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Post by AztecWilliam on Sept 1, 2009 10:02:34 GMT -8
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Post by Bob Forsythe on Sept 1, 2009 16:53:00 GMT -8
He writes it quite well in this:
The CIA inspector general's report on the quite brutal interrogation of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the so-called 9/11 mastermind, suggests he only turned cooperative when he was repeatedly waterboarded, and that the information he provided saved lives. Yet so much was redacted from the report that it is not clear that this is unambiguously the case. Maybe no lives were saved. Maybe Mohammed was waterboarded more than 100 times for nothing. It is an appalling possibility.
I am, as you can see, full of questions. I have, as you can see, few answers.
I am torn between my desire for absolute security and my abhorrence of torture. The one thing I know is that ideology does not provide an answer. For me, it settles nothing because Dick Cheney supported enhanced interrogation and Cheney was wrong and deceitful on the war. It settles nothing because Cheney defined torture as something so extreme that almost anything less than, say, the rack is permissible interrogation. The issue is not Cheney. The issue is the issue.
However, within the context of the commentary, this part is nonsense:
He knows the new restrictions. He knows the new limits. He may even suggest to his interrogators that their jobs are on the line -- that the Justice Department is looking over their shoulders. The tape is running. Everything is being recorded. He is willing to give up his life. Are his interrogators willing to give up their careers? He laughs.
He claims that Ismael can be called a terrorist or a suicide bomber. Pretty much by definition suicide bombers are your basic idiots who are used as stooges. He may know what his handlers tell him, but hey, if he's a suicide bomber, it ain't likely he's going to be captured and most likely he's so stupid that FBI interrogators can get him to talk without using any sort of torture.
I'm still convinced of something. The reason we haven't been attacked in the last 8 years isn't because Cheney approved torture, but rather because AQ lost its best and brightest operations people on 9/11 and have not been able to replace them.
The nonsense that torturing KSM led to stopping plots to attack this country are, as near as I can tell, bogus. I mean really, a bunch of Indonesian yahoos were going to hijack 9 airliners, fly across the entire Pacific and then crash them on American soil? After 9/11?
The problem is the Bushies had a really bad habit of patting themselves on the back for uncovering "conspiracies" that were ridiculous to begin with in order to make themselves look good. And I shouldn't write "had" because Cheney is still trying to do it.
=Bob
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