"Enhanced Interrogation" (torture)- when did it happen?

In reply to Pheller: Snowden is a traitor who had no business stealing the property of his employer. My sincere hope is that he is returned to the US and tried for his misdeeds followed by a public hanging.

As far as saying (Gameboy this is for you) that an enlightened society has no business "torturing" anyone? There are truly bad people in the world and honestly, Joe Sixpack doesn't need to look closely behind the scenes.

Years ago when I watched "A Few Good Men" I appreciated the line (and I paraphrase): "You want to live in my house, safe under the roof I provide and criticize the way I provide it?"

I have a problem with the lack of professionalism which blows up and looks bad for us on the world stage but if someone has information which I can use to stop the next plane from flying into a building or school shooting, I'm willing to get that information by ANY means necessary.

And to say that "torture" doesn't work, that the suspect will say anything to make the pain/discomfort go away is absurd. You check the information given before you release the suspect and they know that if they lie the results will be worse.. EVERYONE breaks, if your information is time sensitive you can try to hold out for a while but in the end, everyone breaks.

<--- SERE cadre

The government has openly been torturing people for years...have you been to the DMV?

GameboyRMH wrote: I see. Such prisoners would still fall under Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions#Common_Article_3_relating_to_Non-International_Armed_Conflict

Geneva applies to activities taking place during declared acts of war by signatory nations.

Terrorism is not a declared act of war, and does not involve signatory nations, nor a nation at all.

The U.S. is a signatory nation, so the case could be made that we must abide by Geneva, but there is still no declared act of war.

It's not relevant.

It's true that everyone breaks, but we also have a duty to do things the "right" way. Most HUMINT folks are taught and do things closer to the "FBI's recommendations" from that linked article than these "enhanced interrogation" techniques.

To those who are saying this isn't political need to separate the contents of the report with the timing and circumstances of its release. This stuff was hashed out in 2008/2009. Much of it was public already. The timing of this report release, as well as the inevitable grandstanding and bluster, is 100% political, even if the contents are not.

For the next portion, I literally had to walk away from the computer for about 5 minutes to avoid blowing a gasket...

GameboyRMH wrote: OK that's an argument I can work with. That's much like how I feel about the NSA reforms - not that they're a political football, but that the NSA is so unaccountable that the reforms are kind of pointless. The best we even know about what's going on is from Snowden's leaks.

PHeller wrote: We don't need more transparency, we need more whistleblowers. Instead, I think the public needs to change how it views whistleblowers. Snowden isn't a bad guy, he just didn't think we were doing right thing. It'd be good if we had a independent national whistleblower review board that could basically say "yes, this department is transparent and the public knows of its activities" or "no, this administration is hiding this policy and its needs to be exposed."

I am going to try to only say this once: Edward Snowden is a coward and a TRAITOR. He obtained his job as a contractor at NSA for the specific purpose of stealing classified information and leaking it. He did so not because he found wrongdoing and nobody would listen to him, but because it was his opinion that stuff that was going on was "wrong" even though the overwhelming majority of the stuff that he "disclosed" was 100% legal. And not just because of the Patriot Act or what have you, but from laws that have been on the books for decades. The actual material that has been disclosed is selected to fit his personal narrative and the twisted web of lies and half truths that he and Greenwald are feeding everyone. The majority (over 50%) of the claims he has made in his interviews are PATENTLY FALSE FABRICATIONS, and a chunk of the remainder are cleverly twisted misrepresentations of reality. He never went through the proper channels to report wrongdoing (because most of what he disagreed with wasn't actually illegal) and he never went to the IG or a Congressman (one read-in to the caveats needed to access said materials), or ANY of the other LEGITIMATE routes a real whistleblower would take.

Anyone remember when the DoS had to close 20-something embassies in the Middle East and North Africa last year because of "unspecified threats"? No? Of course you don't. But little Eddie's revelations contained bits of truth (in order to sell the LIE better), and our adversaries discovered how we had been getting some of their information. Or at least I assume they did, because a number of info streams suddenly dried up. In the latter stages of attack planning against a US embassy, but not in late enough stages that we had figured out exactly where or when yet. We were in the dark at a fairly crucial moment. DoS played it conservative. I can't blame them.

