I would encourage you to look at the list of signitories of the UNCAT. The whole thing is a total joke and only goes to show how big a joke the whole UN is as an effective organization.

Nearly every country in the world is a signatory...with the exceptions of Iran, North Korea, Myanmar, Zimbabwe and a few others.

Reagan signed for the US and when it was ratified a few years later..it became law and codified (see the US Code above)

The fact that some signatories may not abide by the treaty is not an excuse for the US to act in that manner.

Yeah...look at the signatories. It's the whole world. The whole world's a joke.

The whole world did not sign and many have not ratified it.

We can look into the recent history of many of those countries and it makes the whole act look like nothing more than a passion play.

I am not saying that the US should not have it's own standards, just don't hold up UNCAT as some standard that everyone is using, because obviously it means very little to most of the countries on that list. It is nothing more than a feel good document. Pretty typical of what comes out of the UN.

It sure looks like most of the world to me:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...AT-members.PNG

As of December 2008, 146 nations are parties to the treaty, and another ten countries have signed but not ratified it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...gainst_Torture

IMO, the US should act as a model of the best of the signatories, not among the worst.

And as you go through the list how many have squeaky clean records and more importantly how many have absolutely terrible records?

I can't completely disagree.

Pelosi, "I know nutting!"

http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennt...rboarding.html

Pelosi, "Ok, maybe I was fully informed. But it's Bush's fault!"

http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennt...ng_in_02_.html

UT.....from a speech by Bush in 2006:
The timeline for the asserting that it was the result of waterboarding KSM and Zubaydan just doesnt fit.

The plot was "derailed in early 2002...." when the Jemaah Islamiyah (J-I) guys were arrested in Malaysia.

KSM was not captured and waterboarded until 2003. Zubaydan was waterboarded in late summer of 2002.

Another example of the timeline not fitting the assertions that waterboarding worked:

He may have been talking about these guys:

You know Bush was never one known for keeping his facts straight.

Merc...there is no doubt that Pelosi and the other leaders of the Intel Committees were briefed. What is not clear is the extent of those briefings.

But assuming she and the others was fully briefed on the details.......what could they do?

Under security agreements with the CIA, they could not discuss the briefings....could not ask staff to review the legal opinions of the DoJ....could not raise public concerns (if she had any - and w/o knowing the facts, I agree she probably had no concerns) with other members of the Intel Committee....could not withhold funding w/o disrupting all CIA operations....

IMO, this is one of the greatest weaknesses of the current oversight of the CIA....the public policy issue that has the greatest potential for abuse has the least opportunity for Congress to fully review and take preventive or corrective action before the Executive Branch goes too far.

I guess that if she was briefed she needs to stand up now in the face of the recent releases of the memos and come clean as to what she knew. Instead she is acting like she had no part in any of this. If it truely was "torture" than she is culpable in any action that Congress wants to take against those in the know. She is standing by why others may get thrown under the bus.

Where did they release what the security agreements were with the CIA. Maybe I just missed this but no one I know of has stood up and told us just what those were, or are you making an assumption here. This is not a personal attack. If you have the information as to what those specific security agreements were maybe you could point me to a link.

You may be right. But IMO we are about to gut the CIA Operations Branch for years to come. And it would be more than a decade to get them back into the business of agressive gathering of intel. The world does not play by the Gentlemen’s Rules of Imbibage, and those that think it does will lose completely.

Waterboarding truly is torture.

I agree that Pelosi is now talking out of both sides of her mouth....but the leaders of the Intel Committees could do nothing at the time to stop it or even public question it...so I dont know how they can be equally culpable.

The security agreement between the CIA and the Intel Committee chairs/ranking members is probably classified but the non-disclsoure is SOP..and potentially subject to violations of the State Secrets Act or something comparable.

IMO, the only thing that would be gutted would be illegal acts of torture (and possibly the more ambiguous Cruel/Degrading/Inhumane treatment)....and it is still highly contentious if these methods are really any more effective than legal means of interrogation. IMO, and according to many interrogation experts, they are not.

I am not out to gut the CIA....I just want better assurances, safeguards and checks and balances in the future that they comply with the law. As difficult as that balance may be, it should be the highest priority if we want to call ourselves and be recognized around the world as a nation that respects the law.

