In the movie, "A Few Good Men", Tom Cruise questions Jack Nicholson's character to his motive, Nicholson responds(in part) "You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know; that Santiago's death, while tragic, probably saved lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, *saves lives*."
If the price for taking American lives is not significant, American lives will be continue to be taken. And, to be clear, these are not soldiers and sailors that volunteered. These are civilians that are killed. At a park. A mall. A school.
My grandparents were just 30 years old when Pearl Harbor was attacked. They were not vocally anti-Japanese. They didn't talk about it very much. However, when they did, especially my grandfather, an otherwise Norman Rockwell type, his tone became acidic. They would not lift a finger to to help any Japanese or Japanese-Americans. They had friends that lost loved ones in that war. That's where I stand on 9/11. And the ones that carried it out, took their best shot. Why would anyone think they have given up?
2
It is all relative. One's man's "torture" is another man's rough interrogation. That Democrat hero, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, intentionally approved the incineration of over 100,000 men, women and children, almost all non combatants, during the firebombing of Dresden.
When it comes to kill or be killed the choice almost all humans will make is pretty clear. Waterboarding is, comparatively, rather mild.
1
Waterboarding is not torture.
Our soldiers held prisoner by Japanese in WW ll would’ve begged for waterboarding instead of the torture they endured.
6
@Tuco. It is torture. Two wrongs have never made a right. Ever. It's like saying, "Cutting-off a thief's hand isn't that bad, they used to cut off both their hands. At least they still have one left."
Soldiers being tortured would not have begged for waterboarding. They would have asked - not begged, that's demeaning and unnecessary - to have been treated as per the dictates of the Geneva Convention. Of course in this case, the US got around that, by declaring these captives as non-combattants.... Just like Americans of African descent were once considered to be less then people, to get around the dictates of the Declaration.
2
One of the Japanese torture methods in WWII was literally waterboarding; soldiers found guilty of the practice were sentenced to no less than 15 years:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding
Excellent work by Gina and her troops. We are at war and it is not a conventional war. We must act accordingly.
9
@Brewster Millions In other words, we must stoop to the level of our enemies, taking their worst behavior as our moral exemplar? No, no, no.
And you can't say we need to do it because nothing else will save us. Because torture didn't save us. It did not gain intelligence that thwarted attacks, but it did serve to outrage not only our enemies but those who were on the fence, and was great for insurgent recruiting in Iraq, for example. The blowback killed Americans.
1
@Brewster Millions In other words, stupidly. Torture doesn't produce intelligence, but it does produce more warriors for the other side.
And by the say, have you signed up for the battle lines, tough guy?
1
Yes Sir. Three tours, plus several years at an agency in D.C.
How about you, sir?
Why is this terribly old news being reported, AGAIN, today? Enough with the bleeding hearts, please. This dude was rubbing elbows with Bin Laden, who recruited him twice before he successfully reeled him in to do his dirty deeds for Al-Queda. Do any of you know one of the dead sailors from the USS Cole attack, or one of the other 39 sailors that were injured by the senseless suicide bombing of our naval vessel? I knew one of the dead soldiers... LEAVE GINA ALONE. Waterboarding was too good for al-Nashiri...
12
There is nothing wrong with "water boarding" when it is used against our enemies to save the lives of our fellow American citizens. America first and America always.
11
@BC and of course nothing wrong with it when used on American by people who consider America an enemy, right?
3
If America becomes a nation that condones barbarities like torture, then it ceases to be America, that is a nation with any moral standing. These are war crimes.
8
@BC You and I don't occupy the same America, nor did we read the same history books about what America is supposed to be.
Oh, and does it not bother you that torture doesn't work?
8
We were assured that Doctors were present at every torture session. I want their names, now.
7
The torturers often were the doctors, and ignored that bit about ethics
The 17 Americans who were killed in the Cole bombing probably did not suffer but some likely died painfully. Why is Nashiri still alive? Gina Haspel should be given a medal.
5
NPR and the NYT just love to rerun all of the divisive events which have occurred in our country for decades. Nothing like rubbing salt into the wounds ! Slavery, Japanese internment, the Battle of the Little Big Horn, native American displacement, Nagasaki ' Hiroshima , the Rosenberg trial , Joe McCarthy , the Watergate , Kent State, Vietnam, etc. Unlike the favorite slogan of the Left, none of their MSM outlets seem capable of ' moving forward.' Why do that when you can keep inflaming your angry base by constantly bringing up a country's ' sins of the past ' and highlighting your old dirty laundry ? ( wife )
11
Don't you understand we must continue to try to learn from our mistakes? That we continue to allow so many horrors is proof that we have yet to learn a thing, and we waste trillions of dollars that are needed here!
7
@richard
Because the same sins could and might be done again. And we've not admitted how wrong these events were... we his them for decades. That is the way you move forward!! you're way it to look away, and it doesn't work.
@richard because if you don't remember the past, you're doomed to repeat it. Because history shouldn't repeat itself and we must learn from our mistakes. In a way, we are already returning to the increased nationalism of the 1930s and 40s. In that time, nationalism led to dictatorships (which we see in Erdogan and Orban and Duterte) and nationalist sentiment (in the US, Europe, and more), which in turn helped spark World War II.
Let's not forget about the fact that we tortured people and it was bad, lest we repeat our mistakes in harming people for no gain.
8
Hindsight is always 20-20. Those who say CIA leadership or operatives should be prosecuted for torture should read the "torture memos" that justified the use of waterboarding. Waterboarding was justified based on the fact that the US military waterboarded its own soldiers, sailors, and airmen as part of SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape) training. If waterboarding is defined as torture, then the US is duty bound to prosecute all the SERE instructors who engaged in waterboarding over the past half century. The fact that the individuals who were waterboarded were volunteers makes no difference because, by law, it's torture even if consent is given.
It's also important to note that things likely wouldn't have been different if Al Gore had been president. It was Gore who supported the extraordinary rendition of a suspected terrorist, even saying "Of course it violates international law, that's why it's covert." We can have a discussion about whether the enhanced interrogation techniques were appropriate or effective but let's give up on the allegations of criminality.
16
@J. Waddell
source for the Gore quote?
2
The Senate Intel Committee "torture report" was a partisan hit job. Not one person from the CIA, the Counterterrorism Center--which oversaw and ran the interrogation program--or the people who did the interrogations was ever interviewed by the senate committee. So big deal, Al Nashiri, who bombed a billion dollar Navy ship, killing 17 sailors, got water splashed on him, his head shaved, and called a sissy. Thank you, CIA interrogators.
6
The CIA is exempt from many provisions of 5 U.S.C. 552a. What's to stop the CIA from collecting information or covertly arresting U.S. citizens?
I was arrested by DoJ and detained for 5 months but never charged with anything. They didn't even investigate me nor interview me during the 5 months. They classified it as a high intensity drug task force arrest but never tested me for drugs or changed me with possession. I was told in federal court that I didn't have a right to counsel and they didn't have a bail hearing. I don't have a criminal background and they didn't have a search warrant but they classified me as a maximum security felon. I, or my teenage sons, could have been killed during the arrest process. I could have been killed in custody since I was transported with convicted felons or they could have claimed it was suicide. Since then DoJ has claimed over and over again that it is legal for them to arrest and detain U.S. citizens even if there is no probable cause that they committed a federal crime.
72
@Kay There must be more facts at issue, or, you've got a whale of lawsuit under Sec. 1983. Did you have counsel?
2
Many of the people tortured after 9/11 were innocent, having been sold to US agents for bounties or confused with others of similar names or simply falsely accused by enemies. Imagine the insanity of being tortured for information you do not possess. I read that it happened a lot.
2
These poor terrorists who were water boarded in an attempt to gain information that would save American lives belonged to an organization that burned people alive in cages while they filmed the victims die in agony. Those of us that comfortably sit back years later and judge those Americans that were on the front lines of a struggle against immense evil should park their judgements. It might be different for them if it was their son, husband, or father set alight caged in a gasoline caldron parked in a desert surrounded by chanting laughing murders.
3
And we are all diminished...
2
According to this article: "The 'water treatment' was bureaucratic jargon for waterboarding..."
A similar type of symbolic communication was used by senior members of the Nazi party in WWII to evade responsibility for the holocaust. For this reason, none of these men were every linked to these mass killings in a written document.
According to Roseman (2002) at p. 151, the closest the Nazis ever came to writing down their overall plan of genocide was the so-called Wannsee Protocol, a document that surfaced in 1947. It’s the minutes for a two-hour meeting held on 20 January 1942 and led by Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Nazi Security Service (SD). The 15 high level Nazi administrators who attended the meeting were party bureaucrats; those responsible for maintaining the machine that carried out the murders. Everything in the meeting was couched in euphemism, such as: “the final solution to the Jewish question”, “cleanse German living space of Jews”, “evacuating Jews to the East”, or “eliminated by natural causes.”
Roseman (2002) points out that the meeting took place six months after conversion began to make Auschwitz into an extermination center (p. 52), and after the first mass killings in Riga in November 1941 (p. 75). Thus, “the ‘final solution’ now unambiguously meant the death of all European Jews.” (p. 110).
Cite:
Roseman, Mark. The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution : A Reconsideration. Metropolitan Books, 2002. ISBN: 0-8050-6810-4
2
Hire the best, only the best.
1
"So if a leader does what it takes to win power and keep it, his methods will always be reckoned honorable and widely praised"
Machiavelli
In a democracy we bring criminals to justice and we punish them according to the law.
"18 U.S.C. § 2340 (the "Torture Act")
An act of torture committed outside the United States by a U.S. national or a non-U.S. national who is present in the United States is punishable under 18 U.S.C. § 2340. The definition of torture used is as follows:
As used in this chapter—
(1) "torture" means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control... "
source:wikipedia.org
As far as I understand torture is against our law and should not be used. The quality of the information obtained through this technique may be questionable or compromised.
2
Guilt complex apparently seldom occurs in US public officials.
1
Some have asked if critics of torture can accept the deaths of Americans in a terror attack rather than engage in barbarity.
I can. And I would accept my own death to be a citizen of a country that does not torture the way a soldier would die to defend the constitution.
I live in New York. The most frequently attacked city in the US. I lived near the WTC in 2001. The Chelsea bomb missed my family by minutes. Narrowly missed losing a loved one to the terrorist truck driver in the bike lane.
I stand by my position that torture is unacceptable.
4
Strange - 2000 years of documented torture history has proven, that torture hardly ever results true new information, but always moral decay of the torturer - and yet it still seems a topic in a society I, as a German borne during WWII, always looked at as a beacon of civility and rationality. Did I miss something?
4
Rather than question the right or wrong of torture, maybe we should ask, what price is to high to pay, for an American's life.
I say, if the price to take an American life is not high, more Americans will be lost. There is more than one way to "take" a life. If it is clear to those that would do us harm, they will live without existence, they will pass without memory and they will not contribute to the future, maybe they will consider other paths, for their lives.
I have been writing letters to foreign officials for 30 years about the use of torture on their own citizens. Amnesty International was founded on the idea that citizens of free nations were indemnified against reprisal for exposing torture and abuse in less civil countries.
My faith in the USA as a beacon of humanity is dashed-I really never thought the American people would allow such abuse in their name. I am disgusted by the actions and leadership our country has performed under Republican administrations
2
Why does the NYT reporter wait until halfway through the story to say how many U.S. personnel were killed on the Cole? That would appear to be an important piece of this terrible tale.
6
That fact has almost nothing to do with the article about America torturing detainees.
How does that change the story? Does it make OK to torture suspects?
Ah, yes, the oh-so-honest testimonials to Ms. Haspel. Disgusting.
2
The constitution was originally written over 200 years ago. Over the last as many years people have learnt to manipulate, reinterpret that suits their own narrow purposes. It was written to serve the People not select group of people.
The same segment of people are using it as a means to serve their vested narrow interest while alienating majority.
In context of this article, the country governed by the rule of the law, goes on this endless debate on in an attempt to confuse the masses and direct their attention to irrelevancy.
Christianity went into the backdrop after the Medieval times when its abhorring behaviour enraged the masses.
Perhaps United States needs to revisit its constitution and Amend to better fit changing times and need of its People?
1
Ah, I love reading the sympathies for non-state terrorist actors espoused by liberals here. It's almost as if 9/11 never happened. Enlightened progressives are always worried about other people's rights, neglecting their malevolent intent and harm to American citizens. There's a bizarre sense of how humans must behave codified in globalist agreements that routinely get flouted. The horrible Trump administration that liberals detest dropped the hammer on Obama's ISIS, wiping out revolutionary thugs who threw gay people off buildings. So you have to ask yourself, what would you rather baby terrorists or save people. It's a pretty easy call if you live in the real world.
6
Torturer and war criminal Gina Haspel is the person six DEMOCRATIC Senators voted to confirm for the CIA Directorship in the cynical, shameless hope that it would help them retain their seats. If they hadn’t voted for her, she wouldn’t be the CIA Director today. Here's the Roll Call of Honor should you wish to bring it with you the next time you enter the voting booth: (1) Senator Mark Warner, Virginia; (2) Senator Joe Manchin, West Virginia; (3) Senator Heidi Heitkamp, North Dakota; (4) Senator Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire; (5) Senator Bill Nelson, Florida; (6) Senator Joe Donnelly, Indiana. With friends like this, America needs no more enemies. Bush started this moral travesty; Democrats perpetuate it. You either have integrity, or you don’t.
9
Enhanced interrogation does produce results, that is just plain fact. Pretending it doesn't is a lie. To suggest that we should treat folk who get pleasure from sawing other's heads off with velvet gloves is idiotic.
12
Would it produce the result if you are enhancely interrogated? Beside being morally wrong, from practical point of view you should know a priori that the guy really has the information you are looking for, otherwise you are wasting your time, and could actually make crucial mistake if his information is false.
@jaco
So now you guys want to accuse all the CIA interrogators who have officially declared that torture didn't provide ANY useful informations (= all those who tried to obtain info this way) "liars", just because YOU feel better at the idea that we imitate barbaric butchers and you'd then apparently "get pleasure from" doing so ... ?
We need REAL protection, not protection strategies based on our own worst fantasies.
2
@jaco,
like the quote below your insistence that torture (not the Orwellian term enhanced interrogation) produces results simply because you can parrot others that say so does not make it so. The pretending is in the idea that torture is effective and useful when its not. Finally the idea that effective interrogation is treatment with velvet gloves is just silly.
'When I use a word (enhanced interrogation),' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master — that's all.'
1
She did what she had to do.
