It's not "enhanced", not "interrogation" and not a "program". It's torture. That's what it is.

Both Cheney and Andrea Mitchell have claimed that Blair's original memo was changed to soften it and include the caveat. Neither named a source.

It's only torture if it makes a wing-nuts washer slip the surly threads of reason .

It's only torture if it makes a wing-nuts washer slip the surly threads of reason .

Heck, birthday cake can do that :)

I wonder how much useless info they got along with that high-value info.

This is why indulging the efficacy argument is useless. Counterfactuals are counterfactual; you're arguing a hypothetical.

If you support Cheney's position, you believe that the U.S. Government should be allowed to arrest American citizens (like Jose Padilla), designate them "enemies of the state," deny them all due process rights, and then hold them indefinitely. That is a coherent argument. But it also means you no longer actually believe in freedom. That's fine, but guys like Cheney and Peter King should just own that.

Our right wing friends should be asked at every opportunity whether they favor giving Pres. Obama the rights to seize and detain indefinitely anyone on the planet without charges and without trials, to do so in secret, and to torture them. The consequence of failing to prosecute any of the Bush-era torturers will have the effect of giving all future presidents those rights, including of course Obama. Is that really what the right wants? Apparently it is.

Why in the hell are we talking about whether it WORKS? Cutting hands off thieves keeps down crime in primitive countries. That works, too. But we aren't barbarians, so we don't do it. (Well, perhaps the thugs ARE barbarians.) How many times does it have to be said: the ends doesn't justify the means.

You may get high-value information, but you also get more garbage information. We "found out" that Sadam Hussein had helped train Al-Qaeda terrorists.
The torturee will say what he thinks you want to hear. Sometimes it may actually be valid information, but sometimes it will only be garbage with artificial value added because some fools think that if someone said it under duress it must be true. It makes decision making based on false information given false importance more likely to be wrong.

Robbing banks is much more effective than buying a lottery ticket.

Mike from Detroit's got it.

There you go, clouding up the issue with facts again.

I agree with candideincc --- the standard should not be efficacy. If it is efficacious, then why stop at waterboarding? Why not kill someone's child in front of his/her eyes, why not cut off limbs, etc.

We (and the rest of the civilized world) didn't denounce the Nazis because their torture didn't work and they didn't *have* to do it --- we didn't get into that argument. We denounced it and prosecuted it because it was wrong and an effront to human dignity. It's really that simple. So stop letting the right define the debate.

It drives me absolutely nuts that there is even a discussion (let alone a debate) about the United States torturing anyone!!!

Why the hell are we not screaming as loudly as we can, "WHY THE FUCK DO CHENEY AND THESE OTHER ASSHOLES HATE OUR MILITARY SO MUCH?"

There have been zero justifications for torture that cannot be used by other groups as justifications for torturing Americans (civilian or military). If providing justifications for others to torture captured American military personnel is not hating our military, WTF is?

It was a consistent rant from the Reich-Wing that I must 'hate the military', back in the days when I loudly protested Bush's war on Iraq. I vehemently disagreed with the war, but I never put any military in harm's way with anything I said.

Every time one of these assholes justifies torture they very much increase the potential danger to our military personnel!!!

"This is why indulging the efficacy argument is useless."
Posted by: Mike from Detroit on May 22, 2009 at 1:04 PM |

With respect, I strongly disagree.
That torture is not only demonstrably ineffective, but also demonstrably counterproductive, is the most powerful of the various arguments to be made against torture -- if you take into account the audience.
Anyone who genuinely believes in the Constitution, and in the historic ideals (clearly not always met) of America, is already against torture (and all the other unConstitutional abuses of power of the Cheney/Bush cabal), and does not need further convincing.
The audience that matters are the independent voters, especially the "low info" voters, whose votes were and are crucial to the recent Democratic resurgence, and those genuinely-principled conservatives and "moderate" Republicans who are open to reason.
They may or may not be open to persuasion on moral or philosophic grounds, but the majority of them are probably not. Many of them clearly deem torture a necessary evil -- necessary because they've been told, by people they find credible, that it "works." They believe (or have at least convinced themselves of the possibility) that torture has "saved American lives."
Their support of torture thus rises and falls with the credibility of such claims. And since the truth clearly is on the anti-torture side -- as attested by many voices historically on their side -- it's the single most powerful argument that we can provide these people, whose support we will continue to need.

"If you support Cheney's position... you no longer actually believe in freedom. That's fine, but guys like Cheney and Peter King should just own that."
Posted by: Mike from Detroit on May 22, 2009 at 1:04 PM |

And the probability that they will do so is, what, on the same order as the probability that the sun will rise in the west tomorrow?
Hypocrisy and deceit are the the very essence of conservative and Republican "thought." They demonstrate daily an ability to hold utterly contradictory ideas, without suffering cognitive dissonance. Their ability to "compartmentalize" makes Clinton's look like he was a kindergartener.
And with the mass media being, literally, the propaganda arm of the Republicans, and the corporatocracy that owns them, and the Dem "leaders" all acting as if it were still 2003, do you really think anyone will ever call them on it?

To put it more simply: abuse promotes abuse; brutality promotes brutality; torture promotes torture.

We investigate every violent action by our police not just to punish individual acts of abuse, but to remind them and ourselves that cops using violence is a morally serious matter, never to be taken lightly.

We teach and enforce rules of war for our soldiers because the emotional heat of combat wears away at moral resolve, so that killing and violence done out of need gives way to killing and violence done for vengence and for spite.

