[excon]

Hello:

If one has "principles", does violating them mean one really didn't have them in the first place?? I think it does. America has principles. Some of you, who want to violate those principles, have no idea what I'm talking about - or you're lying. I don't know which.

Bill O'Reilly said that he believes in our principles 99% of the time. But, if they're not principles you embrace with all your being, and all your heart, you don't believe those principles in the first place. You're only giving them lip service...

I think you can tell who these people are when they say unpatriotic things, like the Constitution isn't a suicide pact. To them, apparently, there's a BETTER system out there, that will remain nameless until the last minute. I'd really like to know what that system is? I'll bet it starts with F. Why don't those people tell us WHAT system they'd rather have? Wouldn't YOU like to know?? I would!

But, back to principles. Can I grasp, that because you want to torture, you AREN'T, and have never been REAL Americans?? That you've been lurking in the background for just such an opportunity to OVERTHROW our system and institute something else??

I could. Could you?

excon

[tomder55]

Why should I accept your definition of torture ?

I have been saying for years that the Constitution isn't a suicide pact and I'll stick by that. I don't even think it is a perfect system . It is just the best document that the founders could come up with for the governance of the nation given the number of compromises they had to forge to make the nation work . It is not written in stone . It has already been amended 27 times (more amendments than articles) so you know that the founders themselves realized it could use improvements over time.

That being said ;I do think our system is the best system humans have yet to create and worth preserving from jihadists enemies by almost any means necessary .It is a tribute to our principles that the Justice Dept. and the CIA went to such steps to ensure these interrogation procedures were compliant with law. Other nations would not have bothered.

[excon]

Why should I accept your definition of torture ?

Hello again, tom:

Well, if you wanted to torture, and then wanted to pretend you weren't, you'd just change the definition of torture, which is what you did. You're welcome to accept the WRONG definition, made up by lawyers who wanted to give the dufus cover to torture.

They did, and he's sticking by it. So are you.

But, I'll betcha one thing, though. If one of our guys gets waterboarded, you aren't going to have such a hard time calling it torture.

The world sees through the subterfuge, tom. It's over.

excon

[tomder55]

That's hilarious .

I've watched lawyers and judges dance on the head of a pin redefining the principles of the Constitution with language like rights can be found in the "penumbras" and "emanations" of the Constitution. They have defined the murder of one's child as a right .

Yet I'm supposed to be concerned that a jihadist, WHO WE KNEW WAS PLOTTING MORE ATTACKS OF WAR AGAINST US ,was treated a little rough within strict guidelines?

I don't think I'll lose sleep over that,

[excon]

Yet I'm supposed to be concerned that a jihadist, WHO WE KNEW WAS PLOTTING MORE ATTACKS OF WAR AGAINST US ,was treated a little rough within strict guidelines ??

Hello again, tom:

You don't KNOW SQUAT! You MAKE UP the scenerio, just like the DOJ lawyers made up the law. You do it because you WANT to torture. And, you don't do it for information. You do it for payback.

Go HERE, if you want some TRUTH!! Post #16: https://www.askmehelpdesk.com/curren...-347087-2.html

excon

[ETWolverine]

Excon,

Here are the principals I believe in as a Conservative.

1) Protecting the innocent by any means necessary.
2) Punishing the guilty.
3) Holding individuals accountable for their decisions.
4) NOT holding innocents accountable for things they didn't do and aren't responsible for.
5) Big government causes big problems, small government's cause smaller problems. Government is the problem, not the solution.
6) You can't spend your way out of a deficit and you can't borrow your way out of debt.
7) If allowed to be truly free, a free market system can solve most problems. If there is a demand for a problem to be solved and money in finding the solution, someone will do it if they are allowed to do it. If there is NOT a demand to solve the problem then it isn't much of a problem, and it is not the government's job to make it a problem.
8) Protecting and upholding The Constitution is one of the highest duties of any US citizen. But it is NOT the HIGHEST. The HIGHEST duty of a citizen is to protect the country and it's citizens so that the Constitution can continue to be followed.

Which of these principals have been broken?

Elliot

[excon]

Here are the principals I believe in as a Conservative.

1) Protecting the innocent by any means necessary.
3) Holding individuals accountable for their decisions.
4) NOT holding innocents accountable for things they didn't do and aren't responsible for.
8) Protecting and upholding The Constitution is one of the highest duties of any US citizen. But it is NOT the HIGHEST. The HIGHEST duty of a citizen is to protect the country and it's citizens so that the Constitution can continue to be followed.

Which of these principals have been broken?

Hello El:

Sorry to inform you, but YOUR principles are not the COUNTRY'S principles. Toward that end, the following list is offered per your request.

1) We don't use "any means necessary" to do anything. Never have, and never will

3) Holding people ACCEPT the dufus accountable. That's what you mean isn't it?

4) You're not innocent if your only defense is, "I was only following orders". As a Jew, this should be particularly offensive to you.