NYT- stop demanding to be kept safe by the government then criticize how they provide that safety.
Can't have it both ways.
If you have such compassion for enemy combatants, go over and see how much compassion they have for you.....
Yeah, didn't think so.
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@There
Why is it that you guys systematically skip the part in this article where the CIA itself declared that torture did not provide ANY useful information ... ?
The problem with conservatives today is that they don't have the guts anymore to confront reality as it is, and prefer to live in a much more comfortable "alternative facts" world.
And that, my friends, is weakness, not strength. No matter what kind of tough rhetoric you use ...
4
And you are eagerly supporting every measure for sake of security even if these measure are against human rights.
1
Disgusting. If you want to know what real American values are, there you have them. And why not? They've just received Congressional approval.
4
Rid the country of these criminal incompetents . Install a parallel government made up of true patriots
1
All these CIA superiors who support waterboarding and other inhumane forms of torture, including any congresspeople or White House people who support this, should have to undergo, by law, these same tortures for 15 minutes, before they are allowed to approve any of them. Waterboard them for 15 minutes and see what they say then.
4
What goes around comes around.
1
Even the average citizen understands that torture does not produce any practical information. It is mere retribution, violencem and anger, inflicting pain to satisfy the sadists, who are now, apparently, us.
2
It's very easy to Monday morning quarterback something you we're involved in.
Try applying a post 9-11 mindset. We got hit hard. As far as we knew, more attacks were coming. The administration had the lawyers investigate what could and could not be done to get information about attacks that were coming.
Contrary to popular belief, the CIA did get usable information. Now, we have people who want to prosecute them based on their own hurt sensibilities more than a decade after.
We task these people to protect us, give them guidance and ask them to carry out their mission. What do you think will happen if we show them that we will turn on them years later for things we asked them to do? Good luck getting anyone to defend you then.
@Joel You could make the same arguments about Nazis in Germany. Water boarding was illegal and the people who ordered it carried out knew it.
Furthermore, I'd like to see an example of when and where a terrorist plot was averted due to water boarding or other torture. I don't believe that's true.
I don't believe our county should ever use torture, except in rare, extreme circumstances. But of course torture can work, otherwise it would not have been used continuously over thousands of years. Does it always work? Of course not. Does it sometimes provide false information? Sure. But sometimes it provides valuable information that saves lives.
3
@Rick Does bleeding as a treatment for illness work? It must work or it wouldn't have been used for hundreds if not thousands of years. Does it cause some people to die? Sure. But sometimes it works. (Not on George Washington, though.)
1
The question, of course, is that a torturer doesn’t not know, a priori, that his/her actions will elicit “useful” information. Never mind the treaties we are part to, this stance compromises everything our country does on the international front.
Torture for information is useless. Most of us, incl. yours truly, would confess to anything. Torture for punishment? Well, I can think of quite a few people whom I’d love to torture, e.g., all surviving members of the Einsatzgruppen no matter how old, frail, and sick they are now.
It was legal at the time and both Democrats and Republicans supported. Case closed
2
What this shows (including the promotion of Haspel as CIA director and the fact that Democrats felt obliged to accept her because all available alternatives would even be worse) and what the comments below show, is that conservatives in this country for two decades now completely lost any sense of morality and moral values, AND simultaneously any sense of reality and science-based policies and strategies to effectively govern, including when it comes to national security.
The main argument that tries to defend immoral behavior, in the comments below, is that our values should only be upheld when all goes well, but become useless and counterproductive when things get bad. So for conservatives today, moral values are a luxury that America can no longer afford ... .
HOW did we get here ... ??
And conservatives are now asking the government to forget about moral values EVEN THOUGH this same article once again shows that giving up our decency and starting to torture prisoners does NOT result in any useful information, so it doesn't even help us protect the nation and prevent future terrorist attacks.
This crisis of morality in America's conservative communities do may reveal something important though: of course moral values are things we should stick to in difficult times too, as a country. But maybe they are NOT the most efficient way to deal with personal emotions? And that is why conservatives prefer actions based on revenge? At least they make them feel better ... ?
5
Merriam Webster defines torture as: "the infliction of intense pain (as from burning, crushing, or wounding) to punish, coerce, or afford sadistic pleasure"
Waterboarding, loud music and confinement are undoubtedly quite unpleasant but they are not torture no matter how much the NY Times "tortures" the meaning of plain English.
These were not criminal cases but national security matters and I am glad we used such techniques to protect the American people.
1
And what stops you to advocate the use of such measures in our criminal system? After all aren't our citizens deserved safety not only against terrorists but against common criminal? Why wouldn't y
In his Congressional address shortly after 9-11, President George W. Bush said "Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America." President Bush was wrong. The torture, the legal weasel-words framing its official practice, the re-exposure of our nativist splinter groups at their rawest and most jagged, and GOP's gleeful, energetic, unrelenting exploitation of these cracks and divisions have jackhammered the foundations of American life and have vandalized the meaning of the founding documents of our Democracy. The current President ran and won by making speeches that included false references to executing Muslims with bullets dipped in pig's blood, and the torturers are in high office, and we are paying them.
2
Republicans approve of torture because their daughters and sons so rarely serve in the military that they're unlikely to be victims of it. Some Republicans also speak and vote as though they enjoy inflicting pain and misery on people. What they don't destroy they leave broken and disabled.
3
@kathy your assertions seem fairly specious. just sayin.
Here is my question that I have been desperately trying to seek the answer. Particularly from the sweet lady of torture.
Exactly, what made you stop waterboarding Khalid Shaikh Mohd. at #186? Was there a call from Jesus, Gabriel, Moses or people got bored, lunch break or did you find better subject to torture?
1
The only thing that this disgusting and embarrassing part of our history has accomplished to show the world we are hypocrites and to serve as a recruiting poster for Islamic terrorist groups. The claims of "actionable intelligence" has never been shown, and only serves as a smokescreen for the war crimes that were committed. Bush and company wanted to punish people, and that was its sole purpose. Gina Haspel is a war criminal by a being involved with and/or allowing this to happen. Hopefully she will be removed from running the CIA as soon as possible.
3
Torture maven Gina should hold no position in any American government. President Pathological, of course, swoons over her. President Pathological told us he considered waterboard torture insufficiently painful.
12
This is the legacy of small minds taking on outrageous unpredictable situations.
18
Small black boxes, large white boxes...Read the actual report by Gina Haspel. Eat time the violence of the torture escalates, a large white box symbolizing a long section of redacted narration appears.
Reading what we CAN read, one wonders what evil is contained within the boxes.
I am sick to my stomach.
No one likes terrorism. But do more effectively fight it with examples to the world of a higher moral standard, or with more terrorism?
This slow, deliberate, interminable torture is terror of the worst kind. It will not take us to a place where decency and justice prevail. It will lead us all into a future shaped like a small cramped black box, shivering, naked of our humanity.
25
It’s funny how NYT keeps bringing this up. We all know the US water boarded. It was legal at the time. Do we not remember the attacks on the country? The fear and confusion across our nation more attacks were coming? To demonize the people who at the time were following the law and acting on orders approved POTUS is insane. We wanted answers as a nation and wanted to stop any other attacks. Demonize the men that attacked us, they are not victims. Demonize the now famous painter, George W Bush that led us into a war (Iraq) based on false information who gave the orders and approval for water boarding. This victimizing of these TERRORISTS is is crazy. Even crazier is calling out the men and women carrying out orders.
Signed,
Left leaning liberal with common sense and a memory of actual events.
17
@Justin B -- It was not legal at the time, even if Dubya found lawyers to say otherwise, and even if those lawyers have been rewarded since their crimes.
6
@Justin B what's crazier - calling them out or promoting them?
@Justin B Hmm. Memory of actual events?
Ok. Here we go. International law, and U.S. law prohibits torture. Period. Government attorneys stretched the definition of the prohibition to "not on U.S. soil".
So, enhanced interrogation became the norm, not the exception.
Lastly, I provide you with this: "In December 2014, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence issued a declassified 500 page summary of its still classified 6,700 page report on the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Detention and Interrogation Program. The report concluded that "the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques (EIT) was not effective for acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees." According to the report, the CIA had presented no credible proof that information obtained through waterboarding or the other harsh interrogation methods that the CIA employed prevented any attacks or saved any lives. There was no evidence that information obtained from the detainees through EIT was not or could not have been obtained through conventional interrogation methods.". Source: Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (3 Dec 2014). Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program (Report). United States Senate.
Which victims are being terrorized-the tortured, or the torturer.
Haspel, Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell should be brought up on charges of prisoner torture in the Hague.They represent the US at its worst.
12
@Steve
They did the right thing in a very challenging and dangerous time. Indeed, it would have been immoral not to waterboard these "people"
1
@TPierre Changstien, it is immoral to torture people at any time.
She should never have been put in charge of the CIA.
12
Interesting how the NY Times rarely, if ever, uses the word 'torture' to describe the U.S.'s treatment of detained/held/imprisoned/jailed (call it what you will) individuals in articles, and uses it far more freely to describe any similar treatment of U.S. individuals in other countries. Now, why would that be, A.G.?
3
It was surreal watching the confirmation hearings of the Trump administration.
As one watched in horror the enumeration of disqualifiers and borderline crimes committed by the nominees, you had to wonder why these people were not in prison.
And then to watch their confirmation by their fellow Republican swamp creatures made you realize that the American experiment may be ending.
It’s all about money and power.
10
No person that condons torture, should ever be allowed to hold public office, elected or nominated. The best she/he can do is to publicly denounce torture and apologize for any form of direct or indirect involvement in it. No cause justifies using torture, waterboarding is torture.
13
Anyone who claims that torture yields reliable intelligence is enabling sadism and counter-productive denial of reality. Neither serves this country well, nor the quest for peace from terror.
12
In most cases, truth SHOULD be claimed. The only thing that truth "enables" is MORE TRUTH. Torture, and in other cases, the prospect of torture MOST CERTAINLY has yielded reliable, and LIFE-SAVING intelligence. CLAIM THE TRUTH, Rocky.
3
@kmk Dear CAPS person: Read what Ali Soufan, an effective terrorist interrogator for the FBI, and SecDef James Mattis have to say about the effectiveness and reliability of confessions gained through torture.
Jane Mayer in her book The Dark Side wrote extensively about CIA torture during this time period. If anyone wants to read about what our government was doing they should read this book.
11
I am dismayed at the number of comments excusing torture by saying "we were afraid" after 9-11, or by saying that if the reader had lost a loved one in the World Trade Center, that person would have done the same thing. Any of you remember that line from FDR's inaugural address, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself?"
15
@Martha Shelley Right. When we are attacked, murdered, if we are smart, if we want to survive, we fight back. WE KILL. Just as FDR did after the Japanese attacked us in 1941, he, we, fought back, and eventually won WW11.
And here stands our country in glory and in sorrow.
We are still in the stage where Darwin rules.
1
This nation has multiple problems under both the Trump administration and his equally unethical GOP Congress. Admittedly, the above is an understatement. Under different leadership, i.e., Democrats, Ms Haspel would have never been confirmed. She is as culpable as the Bush administration in her green light attitude toward torture. Now we are faced with another looming error with ominous consequences. That is the role that Judge Kavanaugh played in the Bush/Cheney deceit and dishonesty toward our country, among one of our darkest chapters in recent history. We are being blocked - by this Congress - from full disclosure of Kavanaugh's suspiciously shady past decisions. One would almost think that there is a deliberate intention by the executive and legislative branches to sabotage our democratic rights. For what reason? Power and greed? And now we are faced with the final corruption - our judicial branch. An unholy trinity, indeed.
15
@Kathy Lollock, admittedly Obama was feckless, but to completely blank out his intermediary eight years in office is really taking that all the way. Somehow doing so does not build a strong case for Democrats being the only answer.
1
@John Doe You conveniently forget, John, that President Obama had a completely hostile GOP Congress, determined to stop him at every point, even taking our country down as they did it. The Democrats are our ONLY hope of saving this country from complete disinegration.
@Mature Voter, make sure you keep your homework away from the dog.
1
Tragedy and fear. Two greatest weapons of governments around the world. Horrified by WWII, we let FDR intern Japanese- and German-Americans, increase executive power, and trample on our liberties and values. 9/11 became my generation's calamity. In the name of safety, we have given up our most fundamental liberties. Our representatives have given up their duties of oversight, mis-action would be worse than inaction. The Congress surrendered their Constitution-given authority to any party's president. And now we are slowly turning into the enemies we are sending our troops to fight.
The citizenry across the political spectrum must not let anyone define our values, our civil liberties, and our continued experiment that is this beautiful America. Much like the Post-Nixon cleanse, we must compel our government to create transparency, enact procedural checks and balances, and remind them the authorities of coequal branches under the Constitution.
5
Gina Haspel was an unconvincing witness at her confirmation hearing; but protected by Chairman Burr. I have never seen a Cabinet-level nominee get by a confirmation hearing when we knew so little, publicly, about the career record. It was as if she was "The Spy Who Never Was." The whole process made a mockery of Senate oversight.
9
There is a bigger picture here. The view that we are rapidly coming to hate each other. I have no solutions except to point out that both parties liberal and conservative are lead by the extreme ends. If we cannot fix the conservative part of our society can we at least try to moderate the liberal part.
2
@Allan
Could you please explain what the Democrats are doing or saying and that:
1. you'd qualify as "extreme", and/or
2. you believe increases hatred for other Americans (rather than for certain policy ideas or conception about how to govern)?
Thanking you in advance.
4
@Allan how does this have anything to do with liberals and conservatives?
In an effort to accommodate the worst impulses of those in our society, our more equinamous instincts should be moderated?
3
If I knew that someone personally oversaw the simulated drowning of a man, over and over, in the name of the United States of America, I'd offer that person psychiatric help.
Trump offered her the CIA directorship.
What use are Washington's cherry tree, Yankee Doodle, Paul Revere's ride, and Betsy Ross now? Where is that shining city on a hill? "Be the change you want to see," Gandhi said.
I don't want to see my nation drown someone over and over, and then lock them in a tiny box.
I don't want to see those with such perspectives in a position that could bring me harm. But here we are. And where, exactly is here?
Where can we find our historical equivalents?
1930's? In Germany........?
15
torturing known terrorists in an attempt to save american lives doesn't bother me at all. if that makes me a barbarian, so be it
6
@Vince
If you want to live in a barbarian country, why don't you move to Saudi Arabia instead ... ?
Why would we want to defend America if we don't care anymore about the American Constitution and would as well accept a barbarian government ... ?
