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Topic: The fruits of US torture point to above average stupidity. (Read 1049 times) |
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Hermit
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The fruits of US torture point to above average stupidity.
« on: 2007-03-18 11:20:30 » |
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The Confession Backfired
Source: Antiwar.com
Authors: Paul Craig Roberts
Dated: 2007-03-17
The first confession released by the Bush regime's Military Tribunals – that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – has discredited the entire process. Writing in Jurist, Northwestern University law professor Anthony D'Amato likens Mohammed's confession to those that emerged in Stalin's show trials of Bolshevik leaders in the 1930s.
That was my own immediate thought. I remember speaking years ago with Soviet dissident Valdimir Bukovsky about the behavior of Soviet dissidents under torture. He replied that people pressed for names under torture would try to remember the names of war dead and people who had passed away. Those who retained enough of their wits under torture would confess to an unbelievable array of crimes in an effort to alert the public to the falsity of the entire process.
That is what Mohammed did. We know he was tortured, because his response to the obligatory question about his treatment during his years of detention is redacted. We also know that he was tortured, because otherwise there is no point for the US Justice (sic) Dept. memos giving the green light to torture or for the Military Commissions Act, which permits torture and death sentences based on confessions extracted by torture.
Mohammed's confession of crimes and plots is so vast that Katherine Shrader of the Associated Press reports that the Americans who extracted Mohammed's confession do not believe it either. It is exaggerated, say Mohammed's tormentors, and must be taken with a grain of salt.
In other words, the US torture crew, reveling in their success, played into Mohammed's hands. Pride goes before a fall, as the saying goes.
Mohammed's confession admits to 31 planned and actual attacks all over the world, including blowing up the Panama Canal and assassinating presidents Carter and Clinton and the Pope. Having taken responsibility for the whole ball of wax along with everything else that he could imagine, he was the entire show. No other terrorists needed.
Reading responses of BBC listeners to Mohammed's confession reveals that the rest of the world is either laughing at the US government for being so stupid as to think that anyone anywhere would believe the confession or damning the Bush regime for being like the Gestapo and KGB.
Humorists are having a field day with the confession: "'I'm a very dangerous mastermind,' said Mohammed, who confessed to the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, the Brink's robbery, St. Valentine's Day Massacre, and the Lincoln and McKinley assassinations. Mohammed also accepted responsibility for spreading hay fever and cold sores around the world and for rained out picnics."
If there was anything remaining of the Bush regime not already discredited, Mohammed's confession removed any reputation left.
The most important part of the Mohammed story is yet to make the headlines. Despite having held and tortured hundreds of detainees for years in Gitmo, and we don't know how many more in secret prisons around the world, the US government has come up with only 14 "high value detainees."
In other words, the government has nothing on 99 percent of the detainees who allegedly are so dangerous and wicked that they must be kept in detention without charges, access to attorneys and contact with families.
And little wonder. The vast majority of detainees, alleged "enemy combatants," are not terrorists captured by the CIA and brave US troops. They are hapless persons who happened to be outside their tribal or home territories and were kidnapped by criminal gangs or warlords who profited greatly at the expense of the naive Americans who offered bounties for "terrorists."
The US government does not care that innocent people have been ensnared, because the US government desperately needs both to prove that there are vast numbers of terrorists and to demonstrate its proficiency in protecting Americans by capturing terrorists. Moreover, the US government needs "dangerous suspects" that it can use to keep Americans in a state of supine fearfulness and as a front behind which to undermine constitutional protections and the Bill of Rights.
The Bush-Cheney Regime succeeded in its evil plot, only to throw it all away by releasing the ridiculous confession by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Will Bush's totalitarian Military Tribunal now execute Mohammed on the basis of his confession extracted by torture, or would this be seen everywhere on earth as nothing but an act of murder?
If Bush can't have Mohammed murdered, the US government will have to shut Mohammed away where he cannot talk and tell his tale. The US government will have to replicate Orwell's memory hole by destroying Mohammed's mind with mind-altering drugs and abuse.
