Central Intelligence Anxiety
How the Bush administration left the spooks to twist in the wind
After that, a division emerged between what a former senior Agency official described to me as the "SS crowd" and the "Wehrmacht crowd," the "hard edged" and the "smarter and better informed." He said, "People managed not to take assignments. There were senior people who would not go to meetings if they thought that extraordinary rendition or enhanced interrogation techniques were going to be discussed."
Sure enough, when public opinion finally shifted, the administration left the spooks to twist in the wind. "The Bush administration ordered it and approved it and then never came to the Agency's defense when it hit the fan," the former operative said. "The hypocrisy is breathtaking." That prompted a former CIA counterterrorism officer, John Kiriakou, to go on national television to point out that administration officials had been briefed in detail about the Zubaydah interrogation and others. For his trouble, Kiriakou now is reportedly the subject of an FBI investigation focused on whether he disclosed classified information.
What about Congress? "They have known for a long time that [the CIA] uses stress positions and hypothermia and waterboarding and sleep deprivation—and they haven't done anything about it," says Marty Lederman, a former Justice Department attorney who now teaches law at Georgetown University. "They don't disagree with it. And if they do disagree with it, what are they going to do about it? The default position is to have closed hearings, which is preposterous. The intelligence oversight committees are totally captured by the intelligence community."
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after you are sure to have the enemy in your hands, and done mistreating him, suddently you realise you have made a mistake, how will the rest of your life be?
There is absolutely no planning or anaysis of cause and effect from Iraq to restarting the cold war to a nine trillion dollar deficit; a REICH can never be wrong! God help the next President. Sig Heil, Herr Bush: "Mission Accomplished".
English-French-German-Italian-Chinese-Japanese-Dutch-Belgians etc etc all had "good" soldiers that would do their psycopath/leaders wicked bidding. What is alarming to me is the high % of Americans who feel this inquisition is ok. Blowback for u folks is going to be a bitch
...non American who has been living in a part of the 'uncivilized' world with little or no experience with 'freedom'. After a good waterboarding I see that light and convert to Amercian Democracy! How likely is that scenerio?
So tell me what is wrong with waterboarding or advanced interogation techniques? from what I read some of these " hard core" terrorists broke within minutes. I pose this question to you, if you knew you had captured a terrorist, who you believed knew were a school bus of children were being held, would you waterbaord them or use advance interrogation techniques to save the children?. If you would justify it, because every terrorist we break is another terror attack, another child that gets to live and another American that gets to live! Beside we have outsourced much of our countries manufacturing capability , why not outsource the job of interorgator also!! is this moral or ethical? and if so is it moral or ethical if we outsource our jobs? what is the difference? Oh pick us it makes people feel " moral" because they are opposing something that looks bad.The same people who support abortion as a womans right to choose, now think " torture " is wrong?! Now they have morals?! the same people who claimed I did not know this was happening want it to stop while they sit in the safety of their homes, the same people who let others join the military so that they can be free and sit at home and critisize everyone. Get reel!! Hypocrites!!!!
To answer Dr. Q's question below, the rest of a torturer's life will be about either justifying, or atoning, for what he's done.
Most of us have demons, and the demons are in the driver's seat more often than not. If you've tortured another person, the demon will definitely be driving.
What an irony, if these guys, who will need long courses of psychotherapy, if they want to stay half-way sane, are now being cut loose, presumably losing their benefits in the process.
And let's not talk about the victims, shall we -- and THEIR chances to find some resolution.
Chris, you commit the perennial error of hypothetical scenarios: since the postulated event has not happened, you cannot know how you or anyone would react in the situation.
Say there was a train hurtling down a track toward two adults. Would you, at the switch, turn the train onto a track containing a defenseless child, to save the adults?
Say there was a bomb ticking, would you shoot a suspect in the knee to find out
where the bomb is?
Would you rather a RedPhone@3AM were answered by a hair-trigger hot-head, or by someone who gives due consideration?
There are so many unknowns that cannot be answered, except by going through the REAL situation. These artificially-constricted scenarios are just tv-fed "candy" morality. They have no real bearing on what an informed, moral human will do in a challenging situation.
----
stop watching tv.
Dan you are soooo right, you said it better than I could have and you didn't even mention that Chris the moron can't spell the word real
Chris, as most of the Fox-news watching public, fails to recognize the well-documented fact that torture rarely, if ever, results in reliable intelligence. Torture only works on "24" and in right-wing wet dreams.
The only thing that this barbaric behavior does is produce is more enemies of America and further solidify the United States' role as the latest in a long line of imperialist bullies in the pages of history.
If terrorists get one or two nuclear bombs from fellow Islamists in Pakistan, and deliver it in a chartered cargo jet to Washington DC, say, thousands, maybe tens of thousands of children will be horribly burned. Will you be consoled with the thought that at least our civil liberties were not compromised nor was anyone tortured?
My only real [sic] response to you ,Chris is this: what happens when a mistake has been made and an innocent person is tortured? Would you feel this way if, God forbid, someone has falsely accused your wife or mother of being a terrorist or of having information that could prevent an imminent attack? It has been my impression that those who argue for torture see the enemy as racially different than white Middle America.
There is one more question for you, Chris: Why do you advocate torture when our own experts found out long ago that torture forces the intel source to answer in any manner that will stop the torture? What intel reason would one use to justify a method that has been demonstrably proved to create unreliable intelligence? What evidence has been brought forth to counter the previous conclusion? Has the administration yet to define what is meant by what is 'not' torture or any corrobating evidence that the 'enhanced' techniques were indeed successful? Chris, I have to assume that you comfortable with torture, even though under Patriot Act statutes you and your loved ones may be on the receiving end of these 'lawful' acts. And don't forget that under current War on Terror rules, you cannot sue the federal government if you were mistakenly picked up for some CIA questioning. While we're at it, let's hope you're for denying habeas corpus to anyone suspected of terroristic activities, because that linchpin of the Rule of Law in our country predicated on the inalienable right to fair treatment and representation before the state, i.e. the federal gov't, is at risk. Don't think for a second that these concepts-legalization of torture and suspension of habeas corpus-aren't related. I'm truly sorry ,but I don't recognize the country I served for so many years.
Does the name Nuremburg strike a memory chord?
If it didn't work for the S.S. what would make the "intelligence" community or the administration think it will work for them?
What school bus?
This is a straw man! As is the entire "War on Terror" - we had systems in place - we should've improved what we had, not created a slower, stupider government agency that is a greater threat to our freedom and republic than ANY OTHER FORCE IN THE HISTORY OF OUR NATION
Why are you so blind?! Wake up!