And then we're even not talking yet about the fact that trying to behave in a barbarian way when your job is actually to protect the US is NOT the most effective way to obtain information and do your job properly, remember ... ?
The US isn't merely founding on superior moral values in order to feel good about ourselves. The Founding Fathers chose those values because they knew they would lead us to a more perfect, stronger, more thriving union.
Throw them away, as the GOP is doing for two decades already now, and you weaken America itself.
9
@ana Luisa,
The founding fathers were all slave owners.
At the time it was normal.
@Ana Luisa - actually, the Constitution is pretty barbaric and close to Saudi Arabian rule - slavery was okay, women had no votes, etc. It was the amendments to the constitution that changed things in this country.
It has been 16 years after being tortured and degraded in 2002 , and Mr. Nashiri is still in Detention and has yet to go on trial.
How long does it take? By ANY measure or standard, 16 years without a trial and still being held as well as being illegally tortured back in 2002 when first abducted/arrested.
What a fallacy of Law and Justice this case (as are those of most of the other Detainees) is. If you can't /won't hold a trial and charge any of them with anything after 16 years, let them go...or has it been decided that no statute of limitation applies?
Are you going to just hold these people in detention until they die of old age?
You are setting a rotten example America, what happened to rule of law, international agreements on the holding of Prisoners, Basic Human Rights, Bans on torture?
Shameful.
66
@Loomy I'm guessing you missed the video of people jumping out of the North Tower, before the video feed was cut.
What is the statute of limitations? What is the statute of limitations for seeing someone, that might be a loved one, stepping off the 100th floor, rather that burn to death?
2
@Loomy, In the US, justice is delayed until it is rotted into muck.
2
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth......
Don’t mess with us, you’ll get hurt, bad...!
5
It's a shame it took this long for this story to come out. Instead of a prison cell, Gina Haspel is the director of the CIA. The US has a very long history of torture. We sent the CIA out to teach torture while we propped up dictators to murder and torture their people in the name of fighting communism. The folks at the CIA are probably mostly decent, trying to protect the US from those who will attack us, but clearly it was out of control after 9/11 and hid the actions which embarrassed it or would be found to be illegal. The two professors who created the waterboarding techniques faked the data and made money from their lies. They will never be held responsible, nor will the agents who took the US to a new low for a country which, despite our pretend values, is in actuality a pretty sick, immoral, and low on the list of first world countries when measured by decency and other societal values. We have a lot more to be ashamed of these days in the US than to be proud of and with our current administration and Congress we should expect a furtherance of truly despicable behavior. Donald Trump endorsed a person who should have quit in disgrace, and those who endorsed her with the understanding that she "learned her lesson" cannot be trusted as their moral compass is nonexistent.
1
An eye for an eye eventually leads to blindness.
1
@William B.
We just hurt a couple of guys, when they killed more than 2,000, remember?
The problem with allowing yourself to take emotions such as desire for revenge and seeing others suffering and anger as the very basis of our action, as studies show over and over again, is that we confound providing ourselves with the emotional help we need to learn to cope with what we had to undergo, and rationally, calmly and effectively designing and then implementing a strategy to punish those criminals and prevent further attacks.
Obama immediately banned torturing prisoners from CIA interrogation manuals. Result? No major terrorist attack on US soil in 8 years ... .
At the same time, torturing never ever provided any reliable information, for obvious reasons: you'll say no matter what pleases your interrogators when you're tortured, rather than sticking to the truth (and then we're even not talking yet about the fact that when they half destroy your body and brain, your memory doesn't function very well anymore either ... ).
2
This might have been news before her confirmation. After, it's just griping. Thanks NYT.
7
@Carr kleeb
It's news now because the cables were just released. Gee, I wonder why they weren't released before Haspel's confirmation?
These chillingly detailed records of torture recall the meticulous record keeping of the Nazis during the holocaust. They describe the torture of a man who was ultimately found by the torturers to be cooperative and telling the truth. The two psychologists involved in the torture should have been tried for war crimes. Instead, they enriched themselves with lucrative government contracts.
Finally, we have something that can't be blamed on Trump as this crime was committed in 2002. From Truman to the present, only one president, Jimmy Carter, exercised any control over illegal CIA operations. For anyone who thinks that the CIA has made any contribution to American security since its founding, I suggest reading or listening to Legacy of Ashes, by Tim Weiner.
8
Once and for all:
TORTURE DOES NOT WORK (as Napoleon observed in 1865).
Now indict Haspel and her fellow war criminal Dick Cheney.
12
@Don Alberstadt We, those of us who do not believe in torture are talking to deaf ears, and blind eyes.
There is a senator we all are aware of who was tortured for years and echoes what you have stated-torture does not work.
4
@Don Alberstadt
Your right, instead we should invoke a Military Court, give them a plea agreement option to spill the beans, or put them before a firing squad.
NO? Oh, that would make them a "martyr"? OK, how about witness protection program, A year subscription to TIME, a government subsidized 401K, "food stamps", and SS check. Kill'em with kindness, that'll make'em talk.......
1
Would love to see what truths would spill out if you subjected various numerous still living U.S war criminals like Cheney and Bush , whose actions elicited the blow-back known as 9/11, to the mere sight of a little "water treatment.":
5
Haspel should NEVER have been installed as CIA Director!
7
John Bolton is the head of NSA. Steven Miller is the White House advisor on Immigration policy. Gina Haspel is as good as it gets.
4
@HL hoping this is sarcasm!
1
@HL "...Haspel is as good as it gets."-if one condones torture, as for Miller, if one condones his racism, and Bolton, if one condones his cheerleading for war.
Same rational used by the Germans during the Second World War... There is a great movie which most of you are too young to remember "Judgement at Nuremburg" with two great male actors, Tracy and Lancaster... German Judge vs American lawyer.
Also you might want to read about Julius Streicher publisher of Der Sturmer was executed for crimes against humanity for publishing Nazi Trash and found guilty at the main Nuremberg War Trials. I often wonder, if in today's free speech discussions, he would have been found not guilty for exercising his free speech rights....
History is always interesting....
2
I remember reading about the war crimes trials for WWII criminals when I was a child. It was incomprehensible to me and to the world, that a person could dehumanize themselves to the extent of perpetrating these unspeakable deeds on another. And now, the United States of America—who saved the world for decency and democracy—has a history of training, and condoning the making of, psychopaths in our midst. There are no rationalizations or euphemisms that can sugar-coat it. Torture is the refuge of the weak and fearful; it is indecent; it is sadistic cruelty; it destroys the lives of those who perform it; it is a rank stain on our government and our history. I am proud of John McCain, the great Arizona Senator, and my own Senator, Dianne Feinstein, who have stood firm against the legitimization of these deeds. Ms. Haspel should not continue to lead an American agency. She should be hanging her head with shame. Thank you NYT for this reportage.
15
I guess I’m at a loss as to the point of this story today so many years after the fact. I kept looking for a Trump take down in it but failed to find it. Someone please illuminate me. Please don’t tell me this is some pitiful conscience raising exercise way too long overdue to matter at all.
1
It is strange to read that "the agency had no experience or expertise in interrogation" in referring to the need for outside experts to "develop the techniques". Really? That sounds like rationalization on someone's part; let's blame the consultants! Who was the CIA using during the decades of the Cold War to pulse their assets, the panelists on 'To Tell the Truth'? The fact is that the U.S. intelligence community simply flew off the rails of propriety during the immediate post 9/11 years, and threw their rule books out the window in the anxiety to prevent another attack. How to stop that from happening again will be the most important thing that we can learn.
4
Every senator knew she is a monster, and many chose to support her anyway. The blood of her victims is on their hands too.
7
There you have it, the torturers are still in charge, and all U.S. presidents from Bush thru Trump bear blame, including Obama, who looked the other way when the CIA destroyed the torture tapes in defiance of a court order.
4
But Marco, stated as such, finger pointing would not be permissible. What on earth are we to do with our hands? Build something constructive? Never!
@Marco Philoso
President Obama didn’t look away. Remember, he was the Drone King.
7
Maybe it would help if you all knew that even if Congress passed a Constitutional amendment making torture legal, it would still not be legal.
You can never make human rights violations legal.
3
Torture goes against every norm of liberal democracy bounded by the rule of law, and robs any person, agency, government, or nation that practices it or consents to it being practiced of their humanity.
That the Bush administration practiced torture without consequence, and tried to justify it legally and morally, that those who participated in torture are still employed by the U.S. government, that the Trump administration nominated Gina Haspel to run the CIA and Congress confirmed her, that the majority of the American public are indifferent to it, that many still try to defend it, demonstrates just how successful the far right movement has been in preying on many Americans’ fears and in separating us and our political representatives from commitment to the norms and principles that are the bedrock of our political system.
Fear, inflamed and often disguised under a false veneer of toughness- of neoconism, of “MAGA,” of “America First,” of zero-sum games, of “law and order” of “stand your ground” of “zero tolerance,” of border walls – it is fear that has led us to implement and try to defend the indefensible, to lose our moral compass. Fear that led to torture under the Bush Administration and taking children away from their parents at the border and locking them in cages under Trump's.
This country MUST throw off that fear and repudiate the movement that stokes it, or soon this country will be set on a downward path from which it can never fully recover.
52
Wow...what an awesome comment! Thank you for your skillfully written words that outline so succinctly the real disease infecting so many in our nation.
2
I remember when I though having more women in positions of power would make the world a kinder, gentler place.
8
@JHa, it’s obviously not the gender, it’s the power problem.
4
We have allowed the events of 9/11 to sabotage our nation, our values and our future if we don't stop - NOW! Do we want to be Americans, seeking to live by the ideals of our Constitution and our humanity or do we follow the chaos into oblivion. Are we just one more foolish has been civilization? It's not easy and it is much more satisfying to live authentically in truth and caring.
5
during this period, one J O Brennan was a senior CIA official
Yet, Obama nominated him, twice, to be DCIA. First time, name had to be withdrawn cause of Brennan's association with torture, The second time, all the "liberal" Dem Senators, including E Warren and B Sanders, voted to confirm
so anything Dems say about torture is pretty hypocritical, imo
some of this is in wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_O._Brennan
eg,
Brennan withdrew his name from consideration for Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the first Obama administration over concerns about his support, while serving under President George W. Bush, for transferring terror suspects to countries where they might be tortured.
Instead, Brennan was appointed Deputy National Security Advisor, a position which did not require Senate confirmation
9
During the American Revolution, George Washington ordered that British prisoners be treated humanely, no matter how brutally the Brits had behaved before being captured. Bush and Cheney rejected Washington's sensible approach. They put their trust in shock and awe. Washington knew that tortures brutalize not only their victims but also themselves. That brutalization remains with the ever so enhancing interrogators to the end of their days.
Donald Trump, who neither reads nor thinks much about the lessons of history, does not know about George Washington other than that George's image appears on American currency. Donald, who has expressed the idea that people working for the CIA are like Nazis, might do well to fear that he, himself, could one day be exposed to CIA "enhanced retaliation" much worse than that directed at him by the likes of Hannity and Fox friends.
Imagine the reaction of Putin client Don when Ms. Haspel's gang of tough guys shaved off Donald's, um, hair. Or, alternatively, how the healthiest president in all history (ask Dr.Bernstein) might whine and twitter if the pitiless agents were to stuff his girthness into "the small box" - for safe-keeping, of course.
Even if Donald is eventually impeached, however, he will not be subjected to enhanced corrective measures. President Pence will be sure to pardon him, just as Jerry Ford did for Nixon. In return, Pence will surely be pardoned by his maker.
5
@pmaxmont
Even if trump were to be impeached, my greatest fear is that he will be relected.
1
An exceptional country. Slavery, genocide, jim crow, assassinations, torture and on and on.
15
It's just so amazing that lots of people want to come here then isn't it? Perhaps it is because, even with our faults, we are an exceptional country.
3
Torture by America. Ashamed. More ashamed that congress confirmed Haspel. Vote out GOP. Ray Sipe
6
She worked for John Brennan......
3
"The cable says the interrogator and linguist “strode, catlike, into the well-lit confines of the cell...”
They were brutal torturers AND ridiculous idiots.
3
Anyone that thinks waterboarding is not torture needs to watch right wing radio most Mancow Muller get waterboarded, because he thought he could prove it was like "being in your bathtub."
He said he thought he would last 30 seconds, but it was "instantaneous." He said, "I don't want to say this, but it is torture."
https://youtu.be/KKfEjdAkmbs
Or you can watch Christopher Hutchins get waterboarded and listen to him talk about how it gave him nightmares about being smothered.
https://youtu.be/4LPubUCJv58
And there are other kinds of torture. One detainee in Afghanistan was kneed in the thighs every time someone walked by until his muscles were turned to "pulp" and he died from the internal bleeding.
Donald Rumsfeld said stress positions are no big deal, "I stand all day long." But Rumsfeld stand because he has a bad back and sitting is uncomfortable for him. What if he was tired up and forced to sit in s chair for 12 hours. Do you think that might change his mind.
Remember when America was proud that we helped create the Geneva Conventions? Now too many of us are proud of violating them, and that gives permission to other countries to torture our soldiers if they get captured.
Meanwhile we paid some con-men $80 million to develop a torture program even though they had no experience with interrogations.
And the experienced interrogators that get results say that they do it by becoming the subject's friend and getting them to trust the interrogator.
11
Let us also point out that BRET KAVANAUGH, appointee to the Supreme Court, was a staff secretary, for GWB, and a key player in the development of Gitmo, dark site, and torture policies, in around 2004. There are scores of documents, pertaining to his opinions on these, now unlawful, activities and Republicans are trying to hide them, and keep them from disclosure, so they can ram through Kavanugh's confirmation. Democrats are being denied access to thousands of enlightening, and unflattering, documents produced by Brett Kavanaugh. There is clear evidence that Kavanaugh LIED to congress during his last confirmation hearings, to the DC Court of Appeals. Corrupt Republicans wish to change the conversation, so they can push this odious confirmation, and then send Mueller's subpoena, of tRump, to a newly right tilted SCOTUS. The people involved with Bush's horrendous, costly, illegal Iraq war, and attendant activities, come back to haunt us, today, because we didn't address them when we should have. Thanks, very much, to a Republican Congress, following Bush's first appointment to the oval office, and then for the past 8 years. If something can go wrong, it will go wrong. It's all connected. Neither Gina Haspel, nor Brett Kavanaugh, are worthy of public trust. VOTE Democratic, and get these people out of our government. To do otherwise will cost us dearly for the next 40 years.
