[Vision2020] "Harsh" Interrogations -As ye sow, so shall you

Fri Apr 24 17:13:38 PDT 2009

With your very first sentence you once again mischaracterize what it was I said. I did not concede that the things you mention took place. Just because you've read something in the huffington post and/or the new york times and regurgitate it here doesn't make it a verified fact. You don't know for certain, you were not there, you are electing to take someone at there word. Show me evidence and I'll concede that those events occurred and not before.

What I did say was that I did not at any time defend or encourage those sorts of measures. Period. Your overused technique for taking what someone actually says and determining what they really mean and what they really think is tedious and annoying.

What I have said and what I do think is that harsh interrogation methods can sometimes be necessary and can produce useful information. This does not give you license to infer anything else.

But Lord knows you almost certainly will.

g
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Andreas Schou 
  To: a 
  Cc: keely emerinemix ; jampot at roadrunner.com ; vision2020 at moscow.com 
  Sent: Friday, April 24, 2009 3:17 PM
  Subject: Re: [Vision2020] "Harsh" Interrogations -As ye sow, so shall you

  Gary --

  So, what you're saying is that you concede that abuses took place; you concede that interrogation techniques like uninsulated 30 and 100 degree temperatures; you concede that the same guy responsible for Abu Ghraib was responsible for GTMO; you concede that any technique that did not produce pain "equivalent to death or organ failure" was approved for use on our GTMO detainees. And you claim that you don't support any of these things: that these things are torture.

  And then, conceding that we did these things, you nonetheless bang the table and insist that our approach to interrogation didn't constitute torture. The most charitable interpretation of this is that you are merely incapable of drawing conclusion. However, having corresponded with you over the years, I've found that you have a genius for drawing incorrect and immoral conclusions. 

  What are the facts as you believe them to be? Did we waterboard? Did we leave detainees shackled to the ceiling, stewing in their own shit? How about week-long periods of sleep deprivation over years of detention? Did we do that? Do you think this is consistent with our values?  Do you think we should be ordering US servicemen to do this sort of thing? Is that consistent with a duty to protect the honor of our servicemen and intelligenc officers?
  -- ACS

  On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 1:32 PM, a <smith at turbonet.com> wrote:

    You're absolutely right. As a work of pulp fiction it's right up there with the Left Behind series and any of the vapid crap produced by Dan Brown.

    By the numbers:

    1. I have at no time tried to justify the abuses in the FBI report to such as being chained with no access to food, water, or toilet facilities.

    2. Exposing anyone to low temperatures to the point of hypothermia (Although one wonders how many US soldiers were treated for the same thing that night, no "torture" involved)

    3. Sexual abuse of any description.

    Pretending that these are my expressed views and then vigorously taking me to task for them is dishonest in the extreme and is exactly the sort of thing I have come to expect from Mr. Schou. Playing fast and loose with the truth has allways been a hallmark of his debate style and for him to hold himself up as a paragon of moral righteousness is laughable. I believe that he would do well to climb down off his rustled moral high horse and respond to what I actually write not what he concocts in his fevered imagination.

    g
      ----- Original Message ----- 
      From: keely emerinemix 
      To: ophite at gmail.com ; jampot at roadrunner.com 
      Cc: vision2020 at moscow.com 
      Sent: Friday, April 24, 2009 11:57 AM
      Subject: Re: [Vision2020] "Harsh" Interrogations -As ye sow, so shall you

      This is probably the finest post I've ever read on Vision 2020.  

      Thanks, Andreas.  

      Keely
      http://keely-prevailingwinds.blogspot.com/

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      Date: Thu, 23 Apr 2009 22:31:27 -0700
      From: ophite at gmail.com
      To: jampot at roadrunner.com
      CC: vision2020 at moscow.com
      Subject: Re: [Vision2020] "Harsh" Interrogations -As ye sow, so shall you

      Gary --

      From the FBI report on abuse at Guantanamo Bay under Geoffrey Miller, the general later brought in to "Gitmoize" Abu Ghraib: 

      "on several occasions, witness ("W") saw detainees ("ds") in interrogation rooms chained hand and foot in fetal position to floor w/no chair/ food/water; most urinated or defecated on selves, and were left there 18, 24 hrs or more. Once, the air conditioning was so low that the barefoot d was shaking with cold. Another time, it was off so the unventilated room was over 100 degrees, d was almost unconscious on floor with a pile of hair next to him (he had apparently been pulling it out throughout the night). Another time, it was sweltering hot and loud rap music played - d's hand and foot was chained and he was in a fetal position on the floor. Upon inquiry, W was told that interrogators [military contractors] ordered this treatment. Took place in Delta Camp"

      The report goes on to substantiate that more than one detainee (d) was brought into the infirmary with hypothermia after an interrogation session. Detainees pissing and shitting all over themselves. Being sexually assaulted by female guards. Forced to stay awake for longer than the human body can stand. Being partially drowned. Being stuck in a coffin with what you're told are scorpions.

