Report: 'indisputable' evidence of US torture

[MobBoss]

No, we don't. Commodore didn't offer any information on how long it took compared to other methods, or how reliable it was compared to other methods. I'm guessing it'd be hard for him to even know how it compared: It's such a fraught subject that pretty much everyone involved has a strong motive to lie, hyping it's effectiveness. Note I'm not questioning Commodore's first-hand-account - and maybe he does have first hand knowledge on those matters, too. Anyway - what I'm questioning is the reliability of pretty much everyone who might have given him information on torture time and reliability.

Did you read his statements? He indicated that he was present when it was done, and the information gained was accurate and actionable.

And come on, of course your questioning his account - it's precisely what you are doing. After all he is indeed an anonymous identity giving such an account over the internet. Which is why is perfectly legitimate to label it as anecdotal.

 

[Tarquelne]

Did you read his statements? He indicated that he was present when it was done, and the information gained was accurate and actionable.

He didn't address how long it took compared to other methods. He didn't mention how often they *didn't* get actionable intelligence.

I certainly doubt they took in some prisoners and tortured them, and randomly selected others and used entirely different techniques, and then analyzed the results looking for statistically significant differences.

And come on, of course your questioning his account - it's precisely what you are doing.

No. I'm not adding stuff to it. Not stuff he didn't say, not stuff be probably doesn't even know. Maybe he oversaw or was privy to all the intel used, and knows that the most and/or best intel came from torture. Or at least some useful intel came from torture and only from that source. (Used as confirmation, say, or something of tactical value.)

OTOH, maybe he only knows what he already told us.

After all he is indeed an anonymous identity giving such an account over the internet. Which is why is perfectly legitimate to label it as anecdotal.

No. "An anonymous identity giving such an account over the internet." is why it'd be not completely unreasonable to just dismiss it out of hand. It being the experience of one person in (it seems) one locale over not a terribly-long amount of time is what makes it perfectly legitimate to label it as anecdotal. If his experience and/or knowledge base is actually much broader then it'd still have the problem of being a claim from an anonymous identity. Though thus far he hasn't claimed anything I find hard to believe. But at that point it wouldn't really be anecdotal.

When I tell you my illegal workers are my best workers and have super-powers I'm being anecdotal.
When I tell you the BLS figures indicate illegal workers are the best workers and have super-powers, then I'm not being anecdotal. I'm an anonymous identity making a claim that you might find incredible, or might not, but it's not anecdotal.

 

[Mouthwash]

And yet, we have direct testimony from Commodore, albeit anecdotal, that refutes your claim here.

The waterboarding of Kalid Sheik Muhammad led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the "Second Wave," using East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airline into a building in Los Angeles. In the three cases that waterboarding was used on terrorists, Al Qaeda members Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, it always worked and the information obtained was verified.

 

[Tarquelne]

The waterboarding of Kalid Sheik Muhammad led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the "Second Wave," using East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airline into a building in Los Angeles. In the three cases that waterboarding was used on terrorists, Al Qaeda members Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, it always worked and the information obtained was verified.

So?

From the God-Emperor of anonymous internet sources... but with citations:

Wiki:

Forensic psychiatrist Michael Welner, M.D., an expert in false confessions, observed from the testimony transcript that his concerns about his family may have been far more influential in soliciting Mohammed’s cooperation than any earlier reported mistreatment.[91]

One CIA official cautioned that "many of Mohammed's claims during interrogation were 'white noise' designed to send the U.S. on wild goose chases or to get him through the day's interrogation session." For example, according to Mike Rogers, a former FBI agent and the top Republican on the terrorism panel of the House Intelligence Committee, he admitted responsibility for the Bali nightclub bombing, but his involvement "could have been as small as arranging a safe house for travel. It could have been arranging finance." Mohammed also made the admission that he was "responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center Operation," which killed six and injured more than 1,000 when a bomb was detonated in an underground garage, Mohammed did not plan the attack, but he may have supported it. Michael Welner noted that by offering legitimate information to interrogators, Mohammed had secured the leverage to provide misinformation as well.[92]

In an article discussing the reliability of Khalid's confession and the motive for giving misinformation under torture, Ali Soufan, a former FBI special agent with considerable experience interrogating al-Qaeda operatives, pointed out that:

When they are in pain, people will say anything to get the pain to stop. Most of the time, they will lie, make up anything to make you stop hurting them. That means the information you're getting is useless.

