SERE called their tactics "Torture" in 2002

[Balta1701]

Starting this fight up again is less painful than looking at the current White Sox/Blue Jays score.

The military agency that provided advice on harsh interrogation techniques for use against terrorism suspects referred to the application of extreme duress as "torture" in a July 2002 document sent to the Pentagon's chief lawyer and warned that it would produce "unreliable information."

 

"The unintended consequence of a U.S. policy that provides for the torture of prisoners is that it could be used by our adversaries as justification for the torture of captured U.S. personnel," says the document, an unsigned two-page attachment to a memo by the military's Joint Personnel Recovery Agency. Parts of the attachment, obtained in full by The Washington Post, were quoted in a Senate report on harsh interrogation released this week.

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It remains unclear whether the attachment reached high-ranking officials in the Bush administration. But the document offers the clearest evidence that has come to light so far that technical advisers on the harsh interrogation methods voiced early concerns about the effectiveness of applying severe physical or psychological pressure.

 

The document was included among July 2002 memorandums that described severe techniques used against Americans in past conflicts and the psychological effects of such treatment. JPRA ran the military program known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE), which trains pilots and others to resist hostile questioning.

 

The cautionary attachment was forwarded to the Pentagon's Office of the General Counsel as the administration finalized the legal underpinnings of a CIA interrogation program that would sanction the use of 10 forms of coercion, including waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning. The JPRA material was sent from the Pentagon to the CIA's acting general counsel, John A. Rizzo, and on to the Justice Department, according to testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

 

A memo dated Aug. 1, 2002, from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel authorized the use of the 10 methods against Abu Zubaida, the nom de guerre of an al-Qaeda associate captured in Pakistan in March 2002. Former intelligence officials have recently contended that Abu Zubaida provided little useful information about the organization's plans.

The very same people who the Republicans have been using to say "oh, it's ok, it's not torture" called it torture and said it was unreliable.

 

(P.s. You'll note...I've started a torture thread. It's a torture discussion thread. Now it doesn't have to go in the catch all threads. yay.)

[lostfan]

Focus on the "unreliable" aspect.

[HuskyCaucasian]

Knowing how the Bush administration worked, i'd be curious to see how many people were fired/replaced before it all became "not torture".

[Balta1701]

And for that matter, why don't they release the memos saying how many terror attacks the torture stopped?

The CIA inspector general in 2004 found that there was no conclusive proof that waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques helped the Bush administration thwart any "specific imminent attacks," according to recently declassified Justice Department memos.

 

That undercuts assertions by former vice president Dick Cheney and other former Bush administration officials that the use of harsh interrogation tactics including waterboarding, which is widely considered torture, was justified because it headed off terrorist attacks.

Oh.

[BigSqwert]

"As a senior interrogator in Iraq, I conducted more than three hundred interrogations and monitored more than one thousand. I heard numerous foreign fighters state that the reason they came to Iraq to fight was because of the torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. Our policy of torture and abuse is Al-Qaeda’s number one recruiting tool. These same insurgents have killed hundreds, if not thousands, of our troops in Iraq, not to mention Iraqi civilians. Torture and abuse are counterproductive in the long term and, ultimately, cost us more lives than they save," - former senior military interrogator Matthew Alexander.

 

LINK

[lostfan]

LINK

When I was talking about how the cat was already out of the bag in the Dem thread, concerning the PR damage that the release of the documents was going to do, this is what I meant. We can't really make it any worse.

Edited April 25, 2009 by lostfan

[StrangeSox]

And for that matter, why don't they release the memos saying how many terror attacks the torture stopped?

Oh.

 

To be fair, that says 2004. It's been five years, so that leaves room for "effective" torture.

[BigSqwert]

The UN Convention on Torture, which Ronald Reagan signed and championed, is very clear and its definition of what torture is obviously broad and inclusive. There's actually a good discussion of it at Hot Air, which reproduces the legal definition thus:

Article 1.

1. For the purpo

s

e

s

of thi

s

Convention,

torture mean

s

any act by which

s

evere pain or

s

uffering, whether phy

s

ical or mental, i

s

intentionally inflicted

on a per

s

on for

s

uch purpo

s

e

s

a

s

obtaining from him or a third per

s

on information or a confe

s

s

ion, puni

s

hing him for an act he or a third per

s

on ha

s

committed or i

s

s

u

s

pected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third per

s

on, or for any rea

s

on ba

s

ed on di

s

crimination of any

k

ind, when

s

uch pain or

s

uffering i

s

inflicted by or at the in

s

tigation of or with the con

s

ent or acquie

s

cence of a public official or other per

s

on acting in an official capacity. It doe

s

not include pain or

s

uffering ari

s

ing only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful

s

anction

s

.

