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Post by 78aztec82 on May 3, 2011 11:17:12 GMT -8
Quite true, but this takes away the Right's argument that he's soft on terrorism and too incompetent in foreign relations to be President. =Bob At best he is learning on the job. If his initial policies as a Senator and his Presidential campaign (close Gitmo, no enhanced questioning techniques (he even had legal inquires against Bush admin lawyers who authorized such), allowing the detainees to lawyer up in US court, etc, were in vogue since 2001, we may very well have never obtained the leads that led to the ultimate killing of UBL. Its not lost on me that Gitmo remains open, the NY civilian trial of the terrorist was nearly a disaster and he has abandoned that approach, he didn't tell Pakistan what we were up to (Thanks to Bill C. for that lesson learned), etc. Bush/Chenney are somewhat vindicated and are not the Fascist ogres that some make them out to be. Just adults who thought through the problems & realities of national security. All great points and will be lost or dismissed by those we had disagreements with at election time 3 years ago. Sadly, I bookmarked two of these threads on old ATalk to bring up at this point and although the calendar reminders keep popping up, I cannot access them to point this out! |
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Post by Bob Forsythe on May 3, 2011 11:17:56 GMT -8
Quite true, but this takes away the Right's argument that he's soft on terrorism and too incompetent in foreign relations to be President. =Bob At best he is learning on the job. If his initial policies as a Senator and his Presidential campaign (close Gitmo, no enhanced questioning techniques (he even had legal inquires against Bush admin lawyers who authorized such), allowing the detainees to lawyer up in US court, etc, were in vogue since 2001, we may very well have never obtained the leads that led to the ultimate killing of UBL. Its not lost on me that Gitmo remains open, the NY civilian trial of the terrorist was nearly a disaster and he has abandoned that approach, he didn't tell Pakistan what we were up to (Thanks to Bill C. for that lesson learned), etc. Bush/Chenney are somewhat vindicated and are not the Fascist ogres that some make them out to be. Just adults who thought through the problems & realities of national security. Except that KSM gave them the name of the courier during a regular interrogation session months after he was captured. =Bob |
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Post by 78aztec82 on May 3, 2011 20:09:27 GMT -8
At best he is learning on the job. If his initial policies as a Senator and his Presidential campaign (close Gitmo, no enhanced questioning techniques (he even had legal inquires against Bush admin lawyers who authorized such), allowing the detainees to lawyer up in US court, etc, were in vogue since 2001, we may very well have never obtained the leads that led to the ultimate killing of UBL. Its not lost on me that Gitmo remains open, the NY civilian trial of the terrorist was nearly a disaster and he has abandoned that approach, he didn't tell Pakistan what we were up to (Thanks to Bill C. for that lesson learned), etc. Bush/Chenney are somewhat vindicated and are not the Fascist ogres that some make them out to be. Just adults who thought through the problems & realities of national security. Except that KSM gave them the name of the courier during a regular interrogation session months after he was captured. =Bob To be clear, you are right - it was a regular interrogation session - but only after he had broken from the enhanced interrogation and waterboarding. He wasn't giving anything up until then. After a number of enhanced sessions, he finally broke and gave us extensive information - with needing to go back to that. In essence, it took enhanced, legal interrogation to get him to break and after that, he essentially mapped Al Qaeda and gave us the name of the courier. Without it, I doubt he would have as he was being completely defiant. |
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Post by Bob Forsythe on May 4, 2011 10:09:14 GMT -8
Except that KSM gave them the name of the courier during a regular interrogation session months after he was captured. =Bob To be clear, you are right - it was a regular interrogation session - but only after he had broken from the enhanced interrogation and waterboarding. He wasn't giving anything up until then. After a number of enhanced sessions, he finally broke and gave us extensive information - with needing to go back to that. In essence, it took enhanced, legal interrogation to get him to break and after that, he essentially mapped Al Qaeda and gave us the name of the courier. Without it, I doubt he would have as he was being completely defiant. Actually I was wrong based upon William's thread which corresponds to what I've heard since my earlier post - that KSM denied the guy was of any value and that made his interrogators suspicious. And torture is never legal when it's used simply because some WH lawyer writes an opinion. =Bob |
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Post by 78aztec82 on May 4, 2011 12:17:33 GMT -8
To be clear, you are right - it was a regular interrogation session - but only after he had broken from the enhanced interrogation and waterboarding. He wasn't giving anything up until then. After a number of enhanced sessions, he finally broke and gave us extensive information - with needing to go back to that. In essence, it took enhanced, legal interrogation to get him to break and after that, he essentially mapped Al Qaeda and gave us the name of the courier. Without it, I doubt he would have as he was being completely defiant. Actually I was wrong based upon William's thread which corresponds to what I've heard since my earlier post - that KSM denied the guy was of any value and that made his interrogators suspicious. And torture is never legal when it's used simply because some WH lawyer writes an opinion. =Bob What is torture? Seriously. At some point annoying a detainee isn't and as you gradually dial it up to physical harm it is. So, where is that line between those ends? In this case, the technique is legal, safe, annoying and it ultimately got KSM to sing and we got a lot of thugs because of it, including the main lead to Osama. Worth it. Legal. Success. |
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Post by Bob Forsythe on May 4, 2011 15:02:25 GMT -8
Actually I was wrong based upon William's thread which corresponds to what I've heard since my earlier post - that KSM denied the guy was of any value and that made his interrogators suspicious. And torture is never legal when it's used simply because some WH lawyer writes an opinion. =Bob What is torture? Seriously. At some point annoying a detainee isn't and as you gradually dial it up to physical harm it is. So, where is that line between those ends? In this case, the technique is legal, safe, annoying and it ultimately got KSM to sing and we got a lot of thugs because of it, including the main lead to Osama. Worth it. Legal. Success. Well, considering we tried and convicted our own troops for torture after the 1898 Philippines uprising and Japanese officers after WW II, in both cases for waterboarding, I'd certainly suggest that waterboarding is torture. KSM did not give the main lead to us; in fact, even after all that waterboarding he claimed to not know the guy and made the interrogators suspicious because they knew he was a bin Laden protege. Now, that information may or may not have come from people who were tortured, but all they had was an alias. It took years of research by CIA analysts and a lucky break when the courier called someone the CIA was tracking, before they had his real name. So really, if I were to assign credit, it would go far more to the CIA analysts and spooks, not their interrogators. =Bob |
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