7
The Constitution is not a suicide pact. Those repulsed by the interrogation methods used in the wake of 9-11, the Cole attack and other mass terror attacks were not those responsible, thankfully, for threading the needle between unprecedented intelligence challenges and observance of pristine investigative techniques. The vehemence of those who engage in Monday-morning quarterbacking expose a longing for safe spaces for themselves without paying the cost.
6
@Alan Mishael This is the “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it” argument. It was a heinous lie in 1968 and it’s a heinous lie today.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if the Trump gang made this into a country not worth saving, which could be where we’re headed.
2
@Alan MishaelAah, I see that you live in the 'land of the Free and the Home of the Brave'.
1
I'm old enough to remember when being inhumane was considered a bad thing. Those justifying the use of torture degrade themselves and the nation, and they put our soldiers and citizens at an even greater risk.
6
The rich detail of the later reports...someone is honing their novelist chops. Vince Flynn lives on.
I intended to call LYING an art form in this administration, but that puts too fine a point on the product. Then I thought maybe CARTOONISH a better descriptive, but that might tend to make light off torture. So I am left with only one word ENTERTAINMENT for those who order it, perform it, or lie about it.
Regardless of Ms. Haskell's talents, shall we say, one vicious supervisor-in-chief, the president, is one more than we need.
Hey, torture's okay if you're using it on the "bad" guys. I wonder how Ms. Haspel would react to American soldiers or citizens being waterboarded. Torture is torture and and the Constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, except when these cruel war mongers to do it in the name of national security. Too bad they don't realize their torture and tactics just make our country more insecure. These people have blood on their hands.
4
Why is she not being indicted, if not in the USA then by the International Criminal Court?
4
@Richard U.S. economic might. We have free rein.
1
Gina Haspel's nomination and confirmation as the C.I.A Chief indicates how criminality is rewarded not punished by this administration. Ms Haspel has admitted that there crimes against humanity, war crimes, had been committed. Yet she was confirmed. This is a definite indication that war crimes can continue without fear of retribution. Sept.11 was a watershed moment of human depravity. It was an extremely sad day for ALL Americans when all Americans came together, united and mourned. And the rest of the world mourned with us. But by confirming Gina Haspel, we have almost stooped down to the level of these war criminals themselves. As the only superpower, we should have displayed our moral superiority, our righteousness, our justice as keepers of that high bar, a glowing beacon to emulate by rest of the world. But now?
2
Surprise! But, of course, she was "only following orders" from George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their legal advisers like John Yoo and Brett Kavanaugh. These were "crimes against humanity" and violations of the Geneva Convention, but Barack Obama sadly gave them all a pass rather than deal with it through a "truth and reconciliation" commission. The price the nation is paying is that those involved were never punished, but instead rewarded with distinguished professorships (Yoo), high-level government positions (Haspel) and now a potential seat on the Supreme Court (Kavanaugh). It's national disgrace from the nation that claims to honor justice and set an example with the Nuremberg trials after World War II.
6
Is it any wonder that Putin has the domestic popular support that he does?
1
this is the reason there is an international criminal court in the Hague
6
As the former republican president said. We tortured some folks.
He also said we have to look forward not back. War crimes happen in the past not the future Mr Republican Lite.
1
Ah yes, this is so disgusting on many levels. First. A woman who could be so cold and horrid. I'm not being misogynistic. Just think that most women wouldn't do this. Second. The gov. has given the fox control of the chicken coop. She is one of the worst and now she runs the show. Why didn't congress wait for better vetting? Oh I know, the whole government is now controlled by filthy dirty people. From the top on down. For shame on us. Vote folks. Our lives and democracy depend upon it.
2
@heysus “Just think that most women wouldn't do this.”
The real reason women and children have traditionally been barred from combat: too vicious.
Democrats better get a message that will take power and keep it forever.
Shameful and inhumane. To live in a better world, we must uphold the ideals we claim to have and we swear by. Protect and serve the nation does not mean be savages. Its just sad that humanity has to continue to learn to be human, WWI & II should have delivered us from this behavior.
The "Word a Day" e-newsletter had this today:
The one thing we know about torture is that it was never designed in the first place to get at the actual truth of anything; it was designed in the darkest days of human history to produce false confessions in order to annihilate political and religious dissidents. And that is how it always works: it gets confessions regardless of their accuracy. -Andrew Sullivan, writer (b. 10 Aug 1963)
5
What’s so unfortunate about this is what is detailed out in Tim Weiner’s book, “Enemies, A History of the FBI.” The FBI developed interrogation techniques that did not involve torture. They were tried and proven effective. After 9/11 it was Bush administration officials that pushed them aside in favor of CIA “enhanced interrogation” techniques that we now know were completely ineffective. The information we could have gotten was squandered and lost because a few people thought it was more important to settle a score. It was a sad day for America that continues on as we learn how truly useless and brutal these techniques were.
43
@Josue Azul
Bush's were very familiar with CIA's operations/procedures thus the least path of resistance.
The CIA does the dirty and dangerous work the very few are willing or able to do to keep us safe. They spend years away from their families and risk their lives, knowing that their heroism will likely never be acknowledged because of the need for secrecy. Unlike other Federal agencies with three letter initials, they don't seek accolades and awards, they don't mug for news cameras, they do what they do because they are selfless patriots.
20
@Dan M - I am not asking anyone to torture anyone for me.
1
@Dan M You don't put out a fire by feeding it more. Good people should be better than the bad people if they intend to come with any legitimacy what so ever.
Torture is for bad people. Good people rise above the bad behavior, by not torturing anyone.
1
@Dan M Patriots make their country proud. Torturing people does not.
1
No doubt, the Torture Queen, Gina Haskell was picked by Trump because of her talent for lying. (Donald, of course, has an affinity for liars, cheats and thieves.)
9
Is it any wonder that our country has lost international standing as the beacon of human rights? As President Clinton once said, "People around the world have always been more impressed by the power of our example than the example of our power." This torture, started under Bush, finally ended but not punished under Obama, and still condoned by Trump has stained us for a generation. It will take time, but this country will be back.
6
this is not my country. my country wouldn't do this. how did this despicable woman get to be CIA director? how did pruitt last so long. what's wrong with america? i am thinking of moving to canada. seriously. there is a pitch black pall hanging over our entire country, starting at the white house and ending with the KKK in every state. this is so incredibly sad yet i can't even cry. i just shake my head in shame.
15
Were you to treat a dog like this you would land in prison.
And those who take a knee during the anthem are persecuted.
For shame, America, for shame.
32
Using any form of torture at all is TERRIBLE.
The end does not justify the means..............
same with capital punishment.........STOP IT!!!
12
She was always up to her neck in the garbage, but the nation didn't care.
She should probably be in jail for crimes against humanity.
23
It is amazing what sleazy people and organizations can get away with, when the mass public is gripped by fear. I am not referring to torture; rather, I am alluding to all the things they take (namely money); all obtained due to the fact that the people who have oversight "look the other way".
1
Let us note that the NYT publishes opinion pieces by John Yoo, currently not in prison for colluding on torture, but employed as a professor at that hard-right university, UC Berkeley.
Our moral compass is indeed firmly pointed to: "anything goes".
9
Bonus points for the “Poet McTeagle” reference. “Can I have fifty pounds to mend the shed?”
It makes sense that the most criminal and cruelest administration and political party in the history of our country would confirm a torturer for the purpose of doing more torture. Get out and Vote America! Trump and Republicans are quickly turning us into a Banana Republic!
13
Why won't the Times use the word torture to describe torture?
41
Same reason they won't call lies lies: It upsets the powerful.
There's bias in the media, all right - just not the one that Tucker 'n them keep yap-yap-yapping about.
2
@John M Same reason they won't call a 'lie' a 'lie'... #AccessJournalism
2
Sorry, but you can't play nice with an enemy that is trying to kill you.
18
@John I am pretty sure someone tied to a bench or a chair and without any possible way of getting out of there pretty much tries to kill noone, because he/she is in no position to do such a thing.
Mmm'kay?
@John not nice, but we might abide by the Geneva convention, lest we receive what we dole out. That we are combating a non-conventional army does not give us a pass on the GC or the Constitution, which specifically forbids cruel or unusual punishment. It does not work anyway, the victim tells you what you want to hear, not what he knows. That is a well known fact.
1
The United States took great pains at the Geneva Convention to ensure soldiers would not be tortured! Psychologists have proven torture does not work!
We are, America not Nazi Germany or WWII Japan!
1
Can't say we weren't warned. Her hands are so blood stained they'll never come clean. Now she runs the CIA. You can't make up this stuff.
20
Who and where are we waterboarding now?
What medal of freedom for meritorious service is being contemplated for the persons turning the screws and gouging the eyes for democracy?
6
This was controversial and indefensible then, and it remains so. Shame on the CIA, shame on the Bush and Obama administrations, and shame on anyone—ANYONE—who defends the use of torture.
17
@D Plaine
FYI: Obama abandoned torture the first day he came into office. And he has been very vocal about why this was so important to abolish.
Torture was scrapped from CIA interrogation manuals by a stroke of his pen.
To be able to stop this madness, we first have to focus on who's doing what, more precisely ... if not we'll only make things worse.
1
FYI: No torture under Obama's tenure! Unless it was done without his knowledge!
1
Torture didn't happen under Obama (and I hope I never have cause to retract those words) but Brennan was kept around and they never prosecuted any of the people who developed and ran the torture program
Refuse to feel any sympathy for the Islamic terrorists who were waterboarded to get them to divulge information. When you are dealing with fanatics who are willing to commit suicide to wreak death and destruction as they did on 9/11, any tactics to stop them are worth it. The high idealists commenting here would be the first to call for these same measures if one of their loved ones or friends was a victim of these terrorists.
14
Precisely, Paul. There is only so much sympathy to go around...
2
@paul
In real life, nobody is asking for your sympathy.
The moral value that is defended here is NOT turning the other cheek to the person that just hit you in the face.
It is to not inflict any unnecessary harm, and as torture has been proven to provide NO reliable information at all, it simply inflicts unnecessary harm.
If CIA agents feel a need for revenge, they should go in therapy, not start beating up prisoners. They're not paid to act out their frustration and (perfectly understandable) feelings, they are paid to reflect and defend the American Constitution and America's highest values, and to do so in a way that has been proven to work.
THAT's why there's really no excuse for torturing prisoners.
1
And if you get off in the process, so much the better!
How a human being can do waterboarding? How one can be so cruel? Whatever you call it like Enhanced Interrogation Technique , you are trying to sugar coat Torture and it is extreme Torture. Secret Prison ? What is this? Is this a banana Republic? Do we have any constitution ? Or We are a lawless country and do not believe humanity. It is shame for USA.
8
Too little, too late
4
Conservatives have turned us into a nation of hateful, cruel and corrupt "leaders" and followers, a hidden reservoir of those with no character.
How can they sleep at night having done this to other Human beings?
Are we going to fight back with votes, or are we going to let them ruin our nation and our Democracy?
7
It’s going to take more than votes, counted electronically, by corporations, in secrecy.
Those on this comment section who support waterboarding must be cheering for the "bad" guys in movies. What is bad or good is relative. Germans saw the holocaust as a "cleansing" of their society. Germans in WWII did horrible things to their "enemies". If they had won, would we be cheering them when they separated kids from mothers and took them all to gas chambers? There are norms and ethics which we all as humans should follow. John McCain (a person who was tortured and who fought for our country) is strongly against torture and for a good reason. We Americans consider ourselves as good people, but are we really? We invade countries on false claims . We have interfered in other countries elections just so that a private US company can milk the resources of that country. Yes we do have tainted hands and yes it is us not so and so politician. In the end we elect and choose who is going to lead us and although I did not vote for W or Trump. I am well aware that they were and are my and our president. If we are the good guys then we should do what good guys do. Good guys do not torture!! As one great guy said: when someone slaps you on one cheek, you should turn the other cheek. I wish all his so called followers would listen in their hearts to this great guy.
6
@Theni Good guys who end up dead because they abandoned their duty to protect us are - bad guys.
It amazes me how you compare mass murder by Nazis to CIA treatment of a dog, yes. dog, who murdered our sailors.
Material like this brings out the editor in me. For example, "enhanced interrogation techniques" is simply too long. Let's go with "torture."
I'd also shorten the key sentence in paragraph 3 and moving it up, as what we old-timers used to call "the nut graf" as follows: "Gina Haspel, now the C.I.A. director, oversaw the techniques the agency used to brutally interrogate Qaeda captives."
See how much cleaner that reads?
Not to disappoint my regular readers, I'll note that, with this administration, that's not a bug; it's a feature.
10
This is another reminder that in every society and in every age there are people willing to cast aside traditional morality and rationalize the most despicable acts. We held Nazis responsible for their actions regardless of their assertions that they were protecting the Fatherland. We should not pretend that the case as hand is factually or ethically different. Only a fool believes that the United States cannot devolve into a rogue state.
10
"The one thing we know about torture is that it was never designed in the first place to get at the actual truth of anything; it was designed in the darkest days of human history to produce false confessions in order to annihilate political and religious dissidents. And that is how it always works: it gets confessions regardless of their accuracy." Andrew Sullivan
More appropriately: " ... to annihilate the humanity of those being tortured." Gina Haspel clearly has been complicit in torture. Her disavowal of it was pure expedience - nothing more than a convenient means of advancing her career. Her appointment was a signal to the world that this administration - and those who voted to confirm her - condone the inhumanity detailed in these cables.
10
@Olenska
and to annihilate the humanity of those who torture...
The very ideal of America is forever soiled by Ms. Haspel and the people behind these shameful torture practices.
4
Extreme torture methods can be condoned if information can be obtained that the "enemy" is involved in a devastating terrorism action against the US and/or its allies.
Who wants to be destroyed because it was morally wrong to apply extreme measures to obtain information that would allow the US to counter and stop such actions?
The recent Ohio election results, where a small morally focused "Green Party" independent group may cause Democratic candidates to LOSE an election and allowed the right wing fascist Republicans to win.
Talk about sheer stupidity!
Same thing with torture.
Stand on your principles and lose everything?
Or win by stepping over the line?
Do you want to survive?
3
Except torture doesn’t produce information that is valid, people who are tortured will say whatever they think will make it stop.
10
@Wilson Woods
So where do you draw the line? Is there anything you would not do to survive? Anyone you would not betray?
How about torturing someone's innocent family to death in front of them? I'll bet that could crack even the most hardened terrorist.