It is more than that. Cruel, degrading, and inhumane treatment is a highly subjective list which most will never agree on. If you have operators who are always looking over their shoulder and supers who do not have their back they will hesitate and will not be an effective force. They run the risk of gutting the soul of the Operations Branch. The world is not a fair place and those countries that allow the enemy to dictate the rules of engagement are setting themselves up for failure. It has happened before in the CIA and it is going to happen again. We are going to lose a valuable tool when that portion of our forces loses it's heart in the fight. Maybe some are ok with that. I have seen these people work. I am not willing to accept that.

An interesting opinion in today's NYT's:

continues:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/we...shane.html?hpw

War is hell. It's messy. Innocent people will die. Everyone expects that. The point of war is to kill your enemy. So bombing someone in a war really doesn't move me at all. It's part of the point of war. I don't support war easily. I've been opposed to most of the wars in my lifetime. But if you're gonna do war, you have to do it to win and show no mercy for the enemy. (Unless showing mercy gives you a strategic advantage.)

Once you have a prisoner in captivity however, the rules change. You are in complete control of the situation. It's no longer a messy war situation, but a prison situation. The rules of law should apply because you are back in civilization.

I know what you are getting at. And I sort of agree. I am not sure that the problem lies with what we do to the high value targets of whom we are sure of their importance and value as the vetting of all the prisoners captured. I think back to the days of WW2 where our soldiers were kept in pretty poor conditions and the Germans we captured were actually brought to working farms where they had a lot of local freedom to work, move about, and purchase goods, and in some cases even travel. But times have changed and although war and the WOT specifically has changed many of the rules of conventional combat. The enemy is non-specific and not easily identified. IMHO, all they know and respond to is a certain degree of brutality and ruthlessness, anything less is a weakness to that kind of enemy. It brings about many mixed emotions for many reasons. I don't have the answer. But I know the answer is not easily defined by ill conceived UN Conventions which everyone ignores and only provides a bully pulpit for the detractors and critics.

Please note the critical difference in these two statements.

We know when a Southeast Asian nation arrested a key al Qaeda operative. We don't know who that was. We don't know when the J-I guys were arrested, but we know it's later:

And we also know that J-I remained active and powerful in October 2002 when they carried out the Bali bombings.

And we know that ringleader Hambali was arrested in August 2003 in Thailand.

Makes sense that it would take that kind of time. The torture memo I referenced lays out what leads to it:

Based on all this and the flawed Timothy Noah piece in Slate, I'll guess this: the plot began to unravel in the first early 2002 arrest, but we didn't necessarily KNOW that it was unraveling, and the trail that led to the arrests of the rest of the cell in late 2003 were provided by later intelligence. KSM intel figured into subsequent understanding of the plot and associated arrests.

UT....here is another perspective:
I guess it is a matter of interpretation and who one chooses to believe.

Violence and torture are all their kind understand?

Violence yes. Anyone will respond to torture, it may not be kind of response you expect, but anyone will respond.

I guess it is a matter of interpretation and who one chooses to believe.

Yah, and what parts one decides to put in bold.

Okay, so what do we know. We know they had money. They had a cell. They had a leader. They had a target. They had a plan. Their operation was decided upon and timed by al Q's #2.

Never progressed past the planning stages? Can I ask you just one question:

What the fuck?

Because the thing after the planning stage is, you do what you planned. So they didn't have boarding passes yet? That's what the LA Times and you find most important?

Yes...that is what I choose to believe.

I also choose to believe the Bush administration frequently exaggerated the terrorist threat level for political purposes including to justify torture.

And the current administration would never do anything like that :headshake

I also choose to believe the Bush administration frequently exaggerated the terrorist threat level for political purposes including to justify torture.

But that's something you don't actually know about until more information is released, so choosing to believe that is irrational partisanship.

Educated guess?

We know from the memos that the CIA Inspector General found there was no conclusive proof that harsh interrogation techniques (torture) helped prevent any "specific imminent attacks"...despite numerous assertions by Bush/Cheney/Rice that torture led directly to preventing such attacks. (political?)
We also know that the CIA director later ordered an investigation of the CIA IG - a highly unusual and unprecedented action. (political?)
We know from the bipartisan Senate Armed Services Report that Cheney/Rumsfeld pressured interrogators to use torture to find a (non-existent) connection between al Qaida and Saddam Hussein. (political?)
We know that Bush's DoJ Office of Professional Responsibility has issued a report (to be made public in the next few weeks) that reportedly says the DoJ attorneys who wrote the torture memos may have deliberately slanted their legal advice to provide the White House with the conclusions it wanted. (political?)
IMO, yes...without knowing all the facts, all of the above stink of politicization to justify the use torture.

