I don’t for a moment believe any of the rhetoric (moral or pretend practical) from all the various bloviators accompanying or preceding today’s disclosure of memos regarding CIA interrogation techniques. Nor do I believe the predictable boilerplate on the subject from Presidential adviser David Axelrod, as reported by Politico’s Mike Allen: “It was a weighty decision,” Axelrod said. “As with so many issues, there are competing points of view that flow from very genuine interests and concerns that are to be respected. And then the president has to synthesize all of it and make a decision that’s in the broad national interest. He’s been thinking about this for four weeks, really.”
Really? All of four weeks. What an intellectual!
Of course what he has been thinking about, if anything, is politics, because this was, no matter what anyone says or (again) pretends to say, a purely political decision, because here is the truth about torture decisions:
Everyone (except a sadist) abhors torturing, but no one knows what they would do in an inidividual situation until they are confronted by it – and those situations are always changing. That includes Barack Obama, George Bush, you, me and Ariana Huffington. [Ariana Huffington - why did that name come up regarding torture?-ed. Free association?] So what we are dealing with in the release of these memos is pure political smear. And Obama knew it. That’s why he delayed for those four weeks of deep cogitation referred to by Agent Axelrod of the DPA (Democratic Party Apparat). Meanwhile, regarding those torture decisions I never expect to have to make and hope I won’t, I would bow to my main man Jeremy Bentham who wrote of the “greatest good for the greatest number.” The old “utilitarian” was an even deeper thinker than David Axelrod or Barack Obama. [No. That's impossible!-ed.]
My initial reaction to the memos was, Where’s the beef?? The CIA is worried and the terrorists laughing because now the whole world how LITTLE the U.S. can do with respect to interrogation.
Of course that disgusting lightweight Anderson Cooper was having a field day last night on CNN, with his furrowed brow and manufactured discomfort at the lengths to which the Bush administration went, and how it affected our standing with world opinion, and was it really necessary, and on and on
Um, who’s being smeared?
I’m with IcePilot.
If those memos reveal anything we should be concerned about, then we are incapable of fighting the barbarians of the world.
We live in an age of perfumed lawyers and judges presuming to judge issues of warfare with which they have no experience.
The old “utilitarian” was an even deeper thinker than David Axelrod or Barack Obama.
The Little Engine That Could was a deeper thinker than Axlerod and Obama.
Wordygirl:
You still watch CNN?
“Publicity is the very soul of justice. It is the keenest spur to exertion, and the surest of all guards against improbity.”
— Jeremy Bentham
I, for one, am glad to see Roger finally state his position: justice is subordinate to utility, and therefore, torture is acceptable.
Do Biden’s speeches count as torture?
“Do Biden’s speeches count as torture?”
That’s why I’m going to Geneva. To see if I can get them banned under the Convention.
In the end, the proof will be in the pudding. Closing Guantanamo Bay, fatuously renaming the war to “man-caused disasters,” and generally rewinding to the 09/10/01 criminal investigation mindset will either work or it won’t.
When his four years are up, we can look back on all this horsecrap and run a simple test: did Obama’s watch match Bush’s record of wins vs. terrorism?
Anybody want to take the Obama side of a $5,000 bet? No, of course you don’t. You’re not a fool.
Is justice subservient to utility? Or is justice a facet of utility? I know what utility means, please define justice.
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dc2m8p62_148ghtd75db
http://pasta.cantbedone.org/pages/C3Mc5o.htm
http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnewstt_news=34862&tx_ttnewsbackPid=7&cHash=ed1ae9941f
Russian Forces Deploying for Possible Action in Georgia
Pavel Felgenhauer, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 16 April 2009, Volume: 6 Issue: 73
Last week Georgian opposition parties prepared to mount street protests to force President Mikhail Saakachvili to resign, while Russian forces began military exercises in the Caucasus that might be a direct preparation for an intervention in Georgia -in response to the country being further destabilized. Massive rallies by opposition supporters have not forced Saakachvili to yield and tension is mounting in Tbilisi (EDM, April 14). The possibility that radical elements on either side of the political divide in Georgia might provoke violence is high, while Russia seems to be ready to intervene to defend a brotherly Christian Orthodox Georgian nation from the Saakachvili regime, which it considers as an ultimate enemy. After the war with Georgia last August, President Dmitry Medvedev declared in an interview with Italian RAI TV, “For us president Saakachvili does not exist, he is a political corpse” (www.kremlin.ru, September 2, 2008). While in a recent BBC interview, Medvedev reiterated:
“We love and value the Georgian people. I do not want to have any relations with president Saakachvili and will not communicate with him. But if as the result of democratic processes power in Georgia changes, we are ready for discussions”
(www.kremlin.ru, March 29).
