Posted on 04/05/2014 8:42:35 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
People might think it is wrong for me to condemn a report I haven’t read. But since the report condemns a program I ran, I think I have justification.
On Thursday, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted to declassify and release hundreds of pages of its report on U.S. terrorist interrogation practices. Certain senators have proclaimed how devastating the findings are, saying the CIA’s program was unproductive, badly managed and misleadingly sold. Unlike the committee’s staff, I don’t have to examine the program through a rearview mirror. I was responsible for administering it, and I know that it produced critical intelligence that helped decimate al-Qaeda and save American lives.
The committee’s staff members started with a conclusion in 2009 and have chased supportive evidence ever since. They never spoke to me or other top CIA leaders involved in the program, or let us see the report. Without reviewing it, I cannot offer a detailed rebuttal. But there are things the public should consider.
The first is context. The detention and interrogation program was not built in a vacuum. It was created in the months after Sept. 11, 2001, when nearly 3,000 men, women and children were murdered. It was constructed shortly after Richard Reid narrowly missed bringing down an airliner with explosives hidden in his shoes. It continued while U.S. intelligence learned that rogue Pakistani scientists had met with Osama bin Laden to discuss the possibility of creating crude nuclear devices.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Plan to serve tea and cookies to get murderers like kalid Sheikh to divulge plans.
Good luck with that.
Have you been on the waterboard?
I have. SERE/FASO West, 1978.
In my opinion it is torture by any definition.
To add to the above, I must say I SUPPORT the waterboarding of terrorists, out of uniform.
Zero Dark Thirty may not have been how it happened exactly, but it's close enough. The essential message of that movie... Waterboarding worked and Obama can't make a decision. That Jessica Chastain chick was pretty awesome looking too.
That was a very, very tame version of waterboarding.
God preserve the memory of CIA agent Johnnie Mike Spann, who was essentially torn to death by islamist savages in Afghanistan.
Exactly. As a former CIA OTS officer to the JAG officer: I understand the need to have boundaries for our troops - in general an effective war machine must be self-disciplined - but there is a place for limited and controlled application of hard interrogation (best done outside of the military structure). There is also a time and place for flat out torture although I would never make that legal because it needs to be rare.
I was captured during the evasion portion of SERE, handcuffed and a hood placed over my head. We were loaded onto a truck and driven a mile or so to another place where I heard shouting and screaming.
Two men laid me down on my back, onto a board and tightly strapped every part of my body to it. Ankles, knees, waist, chest, and two places along my arms. Heavy straps, and I found them unbreakable.
Then the hood was removed and I saw a man dipping a large beach towel into a bucket of water. Beside him was another with a waterhose. The towel was folded several time then suddenly placed over my entire face and was held very tight with the man kneeling over me, his hands on either side of my head holding the towel very tightly over my face.
I could not breath. I could not move. All the while the other man was pouring the waterhose over the towel. After what seemed like eternity they released the towel and I gasped for breath.
Then they started asking another man, "what aircraft do you fly? what was your mission?" etc.
When he refused to answer, they placed the towel over my face again and started pouring water over it.
On the fourth run, I lost consciousness.
When I awake there was a Corpsman or doctor checking my pulse and ensuring my airway was open...then to "the boxes" where I was awarded my War Criminal number.
The man was awarded a 100% PTSD disability.
Such an experience will permanently rewire your brain.
Thanks. I was hoping someone who was qualified to say that would do so.
Thanks again.
Sad that a JAG doesn’t even understand the purpose of the Geneva Convention. It applies to legal combatants only whose countries are cosignatories. The reason we participated in the Geneva Convention is to avoid mistreatment of our prisoners. It is wrong for us to extend Geneva treatment to these Al-Qaeda animals. It shows our enemies that they can do whatever they feel like to our troops, but that we’ll still treat theirs with kid gloves.
Having to deal with these sea-lawyer JAG’s during my time in the Marines brings back some horrible memories. They are non-combatants and they just don’t get it. They are there to cover the commander’s ass and find a way to avoid taking action or making a decision whenever possible.
you make me sick
Live tough or die weak.
Its both necessary and justified when dealing with mass murderers.
I'm proud that I have been able to help refine the techniques.
I guess you consider what was done at Abu Ghraib as torture. We are defining torture down. What's next? Loud music? A non-halal dinner entree?
No.
Only the waterboard is torture, and a necessary one at that.
Read my post #28 and tell me how you would characterize that event.
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I'd be interested in knowing the answer to this question, yldstrk.
I don't consider something that is done to our own people as part of training, as torture when done to the enemy. It was done under controlled conditions with medical personnel in attendance.
WWII was the last war we have been involved in that threatened our very survival. We fought to win with the objective being the unconditional surrender of the enemy. We killed hundreds of thousands, if not millions of civilians including women and children. The fire bombings of Dresden, Hamburg, and Tokyo were designed to kill as many as possible. And so were the two atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
We have created the expectation of antiseptic wars with little or no collateral damage. We go to extreme lengths to spare civilians even it means placing our own troops at greater risk. We have this luxury because of technology and the fact that our very national survival is not at risk in these conflicts like it was in WWII. That could change very quickly if the terrorists detonate a nuclear weapon inside this country or launche a biological attack that kills hundreds of thousands of Americans. We will then become more concerned about the welfare of our own citizens than the "rights" of the terrorists.
According to CIA docs provided to the Senate Intelligence Committee circa 2009, every CIA officer who volunteered and was subjected to the waterboard...when given the chance to capitulate, capitulated within 20 seconds.
They did not release the number of agents who went through it.
But if you assume 2 for every SERE class (FASO West, it's reported other services never allowed the technique) and 5 CIA guys per year, the number of US Citizens who have experienced the waterboard is certainly less then 5000 and probably around 1000.
The US also signed and ratified the United Nations Convention against Torture, not just the Geneva Convention. This requires signatories to not allow torture of anyone in territory under their control. This gives illegal combatants protection as well. This is described as an absolute prohibition meaning that torture may not be used even in an emergency.
You can disagree with being a signatory to this treaty but the fact remains that we did sign it and we should honor our word.
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