1
@Corbin, @Wilson Woods:
Both of you are engaging, yet again and ad nauseam, in an endless debate on bad premises. There is a "ticking time bomb" threshold when you have to resort to torture, is one side. Torture never works and produces only what the torturer wants to hear, is the other.
Gina Haspel, whatever you think of her, got it exactly right: It does sometimes yield information and might prevent massive tragedy, and it should never be done again by the United States.
Got it? The overriding bedrock of the laws of war exist in two statements, one from the Hague Convention of 1907 and one in its most recent update in the 1977 1st Additional Protocol, article 1(2).
The first says, "The methods and means of war are not unlimited."
The second says, "In cases not covered by this Protocol or by other international agreements, civilians and combatants remain under the protection and authority of the principles of international law derived from established custom, from the principles of humanity, and from the dictates of the public conscience."
In other words, it makes no difference if an illegal method or means works, it is prohibited, and it makes no difference whether there is a specific law, if it violates humanity, or shocks the public conscience, it's illegal.
Torture is wrong, no exceptions, no justifiable circumstances, no loopholes or black holes of law. It makes no difference how good the cause for which it is used or whether or not it works.
Trump has a strong track record of appointing women to positions of power. Conway, Omarosa, Hicks, Haspel, DeVos, etc. Is it Trump’s fault that conservative women can be equally disastrous as their male conservative counterparts? Give credit where credit is due.
@CP
As far as I know, he did so less often than Obama. So yes, let's give credit where credit is due ...
I thought it was established that it was only torture when Japanese did it to americans during ww2.
when it americans do it....well enhanced interrogation is just fine.
sort of like changing sugar crisp to golden crisp.
sugar just disappeared with the new name.
9
The confirmation of Haspel is just one of many indicators that we have a two-party duopoly that doesn't respect the rule of law, international treaties, or the need for ethical people of integrity in our government.
The Democrats should vote en masse to reject every Trump nominee for any post, including judgeships.
Dems should do hearings to reopen Haspel's past, and should use her terrible complicity as an example of Trump officials' lack of ethics and integrity.
5
Water-boarding - the very same act for which the US executed Japanese officers after WW II as being war crimes.
Enough said.
21
@Dave
But they were racist then so the morals they did have do not count.
Well that's how the story of America's "real" values goes isn't it?
Just like how racism infects society and it turns out that any community with a crime problem is largely the effect of fewer than a dozen bad actors, these crimes were committed by individuals who made a choice to do something that is against the principles of our nation and obviously wrong.
Funny story we did not put the Japanese through the same amount of self examination and forced rehabilitation as we did the Germans due to prejudice based ignorance of how the "Japanese mind" worked.
...the CIA's waterboarding is probably de minimis compared to what the clandestine organization has done in the last few decades. It's operations were opaque and it sounds like the Agency's operatives did whatever they wanted to in order to achieve their goals. I never believed in the spy operation, and now I think they should close the entire organization. It's a waste of money and resources.
2
Lets us recall the horrible time of grief and uncertainty that blanket our country as we witnessed the horror of hijacked planes slamming into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The horror of people leaping from the Towers to escape the raging inferno and chose death in another way. The evidence collected showing Al Qaeda plotting to use dirty bombs and primitive bio-warfare to attack our cities and schools. This was the reality of the moment. A time when all of us were wondering what new threat was to be unleashed upon us.
The men and women in our military and intelligence services were tasked to prevent that future attack and find ways to destroy our enemy. Recall our enemy cared not about attacking only our military, but bragged about killing the families and children of all Americans. A new term came into our vocabulary: Asymmetric Warfare.
We resorted to using methods to stop the killing of our people. It required methods that would break the dedicated terrorist and reveal those secrets that would keep us safe. Future attacks were thwarted and we eventually were able to find and kill Bin Ladin.
I find it ironic that there are those, who obviously have not considered the flip side of this moral dilemma, who scream out to have those involved prosecuted for torturing the very terrorists willing to kill each and every one of us.
I wonder if those apologists would be of such mind if their child or other loved one had been murdered on 9/11.
14
@Mike I wonder how you feel about our troops being subjected to torture, because that's what we will get for doing it to others. There is no excuse or justification for it, despite the appeals to emotion for the events of 9-11. It's a coward's way out.
4
@Mike
I disagree with your argument that our fear and anger was justification for immoral behavior. Yes, the terrorists were the barbarians, but that does not mean we should emulate them. If we are the nation as you seem to see it, we need to remove the last word from the national anthem.
3
@Mike "I wonder if those apologists would be of such mind if their child or other loved one had been murdered on 9/11."
Yes, I would. Because I believe in justice, and I don't suffer from amnesia.
You seem to have missed the part about how torture was ineffective. It did not thwart attacks. This is documented, it's in the CIA's report. And that's been known for centuries.
There's nothing new or different about terrorism or asymmetric warfare. They are ancient. The US has experience with both going back to the 19th century at least. For example, just over a century ago the US waterboarded Filipinos (and massacred all the males over age 10!) to counter their asymmetric insurgency in the wake of the Spanish-American War. Those tactics were wrong then, and wrong now.
4
The use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” was one of the charges leveled against the Gestapo during its trial after World War Two. It was convicted as a criminal organization, even though its defense attorney countered that the use of such techniques was rare, legal at the time, and always had to be approved by the proper authority.
7
This is beyond obscene. Nothing, absolutely nothing justifies this type of behavior from any branch of our government. The people responsible should be tried for war crimes. Including Haspel.
16
The White House made the argument you need someone capable of being tough on terrorists to lead the CIA. Does that really mean has the ability to endorse torture and willingly violate the rule of law for expedience's sake? Remind me what separates the good guys from the bad guys again.
8
@trudds
Bad guys fly planes into buildings and burn innocent prisoners alive in cages
Good guys waterboard the bad guys to extract information that can be used to stop them from flying planes into buildings and burning innocent prisoners alive in cages
Hope that helps, Chief
Torture is never acceptable for any reason. If our military personal were ever tortured, there would be a huge public outcry. Why would it be different for other countries?
16
In a situation where someone is associated with a group plotting mass murder against innocent civilians in this country or any country for that matter, I have no problem with the United States using the tactics outlined here. I have yet to hear of a situation that was truly torture. This is inducing stress and threatening them. Simulating drowning. Torture was what happened to soldiers and spies during Vietnam and the world wars. Torture was what Saddam Hussein did to his political prisoners with battery acid or with car batteries attached to body parts. This "water treatment" should not be used on every prisoner, but in the face of an imminent mass murder 9/11 scale attack, we would be irresponsible to tie the hands of those in a position to prevent it. I believe we should be better than those that would seek to murder us, but we should not fight with both hands tied behind our backs.
14
@Mark "Waterboarding isn't really torture" is absurd. It is one of the techniques employed "during Vietnam and the world wars." It is not "simulated" drowning; when you're lying back and water is poured on a rag stuffed in your mouth you are actually drowning, and will die if your captors don't stop in time. In addition, waterboarding was just one of many techniques routinely used on detainees, including sleep deprivation, blasting loud music 24/7, beatings, putting guns to their heads, confining them in coffins (sometimes with insects to crawl on them), threatening to kill their families, and more. All of this is documented. If that's not torture, nothing is.
The Geneva conventions are clear that nothing can justify this. But you would apply it merely for being "associated" with a group plotting mass murder? That is inhuman. Rather, it shows you fail to regard others as human--and that failure, that othering, more than anything else, is what leads to tolerance of torture. We tell ourselves we're making the hard but necessary choice when we would be outraged were it done to us. It's not maturity, it is hypocrisy.
4
@Mark
The end justifies the means. Seems like everybody operates on this level now. Once, not so long ago, everybody realized this was simply wrong. And despite all the bible thumping we hear coming out of the US nowadays, not too many people mention the golden rule that once was message #1 from the Good Book - Do unto others as you'd have done onto you.
Experts - not you, not me - will be the first to tell you; 'torture' techniques do not yield reliable results. Its victims don't tell the truth - they tell you whatever you want them to. In the end, one gets false leads which are worse than no leads.
Among the many problems with your train of thought - do you want US soldiers to be treated this way too? What's good for one, is good for the other. Ask Senator McCain what he thinks. In the past we have condemned and hung foreign officers for resorting to torture. Double standard?
"But these are different times, you might say". No they are not. That's an easy justification you give yourself to accept heinous behaviour.
5
Please consult the comment above by the Vietnam vet who can attest to the fact that waterboarding is, in fact, torture. If you think NOT employing torture is fighting with both hands behind your back, you are taking a very, very narrow view of what power is.
6
Gina Haspel's tenure at the CIA will likely not be one of the highlights of the agency's leadership history, nor of the Senate's sagacity in confirming her appointment by Trump.
So far, Trump's picks requiring Senate confirmation have been uniformly second-rate and lower, the latter more often than the former. And the Senate has failed in fulfilling is constitutional responsibilities.
35
@Glen Individuals of stature and quality have little interest in working for -- or being associated with -- the administration of the repulsive Mr. Trump.
6
The question really should be whether Ms.Haspel performed within the bounds of the law as laid out by the congress. It’s very easy for politicians to push the law enforcement agencies under the bus and not take any responsibility for the fact that they did look the other way when these practices were going on. The Obama justice department concurred with Bush’s that these practices of enhanced interrogation were not illegal. So why throw dirt on Haspel now. Hold the intelligence oversight committees and justice department accountable. Not the guy at the end of the line charged with executing the policies that look bad with the perspective of hindsight.
26
@Abacus the person at the end of the line has a moral responsibility too
1
@Abacus "The memos included an August 2002 legal opinion signed by top Justice Department lawyer Jay Bybee that provided the specific authorization for waterboarding that the CIA would use against three detainees -- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri -- in 2002 and 2003."
The investigation concluded that no charges would be forthcoming. They did not say they were legal.
1
@Abacus Yeah, she was only following orders. We've heard that defense before and it didn't work then.
Why does the Times persist in using the phrase “enhanced interrogation” outside of quotation marks? This was a euphemism employed by the Bush administration for torture. Torture which is illegal and immoral and disturbingly fine with more than zero of the previous commenters. “Enhanced interrogation” without reference to the dishonesty of the phrase only does torturers’ work for them by normalizing and uncritically accepting bad faith. It is not a failure of objectivity to refer to torture as torture but it is a failure of integrity to use the unqualified euphemism of the torturers.
169
“Enhanced interrogation techniques” (also translated as “sharpened interrogation”) was the Gestapo’s own euphemism for torture. That is the moral plane occupied by the CIA under George W. Bush.
3
Gina Haspel is an unremovable stain on our country's (former) honor. She, and other Republicans who implemented, knew of, and/or supported various forms of torture under George W. Bush should be driven out of town on a rail, not put/kept in positions of power.
150
@ALB
IMO that applies to all republicans period. Every single one of them abdicated their duty as citizens before the end of the first reagan admin.
5
@ALB she is a stain and the democrats that voted for her confirmation . They all need to go
2
Before I deployed to Vietnam in 1967 I completed SERE survival, evasion, resistance, escape training. During that training I was water boarded, let no one be in doubt, it is torture.
274
@Brendan Varley
Thank you for your first hand account.
2
@Brendan Varley Thank-you for your service and your courage. It is important to point out that "doctors" from the SERE school at Fairchild Airforce Base oversaw some of the CIA's torture.
This type of behavior, and probably worse, will occur again because Obama made the decision to immunize the torturers, and those who condoned and ordered, it from prosecution. We hanged Japanese after WWII for this same behavior. It has always been considered torture and always been illegal, no matter what twisted logic the twisted mind of John Woo tried to come up with to "legalize" it as ordered by Cheney/Bush. Allowing this behavior to not only go unpunished, but even rewarded, sends the clear message and there is no limit to what will be "forgiven" in the name of "security". Shame on us for allowing it.
197
@Jack Robinson
Where did the Obama reference come from? The torture being discussed occurred during the Bush Administration.
8
@Jack Robinson
Yes, centrist Democrats made Trump possible and are enabling him.
2
@Jack Robinson
And John Woo teachers law now at Berkeley. Irony or ironies. He should have been disbarred long ago, and all those who came up with the legal, ethical and medical underpinnings of this policy should lose any accreditation they might have.
Such vile behavior should not be condoned, sanctioned, or rewarded.
2
While Republicans rant at Pelosi's imaginary malfeasance, Haspel and her associates are actual war criminals. Democrats say nothing. It is not enough to say that history will judge her. The Democrats have to make history and if they take power, indict her.
34
Waterboarding is not torture. It's an interrogation technique and it is used in the training of special forces warriors. Torture is what Hezbollah and Iranian operatives did to CIA station chief Bill Buckley in Beirut in the 80s. If you read accounts of what they did to him, your skin will crawl.
Buckley's torture also proves that torture works. It is nothing but a politically correct, bald-faced lie to argue otherwise. They extracted over 300 names as well as an enormous cache of secrets from him.
11
Dougal E- Waterboarding is torture. There's no question about that in any part of the civilized world.
10
A lot of comments are decrying America's lost of our "high moral ground".
Being able to claim the high moral ground has always been a bit over rated.
5
The description of the CIA's walling technique herein does not really capture its cruelty.
What is "walling"?
People are not "shoved" against the wall. This article apparently uses the CIA's own watered down term of "shoved."
Detainees are not "shoved." They are slammed violently.
According to the International Committee of the Red Cross, as reported by detainees, the CIA's technique involved encircling a person's neck with a collar and the collar is used to slam the person against the wall.
This is criminal torture.
Please, New York Times, do not sugar-coat what happens.
By parroting government terms, like "shove," "walling technique," and "watering technique" you do your readers an injustice.
Walling is collaring a person like a dog and slamming them against walls via the collar.
Report, but do it boldly, and unvarnished. Please. In very real ways, our democracy depends upon it.
39
@Tony Glover
I read the NY Times because it has the most lines to read between.
But the NY Times is part of the global corporate media that pushes corporate interests above the national interest.
They are not liberal media. They are neoliberal media.
The is little difference between neoliberals and neocons. Remember this when you read the Times.
1
The moral: bring shame to the US and you will be richly rewarded by the US government.
16
@Max duPont Almost. I'd put it a little differently: You can get away with anything, no matter how depraved, destructive, or dysfunctional, if you do it in the name of defending the country. Ask Dick Cheney.
The press must not legitimize a torture program by referring to it in the torturers’ own euphemisms: “...the C.I.A. enhanced interrogation program...” If the press must use those words it should be done thusly “so-called ‘enhanced interrogation program’.” But it should be called “torture.”