2. Thi

s

article i

s

without prejudice to any international in

s

trument or national legi

s

lation which doe

s

or may contain provi

s

ion

s

of wider application.

 

Article 2.

1. Each

S

tate Party

s

hall ta

k

e effective legi

s

lative, admini

s

trative, judicial or other mea

s

ure

s

to prevent act

s

of torture in any territory under it

s

juri

s

diction.

2.

No exceptional circum

s

tance

s

what

s

oever, whether a

s

tate of war or a threat or war, internal political in

s

tability or any other public emergency, may be invo

k

ed a

s

a ju

s

tification of torture.

3. An order from a

s

uperior officer or a public authority may not be invo

k

ed a

s

a ju

s

tification of torture.

Just ask yourself: reading this language and knowing that president Bush ordered the waterboarding of a man for 83 times to get evidence linking Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda, is it really a matter of debate whether the last president of the United States is a war criminal? How is one able to come to any other opinion?

 

Remember:

"any act by which

s

evere pain or

s

uffering, whether phy

s

ical or mental, i

s

intentionally inflicted on a per

s

on for

s

uch purpo

s

e

s

a

s

obtaining from him or a third per

s

on information or a confe

s

s

ion"

is torture. Remember:

No exceptional circum

s

tance

s

what

s

oever, whether a

s

tate of war or a threat or war, internal political in

s

tability or any other public emergency, may be invo

k

ed a

s

a ju

s

tification of torture.

Why are we still debating this?

 

LINK

[BigSqwert]

Whoever said the following is clearly a terrorist sympathizer:

 

"The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment. I call on all nations to speak out against torture in all its forms and to make ending torture an essential part of their diplomacy."

[Texsox]

Sad. Most people will agree what is, and is not, torture. The merits and effectiveness is actually a fair debate in my mind. I believe it is ineffective, and really has no merits except to make some people feel better or fool themselves into thinking they are "doing something".

[Balta1701]

Newsweek has scored an interview with the guy leading the interrogation of Zubaydah before the clan decided it was time to "Get tough" with him.

As Soufan tells the story, he challenged a CIA official at the scene about the agency's legal authority to do what it was doing. "We're the United States of America, and we don't do that kind of thing," he recalls shouting at one point. But the CIA official, whom Soufan refuses to name because the agent's identity is still classified, brushed aside Soufan's concerns. He told him in April 2002 that the aggressive techniques already had gotten approval from the "highest levels" in Washington, says Soufan. The official even waved a document in front of Soufan, saying the approvals "are coming from Gonzales," a reference to Alberto Gonzales, then the White House counsel and later the attorney general. (A lawyer for Gonzales declined to comment.)

 

What this document was—and what, exactly, it authorized—is unclear. Soufan notes that, at that point, there had not been any talk in his presence of waterboarding, the most extreme of the techniques. But, as he later told Justice Department investigators, Soufan considered the methods he witnessed to be "borderline torture." A CIA spokesman declined to comment on what Soufan may have been shown, but wrote in an e-mail to NEWSWEEK: "The Aug. 1, 2002, memo from the Department of Justice wasn't the first piece of legal guidance for the [interrogation] program." "There are still gaping holes in the record," says Jameel Jaffer, the American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who spearheaded the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that forced the disclosure of the Justice memos. The ACLU is now suing for further disclosures

 

...

Soufan became a teacher for other interrogators. McFadden says that in early 2002, Soufan flew to Guantánamo to conduct a training course. He gave a powerful talk, preaching the virtues of the FBI's traditional rapport-building techniques. Not only were such methods the most effective, Soufan explained that day, they were critical to maintaining America's image in the Middle East. "The whole world is watching what we do here," Soufan said. "We're going to win or lose this war depending on how we do this." As he made these comments, about half the interrogators in the room—those from the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies—were "nodding their heads" in agreement, recalls McFadden. But the other half— military intelligence officers—sat there "with blank stares. It's like they were thinking, This is bullcrap. Their attitude was, 'You guys are cops; we don't have time for this'."

