Oh, the horror!!!!!!!!!!! Detainee Tortured, Says U.S. Official
The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a “life-threatening condition.”
“We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani,” said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case” for prosecution.
Sounds like what one often goes through when joining a fraternity or the rugby team at college. Or, come to think about it, most special forces trainees go through much of the same. Don’t the SEALs have a period where they all sit in cold ocean water for hours and hours? Stay up for days?
I do not hear anyone on the left complaining about prisoners, such as Border Agents Ramos and Compean, remaining in solitary. But a jihadi that may have been a part of the 9/11 attacks being put in “sustained isolation,” not to mention the other stuff, will have progressives wetting their silkenpink-with-coat-hanger-bows panties all in a bunch. I bet al Qaeda is scared now! Say, I wonder what al Qaeda consideres torture?
But, don’t worry, Libs, President Barry will soon have these little darlings ensconced in a jail cell near you when he closes G’itmo.
Meanwhile, headline, the world: Pentagon: 61 ex-Guantanamo inmates return to terrorism
More: Jules Crittenden:
I’m not trying to be cute here. I’d never suggest that just because the MoveOn crowd wanted to waterboard the president, vice-president and secretary of defense, that waterboarding should be resumed. Obama can keep it on the table if he wants, but we all know it’s water over the dam(ned terrorist), so to speak. Playing loud music, failing to turn off the light switch, and private time without clothes all are now defined as torture. It’s clear we need to look at more practical methods of encouraging the cooperation of recalcitrants that are incontrovertibly moral.
Excitable Andy is beating his standard drum. Yawn. Gotta find a new schtick there, Milky!
One of the most amusing Lefties of the day, Donkelephant (funny names, since the majority of sidebar links are to blogs on the left
Obviously I’m not suggesting that our actions are anywhere close to being as bad as the terrorists, but one of the ways they’ll “win†is if we adopt their tactics. The Bush administration fell right into this trap and lost a massive amount of credibility as a result…as well they should.
Perhaps I need to add this link a second time. Please tell me if some sleep deprivation, along with feeding the jihadis food so rich that they are actually gaining weight, compares to drilling hands, severing limbs, eye removal, and so on. Somehow, I just seem to be missing the connection.
And visit Memeorandum for links to all sorts of links to outraged progressives, many whom go “huh? Oh, it’s September 11th. Again. Whatever.”
It all seems so surreal,
Israel fights for life…meanwhile…Obama is on Parade in Washington.
Gitmo about to be closed….meanwhile…61 return to fight.
Obama’s flag burned in Tehran…meanwhile…Trail Maids Parade in the Inauguration!
Oh, the irony!
[…] to see what President Obama and his administration, if he can fill the posts, will do with Israel, Gitmo, Terrorists, Lebanon, Hamas, Iran, […]
Actually she said it was torture
Torture is most useful in obtaining confessions, not information. People under duress/torture will say what they believe will end their suffering. When “witches” were tortured by christians they had a very high sucxess rate. Using torture they were also able to make the witches implicate other witches including the difficult to find hidden “sleeper” witches. Teach if you were tortured would you confess ? I think that you would.
Hey! Whaddaya know? This is wrong too!
http://law.shu.edu/administration/public_relations/press_releases/2009/shl_defense_dept_wrong_on_gtmo.htm
I’m going to ask it something, so that we can all be amused by its squirming as it tries hard not to answer — or at least not to answer honestly:
Is torture illegal, under the laws of the United States? Yes or no?
Oh, and note that the headline on this post is a flat-out lie. That’s what it does best: lie.
I think I will take the word of the Pentagon over the far left at Seton Hall, Reasic.
Real torture is not legal, meaty.
It ignores the facts, as always. The folks at Seton Hall do not ask anyone to take their word for anything. They provide documentation showing that the administration figures regarding ‘detainees’ who have ‘returned to the fight’ are inconsistent and unsupported by the facts, and that the administration counts as former Guantanamo inmates individuals who were never held at Guantanamo. This is documentation that it will never, ever read, because facts are horrendously dangerous to the fantasy world it has constructed for itself.
And does it know that waterboarding, for instance, is torture?
How amusing that it tries to parse its answer by using the phrase “real torture”. I will remind it that a lying ignoramus of its sort does not get to define what torture is.