Which is why we need some type of hearings to get to the truth and to prevent such practices in the future.

If you can point to any action by the current administration that has been perceived or publicly acknowledged as illegal or potentially so by many officials within the agencies responsible for those actions....let's discuss it and if there is compelling evidence to support it, I will probably condemn it.

And the White House was involved in ordering the investigation? That's such a long reach, even the Times doesn't draw that conclusion.

In a search of all 266 pages of the bipartisan Senate Armed Services Report PDF part 1 PDF part 2, the word "Iraq" does not appear.

The evidence in that McClatchy story comes from a single anonymous individual. And the story buries the note that
That's the newspaper game for you: the scary bit goes in the lede, the lack of evidence for the scary bit goes after the jump.

If the Bush DoJ writes opinions with its left hand, and investigates itself for those opinions with the right hand, then if the left hand is politicization, the right hand is utter lack of it.

Now, to think in a straight line, your original conclusion is the Bush administration frequently exaggerated the terrorist threat level for political purposes. The examples you've provided do not address that conclusion, not even circumstantially, so you're back to square one.

UT....this is not a case where I have concluded that the facts are irrefutable. My opinion is based on what I consider to be reasonable conclusions from the information available.

You obviously disagree...again a matter of opinion.

I don't disagree. I don't think I've stated a position. I just find that partisanship is a terrible way to determine truth, guaranteed to fail regularly, and that's important.

Also, you used the word believe, and that set me off. Why choose to believe when the facts are not present? Why not just wait for better information, or admit you can't know?

As a skeptic, I believe that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I find many partisan people making extraordinary claims *constantly*, with little to no actual evidence in sight. I think that's a big mistake.

Eventually they wind up in such a tight circle that it's embarrassing, as in the case of UG, whose logic is so minimal at this point that he'll have this conversation:

UG: "This Democratic Party idea is dumb."
Others: "Why, what makes it dumb?"
UG: "Because it's from the Democrats."

The radio biz takes advantage of this kind of thinking:

Excited teen: "KQOR plays the very best music!"
Program Director: "Why do you think that's the best music?"
Excited teen: "Because it's on KQOR, duh!!!"

UT....that is a fair critique.

Can I invoke the classicman ACORN "guilt by association" defense? "Where there is smoke, there is fire"....and I see a hell of alot of smoke in the justification of the torture memos.

I think it is important for the facts to come out in some forum. And I have said repeatedly that I dont think anyone should be prosecuted.

My interest is in ensuring that such questionable practices be subject to greater oversight in the future.

Heh, yeah as long as you do a fair post-mortem of where you went wrong if it turns out you went wrong.

That from one who advocated torture, knew that Saddam had WMDs, believed the myths about Al Qaeda in Iraq, and will not even ask a question that any decent American would ask - when do we go after bin Laden.

The fact that classicman repeatedly and only criticizes Obama says so much about how much good Obama has accomplished in only 90 days. He even closed America's overseas torture chambers that classicman said did not exist. Who should we believe?

Extremists are still parroting what Limbaugh et al tells them to. So classicman posts another cheap shot. Extremists: people who will routinely lie to promote a poltical agenda.

A smarter classicman would stop posting where he has nothing useful to offer - as if that was somehow supposed to be humorous.

Based upon that logic you would have stopped posting years ago.

Wouldn't that depend on the right hands marching orders? Violating Occam's Razor, I can think of a lot of nefarious reasons for having the right hand do investigations, and would not put much stock in them without more detail as to exactly what they did/didn't do.

I agree. We need more and better information, which is why Obama's push for more transparency in the future is a good thing.

But you remind me that Dux's post contains two internal investigations, CIA and DoJ.

The first is interpreted as political: you did what the WH didn't want you to do, so we're investigating you.

The second is interpreted as the result of politics: you did what the WH wanted you to do, so we're investigating you.