It is inappropriate for a leader of a small neighboring nation, who has been officially pronounced by Moscow as a “political corpse,” to remain in power. As the Georgian opposition was gathering force, the Russian military were already on the move. The Russian Black Sea Fleet left Sevastopol, Crimea in force, lead by its flagship missile cruiser “Moskva.” The Georgian Foreign Minister Grigol Vashadze accused Russia of “continuing aggressive policies” by deploying warships and reinforcing its troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Vashadze expressed the hope that Russia “will not dare a new aggression against Georgia, since this will put it against the entire civilized world” (Novosti-Gruzia, April 11). Russian military officials said that the deployment of troops and warships was part of routine military exercises, while the Georgian reaction was described as “hysterical and provocative” (RIA-Novosti, April 11, 13).
It is important that the Russian military acknowledges its mobilization and forward deployment of troops and ships. At present, it is impossible to know precisely how many additional army units have been moved within striking distance of Georgian territory. However, the composition of the naval force that disembarked from Sevastopol is not secret, since the Ukrainian authorities must be informed. It seems to be larger than the force that was deployed against Georgia last August. Four large amphibious landing craft left Sevastopol last week, while in August 2008 only two were reportedly deployed to insert a regiment of marines into Abkhazia in the small port of Ochamchira, close to the border with Georgia (Vlast, August 18). The marines were later deployed in the invasion of Western Georgia.
Before the war in August, the Georgian navy was small, armed only with old ships and not ready for serious action. First Deputy Defense Minister Batu Kutelia (now Georgia’s ambassador in Washington) told EDM last November that all seaworthy Georgian navy ships were moved at the start of the war from their main base in Poti, and relocated south to Batumi. The Russian navy announced it sunk a Georgian “missile ship” during a naval encounter after it attempted to attack the Black Sea flotilla (Interfax, August 10).
Kutelia says the Georgian Defense Ministry denies knowledge of such an encounter. Georgia did have two small guided missile ships: an old Soviet vessel “Tbilisi” and an even older French-build ship “Dioskuria.” Both were left stranded in Poti and sunk in port by the occupying Russian army. Recently the wreckage of these ships has been auctioned off for $61,000 for salvage as scrap metal to clear the Poti harbor (Interfax, April 3). In the view of the Georgian Ministry of Defense, the naval encounter reported by the Russian navy last August was either a propaganda ploy, or simply a delusion.
After the war, Georgia disbanded its navy, handing over its surviving ships to the local coast guard. The Russian naval flotilla led by “Moskva” will not find any opposition at sea, but the deployment of a large amphibious force formed of thousands of marines armed with heavy weapons on board is a threatening sight. The low capacity narrow roads leading from Russia into Georgia (one into Abkhazia and another leading into South Ossetia) create immense logistical problems in rapidly deploying large military contingents into Georgia if Moscow opts for a “humanitarian intervention” to bring about “regime change.” The insertion of a sizable marine force with heavy weapons was used last August to bypass the clogged up overland routes and this could prove important again. The Russian military knew beforehand the exact timing of its pre-arranged invasion and fully controlled the pre-war armed provocations by the South Ossetian forces, whereas in the present crisis the situation is much more volatile.
Saakachvili and his ministers have been expressing confidence that the present Russian military deployments are a game of bluff, and that Moscow will not risk an attack that hinders the “resetting” of its relations with Washington (Novosti-Gruzia, April 2). But from Moscow’s perspective only a tacit acceptance by the United States of Russia’s dominance of the South Caucasus and control of energy transit routes from the Caspian and Central Asia is a prerequisite of any “reset.” Washington’s acceptance of Russia’s dominance over these regions might be the unspoken precondition for a genuine improvement in bilateral relations.