We do not torture, not just because of what it does to the victim, but because of the damage it does to us, and the opportunity it provides for the brutes among us to indulge and rationalize their brutality.

These are the weasel words of an Obama appointee:

"The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means."

Like, seeing as these tactics were used as a last resort, what exactly are those 'other means' he refers to?

Polar opposite, my @$$.

how bout latitudinal attempt to skirt the issue at hand?

"Both Cheney and Andrea Mitchell have claimed that Blair's original memo was changed to soften it and include the caveat. Neither named a source."
Bunch of wingers have grabbed this meme. Scarborough spews it 5 times a morning.. the source. ...scarborough defecates from it 5 times a day.

A kidnapper in Montana has an entire school bus full of little girls locked away in an old mining tunnel. He's going to fill the tunnel with poisonous gas if 10 million$$ isn't wired to an account in some financial safe haven. Luckily a cohort in the plot has been picked up by the side of the road, exiting a disable vehicle. Unfortunately the best efforts of the FBI to get this person to reveal the location of the bus have proved fruitless. He will not talk. If an entire school bus full of little girls' lives are at stake why shouldn't this person be waterboarded? Cheney says it works. 40 innocents may die. It's already conceded by many that laws were ignored, bent or broken when dealing with Iraqis during questioning. Why not ignore, bend or break a few when confronted right here in the U.S. with terrible circumstances? We'll torture Iraqis to save American lives but we won't torture Americans to save American lives? Someone needs to ask Gingrich about this quandry.

because you're talking about a little girls' security issue, not a national security issue.

Well, it would clearly depend on whether the little girls in the bus were cute, blonde, and white, or... not.

I wish this were just sarcasm.

"..because you're talking about a little girls' security issue, not a national security issue."

Posted by: ellen
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I think Cheney and others are alleging terrorist plots that would have resulted in the death of average citizens (you know, like the people killed in the Towers on 9/11), not military or other governmental functionaries, were thwarted. I don't recall torture defended as something needed strictly for preservation of our national security. And of course if we inserted an al Qaida operative as controlling those 40 little girls you would say their irrelevance to national security protected the terrorist from threat of waterboarding, right?

The fact that the discussion of this topic continues here and elsewhere points to only one thing: America is completely morally bankrupt.

Whoever can carry an argument against another, regardless of the basis for the argument, is judged to be the winner and the winning argument is considered to be the only argument that counts. The most fundamental debates about who and what we are reduced to who wins the argument. Everything is a contest, a sport, nothing is really serious.

It is sickening. And Obama with his high-sounding words and weaselly actions, is not only leaving a moral vacuum that no-one is filling but helping to entrench this fundamental lack of seriousness on human issues.

smartalek, say it was 2003 and those girls were cute, blonde, white & disabled and on their way to the Dick Cheney Horse Ranch For Cute Little Disabled Blonde White Girls. Say it was an al Qaida dude that had them. There would have been nuclear weapons dropping on Iraq in about 5 minutes. Four TV networks with wall to wall coverage, wailing parents, every wingnut blowhard on the planet demanding blood. I mean, c'mon, 40 little cute, blond, white crippled girls? Gonna get gassed in a mining tunnel? Ya gotta drop some nukes, right? Waterboarding just ain't gonna get it.

I think we have a made for TV movie here. It has all the elements. Meredith Baxter-Birney can be the bus driver. Her vain attempts to wrest command of the bus from the terrorist only result in her getting raped. In front of the little girls! Oh boy, now he's done it! Grrr!! You don't fuck with Meredith Baxter-Birney! You can fuck her, but you can't fuck WITH her. That final scene where the terrorist gets what's coming to him is going to be great! GREAT!! It might take ten years and 3 dozen continuing resolutions but it's coming! USA! USA! USA!

Why... republicans completely mis-quote an admiral to support a lie? Why, I'm shocked. Who would have thought?

All of this could be made to go away very simply. Dick Cheney should be tortured, on live TV, maybe even on Fox News (to forestall any criticism that the torture had a liberal bias). Hook his shriveled old nuts up to a Delco tractor battery, and ask him, "Were you the secret author of The Chronicles of Narnia?" Every time he says "No", give him a jolt to the goolies. Eventually, after a lot of screeching and blubbering which will make the righties wince, he'll say Yes, because everybody has a breaking point beyond which you will say anything to make the hurting stop.

Everybody knows Dick Cheney would have nothing to do with ghost-writing a sappy piece of rubbish like "The Chronicles of Narnia". The torture will accomplish several objectives. It will (a) prove that anyone can be made to say anything under torture, thus dispelling the myth that torture provides reliable intelligence; (b) probably get confessions to quite a few things that he DID do; (c) satisfactorily showcase how brutal torture is so that righties can grasp it (since Dick Cheney says it doesn't really hurt much at all); (d) link Dick Cheney to "The Chronicles of Narnia" in the minds of all the right-wing conspiracy addicts; and (e) hurt Dick Cheney. Everybody wins! Except Dick Cheney, of course.

I don't have a problem with that.

Fox News : Experts on "Factually Inacurate" We wrote the book

It's a red herring anyway, whether torture ever worked in one instance. The question is, is it wrong/illegal, and are the net results worse than any benefits.

Obama doesn't want a balanced debate of the second part of your question. That's why he's not releasing memos regarding interrogation results.

"Like, seeing these tactics were used as a last resort,..."

How would YOU know that? What information could you possibly have regarding this matter that the Director of National Intelligence doesn't?