Xceler8x wrote: Opening the books on a torture program isn't playing politics. It has to be done in an attempt to make doubly sure that we don't do this again. Saying this was done to make one football team look worse than the other is truly ridiculous. It's a moral issue as opposed to a political one. Are we a moral nation? Assuming we are we need to examine our actions and determine if what we did was right. We are doing that now. Albeit while some butthurt jack holes kick and scream about having their horrific decisions brought out into daylight and being judged as wrong and unamerican. We obviously won't jail the liars, the torturers, or anyone else responsible because they don't live by the same laws that the rest of us do. They are part of the ruling class and are untouchable much like bankers and the police. Our last hope of having any kind of day of reckoning for the people who did this is to defame them publicly. I'm all for it.

Seems like you're occupying some selective moral high ground with that stance. Can we expect the same response when the morality and legality of state-sanctioned drone assassinations are put under the microscope?

It's not political to note that we have murdered over two thousand people without giving them the benefit of a legal defense so they can proclaim their innocence. That's not to mention the hundreds of poor souls who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and then glibly written off as collateral damage.

I also would be interested to see if he gets worked into the same lather about the non-disclosures and stonewalling about Benghazi 2012.

Well it looks like the US has indeed found and exploited a loophole in the Geneva conventions. They technically didn't commit war crimes by torturing these people! Yaaaay!

KyAllroad wrote: As far as saying (Gameboy this is for you) that an enlightened society has no business "torturing" anyone? There are truly bad people in the world and honestly, Joe Sixpack doesn't need to look closely behind the scenes. Years ago when I watched "A Few Good Men" I appreciated the line (and I paraphrase): "You want to live in my house, safe under the roof I provide and criticize the way I provide it?" I have a problem with the lack of professionalism which blows up and looks bad for us on the world stage but if someone has information which I can use to stop the next plane from flying into a building or school shooting, I'm willing to get that information by ANY means necessary. And to say that "torture" doesn't work, that the suspect will say anything to make the pain/discomfort go away is absurd. You check the information given before you release the suspect and they know that if they lie the results will be worse.. EVERYONE breaks, if your information is time sensitive you can try to hold out for a while but in the end, everyone breaks. <--- SERE cadre

I don't think making yourself as bad as the truly bad people is a good solution. While we're using movie analogies, let's look at the 2nd Dark Knight movie where the Joker tries to bring Batman down to his level, convinced that he's just as rotten as he is deep down inside. That's what the terrorists are doing. And the US snapped and made themselves a bad guy just like they wanted.

Since you seemingly didn't like the ending of A Few Good Men (Suggesting that Colonel Jessup was making a good point rather than going on a power-mad rant), I assume you also didn't like the ending of Unthinkable? That the interrogators should have done...the unthinkable (sorry, trying to avoid spoilers)...on the chance that they could have prevented the attack?

I'll say it again: You shouldn't become the monster to beat the monster. I realize it's probably not a popular opinion.

GameboyRMH wrote: Well it looks like the US has indeed found and exploited a loophole in the Geneva conventions. They technically didn't commit war crimes by torturing these people! Yaaaay!

It's not a loophole. Soldiers who become POWs are acting on the orders of the government of their country. Terrorists are not. I am NOT condoning torture or approving of it, and the "lack of status" of these particular E36 M3heads doesn't absolve us of our duty to conduct ourselves in a moral fashion. But at the same time Joe Terrorist does not rate the same rights as a US citizen or the same rights as a POW. If anything, international criminal is the closest category you could place them into, but what they do is beyond even the scope of organized crime.

GameboyRMH wrote: I'll say it again: You shouldn't become the monster to beat the monster. I realize it's probably not a popular opinion.

It's more popular than you think.

jsquared wrote:

GameboyRMH wrote: OK that's an argument I can work with. That's much like how I feel about the NSA reforms - not that they're a political football, but that the NSA is so unaccountable that the reforms are kind of pointless. The best we even know about what's going on is from Snowden's leaks.

