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You're right, Panetta would know http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/ ... laden.html



AQ wasn't in Iraq until after the invasion.



And exactly what objectives are they? What did we go in for? Keep changing the objectives and we'll never get out. The American public has been in favor of getting out of afghanistan for quite a while now.



Except that they're not enemy combatants. Some are, for sure, but many lost years of their lives on some suspicion, suspicion which never played out, but for which they were tortured anyway.



Well, some of us still have some self-respect.

Dvergar /
Quisling

Morals and self-respect don't work on any hard line republicans and conservatives, only money and "fuck you got mine" do.

[✔] [item]Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker[/item] (Three)
[✔] [item]Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros[/item] (Two)
[✔] [item]32837[/item] & [item]32838[/item]
[✔] [item]Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury[/item]
[✔] [item]46017[/item]
[✔] [item]49623[/item] (Two)
[✔] [item]71086[/item]

I disagree. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plu ... _blog.html

From his speech:

Dvergar /
Quisling

Okay, maybe I shouldn't have said "any" but the ones I know of and what I have gleaned in my life's experiences has shaped my opinions regarding conservatives.

That was a good article though.





gogo enhanced interrogation techniques! we haz ballz gaiz!!

[✔] [item]Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker[/item] (Three)
[✔] [item]Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros[/item] (Two)
[✔] [item]32837[/item] & [item]32838[/item]
[✔] [item]Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury[/item]
[✔] [item]46017[/item]
[✔] [item]49623[/item] (Two)
[✔] [item]71086[/item]

You say we're at war, we need to be in Afghanistan/Iraq to get these terrorists etc...but bin Laden wasn't in those places, and to take him out, we did NOT need to invade Pakistan.

Whether the hit job was done by elite forces or a SWAT team, it adds up to the same thing which was that it was basically a police action. This proves the invasions weren't necessary...it wasn't necessary to wage a full-scale campaign and occupy an entire country to nail a few dudes in surburban homes.

As for the "EIT", and let's say what that really means, which is torture, arguing it's necessary is flawed on several grounds:

1. Because we have no evidence that it was other than someone with an interest in not looking bad saying so; we don't actually know who was tortured, how, when, what information he gave or what the alternatives were

2. Because torture is a fundamentally ineffective means of gaining information, because someone who is being tortured will say whatever he thinks will make the torture stop for a moment. Since he knows that any cooperation will only result in the torturer opening a subsequent new line of questioning, the captive will typically respond by spinning yarns or feigning ignorance rather than cooperate only to be presented with new demands.

Torture is a fundamentally ineffective technique practiced only by sadists. There are much more effective techniques in existence, such as:

A. manipulating captives by pitting them against each other, chipping away at their convictions and encouraging them to believe they have nothing to lose by helping their interrogator
B. playing games of power and control, engendering Stockholm Syndrome in the captive
C. isolating captives for extremely long periods of time, then taking them out and treating them very well, feeding the captive a warm and satisfying meal, seating him in an overstuffed chair, and apologizing profusely to the captive for the "inconvenience", causing a natural parasympathetic response; more often than not, the captive will open right up and volunteer whatever information is asked of him
D. entrapment, bribery and extortion
E. forcing the captive to view images, then monitoring his responses on an EEG, and therefore learning exactly what the captive knows and does not know - this method is almost impossible for any human to resist
F. "Good cop, bad cop"

Let me give you some examples of Technique A.

Ten captives are all housed and bunked together. One day, they are seated in a room. They are all given pencils and paper and told to write what they know. The next day, one of the captives disappears. A few days later, he is seen by the other captives clean-shaven and well-dressed, and being led out of the facility without restraints. A few weeks later, another captive shows up, saying the captive had given information leading to his arrest. In reality, the captive never left, he was merely transferred to solitary confinement. The person seen leaving was really an impersonator, and the new captive is really a plant.

A few days later, the captives are eating at the mess hall. The mess hall has four circular tables and eight chairs. The circular tables are small enough that only two chairs can be placed at each table, and the room is so small and cramped that it is not possible to rearrange or conjoin the tables. The mess hall is buffet-style. The foods are of very unequal quality, and the best foods are very limited in portions. During mealtimes, pounding music, so loud that it is impossible to have a conversation, is played. The plant is always sure to defer to the other captives, especially the most politically active and loyal captives.

The plant manufactures an incident in which he deliberately insults/assaults one of the captives who tends to get the best food, then apologizes, but the captive can clearly see it was done on purpose. A few days later, being led past a room in the facility, the other prisoners overhear a conversation in which the captive volunteers information to the interrogator. When the captive reappears he protested he said nothing of the sort (and in reality the entire conversation was faked by means of a voice changer). Some other captives believe him, some don't. The seeds of mistrust continue to be sown.

Eventually, the interrogator points out to the remaining captives that their friends have betrayed them and it has been proven that their convictions were false and they are fighting for nothing. He offers other captives cash and freedom and new identities in exchange for the information.

3. Because police agents and drug/murder investigators work against far better trained and disciplined organizations such as the Mafia and drug traffickers without the need for torture. Torture and other forms of thuggery are basically a shill for incompetent police work, and terror crime is no exception. If these people are saying they can't do their jobs, fire them and get some good PIs on the case and have them go gumshoes on Al Qaeda - following people around, staking places out, asking questions, etc...that's how you catch a man, whether it's Dr. Livingstone, the Unabomber, or bin Laden.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

this seems somewhat applicable

How do people say "enhanced interrogation techniques" with a straight face?

It's fucking torture; live up to it you pussies.

If destruction exists, we must destroy everything.
Shuruppak Yuratuhl
Slaad Shrpk Breizh

why not just call it torture? you might as well call rape enhanced flirtation techniques.

if torture had anything to do with finding osama, we'd never hear it confirmed anyway, so arguing that point is as moot as can be.