His words are echoed by the US Army Training Manual's section on interrogation, which suggests that:

the use of force is a poor technique, as it ...can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.

As an example of this the article discloses that although the George W. Bush administration made claims that the water-boarding (simulated drowning) of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed produced vital information that allowed them to break up a plot to attack the U.S. Bank Tower (formerly Library Tower and First Interstate Bank World Center) in Los Angeles in 2002, this has been proven to be untrue. In 2002 Shaikh Mohammed was busy evading capture in Pakistan.[93] Likewise the claim by the Obama administration that torture of Kahlid Mohammed led to the lead in finding Osama Bin Laden has also been shown to be false. According to U.S. Senator John McCain, "The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. ...not only did the use of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed not provide us with key leads on bin Laden’s courier, Abu Ahmed; it actually produced false and misleading information

I feel like I'm a couple of people's prosthetic reading-comprehension device. I'm going to go do something else for several days.

 

[Borachio]

Yeah. It's a hopeless argument. It seems either people (the majority?) recognize torture is an irremediably bad idea in itself, or they (a rather strange minority) don't.

 

[Commodore]

Well, there ya go people. Proof that torture, as unpleasant as it may be, works from someone who knows. Kinda contrary to all that hubbub about torture not resulting in good intel. Ah well.

I would still never advocate using it as a go-to collection method though. Even though I got several awards and commendations for the operation I mentioned, I am not proud of it at all. Those people we tortured were absolutely ruined after the experience and will never be normal human beings ever again.

There is also the effect it has on the ones doing the torturing. After a while you just become numb to it and eventually what you are doing doesn't bother you anymore. I saw that happening to my Iraqi counterparts. For me, it led to a lot of counselling when I got back to make me somewhat normal again. My wife tells me that I still freak out in my sleep sometimes. It left me scarred for life and it's something that I will feel guilty about for the rest of my life. I even took all my leftover stuff from the Army (awards, uniforms, etc.) and just stuffed it all away in a closet. My wife wants to hang up all my awards and start telling our daughter about my military service, but I refuse to let her do it. She still doesn't know what I actually did in the military because I told her I was a Cavalry Scout (which isn't a total lie since that was my secondary MOS).

Anyway, I'm ashamed of what I've done Mobboss and I respectfully ask that you not use my words to support your position on torture. I could have collected that intel through my source network, but I chose to take the easy way out. Sure it paid off and made me look like a stellar soldier to my commanders, but the price paid was way too high in my opinion.

 

[Commodore]

No, we don't. Commodore didn't offer any information on how long it took compared to other methods, or how reliable it was compared to other methods. I'm guessing it'd be hard for him to even know how it compared: It's such a fraught subject that pretty much everyone involved has a strong motive to lie, hyping it's effectiveness. Note I'm not questioning Commodore's first-hand-account - and maybe he does have first hand knowledge on those matters, too. Anyway - what I'm questioning is the reliability of pretty much everyone who might have given him information on torture time and reliability.

The information for the operation I mentioned took approxiamtely 3 months to collect. The information was collected through a combination of the source network I had built among the locals and joint interrogations with the Iraqi Army.

The way I used torture was to sort of "prep" the subject for the real interrogation. Basically, I would tell the IA guys to go in there and "do their thing". This would go on for approximately 1 to 8 hours a day sometimes for several days, depending on the subject. Obviously the higher ups in the cell we were targeting required a little more prepping than the low level guys. I never told the IA what methods to use, but they didn't need any guidence in that department. After they felt the subject had enough and was ready to talk I would go in and start the real interrogation. I would act disgusted at what the IA had done to him and pretend to reprimand the IA soldiers in front of the subject. I would then offer the subject some food and water and maybe a cigarette if they were a smoker. I would tell them that all they had to do was help me out by giving me some information that I can verify and I could get them transferred to an American facility where they would be treated better. This of course would not be the case, but the subject didn't know that. They would all of a sudden tell me anything I wanted to know, and if they didn't know then usually they would tell me who did know.

That is how I filled in the crucial gaps of information that my willing sources could not get.

 

[mrt144]

And yet, we have direct testimony from Commodore, albeit anecdotal, that refutes your claim here.

So torture is okay because it might work some of the time but hey, all those other times it doesnt work, lets not talk about those and just keep it hush hush.

I dont think you'll be happy until we're waterboarding 5 year old children that have an uncle who is #10 on Al Queda's list.