 

Only weeks later, this clash of cultures played out in the heated dispute over how to handle Abu Zubaydah. A Palestinian who is believed to have served as logistics chief for Afghan terrorist-training camps, Abu Zubaydah was captured after a bloody gunfight. He was transferred from Pakistan to Thailand, where Soufan and Gaudin immediately sought to gain his trust by nursing his wounds. (Soufan would not comment on the location of the interrogation; sources, who like others interviewed for this story didn't want to be named discussing sensitive information, have placed him in Thailand at this time. An FBI spokesman says Gaudin, who is still in the bureau, would not comment on his role in the Abu Zubaydah interrogations.) "We kept him alive," Soufan says. "It wasn't easy, he couldn't drink, he had a fever. I was holding ice to his lips." Gaudin, for his part, cleaned Abu Zubaydah's buttocks. During this time, Soufan and Gaudin also began the questioning; it became a "mental poker game." At first, Abu Zubaydah even denied his identity, insisting that his name was "Daoud."

 

But Soufan had poured through the bureau's intelligence files and stunned Abu Zubaydah when he called him "Hani"—the nickname that his mother used for him. Soufan also showed him photos of a number of terror suspects who were high on the bureau's priority list. Abu Zubaydah looked at one of them and said, "That's Mukhtar."

 

Now it was Soufan who was stunned. The FBI had been trying to determine the identity of a mysterious "Mukhtar," whom bin Laden kept referring to on a tape he made after 9/11. Now Soufan knew: Mukhtar was the man in the photo, terror fugitive Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and, as Abu Zubaydah blurted out, " the one behind 9/11."

 

As the sessions continued, Soufan engaged Abu Zubaydah in long discussions about his world view, which included a tinge of socialism. After Abu Zubaydah railed one day about the influence of American imperialist corporations, he asked Soufan to get him a Coca-Cola—a request that prompted the two of them to laugh. Soon enough, Abu Zubaydah offered up more information—about the bizarre plans of a jihadist from Puerto Rico to set off a "dirty bomb" inside the country. This information led to Padilla's arrest in Chicago by the FBI in early May.

 

But the tenor of the Abu Zubaydah interrogations changed a few days later, when a CIA contractor showed up. Although Soufan declined to identify the contractor by name, other sources (and media accounts) identify him as James Mitchell, a former Air Force psychologist who had worked on the U.S. military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training—a program to teach officers how to resist the abusive interrogation methods used by Chinese communists during the Korean War. Within days of his arrival, Mitchell—an architect of the CIA interrogation program—took charge of the questioning of Abu Zubaydah. He directed that Abu Zubaydah be ordered to answer questions or face a gradual increase in aggressive techniques. One day Soufan entered Abu Zubadyah's room and saw that he had been stripped naked; he covered him with a towel.

 

The confrontations began. "I asked [the contractor] if he'd ever interrogated anyone, and he said no," Soufan says. But that didn't matter, the contractor shot back: "Science is science. This is a behavioral issue." The contractor suggested Soufan was the inexperienced one. "He told me he's a psychologist and he knows how the human mind works." Mitchell told NEWSWEEK, "I would love to tell my story." But then he added, "I have signed a nondisclosure agreement that will not even allow me to correct false allegations."

 

The tipping point came when, after a few weeks, Soufan saw the coffinlike box that Mitchell had constructed. Soufan refuses to say what he was told the box was for. But other sources who heard accounts of the confrontation say the idea was to stage a "mock burial." (A CIA spokesman says, "The CIA's high-value-detainee program did not include mock burials. That wasn't done.") When an incensed Soufan told his superior what was happening, the response was quick: D'Amuro told him to leave the scene of the interrogations. Then, a few days later, he was told, "Come on home." Now the debate Soufan began in Thailand has come home, too. If given the opportunity, he may again play a starring role.

[lostfan]

See the part about the Coke, I made a post a couple of days ago in response to mocking about "giving up information over a nice cup of tea." Well...?

[Balta1701]

See the part about the Coke, I made a post a couple of days ago in response to mocking about "giving up information over a nice cup of tea." Well...?

There's a teabagging joke here somewhere that I just can't manage to articulate...

[Controlled Chaos]

Is playing loud music and using bright lights torture?

[lostfan]

Is playing loud music and using bright lights torture?

I don't think so. It's not necessarily effective with everyone though.

