"Are the Russians calling our bluff?* sara:
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But it appears that the Russians, as skeptical as the rest of us of claims from some in Congress that WMD really was found in Iraq after all, is telling the Bush Administraton to put up or shut up.
If what members of the President's party are saying is true, then it logically follows that the international community will need certain assurances, such as guarantees that all such weapons and weapons capabilities are destroyed and commitments by the new Iraqi government that it will not pursue any such capabilities."
"Apparently the CIA has a thirty year long study that concludes that neither Torture nor extreme coercion produce useful intelligence. They examined thousands of cases (wonder how many were US cases??) -- and they found nothing useful. Apparently this study was personally given by George Tenet to Rumsfeld when the Torture policy was first under debate -- and fully briefed at the WH -- including Bush and Cheney. They totally ignored it. I think that small item is just priceless."
* billmon:
"Kidding, or semi-kidding, aside, it's interesting that the gang picked the SWIFT story (Jeez that name has been popping up a lot lately) to make such a raucous stink about. I think it's because they believe this program, unlike the NSA illegal wiretaps and the every-phone-call-ever-made data base, is actually legal, making it a safer issue to push back on.
Alternatively, perhaps the administration suspects, or at least has reason to worry, that the Times is getting close to an even bigger police state atrocity, and are pulling out the stops to try to intimidate Keller and his minions into laying off the story.
If you think about it, the latter theory makes a certain amount of sense: This is by far the most sustained political attack on an American news organization since Nixon took on the Washington Post over its early Watergate coverage, and we all know what he was afraid Woodstein would find."
6 comments:
I strongly suspect that many torturers working for the CIA (or other DOD-related agencies) fully recognize the fact torture yields no useful information. However, torture can be useful to intimidate people in groups you want to repress, and for other people (like the former Mjuhaddin which are now known as "al Qaeda") who have been in cahoots with the US military or CIA covert operatives, the torture may be used to prevent "blowback" and revelations of information that would be extremely embarrassing to our government such as foreign assassinations, election rigging, sabotage, and terorist acts in support of the American Empire. In other words, torture can be useful to silence people with dangerous information, or make them so psychologically damaged nothing they say can be trusted; torture is not useful in making people speak the truth.
i suspect that yuo are correct.
(i also have a hunch that they torture people becuase they enjoy it)
Lukery: (i also have a hunch that they torture people becuase they enjoy it)
yup--and it somewhat appeases their tiny dick syndromes. in their line of thinking (and i use that word lightly), it makes them look tough, especially to the slack-jawed droolers. kinda like cuttin' brush w/a big ol' dick, rather, chainsaw.
(remind me to use the term 'mouth breathers' more often)
True, there is a strong, sadistic impulse running through fascistic, power-obsessed regimes. However, to make torture such a central policy pillar like the Bush regime has done has got to have rational motivation behind it, not just sick, pleasure-seeking emotions.
ewastud
i actually read somewhere that the actual 'methods' they are using are the same as the ones used by some others (ussr?) that were SPECIFICALLY designed to get false 'confessions' rather than to actually get any useful information
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