U.S. Senate Report On C.I.A. Interrogations.

[trackside528]

You can accuse the Americans of being limp but they've done it and made public.

Barely. With the amount of sentences blacked out, the document looks like some shitty piece of modern art. The document itself is virtually impossible to read.

I agree with Grey that there must be a serious doubt about the validity of the information someone provides after being tortured.

The most interesting thing for me is that the CIA seem to have gone to fairly decent lengths to actually embellish the amount and quality of information they obtained through "enhanced interrogation." Forget making something public, it doesn't even seem like the internal debate was fully open.

On another note, this was compiled solely by the Democratic Senators on the SIC - mainly their staff. It is obviously fully available to scrutiny (at least to people who can see the whole report), but it does leave itself open to being seen as a partisan report (or a full-on hatchet job at worst).

 

[Warbler]

Not exactly the point is it.

How far away is it though?

OK, lets say that Saddam rounds up people opposed to him and tortures them to find out the names and identities of others (the followers of Sadr for example) is this really substantially different to America rounding up people opposed to them (often in sovereign states - which Saddam wasn't doing) torturing them (whilst simultaneously denying it) and then using the information gleaned to round up others. We know from the experience in Afghanistan that warlords were giving in the names of their rivals in the hope that America would 'take them out'.

Now America says it's learned from its mistakes and that it's confident in itself as if that makes it OK. What if the North Koreans did the same. Would that make it OK?

I think there is a principle here and some far from convincing chicanary on the part of the American's. It's difficult for them to completely hold the high moral ground on this.

I'm trying to think of examples of where torture has worked since Guy Fawkes and and the gunpowder plot? I've got it in my head actually that the photocopier bomb that the British finally found at the second time of asking at East Midlands Airport was the result of torture, albeit I think the French were involved in that. Perhaps the French make better torturers? Perhaps they played them Edith Piaf records non stop

 

[EC1]

seeing beheading videos on Youtube has that effect, I suppose.


.........................

i personally haven't watched the videos..and to be quite honest i think they ought to be able to find out the people who do watch them..surely they can find a few and make examples of them....and get some treatment for them..because in some ways those people have a tile nearly as loose as those producing the videos

what % of the population do you think watches them?

i am hoping its small...and i think you are way off beam thinking millions are watching them and getting desensitised to it.

If we have got millions watching these videos...then we are shagged anyway..probably best if we all get wiped out if we have dropped that low down the food chain

 

[icebreaker]

I haven't seen them either -- I couldn't watch them, tbh.
It was a throwaway comment of mine; maybe one I shouldn't have made.


But I am convinced that the series of ISIS beheadings have some little bit desensitised us all. I felt appalled and sick by the first one some months back. Then, the horror I felt somewhat diminished with each subsequent one in the series until the most recent -- when 24 captured Syrian soldiers were lined kneeling down and mass-beheaded -- when my immediate reaction was "just another day in Syria".
That's what I meant about ISIS somewhat desensitising us. 20 years ago I would have been vigorously against State-ist torture; nowadays post-ISIS I feel that I don't care if terrorists get whatever comes to them.

 

[EC1]

I haven't seen them either -- I couldn't watch them, tbh.
It was a throwaway comment of mine; maybe one I shouldn't have made.


But I am convinced that the series of ISIS beheadings have some little bit desensitised us all. I felt appalled and sick by the first one some months back. Then, the horror I felt somewhat diminished with each subsequent one in the series until the most recent -- when 24 captured Syrian soldiers were lined kneeling down and mass-beheaded -- when my immediate reaction was "just another day in Syria".
That's what I meant about ISIS somewhat desensitising us. 20 years ago I would have been vigorously against State-ist torture; nowadays post-ISIS I feel that I don't care if terrorists get whatever comes to them.

oh yes i agree we get desensitised to the reporting of atrocities. In the 60's when i was a kid that was amply demonstrated by the Vietnam war..it seemed to me that when i heard the news..which i probably didn't watch that much ..it was probably mentioned every night for years and years..as a kid it seemed like forever...and i'm sure for adults then it just washed over them after the first 12 months or less probably.

if we look at the terrorist mindset..they are obviously aware of that desensitising affect to..it used to be small acts of terrorism..bombs here and there...then that wasn't enough anymore..moved onto hi jacking planes....what do we do now?..people don't take any notice of planes being hi jacked any more..oh lets blow one up mid air..oh we've done that now...lets hi jack one or two and fly them into one of the most famous landmarks in the world.

What can top that i wonder..obvious answer is a dirty bomb or worse.

Thats what happens with desensitising..those wanting to draw attention are fully aware of it and so its always going to progress to the next stage..i just hope i'm not around when the first terrorist nuclear attack hits

ISIS though have sort of gone back to the very small..in comparison.. event..but an act that is possibly more disgusting to us in many ways than the bombing scenario...its a more personal form of terrorism...this could be you sat here having your head hacked off.

But lets say that they continue to evolve..does anyone think creatures like this would hesitate to detonate a nuclear device?

When it comes to this particular group..i don't personally give a monkeys what they do with them as prisoners.