This also applies to the genocide that despots are perpetrating. For the press to repeat their phrase “ethnic cleansing,” instead of calling the crime genocide, legitimizes the term, in part because we have all been taught by birth that cleansing is good.
11
If we can torture them then they can torture us. So why and what are we fighting for and against? What are our values in moral contrast to theirs? Why is this war criminal the head of the C.I.A.? Why werren't George W. Bush and members of his Cabinet and staff charged as war criminals for this torture and other acts? " No justice no peace".
42
@Blackmamba Exactly right; where there is no justice no peace can be expected. The C.I.A. has a dark past throughout the world, even assisting murderous regimes when the 'threat' of Communism was raised, and causing untold suffering and killings, especially when U.S. interests were at risk. Machiavellian, the end justifying the means, right? And Haskel just a useful idiot doing as she was told?
1
In removing any reference to human rights in determining the foreign policy of the United States, Trump has the distinction of being the most truthful president in modern history. Unfortunately.
9
The redacted cable is sickening to read. As they say, history is written by the winners, and that's why none of our people are being prosecuted for these horrendous war crimes.
22
Click through and read the cables. It's much worse than even the article shows. Note the many times they applied "the walling technique," which is slamming the detainee against a wall, in addition to "the water technique," waterboarding. All this was clearly and explicitly forbidden by the Geneva conventions, without exception, but Bush's hack lawyers, including Bybee and Yoo, tried to give it legal cover.
On top of that, we've known for years that torture tends to get suspects to say what they think interrogators want to hear, not the truth. After all, these techniques were recommended to the CIA by Drs. Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell, who were paid over $80M of our tax dollars to repackage torture techniques used by North Korea to extract false confessions from American POW's.
Notice the combination of gross disregard for law and morality and gross incompetence: trademarks of the Trump Administration, too. So it's no surprise they'll, for example, torment and terrorize parents by abducting their children.
20
@Jeremy
Since you read actual documents, you probably already know this, but Thomas Blanton and the National Security Archives at George Washington University do amazing work declassifying government documents so that we can know what our government is doing.
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu
1
The reality is most people don't care one bit whether the CIA tortured Al Qaeda terrorists. If the CIA got information out of them, so much the better. But even if they didn't, many people will view the torture as a well-deserved form of punishment for evil criminals. They may not admit it, since the preferred form of communication is virtue signaling, but that's just the reality.
9
@JB, the reality is neither you nor Gina Haspel know whether the people she tortured were evil criminals. Haspel tortured them because it was a convenient and she was afraid.
Maybe you’ll be subjected to torture some day when you’re at someone else’s mercy, and they’re afraid. I hope not, but unfortunately that kind of thing tends to come around.
1
@BobMeinetz Is there any evidence this guy was innocent? Or is that just a red herring to avoid the issue?
@JB
"most people don't care"...the canard of the apologist; like: "everyone steals"; "everyone does it"...I do not believe that most people don't care; but even if true, it is no argument...
1
No current or former U.S. officials have been indicted for approving or participating in torture. But those who were responsible should be held accountable, including George W. Bush.
20
There are thousands upon thousands of hard-working, dedicated civil servants employed by the US government working hard to deliver necessary services and keep our country working while our elected and appointed political office holders have become almost worthless. They lack integrity and courage. They make decisions based on fear or self-interest. If they are not removed from office our deeply-flawed democracy will collapse altogether.
Who will rid us of these turbulent priests? That responsibility lies directly in the hands of every eligible voter in the country.
17
"Agency leaders and officers were racing to uncover what they feared were large-scale plots against the United States in the chaotic months and years after the Sept. 11 attacks."
9/11 was an unprecedented event with which we had no experience. Our fears were real. We did not dismember, decapitate or throw anyone off a building. The methods used by our government may have been extreme but faced with similar circumstances I would not condemn the use of them again.
9
Evidence shows that torture does not work to gain accurate, actionable intelligence. Moreover, governments should not lower themselves to the level of a barbaric group of extremist terrorists who lack humanity and decency in every sense. There is a reason for the Geneva Convention and for human rights standards by which the civilized world should continue to abide, and I say that as the spouse of a veteran.
20
@TED338
My father was an Allied airman who was captured and tortured by the SS. My whole family is still paying for that torture.
Sometimes you have to fight with a 'disadvantage'--like refusing to use torture--because it's the right thing to do. If you don't, you've lost what you were fighting for.
4
@TED338
1. These method have been proven to not work, they just help interrogators deal with their feelings of distress and act out their need for revenge.
2. Dismembering, decapitation and throwing people off a building are tactics used by terrorists because their goal is to terrorize an entire population, knowing that there are too few of them to be able to get into a military conflict with a government and win. Governments have a powerful military and police, so they don't need spectacular and horrible acts in order to make people afraid of them, THAT's why they don't do this - not out of one or the other higher moral standard.
1
If you're just now thinking "are we the bad guys?" you have not been paying attention to last few decades.
31
It won't belong before these so-called enhanced interrogation techniques are used on Americans (i.e. your family) by the militarized police in our surveillance-Police State.
The 2018 FISA under Trump was not only extended, but greatly expanded. It is “a bill to give the Trump administration greater authority to spy on Americans, immigrants, journalists, dissidents and everyone else” (as described by the ACLU).
The carte blanche to fight terrorism everywhere (entirely caused by our State Terrorism) includes your home.
Your movements (via cameras) and communications (via secret mass data collection exposed by Snowden (who was vilified for his courageous act)) are stored along with your metadata.
You don't feel it, but it's happening right now.
Everyone - and every family - has a Risk Score. What's yours?
If you're not close to the torture score, you're one of them.
14
Does it not occur to us that we create more haters by our methods? Our behaviors recruit terrorists. And they include the next generations.
9
@geebee
And our behavior creates our own home-grown terrorists: the torturers.
2
The only person who deserves to “suffer the consequences of their deception” is Trump. Since the US is using this tactic already, time to have Mueller start using “the water treatment”.
5
@Corbin, as vile as Trump and his band of amateur Fascists are, if we stoop to revenge we lose. They win.
In due process lies our salvation.
1
One can only conclude that Gina Haspel, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, is a vile human being, who continues to be untruthful in her public testimony about the torture of captured Al Qaeda members. Her action were and are indefensible, and should shock the conscious of anyone not wholly amoral. That she should still be a position of power and responsibility is vulgar.
Americans would have been rightly indignant if the Germans or Japanese installed someone into a position of power who had tortured servicemen during World War II, and I think Americans should be equally repulsed to do so themselves.
20
I am ashamed of our country after reading this and want to know why we held no one accountable for these atrocities.
11
Because of self serving politicians and a false sense of power.
2
@WalterZ ask obama. probably his most monumental failure. that, and letting the bankers walk.
3
The actions of this country in response to 9/11 have destroyed every drop of sympathy and goodwill expressed by the world community over the shocking and tragic attack. We have shown cowardice and lack of faith in the strength of our ideals and institutions and a squandering of treasure, human treasure by our outrageous beyond the pale reaction. We are still at war and threatening the world with more. There were a few in the world who celebrated 9/11, but a tiny minority. Today there will be very few to cry for us when this self- inflicted disaster comes to fruition.
20
The US is still chasing the living to punish the renegades who died conducting the 9/11 attack.
3
These Democrats voted for a known torturer, Gina Haspel, to be CIA Director.
Senator Joe Donnelly, of Indiana
Senator Heidi Heitkamp, of North Dakota
Senator Joe Manchin, of West Virginia
Senator Bill Nelson, of Florida
Senator Jeanne Shaheen, of New Hampshire
Senator Mark Warner, of Virginia.
This is an example of how "centrist" Democrats get more done for Republicans and their twisted, violent view of the world than they do for American workers.
Torture is illegal and immoral. The U.S. prosecuted Japanese commanders for waterboarding after WWII. The Obama administration should have prosecuted everyone who was involved in it.
Now we have a Republican president who is capable of torturing American citizens, just as a Chief of Police in Chicago used to do.
By supporting Trump 90% of the Republican Party show that they are for lying, bullying, white supremacists, and torture.
When Democrats compromise with them, Republicans don't move to the center, they become more extreme. 25 years of begging Republican for compromise and helping them pass bad legislation and confirm bad nominees, doesn't mean that they don't call you socialists or investigate fake scandals for years, or that they vote for good legislation.
It just means that they treat you like suckers and elected Trump.
Any vote for a Trump nominee is s vote for ripping up the Constitution of the United States of America. Compromising with Republicans helps them shred the Constitution!
STOP
16
Let's start at the top on accountability: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld,Powell, Rice: Lawyers Gonzales, Haynes, Yoo, Bybee and then democrats for giving a thumbs-up to Haspel to head the CIA!
20
Ms. Haspel and Bush and those responsible for the torture should spend the rest of their lives in prison.
19
Why the shock? Did we think we were getting Nelson Mandela to run the agency when the Senate confirmed?
Haspel was the key element in the torture doctrine of war criminal Bush 43. She had the option to say no, resign quietly, or blow the whistle. She took the reins and just followed orders. How much pushback will the CIA provide under the current occupant?
The best we can wish for now will be a new release of soothing euphemisms for thumbscrews.
6
Gina should never have been confirmed. Anyone like her
"I was only following orders" Is not the type of person we
want in charge of the CIA. The "only following orders"
defense has been throughly examined in the trials of Nazi
war criminals and found wanting.We don't need people
like her that are incapable of recognizing things that are
not right in an government organization.She said that torture
should never have been used.Then why did she let it be used
when she knew it was wrong?
11
The "Queen of Torture" has risen to the very top. Who said crime does not pay?
12
What happened to “al Qaeda” — the use of just “Qaeda” seems out of order?
- concerned editor
3
What we just read was a description of dozens if not hundreds even thousands of our fellow citizens using the Constitution for toilet paper. Ms Haspel is a traitor. We have a traitor running the CIA.
There is nothing about any part of what went on that any one of them could not have stopped cold by simply doing their duty as an American Citizen or even just as a human being to refuse to carry out these illegal orders.
Every member of the W administration is a war criminal including the current illegitimate nominee for the SCOTUS.
Our nation is one of ideals. There is no stone version of this nation that can be protected. We either stand up for the principles of which that ideal is made or we lose it.
19
Such is life in an inmate-run madhouse.
5
Gina Haspel; another great Trump pick. Corruption runs rampant in Trumpworld. Vote out GOP for change. Ray Sipe
14
The banality of evil again assumes power.
11
We all know it's torture. NYT, why do you continually use euphemisms instead of the REAL words, it's not enhanced interrogation technique, it's TORTURE!!
And the American Psychological Association just this week tried to ram through another change to their long standing policy of NO psychologists at illegal black ops sites spearheaded by the military psychologists in the organization. Luckily sensible ethical and hardworking psychologists and human rights organizations have been fighting this move multiple times for years, and persevered. Again. Psychologists should NEVER be involved in torture. It explodes our first ethical principle. First do no harm. There is NO grey area in this.
We all knew Haspel was involved, and a horrible choice, and yet this unethical hateful cruel xenophobic "administration" rammed another appointment through that is anti human being and unethical and immoral.
The whole crew sickens me to my core. Resist and persist! Democrats elected in EVERY race no matter how local or small!!!!
77
@Anonymous
A very germane article from 2007
https://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2007/05/-versch-auml-rfte...
@Anonymous
The term"first do no harm" does not appear to be in any medical or professional oaths. And sometime one has to do a lesser harm to accomplish a greater good.
1
@Anonymous
Five Democrats voted for Haspel.
Not every Democrat deserves our votes. Voting for Democrats that support Republican policy helps Republicans more than it helps us.
1
Very disturbing to me that in our so-called 'democracy' of 'principles' none of these people has been punished or prosecuted for conducting torture.
The psychologists should have lost their practice, and Yoo and Bush should both be in jail as war criminals.
54
@dmckj
Perhaps the fact that even you recognize it as a "so-called democracy" is exactly why you should not be surprised, or shocked. Oddly, of course this country's leaders have principles,but perhaps not many, if any, shared by you.
1
@dmckj Remember Yoo's took a professorship at Berkley, probably teaching ethics LOL, and his cohort Bybee was appointed a Federal appeal court judge. Both richly rewarded for their lack of principles.
us army 1969-1971/caifornia jd
2
Imagine if such action had been taken against an American prisoner. What would the United States government have done? What is our guiding philosophy:
1. All's fair in love and war?
2. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you?
3. International laws apply to everyone but us?
59
@Tom Q
I am against torture. In response to the question of what the USA would do if these actions were taken against an american prisoner. They cut their heads off our citizens.
1
@Tom Q
Nope it was- "Imagine the worst thing you can possibly imagine. Got it? OK now act as if it was real.
They basically kept asking some version of an apocalyptic question like "What if there was a nuclear bomb in downtown DC or NY or LA and this guy knew??? and no one had the sense to point out that if they knew he knew they could also know where it was by the same method or that they were inventing terrifying fantasies to justify doing what they knew was wrong.
1
@Pat
Who is "they"?
I believe you are speaking of individuals who are part of a criminal gang not nation states.
Waterboarding is torture. The Senate should never have confirmed Haspell and the International Court of Justice at the Hague should issue a worldwide warrant for her extradition or arrest on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
47
How nice that Trump chose and the GOP rubber-stamped Haspel to head the CIA. I have lots of doubts about how she will handle her job. Trump wants to start using torture again. It makes real sense in his mind to put a woman in charge of the CIA who obviously has experience with and an affinity for it. Aren't we lucky...
21
@Meg
Five Democrats voted for her too.
Democrats that vote with Republicans are not reasonable. They are traitors to the People and he Constitution.
Apart from continuing the Times' unaccountable practice of employing CIA advertising slogans ("enhanced interrogation program") as factual descriptions of practices it acknowledges are torture, the authors of this piece make a startling unsupported assumption.
They claim that "the excesses and missteps that surrounded the C.I.A. enhanced interrogation program occurred in large measure because the agency had no experience or expertise in interrogation".
In fact, the glee and enthusiasm with which Dick Cheney and GWB spoke of this "program", and the resistance in the WH to discontinuing the torture in the case reported here, suggests more than poor information.
You could that incompetence, but there are stronger words for people with these inclinations.
28
The tragic events surrounding the war that Ms. Haskell participated arise predictably I would suggest when the popular vote is overly manipulated and/or ignored; consider the arc of history since Al Gore's presidency and how the will of the American people was stolen by morally bankrupt, political handlers running violent mobs in Florida.