In both cases, there is not enough information to know, yet it's the narrative pushed by the reporters that is generally accepted.

http://cellar.org/2008/themoreyouknow.jpg

For 5+ years, the narrative pushed by the Bush administration, from political appointees at DoJ, CIA, DoD to the the very top officials in the WH, was "we do not torture" and "harsh interrogation techniques have been directly responsible for preventing attacks on America."

Internal reports from the DoJ OPR and the DoD and CIA IGs, in carrying out their responsibilities to investigate their respective agency policies and practices without regard to political considerations, would appear to suggest otherwise .

Which is why we need full disclosure (w/o harming national security interests) in order to ensure that current oversight and transparency is adequate to prevent illegal acts or acts that are in violation of administrative policies and procedures...or to determine if greater oversight and transparency is needed.

Negative. That is not at all what has been said. They didn't believe it was torture. Period. You don't have to agree with it. You can draw all the analogies and historical references you want, and I won't always disagree with you, but they didn't think it was wrong or they wouldn't have done it. And if they did think it was borderline then why did they do it if it had not produced the intel that it did. Certainly this is still open to debate, but there is ample evidence that it did produce actionable intel. That is significant in this circle jerk of arm chair quarterbacks like yourself trying to say it produced nothing. Who you choose to believe is up to you. You speak as if you know the facts when you know nothing more than anyone else that can read the reports and news. Hop on the train.

IF waterboarding produced a positive outcome then this administration could be pressured to use it in the future if a key operative were captured. If they did not and something terrible happened, they would be blamed. Right or wrong, for political reasons (among others) this administration does NOT want a credible link.

We can debate who is doing the circle jerk.

The fact remains that CIA,DoJ and DoD IGs all reported to their respective cabinet level directors/secretaries that the proposed "harsh interrogation techniues were potentially (probably) illegal...and those superior chose to ignore those reports (and in one case, CIA, investigate the IG)....and those report were either not shared with the WH or were shared and the WH chose to ignore them as well.

And the fact remains that Bush/Cheney/Rice et al made repeated public pronouncements (and continue to make such pronouncements) that those harsh interrogation techniques directly resulted in protecting the country from attack..and there is no credible evidence to support that.

No credible evidence? OK then the administration should release all the documents regarding this issue. To release only those that potentially support "their side" is less than honest. There have been numerous reports that the documents exist.

side note - How bout her majesty Nancy P claiming to know nothing of this and being quite critical till the truth again came out.
She knew all about it from day one - forkin hypocrite.

The next report likely to be released is the DoJ Office of Professional Responsibility investigation conducted last year (and held up by the last Bush AG) that reportedly found that the DoJ attorneys who wrote the torture memos may have deliberately slanted their legal advice to provide the White House with the conclusions it wanted....but we wont know til we see it.

Beyond that I agree that all relevant documents should be released...but in a structured forum like an independent commission rather than just dumping the reports in the media.

And there is plenty of hypocrisy to go around....from the WH to the leaders of both parties in Congress.

Of course they knew it was torture. They were warned by more than one source that it was. They just had to try and justify it because that's what Cheney wanted. I think it is all his doing.

No, they wouldn't, because they know they can get more reliable information by other methods. Torture is proven to be unreliable. By the gods! I can't believe some of you actually believe torture is OK. :headshake

Operative word. Open to what you want to believe about the good work that most of these people did.

Clinton didnt believe he had sex with that woman.

Nixon didnt believe he was a crook

But Bush/Cheney are pure of heart and honest in their public pronouncements.

No shit.

To believe it, they must lie to themselves. Torture has never proven reliable. But facts get in the way of political agendas be it global warming, economic stimulus, Enron, Saddam's WMDs, and even torture. To be an extremist means one must lie. "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter". Lie after lie.

Never expect an extremist to admit that the FBI gave up interrogating as soon as torture started. Once tortured, any useful information from a prisoner is lost. Anyone who learned before knowing from 24 would know that. FBI knew it. Once torture started, the FBI left. Torture that wacko extremists first claimed did not exist. How can they be honest when lying is necessary to be an extremist?