[ChiSox_Sonix]

Is playing loud music and using bright lights torture?

 

If it causes them any discomfort it is.

[Cknolls]

If it causes them any discomfort it is.

 

 

That's what maalox is for.

[Balta1701]

Is playing loud music and using bright lights torture?

Serious answer; depends on how loud the music is and how long you've kept them awake.

 

Less than serious answer; absolutely, if they're playing Creed.

[Balta1701]

If nothing else, this is going to wind up with a lot of these guys being unable to ever leave the country again.

A Spanish judge opened a probe into the Bush administration over alleged torture of terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, pressing ahead Wednesday with a drive that Spain's own attorney general has said should be waged in the United States, if at all.

 

Judge Baltasar Garzon, Spain's most prominent investigative magistrate, said he is acting under this country's observance of the principle of universal justice, which allows crimes allegedly committed in other countries to be prosecuted in Spain.

 

He said documents declassified by the new U.S. government suggest the practice was systematic and ordered at high levels of the US government.

 

Garzon's move is separate from a complaint by human rights lawyers that seeks charges against six specific Bush administration officials they accuse of creating a legal framework to permit torture of suspects at Guantanamo Bay and other U.S. detention facilities.

 

Spanish prosecutors said on April 17 that any such probe should be carried out by the U.S. and recommended against it being launched in Spain. Their opinion has been endorsed by Attorney General Candido Conde-Pumpido. Garzon originally had that case, but ultimately it was transferred to another judge, who has yet to decide whether to investigate.

 

Now, Garzon is opening a separate, broader probe that does not name any specific suspects but targets ''possible material authors'' of torture, accomplices and those who gave torture orders.

 

Garzon is acting on his own, rather than in response to a complaint filed with the National Court, which is the usual procedure for universal justice probes in Spain.

 

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, speaking with reporters in Berlin before the investigation was announced, did not rule out cooperating with such an investigation.

 

''Obviously, we would look at any request that would come from a court in any country and see how and whether we should comply with it,'' Holder said.

 

''This is an administration that is determined to conduct itself by the rule of law and to the extent that we receive lawful requests from an appropriately-created court, we would obviously respond to it,'' he said.

 

Asked if that meant the U.S. would cooperate with a foreign court prosecuting Bush administration officials, Holder said he was talking about evidentiary requests, and would review any such request to see if the United States would comply.

[lostfan]

Again, "torture" is vastly overrated, at best.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090513/ap_on_..._interrogations

 

Ex-FBI interrogator says harsh methods didn't work

 

WASHINGTON – A former FBI interrogator who questioned al-Qaida prisoners testified Wednesday that the Bush administration falsely boasted of success from extreme techniques like waterboarding, when those methods were slow, unreliable and made an important witness stop talking.

 

Ali Soufan, testifying to a Senate panel behind a screen to hide his identity, said his team's non-threatening interrogation approach elicited crucial information from al-Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah, including intelligence on "dirty bomb" terrorist Jose Padilla.

 

Soufan said his team had to step aside when CIA contractors took over. They began using harsh methods that caused Zubaydah to "shut down," Soufan said, and his team had to be recalled the get the prisoner talking again.

 

Soufan appeared before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee holding the first hearing on extreme interrogation methods since the Obama administration last month released Bush administration legal opinions authorizing them.

 

Memos by the Bush Justice Department contended that waterboarding — a form of simulated drowning — as well as sleep deprivation and other extreme techniques were legal under U.S. and international law, but Democrats said they amounted to torture.

 

President Barack Obama has said he wanted to avoid partisan hearings over the interrogations, but the hearing turned partisan in its opening seconds.

 

Subcommittee Chairman Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., promised at the outset to unravel "our country's descent into torture" and vowed to expose "a bodyguard of lies" by the Bush administration.

 

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., asked whether "we would have this hearing if we were attacked this afternoon."

 

Graham called the hearing a "political stunt" and said Democrats were trying to judge officials who — soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks — "woke up one morning like most Americans and said, 'Oh, my God, what's coming next?'"

 

He also joined in the frequent Republican criticism that members of Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were briefed on the interrogation program and raised no protest at the time.

 

Graham appeared irate, commenting at one point, "The people we're prosecuting didn't rob a liquor store."

 

He said former Vice President Dick Cheney has suggested there was valuable information obtained from the extreme methods. "I would like the committee to get that information. Let's get both sides of the story here," Graham said.