It is to such depths that George Bush and Dick Cheney have lowered America.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Blunderov
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Re:The fruits of US torture point to above average stupidity.
« Reply #1 on: 2007-03-18 13:10:29 » |
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[Blunderov] Naturally there is much excitement at the volume of 'closure' that will become available to so many of the formerly wide-open because of the Sheikh's copious confessions.
Jesus' General
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's Other Confessions
17 March 2007, 04:31:57 AM
- Gen. JC Christian, Patriot
By now, you've all heard that after years of harmless fraternity hazing and gourmet meals at Guantanamo, Bagram, and the most discerning Soviet-built interrogation centers in Poland, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed finally cracked and admitted to virtually every terrorist act Dick Cheney could think of. Human rights observers say he was tortured, but they're a bunch of god-damned American-hating liars. He was treated very well. Heck, the CIA even abducted his seven and nine year old sons to assure him of their safety.
In any event, his interrogation was successful. The news that he's confessed to beheading Daniel Pearl and planning 911 and other terrorist operations has been all over the news. But strangely, or perhaps not so strangely, the mediaslamunistofascists are not telling us the other acts of terror he's confessed to committing. That's why I'm listing them here:
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's Other Crimes:
New Coke
Formidable law blogger Ann Althouse
Not sending enough troops in the initial Iraq invasion.
Faking the deaths of Tupac, Elvis, and Jim Morrison, converting them to Islam, and hiding them out in a cave in Peshawar.
Selling Vogon Star Cruisers to Hugo Chavez.
The neglect of our wounded soldiers.
Introducing Bill O'Reilly to the magical properties of loofahs and falafels.
Telling Scooter Libby about Valerie Plame
Paris Hilton
Gonzales Prosecutor Scandal
France
Olestra's anal leakage side effect.
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Blunderov
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Re:The fruits of US torture point to above average stupidity.
« Reply #2 on: 2007-03-18 13:22:13 » |
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[Bunderov] This just in.
Editor and Publisher
After Confession: Lawyer Will Now Appeal Conviction in Daniel Pearl Case
Published: March 18, 2007 11:00 AM ET
ISLAMABAD The lawyer for a man convicted of killing Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl said Sunday he will file an appeal using an al-Qaida lieutenant's recent confession that he beheaded the reporter.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who has claimed that he planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, claimed at a U.S. military hearing at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that he personally beheaded Pearl for being an Israeli intelligence agent.
"I decapitated with my blessed right hand the head of the American Jew, Daniel Pearl, in the city of Karachi, Pakistan," Mohammed told a military panel, according to a Pentagon transcript released Thursday. "For those who would like to confirm, there are pictures of me on the Internet holding his head."
In 2002, an anti-terrorism court in Karachi sentenced Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British-born militant, to death and gave three other men life in prison for involvement in Pearl's killing.
Rai Bashir a lawyer for Sheikh and the other three men said on Sunday that he will study the Pentagon documents on Mohammed's claim and file his confession as evidence to prove Sheikh's innocence.
"He has not abducted Daniel Pearl, and he, along with his co-accused, is innocent ... But now we are happy that this version has been verified by the Pentagon after the arrest of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," Bashir told AP Television News in a separate interview on Saturday.
Pearl was abducted in January 2002 in Karachi while he was researching a story on Islamic militancy. Months after his abduction, the journalist's body, his throat slit, was found in a shallow ditch in a compound on the outskirts of the city.
Sheikh and the three others _ Salman Saqib, Fahad Naseem and Sheikh Adil _ are in jail and have appealed their convictions.
"What we were saying for so many years in our trial, in the appeal, (is) that Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh is innocent and he has not committed that murder," Bashir said in the interview from the eastern city of Lahore.
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Bass
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Re:The fruits of US torture point to above average stupidity.