We await this finding. If they just wrote opinions, how could one know whether it was deliberate? It seems to me that proof would require:

A) Word had to be passed from the WH on what conclusions they wanted. "We need you to create an opinion that permits the harshest levels of interrogation possible, although that may be unlawful. We will make sure you aren't held accountable."

or

B) Evidence that the DoJ attorneys had a different opinion before being asked. "Attorney X published an opinion ten years ago that stated unequivocally that waterboarding is torture."

Well, since we have prosecuted people in the past for waterboarding, that makes a pretty damn good argument that we think it's illegal. Otherwise, why would we have prosecuted them? OH RIGHT! Because it was OUR MEN who were being tortured. :rolleyes: The double standard that people in this country have is sickening.

King Abdullah of Jordan said yesterday that they had actually been able to turn some members of al Qaeda and got them to work FOR them. They damn sure didn't get them to do that by torturing them.

Who is "they" and how do they "KNOW"?

Please cite a few cases of who "we" have prosecuted.

I said: King Abdullah of Jordan said yesterday that they had actually been able to turn some members of al Qaeda and got them to work FOR them. They damn sure didn't get them to do that by torturing them.

They = Jordanians King Abdullah of Jordan said yesterday that they (Jordan) had actually been able to turn some members of al Qaeda and got them (al qaeda prisoners) to work FOR them (Jordan). They (Jordan) damn sure didn't get them (al qaeda prisoners) to do that by torturing them (al qaeda prisoners).

I guess they know because maybe the people they were able turn supplied them with information that was good? I don't know, he wasn't specific. Go watch Meet the Press from yesterday and see for yourself.

Is my language that hard to understand, or are you just giving me a hard time?

Please don't tell me you didn't already know this...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...110201170.html
The United States knows quite a bit about waterboarding. The U.S. government -- whether acting alone before domestic courts, commissions and courts-martial or as part of the world community -- has not only condemned the use of water torture but has severely punished those who applied it.

After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. At the trial of his captors, then-Lt. Chase J. Nielsen, one of the 1942 Army Air Forces officers who flew in the Doolittle Raid and was captured by the Japanese, testified: "I was given several types of torture. . . . I was given what they call the water cure." He was asked what he felt when the Japanese soldiers poured the water. "Well, I felt more or less like I was drowning," he replied, "just gasping between life and death."

Nielsen's experience was not unique. Nor was the prosecution of his captors. After Japan surrendered, the United States organized and participated in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, generally called the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Leading members of Japan's military and government elite were charged, among their many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The principal proof upon which their torture convictions were based was conduct that we would now call waterboarding.

Here's another one...

http://pubrecord.org/torture/854.html?task=view
George W. Bush’s Justice Department said subjecting a person to the near-drowning of waterboarding was not a crime and didn’t even cause pain, but Ronald Reagan’s Justice Department thought otherwise, prosecuting a Texas sheriff and three deputies for using the practice to get confessions.

Federal prosecutors secured a 10-year sentence against the sheriff and four years in prison for the deputies. But that 1983 case – which would seem to be directly on point for a legal analysis on waterboarding two decades later – was never mentioned in the four Bush administration opinions released last week...

http://washingtonindependent.com/13453/waterboarding
...the U.S. itself prosecuted waterboarding of American soldiers after World War II; waterboarding by American soldiers in the Philippines, and “water torture,” as it’s also been called — most recently by a local sheriff in Texas...

...Evan Wallach, a judge on the U.S. Court of International Trade and expert on the laws of war, wrote: “Not so very long ago, the United States, acting alone before domestic courts, commissions and courts-martial, and as a participant in the world community, not only condemned the use of water torture, but severely punished as criminals those who applied it.”...

We once condemned same sex partnerships too. Things change. ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding#World_War_II
Isn't she so cute! being all smug and pretending to know stuff!

:dunce:

12:33am responding to Merc

12:35am responding to the above.
This was not posted till 2:09PM this afternoon.
Yes, no. (Is my answer hard to follow :p)

I'm just trying to follow you. You are all over the place again and your timeline doesn't add up. It would appear that you were referring to the posts you quoted and now you are saying otherwise... hence the confusion.
I think I got ya now, moving along.

Using Jordan as an example of an enlightened, non-torturing country is just sad.

http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/10/0...d-widespread-0

Hell yes! :p

Sorry for the confusion. I don't see how my timeline doesn't add up though. Oh well. *sigh*