I’ve got a better idea, Roger. OK, we’re not allowed to use anything more than gentle suasion on people sworn to kill us.
How about we tell the prisoners that if they don’t start talking, we’ll make them listen to the collected speeches of Joe Biden? That should bring them around.
Obama promised a transparent administration. I didn’t think he meant that we’d tell the world, including the terrorists, exactly how we interrogate our enemies so they can start training to resist.
Better yet, hook them up to an iPod loaded with Obama’s speeches, set on repeat. You would need a suicide watch, of course.
The left’s great contribution to the global war on terror is the Terrorist Bill of Rights. I don’t think it’s done yet.
Now that there are pacific overtures between Obama and the Brothers Castro, could we just let the Guantánamo prisoners walk through the base gate into Cuba while the Cuban day workers are walking in? Besides, Carter took Fidel’s prisoners during the Mariel Boatlift.
I heard Karl Rove on Fox radio this morning and he brought up a very good point. The interviewer asked him about the argument that torture is unreliable because the person being tortured will lie just so the torture can stop. The fact is individuals have a propensity to lie under interrogation as it is. It doesn’t matter whether you are using water-boarding or sarcasm. Suspects are likely to lie.
Future “detainees” of the “overseas contingency operations” won’t be subjected to such brutal and inhumane treatment. Instead they will be given an iPod containing the speeches of Obama and Biden, and be strapped in a chair in a dark room forced to view repetitive screenings of “Valley of Elah,” “Rendition,” “Redacted,” “Lions for Lambs,” “Stop Loss” and other selected Hollywood movies. If they fall asleep during the movie, a CIA interrogator will poke them in the shoulder and say, “Hey, wake up, you’ll be tested on this.” Interrogation sessions will consist of Power Point presentations, with minimal bathroom breaks (and of course, periodic breaks for prayer and prostration toward Mecca), and “talkback” sessions afterward, with a ruthlessly frank Q&A, with an emphasis on cultural sensitivity and apology for Western arrogance). They may also be subjected to mild sarcasm, knock-knock jokes, and shadow boxing. It is not anticipated that the detainee will be able to withstand this regimen for more than 14 months.
One thing Obama achieved with this was to dominate the TV news in Germany. The nonprosecuton of CIA interrogators, the EPA decision, and the Latin America/Cuba policy changes completed the top stories of the day. All stories were supplemented with reactions of various NGOs that make up the Euro Good Guys team.
I guess Obama has a full-time staff archiving his international coverage for posterity. But then again, he may play the videos in the evening when he is bored and seeking a little change. I find myself wishing they would go back to the pix of BO with Bo. That was nerve wracking but not so scary.
Barack Obama will go down in history as illustrative of just how bloody stupid Americans can be. And most of them will never realize how monumentally they have been played.
0′s poor sense of timing was amazing: Had he done this four weeks ago, it would have stirred much anger too far in advance of the Tea Assembly.
So the assemblies went off peacefully, the media exploitation was minimal, they were caught completely unawares, and it is today that the level of the left’s hatered is on full view; Garbarfalo, Jamie Foxx, etc.
0 got this policy in our sights on the morning of April 15, and justified our ‘spontaneous’ assembly to Middle America, (whatever that is), who don’t pay as much attention to the chronology of events as we do.
0 punted, and it was a gift.
Thanks o, for getting this to us by April 15. maximum efficiency
Torture should be treated the same as homicide.
The relevant authorities should assume any instance of torture to be a crime against another human being unless careful and through review proves it was justifiable by the verifiable presence of direct and immediate threat of grievous harm to an innocent party.
Torture should be legally justifiable under the same rules as homicide and for the same reasons.
otpu
If we are lucky the paranoia of the Islamists will make them believe this is all a plot. That we couldn’t possibly be dumb enough to release the things we really do and hand them all of our techniques on a silver platter. They will continue to think we have some super duper horrific tortures for them.