 

[mrt144]

I would still never advocate using it as a go-to collection method though. Even though I got several awards and commendations for the operation I mentioned, I am not proud of it at all. Those people we tortured were absolutely ruined after the experience and will never be normal human beings ever again.

You think they'll tell their sons, nephews and cousins about how awesome we are?

Even if torture saves lives routinely, it is like a hydra of bad PR.

And its telling that MobBoss, a desk jockey who debates people online over semantics is fully pro torture while the people that actually do it and are part of it are like, whoa, this is still terrible.

 

[Tarquelne]

The way I used torture was to sort of "prep" the subject for the real interrogation. Basically, I would tell the IA guys to go in there and "do their thing". This would go on for approximately 1 to 8 hours a day sometimes for several days, depending on the subject...

Thanks for the details.

That sounds not unlike the "state of cooperation" SOP recommended by organizations like the FBI and (though I'm not sure now) the Israelis, who had some really sophisticated techniques.
Except they do things other than torture in that prep phase.

Sometimes I wonder how much the American use of torture was due to cheapness as much as lack of moral fiber: We couldn't be bothered to spend the money to hire and train better help for guys like you than the local experts.


FWIW, heads older and presumably wiser than yours should not have put you in that situation.

 

[Commodore]

Thanks for the details.

That sounds not unlike the "state of cooperation" SOP recommended by organizations like the FBI and (though I'm not sure now) the Israelis, who had some really sophisticated techniques.
Except they do things other than torture in that prep phase.

Sometimes I wonder how much the American use of torture was due to cheapness as much as lack of moral fiber: We couldn't be bothered to spend the money to hire and train better help for guys like you than the local experts.


FWIW, heads older and presumably wiser than yours should not have put you in that situation.

There is still quite a lot of blame to be placed on my shoulders for what happened though. I was embedded with the Iraqi Army for the express purpose of collecting intelligence and train them on how to collect without resorting to torture. I obviously failed at the latter part of my mission by falling into the trap of "get that intel at any cost".

 

[peter grimes]

There is still quite a lot of blame to be placed on my shoulders for what happened though. I was embedded with the Iraqi Army for the express purpose of collecting intelligence and train them on how to collect without resorting to torture. I obviously failed at the latter part of my mission by falling into the trap of "get that intel at any cost".

It's not a failure on your part if you're set up to fail.

Drive this package from NYC to New Haven (100 miles)! It has to be there in 1 hour! Oh, and you must obey all posted speed limits.

Nice.

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

There is still quite a lot of blame to be placed on my shoulders for what happened though. I was embedded with the Iraqi Army for the express purpose of collecting intelligence and train them on how to collect without resorting to torture. I obviously failed at the latter part of my mission by falling into the trap of "get that intel at any cost".

You should have tried sarcasm first.

 

[Mouthwash]

So?

From the God-Emperor of anonymous internet sources... but with citations:

Wiki:



I feel like I'm a couple of people's prosthetic reading-comprehension device. I'm going to go do something else for several days.

Wikipedia disagrees with my position? I've been refuted!

 

[Ajidica]

Wikipedia disagrees with my position? I've been refuted!

No, a specialist that a wiki editor quotes disagrees with you.

 

[Mouthwash]

No, a specialist that a wiki editor quotes disagrees with you.

I'd enjoy it if you gave a link, rather than drumming on about "hurr durr expert knows betta."

 

[Leoreth]

Would it matter?

 

[Mouthwash]

Would it matter?

Yes, it actually might. Of course, there's always the chance I might be eaten by Cthulhu or have a philosophical epiphany that causes me to renounce all aspects of higher intellectual reasoning and devote the rest of my life to masturbating with bananas in the next few minutes, in which case I'll concede that it probably wouldn't.

Btw, you can stop stalking me now.

 

[Ajidica]

I'd enjoy it if you gave a link, rather than drumming on about "hurr durr expert knows betta."

Well, I would assume experts in the field have a better understanding of the issue that a rather abrasive teenager.

EDIT: Here is an New York Times Opinion piece written by a former FBI interrogator who participated in the interrogation of several important al-Qaeda members.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/opinion/06soufan.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss&

 

[Mouthwash]

Well, I would assume experts in the field have a better understanding of the issue that a rather abrasive teenager.

You'd assume. But, unfortunately, if the world worked that way we'd still be sacrificing our pigs and genitals to the High Magus and killing Jews to ward off the Evil Eye, so I'm gonna have to ask you to cough up a source.

EDIT: An opinion piece is not worth refutation because it doesn't bring evidence to the table. Sorry.