You can close your eyes, plug your ears, and stick to your source of choice all you want, but at the end of the day, you’re still faced with two contradicting arguments, each with supporting evidence (at least in Seton Hall’s case). Now, you can do like you’ve done with global warming and just ignore the refuting argument and its evidence, blindly choosing your preferred source, or you can walk the walk and actually “consider ALL the evidence”, as you’ve claimed that you do.
“…you can do like you’ve done with global warming and just ignore the refuting argument and its evidence, blindly choosing your preferred source…”
That is exactly what it will do. Evidence is terrifying, and threatens its carefully cultivated ignorance.
Oh great, Meaty the Mental Midgetâ„¢ has crawled out from under his rock to grace us with his witty logic.
And the anti-“torture” crowd is out in effect I see as well.
I find it interesting how the lefts ever-evolving definition of torture covers just about everything under the sun. If it makes a prisoner “uncomfortable”, then it is torture. If it is listening to Britney Spears and U2, and the prisoners don’t like it… its torture. Waterboarding? Doesn’t kill you. Makes you feel like you’re drowning, to be sure, but it doesn’t physically drown you. Torture.
I’m not for shoving bamboo under fingernails, or electrocution of genitals, or other methods that bring physical pain, excruciating or not. That for sure would be torture at a level I want us to have no part in.
But this “mental torture” that we put prisoners through, well, I’ll leave that up to the professionals who know how to effectively get information. Ofcourse, in MMMâ„¢’s mind, and the other leftist navel-gazing bed-wetters here, those professionals are just employing these tactics because they are “RedState Sadists” just looking to hurt people. They’re not looking for information that is realistic, accurate, or true. Just doing it for the kicks, and to get SOMETHING out of them to give to their superiors.
I wonder if these are the same people who lament at the slaughter of farm animals for food, but still enjoy the steak and chicken at their restaurants, who don’t really want to think about how that steak came to be medium well on their platter…
Teach, I think that Reasic is calling you a flat-earther and a global-warming (read Holocaust) denier, and that you’re pulling an ostrich by not looking at all of the evidence on torture, etc.
If that evidence is as solid and irrefutable as the
global cooling global warming climate changeglobal cooling evidence, then man, do they have us beat…Duncan:
PLEASE do NOT put words in my mouth, and ESPECIALLY do not assume that I’m calling Teach a Holocaust denier. That you would pull something so atrocious out of your own ass, just to cause a stir, and detract from the discussion at hand surely demonstrates your own lack of brains or decency.
Now you’ve got it. Good boy! I’m so proud of you. Yes, you see, Teach claimed to be a “rational” person, who “considers all the evidence”. Yet, it seems that when he is confronted with evidence he doesn’t like, he doesn’t consider it. That looks to me to be a direct contradiction to his claim.
Ah, how cute. You made an extremely vague pseudo-argument, and didn’t even bother back it up with any sources. That’s so typical. You nitwits expect to be taken seriously on scientific issues like global warming, but you NEVER discuss it on a scientific level. I have provided Teach with some very elementary scientific rebuttals to his claims that the Sun and water vapor are more important climate drivers than CO2, and he has not responded to them. He only dismissed it without reason. Perhaps you would like to take a shot at it?
Oh, and your argument on didn’t discuss the specifics of the Seton Hall source I provided, either. What do you know? More rhetoric, hyperbole, red herrings, etc. Let me know if you ever want to grow up and make a REAL argument.
Reasic,
Please don’t be so dense as to think I was actually saying that you called Teach an actual holocaust denier. My point was that you were calling him what the crazy environmentalists believe is an equally ignorant and stupid view point. Here, let me make it simple for you:
1. Holocaust Deniers are ignorant, stupid people who are bigoted and really, really stupid.
2. Man-made
Global-WarmingClimate Change deniers are ignorant, stupid people who are bigoted and really, really stupid.3. 1 = 2 in the minds of the Chicken Littles…
There. Did that clear that up for you.
I see you are equally as cute. I wasn’t saying that Teach wasn’t considering your evidence. I am actually pretty sure that he considered your evidence, and then felt it lacking in its validity. Much like I hold no faith in the Lancet’s estimate of civilians killed in Iraq because of the method’s used to obtain the number. I considered its information, its evidence if you will, and found it lacking. Doesn’t mean it wasn’t considered.
