Quote:
Originally Posted by TheGame
The only time I heard of a legit situation where the "existing techniques" not working, is when they were pushing harder and harder to get a non existent link between Iraq and 9-11. Care to share with us some other factual situations in which less image-destroying teqniques didn't help, but torture helped?
If not, why were you making a blanket statement of opinion pretending that it is a fact?
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I think I already discussed and clarified the statement you decided to cherry pick in multiple paragraphs in my discussion with Manasecret. But if I must, let me correct it to reflect my opinion.
"...the problem that existing techniques were not likely working, IMO"
Can we get back to the substance of the argument now, instead of playing gotcha games with sentences taken out of context when several paragraphs of context are available?
And I'll agree, with what we currently know about the use and results of the waterboarding, they were used on 3 high level enemy agents and at least part of it's use was to interrogate regarding ties to Iraq. Also, most of the evidence regarding the intent Iraq related questioning is based on opinion and anecdotes, and not hard facts or incriminating documents. As you know, there are almost just as many opinions and anecotes on the other side of this argument. You can choose to believe who you like. I choose to not fully believe anyone until we know more.
Also, considering Iraq's proven ties to various world terror group and the detainees sharing hate for America, I don't think the purpose of the waterboarding was necessarily an attempt to gain false evidence as you have supposed before, but instead it could have arguably been a reasonable line of questioning knowing what they knew at the time, as ethnocentric as that was. It wasn't until later the adminstration figured out that Islamic sects hated each other almost as much as they hated us.
But thats all we know. Most of the enlightening evidence in regards to this case is likely still under lock and key. We know how many times the detainees were waterboarded, and who was waterboardd, but we don't know the full line of questioning associated or the intent of it. We also don't know of any results other than that of the questioning regarding Iraq.
I reserve my judgement until we see more transparency regarding this results of the full range of interrogations and their results. Considering we've basically destroyed any level of secrecy regarding these methods, and our own president has condemned the previous adminstration as torturers, I fail to see any honest reason why the vast majority of these memos and documents haven't been released. Any potential national security theats resulting from their release have been realized, IMO.