8) "Protecting and upholding The Constitution is one of the highest duties of any US citizen. But it is NOT the HIGHEST. The HIGHEST duty of a citizen is to protect the country and it's citizens so that the Constitution can continue to be followed."

I had to repeat it again, cause it's so bizarre... Let me see, you have to violate the Constitution so that it can continue to be followed??

Dude!

excon

[ETWolverine]

Hello El:

Sorry to inform you, but YOUR principles are not the COUNTRY'S principles. Toward that end, the following list is offered per your request.

1) We don't use "any means necessary" to do anything. Never have, and never will

Actually, we always have. I challenge you to tell me what time in our history we didn't.

3) Holding people ACCEPT the dufus accountable. That's what you mean isn't it?

No. We should hold him accountable. In my opinion, he should be receiving his medal for stopping multiple terrorist attacks any day now. Accountability works BOTH ways.

4) You're not innocent if your only defense is, "I was only following orders". As a Jew, this should be particularly offensive to you.

That would be true if the orders were illegal. In the Holocaust they were. In the interrogations they are not.

8) "Protecting and upholding The Constitution is one of the highest duties of any US citizen. But it is NOT the HIGHEST. The HIGHEST duty of a citizen is to protect the country and it's citizens so that the Constitution can continue to be followed."

I had to repeat it again, cause it's so bizarre... Let me see, you have to violate the Constitution so that it can continue to be followed??

Dude!

Excon

I didn't say it first. Some guy named Thomas Jeferson came up with it about 200 years ago. Go argue with Thomas Jefferson. You know... the guy who helped create those national principals that you keep citing as a reason not to do these things? He clearly didn't agree with your definition of what our "national principals" are.

Let's see... I can follow excon's definition of our principals or Thomas Jeferson's. Tough choice, I know. But I'm just going to have to go with Jeferson on this one, ex.

Elliot

[tomder55]

You don't KNOW SQUAT! You MAKE UP the scenerio

The proof is in the results . At least 2 major plots were uncovered and prevented and the infrastructer of the AQ organization was revealed . This is an undeniable fact. The only question is the supposition that the same intel couldve been revealed in a timely manner without the use of the techniques.

[excon]

The only question is the supposition that the same intel couldve been revealed in a timely manner without the use of the techniques.

Hello again, tom:

Seems to me, that if you KNOW what he knows, then you'd KNOW whether he'd give it up WITHOUT being tortured.

I guess you didn't KNOW that. But, the WORST is, you didn't even try. You went straight for torture.

excon

[tomder55]

Huh ? We knew he was operationally planning more .WE did not know when or where ? Do I really have to explain that ?

[tomder55]

From Obama's press conference last night

OBAMA: I have read the documents. Now they have not been officially declassified and released. And so I don't want to go to the details of them. But here's what I can tell you, that the public reports and the public justifications for these techniques, which is that we got information from these individuals that were subjected to these techniques, don't answer the core question.
Which is, could we have gotten that same information without resorting to these techniques? And it doesn't answer the broader question, are we safer as a consequence of having used these techniques?

Clearly that is an admission that the techniques worked .

[excon]

huh ? we knew he was operationally planning more .Do I really have to explain that ?

Hello tom:

Yes, please do.

HOW do you know it?? Some jihadist told you?? When, after you tortured him?? Some CIA agent told you?? He learned of it, where?? These would be the same CIA who told vice about the WMD's. The ones who you said are going to sit down on the job now, cause Obama screwed them. Those guys. Those wonderful Americans.

Nope. You don't know SQUAT! Before I pulled someone's fingernails out, I'd have to KNOW he KNOWS something... Do I have to explain how that just isn't possible?

Now, if I just THINK he knows something, the old standard, tried and true, interrogation techniques should be employed. Nothing else.

excon

[spitvenom]

Here is the thing I don't get about the torture. If these guys are willing to blow themselves up what makes us think that slapping them around, grabbing them with a goon grip, water boarding, sleep deprivation, and putting them in a box with insects etc.. Is going to make them talk.

Just doesn't make sense. After you have been water boarded for the 20th time wouldn't you think to yourself these people aren't going to kill me so the can go scratch their arse.

[ETWolverine]

Here is the thing I don't get about the torture. If these guys are willing to blow themselves up what makes us think that slapping them around, grabbing them with a goon grip, water boarding, sleep deprivation, and putting them in a box with insects etc.. Is going to make them talk.

Well, they did.

Just doesn't make sense. After you have been water boarded for the 20th time wouldn't you think to yourself these people aren't going to kill me so the can go scratch their arse.

Not really. Ask anyone who has been through SERE training what they think about the effectiveness of these techniques, both individually and on a cumulative basis. US Special Forces and British SAS and SBS troops go through this sort of thing in training, and they seem unanimous about its effectiveness.