« Reply #3 on: 2007-03-18 23:22:05 » |
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Although I'm going to neither agree nor disagree with the article (as it is taken from a source that's name itself is biased), it's a little premature to be comparing America's freedom levels to that of the Soviet Union and of Nazi Germany. After all, you most likely wouldn't have been able to even say that in those respective countries at the time.
Nevertheless, I do think that America's current trend is leading in that direction. It wouldn't surprise me that torturing was used to get a confession like that, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a fact based on a site like that, especially seeing as how a lot of what they claimed as evidence was circumstantial.
Again, it wouldn't surprise me if torturing out the confession is what happened and I'm pretty inclined to think it based on the confession itself - after all, it makes a great peice of propaganda, true or false - but more evidence is needed in my opinion before one can claim it a fact either way.
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Hermit
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Re:The fruits of US torture point to above average stupidity.
« Reply #4 on: 2007-03-19 18:10:11 » |
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[Bass] Although I'm going to neither agree nor disagree with the article (as it is taken from a source that's name itself is biased), it's a little premature to be comparing America's freedom levels to that of the Soviet Union and of Nazi Germany. After all, you most likely wouldn't have been able to even say that in those respective countries at the time.
[Hermit] Please try to argue and at least make an effort to be seen to be trying to support your assertions rather than attempting to get away with mere slant and innuendo Bass. It should be noted that all sources have bias, and that this should not affect one's analysis so long as you are aware of it. In this case, it seems to me to be even less relevant than usual. After all, I don't think that that facts in this case are in dispute? Or are they? If you think they are, please try to defend why? After all, the torture of Khalid Sheik Mohammad has been held up as necessary and justifiable by many right wing lunatics; and his ridiculous "confession" is a matter of public record. As are the equally ludicrous "confessions" other torture users have apparently extracted over the years, from the Papal Inquisitors, through the English and French churches and government's strong men, taking in passing the Soviets, the Nazis, the various Maoists and worse, and now the United States. Why are you asserting special status for confessions obtained through torture by the freedom loving government of the United States (whose Attorney General has even borrowed the Soviet theory of state-granted rights and lifted the phrase “quaint and obsolete” in regards to the torture provisions in the Geneva Conventions from the German Nazis), if this is in fact what you are trying to do?
[Hermit] When you make comparisons, invidious as they usually are, it is important to specify which periods you are comparing. After all, the Soviet Union managed to survive as a totalitarian democracy for nearly 70 years. The degree of freedom - or lack of it varied greatly in that time. The National Socialists of Nazi Germany managed to teeter along as a party for only 20 miserable years - fewer than 15 in power, again with extremely varying degrees of freedom for those who were in reach of those not particularly tender hands. Neither of these very different beasts had either the level of information or quality of database access, nor even the degree of monitoring of their citizens now regularly available to the US government (Although it should perhaps be noted that East Germany's intelligence services were paralyzed but too much information, in the same strong hands as currently heads the the US department of Homeland Insecurities efforts to monitor US citizens - and it is mathematically possible to prove that this effort is entirely futile for its ostensible purpose, yet nevertheless sufficient to control its citizens to a very precise degree).
[Hermit] In the same way, America's extremely varying degrees of liberty - and their lack - have varied dramatically over the years, generally declining as government has become more powerful; although most Americans still seem to believe they live in a relatively free country. The relative incarceration rates, with US levels over fifteen times higher than the next worst Western nation and over four times higher than the Soviet Union at its worst, would, I suggest, tend to prove that this is another clear example of delusion and denial. But I'd be happy to be proven wrong.
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Bass
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Re:The fruits of US torture point to above average stupidity.
« Reply #5 on: 2007-03-19 21:28:12 » |
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[Bass] Lol. Wow Hermit, if you pounce this hard on someone who isn't even disagreeing with you, I'd hate to see the ones that do.