On the same token though, saying anything about morality during warfare is laughable. Warfare by its very nature is the suspension of man's humanity to man. I mean Americans under Washington killed a bunch of british. in their sleep. on christmas day.

Evil is done during warfare. Stop sugar coating it.

They were Hessians. They were also soldiers, and when they died, they died in combat.

If you can't uphold your morals and your values at the most trying of times you are no better than whatever evil you fight.

Dvergar /
Quisling

Waterboarding is torture... a pretty tame torture... but so is locking someone in a small, dark room for years of their life with only less than an hour of outside time. It's not like these guys were getting finger nails ripped out, broken bones, burned alive, eyes cut, sodomized with objects, things cut off, forced to injest things that would do internal damage, etc. The reason I say 'Enhanced Interrogation Techniques' is because that could include non-torturous methods of interrogation like grabbing the shirt and shaking them; YOU just think that it's all waterboarding. From what we know, three people have been waterboarded multiple times. Since the CIA officials say most people last several seconds before caving with the technique, you'd think it'd be the fastest and most common choice in extracting information. Since it was only used on three people, it would appear that they used it as a last resort. The technique doesn't have a high chance of killing the person (since no one died from it) and there isn't any physical harm done. At most, it's psychological but are we going to say they weren't psychologically fucked up to begin with? According to ABCs 2005 article on EIT, the six methods used by the CIA are:

Get mad, nerds. If you think having your shirt grabbed or an open-hand slap is 'torture', then you're the pussy.

Edit:
With the massive resources the CIA has at its disposal like the ability to get SIGINTs, TS level information, Satellite data (including operatives on the ground which are used to gather HUMINT, track people and develop relationships), what makes you think that hiring a couple PIs and sending them into the world in search of the leads of a terrorist organization would be effective? It was obviously a bit harder than a game of "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego".

False, Hessians were extra-national mercenaries. Mercenaries and extra-nationals aren't subject to the laws of war.

Conversely, because they are mercenaries and extra-nationals, their own survival and financial well-being is their only concern, and not the moral or legal imperatives of the powers they are fighting for. This was one of the reasons that mercs were gradually phased out in favor of professional armies.



You say that on an internet forum. Bluntly, you're full of shit.

I don't need a crystal ball to know that if you were offered the choice between ensuring your own innocent survival against a ruthless and evil foe that sought to do you griveous harm for no reason by doing something unethical or distasteful, or allowing yourself to be killed or maimed in some unspeakable way, which you'd choose.

In fact, I'd make the opposing argument: if you aren't willing to get off your moral pedestal to take whatever measures are necessary and appropriate to stop evil from harming the innocent, then YOU are no better than whatever evil you refuse to fight. Through self-righteous inaction you become an accessory to that evil.

Now, an argument of necessity doesn't apply to torture, because it's simply not necessary nor even advisable. It won't get us closer to winning, and the political cost isn't worth it.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

Red herring; no one is seriously bitching about people getting slapped.

Do you seriously think you can get info on where bin Laden is by...slapping people silly?



...why didn't they kill Castro?

Because they suck at their jobs, duh. No, really.



You toss around a lot of fancy acronyms to try to make things that have been around since the beginning of time sound kool and interesting when really they're just the basics of investigation.

SIGINT: wiretapping (not applicable since bin Laden had the good sense to do everything by courier, just like the Mafia and drug lords still do)
TS level information: lol, it's not even possible to get top sekrit info because the info only BECOMES top sekrit after someone says so. It's not possible for UNKNOWN information to be top sekrit so you're talking out your ass here.
Satellite data: Google Earth (which means nothing without interpretation)
HUMINT: exactly what I described, going around and talking to people


Because that's how it's done.

If PIs just skulked around Pakistan, looking at homes and who lives at them, and talked to everyone bin Laden knew (including his former wives), instead of dicking around with Sharper Image toys, he'd have been captured (alive) 10 years ago.

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

This is a pathetic excuse for selling out one's values.



http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world ... 75214.html



And those 3 people were collectively waterboarded almost 300 times. Must be reeeeaaalll effective. Good thing we're losing our moral high ground while gaining no valuable information over a technique that clearly doesn't even work.



The Hessians were soldiers and were treated as such by our forces. That was the point of the issue.



Except that isn't the case, this wasn't a situation of 'torture this guy or we all die'. We got information from sources other than torture, infact we've gotten information from sources other than torture for 200 years.




Your argument is complete rubbish. Refusing to abandon one's morals does not mean lying down and allowing anything to happen.

Dvergar /
Quisling

No they were not, they were Prussian mercenaries.

The officers of an army are commissioned. That commission explicitly states that they derive their authority directly from a legitimate government. And so the give-and-take of responsibility and rights between state and individual applies. With mercenaries, however, that doesn't apply - they don't fight on behalf of a particular nation, and they don't derive their authority or responsibility from the laws of a particular nation.

Also your claim that they were "treated as such by our forces" is directly contradicted by the Declaration of Independence:



There you have it. The Founding Fathers drew a stark line between these "cruel and perfidious foreign mercs" and the Redcoat soldiers.



I agree that torture is generally speaking not an efficient way to get information but if you think that the US didn't ever treat anyone horrendously during the Civil War or the World Wars because they felt they had to you're hopelessly naive. Go read Tuchmann's The Zimmerman Note.



Life is not black-and-white. Sometimes options are limited and compromise is required. If you thought you could save an innocent life by committing a lesser evil - burning down someone's empty house, or maiming a guilty man, would you do it? Or would you let the man die?

Aestu of Bleeding Hollow...

Nihilism is a copout.

It's not tame.