I am going to try to only say this once: Edward Snowden is a coward and a TRAITOR. He obtained his job as a contractor at NSA for the specific purpose of stealing classified information and leaking it. He did so not because he found wrongdoing and nobody would listen to him, but because it was his *opinion* that stuff that was going on was "wrong" even though the overwhelming majority of the stuff that he "disclosed" was 100% legal. And not just because of the Patriot Act or what have you, but from laws that have been on the books for decades. The actual material that has been disclosed is selected to fit his personal narrative and the twisted web of lies and half truths that he and Greenwald are feeding everyone. The majority (over 50%) of the claims he has made in his interviews are PATENTLY FALSE FABRICATIONS, and a chunk of the remainder are cleverly twisted misrepresentations of reality. He *never* went through the proper channels to report wrongdoing (because most of what he disagreed with wasn't actually illegal) and he never went to the IG or a Congressman (one read-in to the caveats needed to access said materials), or ANY of the other LEGITIMATE routes a real whistleblower would take.

Again I'm left to choose between believing leaks or the promises of highly secretive and unaccountable organizations which assure us that awful things they've done are not so bad and totally legal - according to some berkeleyed-up laws, that is. I hope you can see why this is a difficult situation for me.

I know the last couple of NSA whistleblowers before Snowden got put through the ringer (houses raided, lost their jobs etc.) as soon as they expressed any concerns, which were apparently not acted upon...information worth considering.

Because those people were also NOT whistleblowers, but leakers. ACTUAL whistleblowers, who go through one of the MULTIPLE avenues for reporting wrongdoing, usually don't get much press, because the manner is either handled through internal policy change or in a closed-door Congressional committee hearing, again due to the sensitive nature of the information handled and the potential for our enemies to profit from said information.

Remember that everything YOU know comes from someone with an agenda to push. I do not have that problem. All those laws you think are berked up, how much do you actually know about them? Not as much as you think you do. And you don't know how these things actually work or the practical reasons for the way the laws are written. Do you disagree with warrantless wiretapping? GOOD! I personally don't like the idea either, I like my Constitution and its Amendments. But there are certainly some rare, specific circumstances that are not far-fetched that would be greatly helped by the ability to react without having to wait for red tape. Does the general public need to know what circumstances they are or what the method is for dealing with that? In general, HELL NO, because if the public knows it, the shiny happy person trying to blow up a building or poison a reservoir, etc, knows it too, and can then avoid giving himself away. THAT is the reason for "all the secrecy." The tough part is finding that happy medium between "never" and "blanket open-season free-for-all".

Thinking that some of these agencies are "unaccountable" is absurd and is just buying into the agenda that is being sold to you. There IS accountability at MULTIPLE levels. There is training and testing on some of the accountability laws that we have to do every year, down to the lowest levels. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is not what you think it is, because you have been fed half-truths and biased conjecture from people who are no better informed than you are. It does not answer to the political whims of Congress, it does not have to do what the President tells them to, they are part of the judicial branch and act in large part the same as any other court. Their proceedings are secret because they have full access to all the stuff you theorize and speculate about, and having that information available to the public would allow our sources and methods to be known to the people we are trying to stop: people who would gladly cut your throat simply because you don't believe the version of Islam they think is right.

I am trying not to be a condescending shiny happy person, but this is very personal to me, literally a matter of life and death at times (I was on the Signals Support Team providing Force Protection for the USMC Security Force for the Embassy in Tripoli, Libya last year when the aforementioned closings occured, among other things), and it is analogous to Adrian Newey anonymously trying to add input to an aerodynamics thread on StanceNation or something. Please don't take this as me lashing out at any person here, I am lashing out at the misconceptions you have been spoon-fed by ignorant jackasses in the media. I don't hold any of this against you, because unfortunately you are not able to see the big picture. Should you be skeptical of the government? Yes. But why are people so skeptical of government so willing to throw that skepticism completely out the window when dealing with someone who criticizes government? Snowden admitted publicly that he took the job for the sole purpose of stealing classified information. He went to (communist) China, then Putin's Russia, and his next destination was Chavez's Venezuela via Castro's Cuba. Sounds like a hit-list of places that are all about "transparency" and personal freedoms, right?

GameboyRMH wrote:

jsquared wrote:

GameboyRMH wrote: OK that's an argument I can work with. That's much like how I feel about the NSA reforms - not that they're a political football, but that the NSA is so unaccountable that the reforms are kind of pointless. The best we even know about what's going on is from Snowden's leaks.