[tomder55]

But we did not pull fingernails out . We put them in confined space much larger than a standard passenger class seat on a 737 . We put a caterpillar in the cell and did not lie to him and tell him it stings. The CIA was permitted to grab them by the collar... oh how cruel!! They were permitted to push them against a fake wall that made lots of noise. Wooooooooo! And the worse of the worse... waterboarding for very brief intervals .

And yes... we knew KSM was a senior planner. We knew he planned 9-11 . We knew in advance he was planning more . When he was asked by the old standard, tried and true, interrogation techniques(techniques which by the way you still refuse to detail) what was he planning his response was "soon you will find out"... implying that indeed time was of the essence.

[spitvenom]

I found this article interesting.

This is a story about two interrogation programs — one run by the U.S. military, the other run by the CIA. The military program was focused on getting important al-Qaida suspects in Iraq to talk. The CIA operation zeroed in on important al-Qaida suspects from around the world. Both programs had similar goals, but they operated under very difficult rules.

Earlier this month, former CIA Director Michael Hayden was on Fox News defending the CIA's enhanced interrogation program.

"The use of these techniques against these terrorists made us safer," he said emphatically. "It really did work." As Hayden and others see it, the U.S. had to use tough techniques — some called it torture — to battle al-Qaida.

Matthew Alexander is an advocate of a different kind of interrogation — one that builds rapport, like the kind of technique you see on television cop shows. Alexander was a military interrogator in Iraq and doesn't see the need for rough questioning.

"One of my best techniques for building rapport was to bring into the interrogation booth a copy, my copy, of the Koran and to recite a verse out of it or to ask questions about Islam," he said.

It is important to know that Matthew Alexander wasn't just any run-of-the-mill military interrogator. He was in charge of an interrogation team working on one of the most important counterterrorism operations of the war: the hunt for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the man in charge of al-Qaida in Iraq.

Learning From Challenges

Alexander and his team arrived in Iraq in March 2006 — well after the abuses at Abu Ghraib forced the military to reform its interrogation process. By the time Alexander's team was on the ground, a military task force had been searching for Zarqawi for three years. But it took Alexander's team just two months of questioning detainees to get one of them to reveal the location of Zarqawi's safe house. Based on that information, the al-Qaida leader was killed in a military operation in June 2006.

"I know on the chase to Zarqawi we had several people during that chase who didn't talk," Alexander says. "But that was OK. We used the opportunities with detainees we couldn't convince to cooperate to become better interrogators. And it was those skills we developed in those interrogations that allowed us to break the detainees who led us to Zarqawi."

Alexander's experience in Iraq is particularly instructive in the context of the current debate over whether harsh interrogation techniques work. That's because Alexander and his team followed international standards for questioning and didn't use any of the rough techniques the CIA adopted. And yet, without waterboarding or stress positions, Alexander says, he not only helped track down al-Qaida's top man in Iraq but also managed to give the military better information.

"When you use coercion, a detainee might tell you the location of a house, but if you use cooperation they will tell you if the house is booby-trapped, and that's a very important difference," says Alexander. He says his success in Iraq proves that torture isn't necessary to break a terrorist.

Philip Zelikow, a senior counselor to former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, agrees.

"Against very dedicated, very dangerous Islamist terrorists in Iraq in a raging war, we did not need to adopt the extreme interrogation methods that the CIA was using in the program it designed in 2002 and 2003," he says.

Zelikow says the comparison of the two programs — one in Iraq and one by the CIA — allows one to judge whether harsh techniques were necessary. "Since the alternatives are effective and don't have all these downsides, including all the moral and legal issues that come with them," he says, "it seems like a very clear choice."

Even if Hayden is right about the information the U.S. got from its interrogations, Zelikow says, it came at too high a cost.

[tomder55]

It took many weeks(according to Gen Caldwell ) to track down Zarqwai . Key to finding him was that he was such a bass turd that the locals came to the hunters with key information.

The assumption was that we did not have time to waste in getting critical new information on AQ following 9-11 . Within a short period there was the 9-11 attacks... snipers in DC... and anthrax attacks .

[inthebox]

Hello:

If one has "principles", does violating them mean one really didn't have them in the first place??? I think it does. America has principles.
...



But, back to principles. Can I grasp, that because you want to torture, you AREN'T, and have never been REAL Americans??? That you've been lurking in the background for just such an opportunity to OVERTHROW our system and institute something else???

I could. Could you?

excon

Has anyone actually said they are for torture? Or is that an assumption that you make, and you know what they say about assuming.:)


Hey speaking of violation of principles in regard to torture I guess FDR, and his Japanese internment camps, or Truman, with the 2 atomic bomb drops, did not have principles either. :confused: Maybe the Obama administration can start prosecuting them :eek:








G&P

[tomder55]

We don't use "any means necessary" to do anything. Never have, and never will

As a Vietnam Vet you must be familiar with the Phoenix Program . The CIA for years operated under the "KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation" .From 1950 to 1962, the CIA used drugs like LSD on subjects .