Americans did not have any interest in Iraq, but the bankers and GOP senior patrons wanted the oil money; so they lied. But it was not a small lie, and certainly not a lie intended to help the people in the USA. That war cost a lot of American lives, physically in Iraq and emotionally in the U.S...
Now, let's contemplate the current president and the same old GOP doing the same old routine to make America a bigger, badder, richer, a far more self-righteous empire, but with more racism, conflict and fear...And while we're at it, let's contemplate an arms war in space.
Has there ever been a good or just war; clearly, avoid war. So someone tell the Republicans to stop threatening war every month, esp against our allies, as does the current political model of the Trump&co.
The waning years of an empire, know panic and confusion, perhaps politicians cannot act any differently in times like these. But the people can...American people are stepping up and will lead if given a chance, if given a fair election.
10
She was nominated precisely because of her infamous conduct. She was confirmed by passivity and casuistry in the Senate of the United States, conduct especially infamous for lacking her excuse of being in a rush. That is the history made now, every day, by this government.
35
Haspel should be removed for lying under oath. There is no recourse. The article even says that the CIA had no experience with interrogation metods.
Torture turns the torturer into a monster sadist and doesn't get good information. The victim will say anything for it to stop.
Torture is never, ever indicated - except as revenge against an adversary and pain deliberately inflected on another human being. It is totally infective.
61
But for the Republicans, Haspel should have never been confirmed.
11
@Debbie
But for five Democrats that also bored for her....
Arrest her, arrest her now. Gina Haspel lied to Congress, she lied to the American people. She is unfit to serve as the director of the CIA. I see evil in her face, derangement, moral decay.
7
I don't have a problem with water boarding.
They water boarded that Khalid Sheik Mohamed terrorist over 180 times and got vital information out of him. He's in jail now, no worse for wear.
10
His torturers are the "worse for wear": they have indulged in their lust to become subhuman moral trash.
7
@MIKEinNYC Torture is not an effective means of getting useful information. I offer as evidence the fact that torture resulted in people admitting they were witches. People will say whatever they think the torturer wants to hear to make the pain stop. Torture is inhuman, ineffective, and I hope sometime soon un-American.
5
@MIKEinNYC
No. The only thing vital they got out of these folks was their life or mental health. They did not get any vital intelligence from anyone of their victims most of whom were entirely innocent of any crime.
3
Besides Defense Secretary Mattis, is there anyone serving Trump who isn’t a terrible person?
9
So far, compared with Bush and his thugs, who left hundreds of thousands of civilians dead, and counting, Trump is a silly clown putting on an act, while Wall Street and himself cash in.
15
@Pablo Fischer
Trump is more than capable of torturing Americans.
Don't underestimate Trump's cruelty.
Immediately after September 11, 2001 the nation was shocked and afraid. The CIA had little or no experience in extracting information from terrorists. We're not a perfect nation and one of that nature simply doesn't exist. Those in control of government at the time consisted of many that thought they knew the answer to information acquisition from people that killed innocents. Some still believe the interrogation used was moral and legal, including the idiot in the White House. The events of 9/11 were horrific and new and the agents tasked with protecting the nation under unimaginable pressure did what they did not with joy and lust for torture but because there was no real policy in place, other than decisions made by an inept administration. I believe Haspel when she says it was a bad decision. I doubt she'd do it again. We should all remember a CIA field operative, never even recognized by their own government and operating in extremely different conditions, tasked with protecting the nation are people who make mistakes. I'm not going to throw an entire agency under the bus for the mistakes or misguided policies of an administration that probably should have never existed given the nature of how they even came to be. It was NOT the CIA who crashed civilian air liners into those buildings that day. We learn as we go in our attempts to make a more perfect union and some bad judgment calls have to be corrected along the way.
7
@Robert Westwind Then again, the CIA wasn't born yesterday. They have had decades to contemplate the ethics, use and utility of torture. It has to have been an ongoing conversation, and they most certainly had to have policies and practices in place regarding its use or non use. To be unprepared would have been a betrayal of the public trust. So, I'm sorry, but it is ridiculous to imagine a CIA operative standing there saying "which way does the board go" when confronted with the task of waterboarding a prisoner. In addition, the government had full warning of the impending assault of 9/11, but chose to ignore it. That is the real war crime. 3,000 plus civilians lost their lives due to the criminal incompetence of the GW Bush Administration. And then Bush et al. threw the CIA under the bus. 'Do our dirty work and then we'll blame you for it.' By all means, let's honor the work these agents do with no thanks or recognition. Let's also acknowledge the scars they bear for being forced to inflict pain and misery on other people. However, let's also not pretend that none of them was ready and quite willing to do so.
3
@Robert Westwind You ignore the fact they straight up violated our own laws and treaties with the torture plan. So, as they say, ignorance of the law is no excuse, and those participating from the president on down should have been prosecuted.
us army 1969-1971/california jd
2
@Robert Westwind
“The CIA had little or no experience in extracting information from terrorists.”
Please don’t be naive. Have you never heard about the Phoenix Program the CIA conducted in Vietnam? Never heard or read about CIA support for death squads in South America such as Pinochet’s in Chile? What about the terrorist “Contras” in Nicaragua? And don’t forget the MKUltra program. The US is the world’s worst violator of human rights around the globe and has been since the creation of the CIA after WWII. No other nation even comes close. When it comes to undermining, subverting, overthrowing, and invading other countries around the globe the US has no peer competitors. We are the evil empire.
1
“The CIA had no experience or expertise in interrogation”. Then why was the agency tasked with this when there were others who had both the experience and the expertise? After all the knowledge that torture was an ineffective method to gather accurate information was already known elsewhere. The claim that their methods were both harsh & effective has been consistently refuted yet the apologists for the agency and officials behind the “torture” policies continue to claim otherwise. Another Bush administration failure that continues to haunt us to this day.
12
@John Chastain
The CIA also outsourced torture. Individuals from Arab countries were caught by the CIA in Europe, drugged and transported for torturing in eg. Egypt, Libya and other client countries. Some of these cases where innocents were tortured have been described in the Eurpoean press..
7
And trump believes “torture works.”
As an American, as a human, I am disgusted.
Even IF torture “works” it is always an abomination.
Is there any more evidence people need to determine that trump is a fascist? Leading a fascist, white nationalist movement?
22
This is why all of our chickens have come home roost. It’s unconscionable that no one at the CIA has ever been held accountable for their heinous conduct. And now one of the most notorious torturers has been promoted to lead this tainted intelligence agency. Only in America.
25
@Zareen
"Only in America"? You really believe that?
Nothing like a bit of Sunshine to disinfect the CIA operatives who think they can act with impunity.
We are NOT a third world country. If you think that these actions are "acceptable" you can't, in any sense of the word, refer to yourself as a "patriot".
32
I agree, and it is my opinion that since the actions taken by this group violated the Geneva Convention, they should be brought to justice and tried for war crimes. Never should we allow ourselves to sink to this level again.
21
You would call me a liberal. And I can't stand the thief, liar, coward and pervert Trump. I also think torture is probably ineffective most of the time. All that said, there are isolated occasions when the use of force is justified. Most if not all the people reading this paper are here today because of the force this country applied in WWII. Direct beneficiaries. We can have this argument at the coffee shop, but it's all academic until people start dying.
7
We tried Germans and Japanese as war criminals for waterboarding POWs. Don't forget that
Another shining example of a Trump bottom feeder. She's now well placed to deal with protesting and recalcitrant Americans that criticize and cross his holiness, the president. Journalists should be wary.
14
The late Christopher Hitchens, while he was still employed by Vanity Fair, purposely underwent waterboarding in order to find out for himself whether or not the process qualified as ‘torture’, which Hitchens himself doubted prior to the experience.
It took less than ten seconds for his mind to be changed. Torture is not an effective method of extracting information.
https://youtu.be/4LPubUCJv58
28
@ubique
See also right wing radio host Mancow Muller get waterboarded and reluctantly call it torture:
https://youtu.be/KKfEjdAkmbs
2
A simpler way to assess people is to ask them for their views on death penalty.
I would be very surprised to learn that anyone around Trump is against it.
2
Careerists at work. I remember an interview with Geoge Tenet where he essentially said he would do anything to keep his job.
17
@Carol lee “Slam Dunk” Tenet!! He wears his Presidential Medal of Freedom when grocery shopping. With flip flops.Things can get snippy when he rounds the end of an aisle and there, in a Hawaiian shirt and cargo pants, is Colin Powell.
3
Its good to remember during the time of Trump when we have supposedly lost our moral compass and the Constitution no longer protects us that the Bush/Cheney team was well on the way to authoritarian measures.
Trump is horrible, he may be our worse president ever. His policies like leaving the Paris accords and destroying the EPA will have a lasting legacy. Caging little children to punish brown skinned mothers is one of the most reprehensible acts this government has taken in years. The list goes on and it is huge.
But yet there is Bush who also lied (or was deceived?) Lies that killed and maimed thousands of our troops and hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan. Isis is his ever lasting gift to the world. Trump has a long way to go to catch up to Bush in the killing department.
While this time with the Mueller investigation and Trump's willingness to be controlled by Russia seems out of place we need to remember that the 8 years of Bush was also out of control. They were establishment so it just looked more "institutional". Mission accomplished.
I have been a volunteer with a torture survivor NGO for many years. Torture is never acceptable and it does serious damage. For those tempted to think that some deserve to be tortured it is important to be aware that a government that turns to torture of the guilty immediately begins to torture the innocent. It dehumanizes.
Haspel should resign.
50
@Duffy Trump was elected because Bush didn’t go far enough as far as the Right is concerned. Obama’s corrections could not be allowed to stand as they represent to the Right the end of “white” cultural hegemony (which they would care to understand as *not* white supremacy, but that is just a “white lie they tell themselves.”)
It is impossible for equality to be achieved when a majority sees it as an existential threat.
5
@Stourley Kracklite Do not confuse the assassin in chief, Obama, with some benevolent figure. He too, carved out a torture exception in the small print, so JSOC and CIA could drive a semi truck through it.
Remember, it was Obama, not Bush II, that authorized the extra-judicial killings of three american citizens without a trial or due process, just on his say so.
If such an action isn't King like, I do not know what would be.
us army 1969-1971/california jd
Americans can never again claim to hold the moral high ground when evidence such as this proves to the contrary. Disgraceful and shameful behavior from the highest ranks.
22
It's a shame that Bush, Cheney et al were never head responsible for their war crimes.
The CIA has a long history of aberrant, horrific behaviour and should be disbanded.
23
@todji
Republicans spent 8 years on White Water and 8 years on Benghazi, but Democrats gave the Bush administration a pass for their crimes.
Centrist Democrats made Trump possible.
Gina Haspel is a perfect fit in Trump's autocractic Oligarchy. Children in cages, no health care or protective regulations for our citizens, polluted water, humans waterboarded...perfect fit.
79
Gina Haspell should be immiediately removed from her post at the CIA and delivered to the Hague for prosecution. These are war crimes, plain and simple. She knew. She condoned. She authorized. She's guilty.
146
And so should those above her pay grade who ordered and knowingly condoned her action.
8
This article sickened me. Man’s basic inhumanity to man. It is a sad sight indeed when the limbic system overtakes the neo cortex.
37
Still wondering what pro torture folks are going to say when water boarding is used against Americans.
Would it be torture then?
63
@Dan
They will be doing the torturing.
1
Ms. Haspel and the CIA have lost all their humanity.
18
That's assuming they originally had any. And what message does this send to the rest of humanity when this woman torturer continues to advance after breaking international law. Is there no limit to their shame?
9
“‘Woman’ torturer”?
What’s your point?
1
And the US Senate turned a blind eye to the Torturer in Chief now CIA Director.
God bless America......
44
What I always find interesting is that the CIA traces 9/11 and other events to Saudi's and yet GW Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld and the US Congress seem to ok the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. So the US has effectively destroyed the MiddleEast for the actions of Saudi Nationals. It made no sense to declare war on millions for the actions of a few Saudi's. This is the abysmal failure of US foreign policy. There did not need to be a War on Terror. There needed to be a surgical approach to deal with an issue that was caused by US failed foreign policy in the first place. The US will never be successful in Afghanistan, joint both the British and Russians as failed military excursions into Afghanistan. The US is going to pay for this failed war on terror for years to come. It is destroying the fabric of US society and the lives of the military who have paid for this war while the politicians go on there merry way, not having to truly face the consequences of their poor decisions, leaving that to future generations.
38
@jeff bunkers
It's not surprising. Saudis have OIL. We "need" that, so a gigantic blind eye is turned towards their culpability in the events leading up to / occurring on 9/11.
15
@jeff bunkers
The Saudis are now terrorizing the world chutney of Yemen with the full support and Mii kissy equipment of the USA. Half of the hospitals are destroyed, a million people have cholera,the last port where relief suppliers is being bombed, and they bombed a school bus full of children the other day.
Saudi Arabia is the world's leading exporter of extreme, violent Islamic schools, and our "second most important ally in the Middle East.
I am convinced that the corporate interests that control U.S. policy now supports international terrorism because it helps them sell constant warts around the world. And these wars are designed to expand their profits at the expense of the citizens of foreign countries, and at the expense of our troops.
3
@Paul P.
Iraq has oil too. Why did we attack Iraq, not Saudi Arabia?
A dark chapter in American history.
Torture has always occurred in this country on a non official or none sanctioned basis.
This is the first time in our history that it became an official policy of our gov't.
As Lincoln taught us punish only the worst re war crimes, crimes against humanity, don't start a witch hunt,
The admitted war criminal Bush 2 should be standing in front of The Hague Tribunal in Belgium.
18
@Paul In the past, the U.S. has outsourced torture.
2
@Jorge Rolon Not sure what your point is....?
@Jorge Rolon-Thank you for your reply. I am sure you are technically correct but my example I believe it was the only example of the USA doing it with official, open sanction of a sitting President.
I guess were supposed to do a mea culpa for 9/11. If the CIA did what the article says, they were doing their job, and I thank them from the bottom of my heart because there have been no other 9/11’s since.
5
@Ed
Ed, for heaven's sake!
If the article exposed CIA rape chambers where officers raped the children of suspected terrorists in front of their fathers all in an effort to "get the truth" would that also have been acceptable? After all, there have been no other 9/11's since.
We fight over oil and religion while the planet warms. Our time is short.
8
Too bad you don’t have a crystal ball. If you think that it can’t happen again, you sadly miscalculate the memories of those who survive our brutality in the Middle East.