      These are not conditions you will find any Hilton other than the Hanoi. They are not on the continuum of acceptable behaviors any more than a knife is on the continuum of 'comfortable objects' because, like a knife, it's also an object. These are techniques we reverse-engineered from North Korean torture techniques in order to create SERE, and then reverse-reverse engineered in order to create GTMO and the "black sites." This is despite the fact that we -- as in, our country -- prosecuted Japanese soldiers for waterboarding, and even Israel, no friend of terrorists, has abandoned it because it produces bad intelligence. Indeed, if I were just a little more cynical than I am, I'd say that that's quite the point: we waterboarded KSM for information on the nonexistent Iraq-al-Qaida connection, and Abu Zubaydah for information on confabulated terrorist plots he had no reason to know about.

      You're wrong about the facts. You're wrong about the law. I could go on about that, but I'd just be arguing with the tinny little noises escaping from the echo chamber you pretend will replace journalism. I'm waiting with bated breath to find out why you think the FBI is infiltrated by ACORN or how George Soros is dictating the legal conclusions of Republican appointees at Foggy Bottom. That's just your intentional ignorance, plus arrogance, tribalism, and smug self-satisfaction at your clever turns of phrase. I can tolerate that. 

      What gets to me -- why I'm provoked to respond -- is that you're willing, even eager, to sell out our country's honor in order to soothe your rank cowardice. Or maybe it makes you feel like a real man to hear that some punk Afghan teenager with an AK-47 was awake for a week, stewing in his own shit, shackled to the floor. Whatever the impulse is -- tribalism? sadism? fear? -- it's not anything I recognize as American. What third-world tinpot dictatorship did you grow up in that you think this is acceptable?

      We consent to abide by certain principles. It's that common consent that keeps our country from being a collection of miscellaneous foreigners on someone else's land. I have disagreements with conservatives about the metes and bounds of those principles, sure. But here you are, disputing whether America should have principles at all.

      Americans, by which I mean FDR and Eisenhower, Reagan and JFK, held off the Soviets and Nazi Germany, nations that both posed a dire existential threat to our country, while banning torture, expanding the protections of the Geneva Convention, and abandoning the pretense that it's okay to attack civilian populations. These are tempting tactics. Some of them work. Torture produces words rather than silence. The Geneva Convention bans effective tactics for making war. Killing civilians forces submission. We stepped away from these things. We won. Twice. Over the two most belligerent, technologically advanced, and staggeringly immoral nations ever to exist, one armed with enough weapons to destroy the world several times over.

      But then 9/11 made you wet yourself. A crime of unimaginable scale happened to people in New York City; people whom you don't even accord the privilege of being called Americans. The crime was carried out by guys carrying weapons you can buy at Home Depot. Somehow, that uprooted your sense that America stands for anything. But how deep were those roots, Gary, that fewer deaths than those caused by the flu could pull them up?

      Our soldiers make a commitment. They tell us they'll uphold the Constitution. But there's a reciprocal side to that commtiment: we tell them that they're the good guys; that they're not just protecting American lives, but American values. That they're fighting for liberty, mom, and apple pie. Because 9/11 made you wet yourself, you're asking those soldiers to sit and play Minesweeper while some dumb Afghan redneck shits his pants in Arctic cold, chained to the ceiling of a lightless cell. If you tell his President to tell our soldiers to do that, you've reneged on our commitment to make our soldiers the good guys. Our moral purpose doesn't come from who we are; it comes from what we do.

      I don't know whether there's going to be a reckoning for the people that authorized this. But you're the reason there should be: to put the rudder straight and make people like you -- who actively argues for torture -- too ashamed to speak up in public. Anything you just said should be enough to make any decent person drop their beer, walk out of the room, and go find another locksmith. I'm looking forward to the day when it is.

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