I am going to try to only say this once: Edward Snowden is a coward and a TRAITOR. He obtained his job as a contractor at NSA for the specific purpose of stealing classified information and leaking it. He did so not because he found wrongdoing and nobody would listen to him, but because it was his *opinion* that stuff that was going on was "wrong" even though the overwhelming majority of the stuff that he "disclosed" was 100% legal. And not just because of the Patriot Act or what have you, but from laws that have been on the books for decades. The actual material that has been disclosed is selected to fit his personal narrative and the twisted web of lies and half truths that he and Greenwald are feeding everyone. The majority (over 50%) of the claims he has made in his interviews are PATENTLY FALSE FABRICATIONS, and a chunk of the remainder are cleverly twisted misrepresentations of reality. He *never* went through the proper channels to report wrongdoing (because most of what he disagreed with wasn't actually illegal) and he never went to the IG or a Congressman (one read-in to the caveats needed to access said materials), or ANY of the other LEGITIMATE routes a real whistleblower would take.

Again I'm left to choose between believing leaks or the promises of highly secretive and unaccountable organizations which assure us that awful things they've done are not so bad and totally legal - according to some berkeleyed-up laws, that is. I hope you can see why this is a difficult situation for me. I know the last couple of NSA whistleblowers before Snowden got put through the ringer (houses raided, lost their jobs etc.) as soon as they expressed any concerns, which were apparently not acted upon...information worth considering.

Actually, you are supposed to have faith and believe the properly designated congressional oversight committees. That's what they are there for. That is where transparency should stop.

If it wasn't for political maneuvering, we would have never known it happened. Which is how it should be. We pay bad men, to do bad things, to bad people, so we don't have to. We pay, not quite so bad men, to hold oversight on the bad men so we don't have to.

I would say that last sentence is a misconception. Oversight is essential. Much of the legislation on the books actually comes from some pretty E36 M3ty overreaches by the intelligence community in the 70s. Without oversight, the conspiracy theorist view of the intel community could actually start to happen. The problem is that, when done correctly, effective oversight will be largely unnoticeable to the general public. Kind of like a referee at a professional sporting event. The ones who perform the best are usually not even remembered or discussed after the game. The ones who make it on SportsCenter are (generally) the ones who berked up big time.

We should never pay bad men to do bad things. We do have some very hard men that do things that wouldn't fit in polite conversation, but those men should be even more robust in their ethics to ensure they don't cross the line. That line is what separates us from the bad guys. If we compromise our foundation in the fight for our way of life, then it is no longer the way of life we are fighting for.

jsquared wrote: We should never pay bad men to do bad things. We do have some very hard men that do things that wouldn't fit in polite conversation, but those men should be even *more* robust in their ethics to ensure they don't cross the line. That line is what separates us from the bad guys. If we compromise our foundation in the fight for our way of life, then it is no longer the way of life we are fighting for.

I will agree that this is much better stated than what I said.

My opinion is that Snowden is a hero and partiot, not a traitor.

By the way, did anyone notice that the Intelligence Authorization act of FY2015, that the CONgress just passed, now claims that it is legal for the government to virtually unlimited access to all of our emails, phone calls, texts, etc.?

They claim that the bill will reign in the government's ability to spy on us (and ignore the 4th Amendment) because they can, in general, only keep the information they steal for 5 years. They can then take whatever info they illegally steal and provide it to law enforcement where it can be used against you in a trial. That is nuts. Not quite as crazy as the government claiming it could assassinate me or lock me up somewhere for the rest of my life without charging me, much less convicting me, of anything at all.

My opinion, for those of you who really think Snowden is a traitor and should be hung, is that you should really think about things and where you stand in them, because you are on the wrong side.

I'm on the wrong side? What the berkeley do you know? Nothing. I don't "think" Snowden is a traitor, I know he is. Your opinion is about this is about as valid as a highschool kid who can't change his own oil walking into the Mercedes F1 garage and telling them they are mapping the fuel injection incorrectly based on something he read on the internet. The people at NSA don't give two E36 M3s what is in your email/phonecalls/text messages/etc. Why would someone who is literally working 12 hours a day to find people who are cutting the heads off of American citizens and planning ways to blow up stuff on our soil going to give a damn about what you say/type? They're too busy dealing with real E36 M3 that actually matters.