The Administration insists on making a splash with everything. The Dems accused the Bush Administration of over-reaching, but these guys insist on stirring everything up and in a hurry. I suspect they believe they have a limited amount of time to do what they want. I think they fully expect to get spanked at the mid term elections. They want to do a lot in hurry before someone closes the barn door.
Maybe we can do what william ayers would do and detonate bombs in their jail cells to encourage them to spill the beans. That of course is if their beans are still intact.
Right now senator rockefeller is writing a letter that he’ll put away in his desk that questions whether the US policy will weaken our intelligence gathering capabilities. If the Us is attacked again he’ll conveniently pull out and show everyone he was concerned about this policy change.
Give me freedom or give me death! When we abandon our principles for political expediency we are no longer the beacon of freedom. If you can rationalize torturing a human being, you abandon the principles upon which this great nation was founded. If you disagree with this simple statement, you are an enemy of freedom. If you are an enemy of freedom, you are my enemy.
Mishu, the information obtained by interrogation is not evidence in a courtroom. If abu Raghead tells you that KSM in is the Kabul Motel 6, room and you go there and he isn’t there, you go back and kick abu Raghead’s ass until he tells you where KSM is. See how easy that is ? Lying only works until the next step.
That was supposed to be “is in Kabul Motel 6, room 16…” New MacBook.
#12- “Is justice subservient to utility? Or is justice a facet of utility? I know what utility means, please define justice.”
I’ll try to define it this way:
An Atheist is someone who is willing to risk going to hell, because at least there’ll be justice there.
I suggest you make yourself familiar with the contents of those documents now that they’re available for everybody to read. I know that’s asking a lot but you do make yourself look incredibly foolish by caterwailing on a subject you clearly don’t know anything about save for the party position that was spoon-fed to you, by lumping all interrogations under the rubric torture. In fact, these documents show that listening to your shrill nonsense that utterly fails to acknowledge the actual physical real world lo these last eight years is more torture than anything the CIA has done. The documents demonstrate, if you would care to actually read them which you won’t, that the statements you assert as true to be false and that you’re banging your fists, gnashing your teeth and rending your clothes for nothing. I wonder why men better than you bother to protect your sorry asses.
I’ve never understood the torture conundrum. Treat it like nukes — the President has to decide on a case-by-case basis of when to use it. And give it the same weighty thought.
How pouring water over a detainees head is any different from giving Class III burns to tens-of-thousands of people (that aren’t vaporized outright), I do not know.
I just saw Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent again, which contains an interrogation scene where they kept a man from sleeping, shined bright lights in his eyes, and played loud jazz music.
So Bush didn’t invent “torture”–Alfred Hitchcock did. Or maybe FDR?
I think the CIA interrogators should be brought up on charges……
…….for NOT beating the living crap outta those guys with brass knuckles to get the information!
If you want to see how the “prosecute the Bushies” think, check out these threads:
http://volokh.com/posts/1239917171.shtml
and
http://volokh.com/posts/1239950901.shtml
You’re absolutely right. You don’t know what you would do in the same situation. What if we could permanently change the mind of the terror suspects. What if their memories could be altered. Think about it!!!
The GH-4 Effect
That the release of this information hasn’t yet backfired shows you how solidly the liberals, therefore the administration, controls mainstream media now.
http://smokebreak.blogshevik.com/2009/04/17/the-hypocrisy-behind-terrorist-interrogation/
Quig, I think the saying you’re thinking of is actually, “The proof of the pudding is IN THE EATING.” Remember that these words originated back when “proof” had a primary meaning of “test”. (Hence, today’s “proofreaders” who check for accuracy; also my wife’s “proofing” of the yeast, to make sure it’s active, when she bakes bread.) The saying, therefore, meant, and still should be taken to mean, “The test of the pudding comes when you eat it”.
Oh, and “pudding” then was something quite different from what we think of today.
Loki,
The proof will be in the result. There can be no knowing how Obama’s policy recipes will play out until we taste the results. I think they will be bitter and unsavory, but I’m willing to be proved wrong.