It was.”

After the waterboarding session, Zubaydah was a different man. “He told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night,” Kiriakou said, “and told him to cooperate because his cooperation would make it easier on the other brothers who had been captured.”
U.S. interrogators, fearing another major attack — remember, this was just months after 9/11 — worked fast. According to Kiriakou, Zubaydah provided information that helped stop a number of al Qaeda actions.

“So in your view the waterboarding broke him?” Ross asked.

“I think it did, yes.”

“And did it make a difference?”

“It did. The threat information that he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.”

“No doubt about that? That’s not some hype?”

“No doubt.”

Kiriakou didn’t actually do the waterboarding. He declined to be trained in how to do it — although he actually underwent the technique as part of his preparation.

Since 2002, he has changed his mind about it.

Back then, he thought waterboarding was necessary. “As time has passed,” he told Ross, “I think I’ve changed my mind. And I think that waterboarding is probably something that we shouldn’t be in the business of doing.”

But he conceded his mind could change again.

“What happens if we don’t waterboard a person and we don’t get that nugget of information, and there’s an attack on a -— on a movie theater or a shopping mall or in midtown Manhattan, you know, at rush hour?” Kiriakou asked, apparently of himself. “Then — then what do we do? I would have trouble forgiving myself.”

According to most reports, the CIA waterboarded two people — Zubaydah and Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11. In the end, Ross asked, did Kiriakou think it was worth it?

“Yes.”

http://thehill.com/byron-york/when-waterboarding-works-2007-12-13.html

See, Landis, I'd rather waterboard an animal who wants nothing more than to kill me, my family, and my countrymen in the name of Allah in order to prevent them from being able to do so.

I hear Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11, was waterboarded a couple of hundred times. Boo hoo sob sniff. IMO he should be waterboarded every day for the rest of his natural life.

 

"The Washington Post reports that Pelosi, who was then a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee, was were informed by CIA officials at a secret briefing in September 2002, that waterboarding and other forms of torture were being used on suspected al-Queda operatives. That's bad. Even worse is the revelation that Pelosi was apparently supportive of the initiative.
According to the news reports, Pelosi has no complaint about waterboarding during a closed-door session she attended with Florida Congressman Porter Goss, a Republican who would go on to head the Central Intelligence Agency, Kansas Republican Senator Pat Roberts and Florida Democratic Senator Bob Graham.
"The reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement," recalls Goss."

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/258258

 

You didn't answer this - Why is it that Obama admin is blacking out all the info pertaining to the outcomes of the "waterboarding"?

 

More drivel from the brainless "cut and paste" Queen of ET.

If "waterboarding" is so effective, then why was it designated as illegal by US generals in the Vietnam War.

 

You mean like how desperate the Bush Administration was in trying to link al-Qaeda and IRAQ with 9/11 and went to extremes in order to make such a connection?

Please provide a credible media link that references your claim.

Meanwhile, I actually TRADE for a living rather than spending my entire day in this Forum like some of you . . . so please forgive me if I am unable to reply in the manner in which you wish.

This may come as a shock to the "AAA's" of ET who don't trade for a living, but there are an awful lot of EARNINGS reports that came out today and stocks are moving all over the place.

http://www.elitetrader.com/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=146223&perpage=6&pagenumber=4

That pays the bills.
Posting in this Forum does not.
A novel concept, eh?

 

Thanks for illustrating the typical moonbat response - denial and obfuscation.

Look, Oh Clueless One, the fact of the matter is that waterboarding may or may not result in information that saves American lives. Would you rather not waterboard a captured Al Qaeda operative and later find out that doing so may have resulted in information that prevented an attack? Obviously, yes.

A critical difference between us, Landis, is that you would sacrifice American lives instead of making a captured terrorist extremely uncomfortable and miserable for a short period of time. Good grief, you know what these animals do to American servicemen they capture, don't you? Talk about "torture":

Friday, June 23, 2006
What Really Happened to Privates Menchaca and Tucker
And... Where is the outrage?

What really happened to Private Kristian Menchaca of Houston and Private Thomas Tucker of Oregon is beyond imagination!

** Arizona Republic - Not just dead, but tortured, we are told. Their unrecognizable bodies dumped at a roadside that had been wired with bombs. According to an Iraqi military spokesman, the soldiers "were killed in a barbaric way"... It is not the policy of the U.S. military to torture enemy combatants, certainly not to the point that DNA tests become necessary to determine which disfigured corpse is which. It is not the policy of the U.S. military to behead captured enemies. Water-boarding and sleep deprivation strike us as bad and likely unproductive policies. Disfiguring torture and beheading strike us as the acts of barbarians and monsters. There is equivalence in this?

** The O'Reilly Factor- Private Kristian Menchaca of Houston and Private Thomas Tucker of Oregon were captured by terrorists in Iraq, hacked to death, their eyes gouged, their bodies defiled. This was payback for the death of Zarqawi.

** The Australian- On the Fox News channel on Wednesday night, the normally measured Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich spluttered with rage at those Americans who did not feel an overwhelming desire to "get revenge" for the deaths of privates Tucker and Menchaca, whose bodies were apparently dragged behind utility vehicles before being mutilated.

** The American Spectator- Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston, and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Oregon, were butchered by jihadist followers of the unlamented Abu Musab Zarqawi, their bodies left behind like common dogs. Their killers gloated on websites: "We give the good news ... to the Islamic nation that we have carried God's verdict by slaughtering the two captured crusaders."

** The Republican- It took the search team 12 hours to reach Pfc. Kristian Menchaca of Houston and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker of Madras, Ore., because soldiers had to make their way through numerous explosive devices set along the road and around the bodies themselves.

** Front Page- They had been so horribly mutilated with their eyes gouged out and their remains so desecrated a visual identification was impossible – DNA testing was needed in order to confirm their identities. CNN also reported that not only were the bodies booby-trapped, but homemade bombs also lined the road leading to the victims, an apparent effort to complicate recovery efforts and kill recovery teams.

** The Herald- "He was identified through fingerprints," Esther Garcia, public affairs officer at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, told The Brownsville Herald.

** LA Times- "The two bodies, severely traumatized, were found bound together with an IED [makeshift bomb] between one of the soldiers' legs," it said.


** E.D. Hill (Fox and Friends video)- Hearts cut out. Their penises were cut off and shoved into their mouths, ears and noses cut off, while being tortured, and then finally killed.

http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/06/what-really-happened-to-privates.html

Not that you care anyway, Landis....