And as far as the
global cooling global warmingclimate change debate, and all of the so-called evidence, I haven’t personally seen anything that you have put forward. However, I have seen that there is nothing definitive from theglobal cooling global warmingclimate change side that says the man is to blame for The Earth’s Fevahâ„¢, as High-Priest Goreâ„¢ claims. I’ve seen evidence Sure, you’re side has said that the “Debate iz over, vee are correczt, and you must behave, submit, vor elze!”, but that doesn’t close the case, by no means.What I truly see is the Watermelon Phenomena, where those who can’t control people with the arguments of their social constructs, decide to create a “disaster in the making” in order to try to implement their beliefs through fear. Thanks but no thanks.
That’s right, and I chose to believe the Pentagon over Seton Hall. I’m going trust the military over a far left college in NJ.
But I do find it intersting that those on the Left care more for Islamic jihadis then in safeguarding the citizenry of the USA.
Duncan:
Okay, what you actually said:
Now, if you meant something other than what you actually said, maybe it’d be a good idea to explain that the first time instead of claiming that I’M dense for actually thinking you meant what you said. I didn’t even use the word “denier” in the first place, and even if I did, it has no connection to the Holocaust for me. Take your assumptions somewhere else.
No, let me make it simple for you. A true “skeptic” is one who considers all evidence. A “denier” is one who ignores evidence they don’t like. Now that’s simple.
That’s what he CLAIMED to have done, but when asked to elaborate, he refused to explain why the evidence was not convincing for him. If it wasn’t convincing, there was a reason.
Okay, I’ll provide it for you, and you let me know what you think. Teach claimed that the Sun and water vapor are more important drivers of our climate than CO2. My rebuttal was as follows:
1. There are several ways to prove that the Sun does not play a major role in recent global warming. The one I mentioned was the fact that the lower atmosphere is warming, while at the same time, the stratosphere is cooling. If an increase in the Sun’s energy output was primarily to blame, we would expect to see a uniform warming throughout our atmosphere. This cooling in the stratosphere is an indicator that greenhouse gases are the primary forcing.
2. While it is true that there is a much higher total concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere, that doesn’t mean that it drives our climate. Instead, water vapor is what is known as a feedback. This is because it has a very short atmospheric lifetime (about 7 to 10 days, compared to 100 to 250 years for CO2), which means that as temperatures drop, water vapor quickly condenses and visa versa. Therefore, changes in water vapor concentration, which are what matter when discussing climate CHANGE, occur as a result of changes in temperature, rather than the other way around. So, water vapor cannot CAUSE a change in temperature. It only amplifies the effects of true forcings, such as carbon dioxide.
Therefore, we are left with primarily man-made greenhouse gases to blame for global warming. Please explain for me how these are unconvincing.
Teach:
Classic wingnut logic. Assume the contradicting information comes from a mean liberal boogey man, and then dismiss for that reason, rather than the veracity of the actual claims made. Then, throw in a little name-calling and question the patriotism of your opponent for good measure. Nicely played, sir. You’ve shown your true colors and proven me right. I guess you’ll NEVER actually consider all the evidence. Maybe what you meant by that was that you’ll consider all the evidence that you already agree with, or that doesn’t come from a mean liberal boogey man.
“I’m going trust the military over a far left college in NJ.”
Notice very carefully what it has said. It bases its beliefs on trust. Facts don’t enter into the matter. It hasn’t actually looked at the claims that the Pentagon has made — that way it can remain ignorant of the remarkable paucity of facts attached to those claims. And it certainly hasn’t looked at the report from Seton Hall and the facts therein — because facts are fatal to the ignorance it so carefully cultivates.
No, it chooses its belief based solely on who it ‘trusts’. Easier that way — no thinking required.
Duncan? Where’d you go? Are you also going to ignore my arguments? They’re not complex, I promise.
STILL nothing…
I wish you guys would take this matter seriously enough to engage in a scientific debate. It has become apparent that you’d much rather spend your time spreading your ignorance on the issue than trying to make sure you know what you’re talking about. It’s really a shame. If you’re going to buck an international body of scientists and virtually every national scientific body on this issue, at least try to discuss it in an intelligent manner.