4
@Ed: just bc attacs following "9/11"
have not followed the exact same pattern
does not mean there have not been any.
my gov't., sadly enough, has agreed to violate its own
constitution + int'l. law by helping countless US drones
manage the earth's curvature on their way toward the
muslim world: 23,000 thrown on 6 countries in 1 year.
this, among others,
is one way to breed more anti-US | anti-west sentiment.
2
In the fullness of time, so long as there is anyone alive who participated in torture of other humans under the authority of our government, these secrets will come to light. Just like the swarm of elementary particles racing from collisions of energetic atoms studied by physicists, we all leave traces behind. The traces exist even if we would will them out of existence.
Ours is an imperfect species, but one capable of stuttering change, wandering between the mountain tops and the chasms, the Nuremberg Trials and the CIA's enhanced interrogations.
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." - Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
We can work for change and hope to speed it but we cannot compel it to happen when we pass through a maelstrom of chaos from external forces like 9/11 or internal forces like the willful destruction of norms brought to us now by greed and lust for power.
9
@Douglas McNeill The thing is that the arc is longer than the perpetrators’ lives.
1
Regardless to how terrible the deed, you and I lose if we tolerate torture.
This is not just about being kind to human beings, it's about the kind of world we want to live in. Torture is like a noxious smell. You can't use it without tainting the atmosphere.
In a few cases it may bring forth useful info that couldn't have been gotten otherwise. In most cases, the evidence is clear, it does not. In all cases, its use remains in the atmosphere and poisons everyone, increasing the number of people who believe they have reason to use similar tactics, thereby increasing our exposure to the dark side of human reality.
If you're pragmatic, as the argument for occasional use of torture is, do your +/- calculations in a timeframe that includes more than a month or a year. Look honestly at the dynamics created over time. You will see that if your goal is self-protection and reducing harm to yourself and your society, you cannot yield to the impulse to use torture, justified as it may seem.
7
I still don't understand what Haspel's role was in the treatment of Fatima Boudchar. Did she oversee that person's rendition directly?
Or was it more of a management thing -- did she set a quota for the number of pregnant women who should be abducted and tortured in a secret CIA-run prison in Thailand? If they processed fewer than 1 per year, was this a sign of being insufficiently vigilant in protecting America?
8
Terrorist attacks, like 9/11, and Climate Change that is causing desertification in Africa are not acts of nature but the consequences of human choices. Torture isn't the way to make better decisions if one wishes to prevent terrorist attacks in the future anymore than increasing tailpipe pollution will restore the environment. Haspel was wrong and unrepentant which makes her a problem, not a solution for CIA credibility which is rightfully under attack by both Trump and his crazies and the even crazier humanitarians.
8
As we sink lower and lower into the morass - Scott Pruitt, Devin Nunez, John Bolton, Brett Kavanagh, Chris Collins - is it really so shocking that we have an architect of torture running the CIA?
Our president supports the use of torture - even though it doesn't work - because it sounds tough. But he also supports deficit spending, tariffs - disguised taxes on his fellow Americans - lying to the American people on a daily basis, intriguing with Vladimir Putin, Roger Stone, and Julian Assange, to rig a presidential election in his favor.
And the beat goes on. Allegations have been made by Senator Bill Nelson - running against Trump acolyte Rick Scott in a hotly contested race - that Russians may have penetrated the voter registration infrastructure in Florida with an eye to swinging the election to Scott. Pushback from Republican sycophants is as vociferous as it is expected. It echoes Trump's assertions that the Russians had no influence on the election that put him in power.
So, what's a little torture in a secret prison in Thailand? A brutal and corrupt means to achieve a worthless end: that's a metaphor for the how and the where America will end up under the thumb of Trump.
14
Just an FYI,
Many on the Resistance - including past administration officials such as John Brennan, the former CIA director who regularly lambasts Trump for his mishandling of democracy and decency - defended Gina Haspel's nomination.
Five democrats voted Yes to install her, including the vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mike Warner.
What this underlines is that still, despite two decades of un-ending war; a destabilisation of the Middle East; countless dead, there are many who are still today willing to openly advocate for those who wanted to destroy video tapes of torture to promote the above.
27
@Mohamud Warsame I really think Dems need to think about this and vote out these people who do this in their name
3
This evil woman should not only be out of the office she holds, she should be in prison. The same is true for the lawyers who conjured up the legal fiction to give cover to this abomination. I am still angry to this day that President Obama and his AG did not prosecute these war criminals.
When I served in the Army we were trained in the laws of land warfare. In the course of training we were told explicitly that we do not torture, that torture does not work reliably, that it is a war crime and that we would be punished under military law (UCMJ) and quite possibly civil law.
We were also told of our nation's history, where General Washington declined to torture British prisoners of war under interrogation despite the fact that the British were torturing members of the Continental Army in ships in New York City. Our tradition of not using torture went back to the earliest days of our nation's fight for independence. It was well established in US, Military and International Law, yet John Yoo, David Addington and others conjured up an imaginary allowance. Alberto Gonzales described the Geneva Conventions as "quaint".
Finally, we were told that not torturing the enemy some degree increased the likelihood that they would surrender rather than fight to the death. If you as an enemy soldier think surrender will get you fair treatment that would make sense, as would the inverse.
88
Waterboarding was small potatoes.
The bigger war crime was the Bush family's "shock and awe" bombing, invasion, and war against Iraq. They not only knew there were no weapons of mass destruction, they exploited the American people's fear after 911 to try to make a lot of money on the war. It was mostly about stealing Iraqi oil.
And yes, John McCain became their enemy because he was so strongly against torture, for obvious reasons. If we torture our enemies, then they get to torture our troops, hence the need for Geneva Convention and other agreements on the conduct of participants in a conflict.
Hugh Massengill
104
Yes, and half of the Democrats including Hillary joined the Republicans to approve the war resolution. Supposedly they “didn’t know,” but they voted for it anyway because they were afraid to look weak on national security.
5
@Ed Ok, we agree Democrats were misled. There are those who say these Democrats are just as much to blame as those that lied about the justification for war, covered up the falseness of it, persecuted their opponents, tortured their enemies, and caused the deaths of one million people, the injury and suffering of many millions more, the destabilization of the region to a cost of $3 trillion and the institutionalization of perpetual war. Are you one of those people, Ed?
@Hugh Massengill
Yes and they didn't even steal the oil for the USA, they stole it for the global oil corporations that they own shares in.
They turned our blood and treasure into their private profit, and Obama did nothing about it.
1
EACH and EVERYONE of these CIA persons who were involved in the torture of persons who had been arrested in connection with the 9/11 incident should be expelled from the US Government service with dishonorable recommendation.
This stain is so harsh that unless and until we, as a nation, put copious amounts of cleansers on it and do everything humanly possible to eradicate it will forever continue to tarnish our reputation as a civilized nation. Putting this disgraceful woman at the top of our intelligence agency is doing everything that we should not be doing.
20
Now America has progressed from waterboarding prisoners to caging children, toddlers and infants. Uncooperative ones are held down and forcibly medicated.
Most of this is done by the "very fine people" who make up the modern GOP with Trump at their helm.
This is what Republicans consider "winning"?
All I see is America losing more and more of her morals, values and good standing in the world.
Aren't we better than this?
Vote Democratic on November 6th.
Every seat, every office.
Changing Congress is how we begin to fix this.
Vote.
205
@D. DeMarco I've changed my political designation to "enough." That's the way I see it, that's the way I'm voting. Enough of this tangled ugliness.
2
@D. DeMarco
Vote Democratic, but don't vote for Democrats that vote for Republican policies and Republican nominees.
Five Democrats voted for a known torturer to be head of CIA.
Votes like this lose more voters than they gain.
Those that like Republican policy vote for Republicans. The job of the Democrats is to oppose the Party of Criiminals like Trump, not help them.
3
@Maria
We have never before seen the extreme actions the Trump Administration is taking.
The Japanese internment in the 1940s is the closest to Trump's actions, and most people & scholars agree that was wrong.
Bush violated the Geneva Convention with his waterboarding.
Yes, torture was not invented by the Bush Administration, but it was practiced by them.
It is always wrong.
The US is Morally Bankrupt on so many levels, and has thrown its reputation to the ground and the World knows it and so do I.
16
"Only the lowest people...."
TRUMP 2018
November 6 2018
Vote !
18
I had two friends on the USS Cole, and they both died during the terrorist attack ordered by al-Nashiri. Please refrain from passing any judgement on Ms. Haspel or any other CIA officers forced to make hard decisions. You have never walked in their shoes. Thank you.
16
So if Americans are killed by foreigners anything goes? People have relatives and friends killed here at home, but we don’t let homicide investigators torture. I’m all for being understanding of folks in difficult situations but that shouldn’t be allowed to undermine our collective morality. We can condemn and not repeat the act while also forgiving the individual.
28
no one ever walks in another’s shoes.
that said, I doubt that those morally piqued now necessarily felt the same at the time.
except John McCain.
he didn’t need to walk in anyone else’s to know the wrong when he saw it here.
9
@Maria Very, very sorry that your friends died in such a horrible way. Those who attacked the Cole should be punished, but not tortured. We stand for, and your friends stood for, a better country than that.
18
Resign Gina or suffer the consequences of your deception. The depths of America’s cruelty never ceases to amaze me. What is its genesis? Makes me so ashamed to be an American.
89
@Beth Bardwell torture is organ failure; I believe that is where we were drawing the line back then. If you had a son or nephew in the service, and he was captured by the enemy, would you rather have him waterboarded and deprived of sleep, or tortured with electricity and power tools by Al-quaeda? That's what I thought.
1
@johnnykilmo
All who torture are the same, only their methods vary.
@johnnykilmo
The people drawing your 'line back then', johnny, were and are criminals.
The United States doesn't decide whether something is proper because it is a 'bit' higher than the bar set by those we disparage. We consider the issue, and pass laws reflecting OUR OWN values - and it was these laws the corrupt W administration violated.
So, stop referring to the barbarity of others, as if that gives anyone in the US a right to break our own laws. It doesn't.
And the idea that torture is only when organ failure occurs is simply ignorant, and not at all in line with US and International law.
We - the US - tortured, and the people who did this thing that we despise amongst our 'enemies', are in every position of power.
And those in power right now - in all branches - are the GOP. And they enshrined this Haspel creature and torturer as head fo the CIA.
So, who is responsible for this initial and continuing shame on America and its history?
Not the democratic party, or greenpeace, or peta or teacher's unions ... it's the GOP boys, as always ...
After Rick Perry in the energy dept., Betsy DeVos in education, and Scott Pruitt advocating for pollution, this should come as no surprise. Why are you highlighting her qualifications now? She’s already got the job. The question is, who do we put in charge of mental health, now that Charles Manson is no longer with us?
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@Peter, Good points, but I would also ask how many more appointments of either unqualified, or inept people Mr. Trump selects for high office will it take for his supporters to recognize his own ineptitude? How many more people who step down for fear of being exposed for their ineptitude will it take for his supporters to wake up and see Trump for who and what he is?
4
@Glenn Thomas: in the eyes of those
currently in power, the ones we are silly enough
to consider unqualified are exactly the ones
required to push the [maga] agenda as planned.
i.e. to disrupt the current system,
to replace one swamp with another,
and maybe to see how deeply they could run
the 99% into the ground, gleefully.
@Peter
My surprise comes from the fact that Democrats voted for Haspel and many other Trump nominees.
Do Democrats only exist to give cover to the anti-constitutional behavior of the Republican Party?
1
Haskell proves that women can be just as immoral as men.
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@katherinekovach
There's no proof here. Rather the article offers anecdotal evidence that one woman can be just as immoral as some men.
i have always been profoundly uncomfortable
with the saying that "in love and war, all is fair."
10
There is a conclusive way to determine if water-boarding works.
Each of the authors would be given 2 secrets.
One secret would be obtainable through water-boarding and enhanced interrogation. The other secret would be obtainable through tenderness and ice cream cones and soft music.
Whichever secret is withheld in each circumstance would provide conclusive proof of whether water-boarding works - and this would be based on the actual experiences of the authors, not on speculation.
8
This is the problem with allowing torture. Once you can torture terrorists people start wanting to torture others ... say reporters who wrote an article they found objectionable.
14
@Maurice Gatien - "Each of the authors would be given 2 secrets."
Lets add that the torturers are told the authors know 3 secrets and their job is to extract all 3. And the authors can lie to stop the pain. Gets complicated, doesn't it?
1
“If tyranny and oppression come to this land it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." - James Madison
Reading about such cruelty and looking at Ms. Haspel's benign smiling face is a chilling reminder that even the most noble ends will never be achieved with government-sanctioned brutality. Her behavior helped dramatically lower the United States' standing around the world and put our soldiers and citizens at risk like never before. I lower my head in shame and horror that she's been elevated to her current role and is not in prison.
257
Thugs managed by thugs financed by a violent culture. We can safely and shamefully admit that we had indeed created the culture of ISIS and its founding members who like Baghdadi were tortured and humiliated in our sites in Iraq and Syria. We really have no moral grounds to stand on.
199
@Tired Of trump at least he still has his head. Ask Daniel Pearl if he would have preferred waterboarding and sleep deprivation.
@Tired Of trump Too boot, we filled them with a terrible and unquenchable resolve.
We kill innocent women and children via drone strikes, then we capture a survivor. They are tortured regardless of guilt or innocence. The innocent woman and children are his so what would the logical outcome? Spending one life trying to destroy anything and anyone who did this me. That would be my approach to these events.
We have met the enemy and it is us.
5
Reading this just heightens my incredulity that the person who oversaw the worst CIA scandal since at least the war in Vietnam has received Congressional approval to oversee the whole agency.
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@Delbert
She received Republican approval.
7
Let's see: The Bush Administration lied to the American people in order to start an illegal war against a nation that never attacked us. This then allowed our corrupt government to sanction and commit acts of torture which never resulted in any significant intel to our military welfare complex.
Sounds like the script for bad TV series and nationalistic movies glorifying the American empire. Oh, no, it's the sad legacy of the real U.S. which can no longer be considered morally or ethically sound. The moral compass is broken.
351
@mrfreeze6
Have we ever had a moral compass or only "cash register eyes?"
2
@mrfreeze6 I hope you are talking about the Iraq War and not the war in Afghanistan.
@mrfreeze6
And the Obama administration, instead of prosecuting these direct violations of U.S. and international law, swept it under the rug.
Republicans investigate Democrats for made up scandals again and again, but Democrats refuse to preview Republicans for actual crimes.
Democrats created Trump by setting no boundaries for the Republicans' childish party.
1