In reply to jsquared:

Dude, you have no idea about how to argue. I didn't say anyone at NSA cares what I say or type, you said that. What I did say, is that they have no business collecting it and that it contrary to the 4th Amendment, thus illegal. Since you apparently cannot refute that, you resort to putting words in my mouth and attacking my knowledge of the subject. You are clueless as to my experience and background, so maybe you should knock off your childish name calling and belittling tactics. My opinion is invalid? Lol. I'm more than happy to have a debate, or even an argument, about things with you, but only if you do something other than act like a playground bully on 3rd grade recess.

The reason I said that is to drive home the point that nobody is going to waste their time trying to collect information from you. There are more important things to worry about, and besides, NSA cannot collect actual content from anything with a US citizen on either end, regardless of whichever news outlet you've been listening to. A warrant is required, unless there is something incredibly new in this bill that I haven't heard about yet. Metadata is not content. Metadata is used, in conjunction with other things, to build a case to present to court to obtain a warrant. The times they do have business collecting things is what the law addresses, and it is very specific about the circumstances and limitations of that collection. It does not violate the 4th Amendment. The outside of an envelope does not need a warrant, the inside of it does.

You have absolutely no idea what all of that entails, and trying to argue about it is like summarizing all of Game of Thrones having read only the first chapter of the second book, but I can't correct your misconceptions because you aren't allowed access to the first and third books (I haven't read Game of Thrones, but I know how long the books are and how complex the storyline is, and the analogy works).

You have no clue what you are talking about.

In reply to jsquared AND T.J.:

My thread, so I guess I will go ahead and say it...

You are both having a pissing match to try to prove how big your balls are, while hiding behind anonymous aliases on the Internet. While I find your inputs interesting, neither of you has established any credibility to be "right".

And check the title of the thread. Neither of you is making the slightest attempt to answer my question.

So, interesting though it may be, this has turned into a pretty big flounder.

I don't mind, cause I'm learning something. But don't pretend you are taking the high road.

It would mean more to me if you would change your tone- I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks!

In reply to SVreX:

Roger that.

I'm not in a pissing match, I'm dealing with people who literally have no idea what they are talking about. I established my "credibility to be right" a few posts previously, maybe I should find a scan of the citations I received? I need some anonymity because of the nature of my profession.

I addressed some of the questions you posed in the initial post but I think they are on pages 2 and 3 Sorry to drag this off topic a bit, but it's the same general category and it infuriates me that armchair quarterbacks are lionizing a traitor and spewing nonsense on a subject that they know literally next to nothing about and that I put a significant amount of time and energy into.

jsquared wrote: He went to (communist) China, then Putin's Russia, and his next destination was Chavez's Venezuela via Castro's Cuba. Sounds like a hit-list of places that are all about "transparency" and personal freedoms, right?

I wouldn't use that as an argument, flying pretty much anywhere else would just be a very slow and jet-fuel-inefficient way of walking right into US authorities' arms.

There are plenty of countries that don't have extradition agreements with the US that aren't, well, authoritarian E36 M3holes. As much as I think the US Gov does a lot of stupid crap and has overstepped its bounds on things, MAN there are some lousy places to live out there.

I think the problem here is, laws are very specific. Specific down to the last little detail. The media and other organizations love to give out a general outline and shout UNLAWFUL at the top of their voice. It makes for spectacular headlines.

But when you get down into the little details, all the sudden it's not unlawful. The devil is in the details. They naturally neglect to report those facts.

Back to Geneva. It's very specific about treatment of enemy combatants. It's also very specific about who qualifies as enemy combatants and who doesn't. It's easy to shout GENEVA but the devil is in the details.

Is torture a good thing? I honestly don't know.

Is it the moral thing? Probably not.

Is it lawful? I would say yes, at the time it happened.

Do I agree with it? That's not pertinent to this discussion.

If you don't like the law, there are ways to change them. Do it by the book, not by the press. The lawful procedure for changing them is very specific as well.

jsquared wrote: There are plenty of countries that don't have extradition agreements with the US that aren't, well, authoritarian E36 M3holes.

True, but the list of countries that wouldn't mind being on the US' Ultimate Forever E36 M3 List for harboring Snowden are basically just the ones that are already on it.

How credible can you be when decrying our security methods when living under the protection of the very definition of a Big-Brother police/surveillance state?