 

Soufan countered that his personal experience showed that the harsh interrogation techniques didn't work even when there wasn't a lot of time to prevent an attack.

 

"Waiting 180 hours as part of the sleep deprivation stage is time we cannot afford to wait in a ticking bomb scenario," he said.

 

Soufan said the harsh techniques were "ineffective, slow and unreliable and, as a result, harmful to our efforts to defeat al-Qaida."

 

Soufan testified that "many of the claims made" by the Bush administration were inaccurate or half-truths.

 

He cited these examples:

 

_The administration said Abu Zubaydah wasn't cooperating before Aug. 1, 2002, when waterboarding was approved. "The truth is that we got actionable intelligence from him in the first hour of interrogating him" before that date.

 

_The administration credited waterboarding for Zubaydah's information that led to the capture of Padilla, who received a 17-year, four-month sentence, although prosecutors did not present any dirty-bomb information. Padilla was arrested in May 2002, months before waterboarding was authorized, Soufan said.

 

_Bush officials contended that waterboarding revealed the involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks of al-Qaida mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. Soufan said the information was discovered in April 2002, months before waterboarding was introduced.

 

Another witness, Philip Zelikow, was a top adviser to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. He described his efforts within the Bush administration to argue that the harsh interrogations violated the Constitution.

 

In early 2006, Zelikow said, he circulated his own analysis that dissented from the Justice Department view that the methods were legal under U.S. and international law.

 

"I later heard the memo was not considered appropriate for further discussion and that copies of my memo should be collected and destroyed," he said. "That particular request, passed along informally, did not seem proper and I ignored it."

 

State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters Wednesday that the memo has been found.

 

"We did locate a document that appears to be responsive to a request that came from Sen. Whitehouse... We've also received a request for the same document from other members of Congress. It is classified, so we are conducting a review, but we're unable to release it to the public because of its classification at this time," he said.

 

U.S. Circuit Judge Jay Bybee has declined to give Senate testimony on the memos he approved while at the Justice Department that concluded the interrogation program was legal, said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

 

Leahy announced the refusal at the hearing but provided no details. Bybee serves on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

[bmags]

I think the thing that I'm most interested in, and has been a sort of under the current type of murmuring, is whether torture was specifically used to gain information on an Al Qaida-Iraq tie.

[lostfan]

I don't remember ever seeing anything like that. It was just some s*** they completely made up.

[bmags]

I don't remember ever seeing anything like that. It was just some s*** they completely made up.

 

There was a specific detainee they thought had info on an Iraq-Al Qaida connection, and there has been rumors there is a document ordering waterboarding to get the info... whether that surfaces we will see, whether it exists we don't know.

 

But seriously does everything have to drop to the one 24 scenario: Spmos-butsijfosf WHAT IF WE ONLY HAVE 10 MIN. Left. These pr***s are trained for torture, you will not be able to get the info out in 10 minutes. We waterboarded these people 100+ times, that clearly wasn't a time precious scenario.

 

edit: so what I'm saying is, say there was success in one waterboarding, it's a hard sell to me that we couldn't have gotten that info any other way. Clearly as exampled by lost's article, sometimes successful interrogations were called off for EITs, so, I don't know, this is just disgusting.

Edited May 14, 2009 by bmags

[NorthSideSox72]

There was a specific detainee they thought had info on an Iraq-Al Qaida connection, and there has been rumors there is a document ordering waterboarding to get the info... whether that surfaces we will see, whether it exists we don't know.

 

But seriously does everything have to drop to the one 24 scenario: Spmos-butsijfosf WHAT IF WE ONLY HAVE 10 MIN. Left. These pr***s are trained for torture, you will not be able to get the info out in 10 minutes. We waterboarded these people 100+ times, that clearly wasn't a time precious scenario.

 

edit: so what I'm saying is, say there was success in one waterboarding, it's a hard sell to me that we couldn't have gotten that info any other way. Clearly as exampled by lost's article, sometimes successful interrogations were called off for EITs, so, I don't know, this is just disgusting.

Read the book Curveball, and you will have the answers to your Iraq-AQ connection questions.

 

[lostfan]

Yeah he wasn't a detainee, he was a wackjob source that attracted the attention of some pretty high-level government officials so he told them what they wanted to hear. I assume you're talking about this guy.