[Bass] The funny thing about biases is that even when they have correct facts, they warp it with their own opinions and imply it's something far worse than it actually is. I'm sorry, but "anti-war.com" is a terrible place to use for a source of debate. Whether it's facts are straight or not, it's really a better idea to use something more neutral (there are sources around that are fairly neutral. Try to look for ones that don't use words like "stupid"). If it's so factually correct, then better sources are bound to have it as well. But that's besides the point.
[Hermit] Why are you asserting special status for confessions obtained through torture by the freedom loving government of the United States (whose Attorney General has even borrowed the Soviet theory of state-granted rights and lifted the phrase “quaint and obsolete” in regards to the torture provisions in the Geneva Conventions from the German Nazis), if this is in fact what you are trying to do?
[Bass] It's ironic how you sound very much like a proganadist. How could you have possibly thought that I was saying that? I said nothing like that. Infact, I specifically said that I would easily believe malpractice on the part of the US. Now, I haven't heard about the US admitting torture on this particular subject (other than their usual water boarding techniques, which isn't news so I assumed you meant more severe), but if that's true then I guess I was right to expect it. Good for me.
[Bass] Regarding comparisons that you made, are you telling me that in the Soviet Union, even in the 70s, you could publicly protest and display your contempt for the government? And although Nazi Germany was fairly nice for Germans themselves, could the same be done there? If so, then I have been grossly misinformed about these two governments. Please direct me to a place of higher learning in that case. Now, I am by no means saying that America is as free as it should be. Far from it. However, and perhaps this is simply personal opinion, I would much rather live in America today (which I actually don't at the moment by the way) than I would in Nazi Germany or the USSR of the 70s. I haven't heard of too many westerners defecting into the communist bloc. But of course, I'd be equally as happy to be proven wrong.
[Hermit] all, I don't think that that facts in this case are in dispute? Or are they? If you think they are, please try to defend why?
[Bass] Again, I hadn't heard of them admitting to any torture that's revolutionary for them, so possibly that. More importantly, however, the only fact that's up for debate is whether or not Khalid's confession is true or not. Despite the fact that you think it's rediculous and may well be correct, you really can't proove it. At least not with any available information I know of. All I'm saying is that it's possible that he did sincerely confess.
[Bass] I hate seeing people whom I usually come to agree with politically jump on the anti-American bandwagon so quickly. It's not that I have any particular or special love for the States, but if they turn out to be incorrect, it gives the North American right so much more fire power in their "liberal bias" arguments.
[Bass] Understand what I'm getting at?
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Blunderov
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Re:The fruits of US torture point to above average stupidity.
« Reply #6 on: 2007-03-20 01:40:48 » |
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Quote from: Bass on 2007-03-19 21:28:12 | ...are you telling me that in the Soviet Union, even in the 70s, you could publicly protest and display your contempt for the government?... |
[Blunderov] Are you telling us that this is possible in the USA?
Have you noticed how Robert Mugabe borrows wholesale from the USA playbook in his supression of dissent in Zimbabwe?
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070319/ts_nm/iraq_protests_dc
More than 100 arrested in Iraq protests By Adam Tanner
Mon Mar 19, 7:46 PM ET
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Police arrested more than 100 Iraq war protesters in San Francisco and New York City on Monday as the nation marked the fourth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Uniformed police outnumbered the fewer than 100 protesters outside the stock exchange building at the corner of Broad and Wall streets in New York's historic financial district.
"Stop the money, stop the war," demonstrators chanted as police hauled away limp-bodied protesters.
A police spokesman said 44 were arrested.
Demonstrators said they were directing their protest at major defense contractors Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Halliburton, General Electric and others. The protest had no impact on the stock exchange's trading.
"U.S. service members and Iraqi civilians are dying so that an elite few can profit," said Fabian Bouthillette, 26, a high school teacher who served for two years in the U.S. Navy.
In San Francisco, dozens of demonstrators, many of them old enough to have once protested the Vietnam War in the 1960s and early 1970s, conducted a "Die In" by lying on the sidewalk and pretending to be dead. Some wore fake blood to recall the more than 3,200 U.S. military personnel killed in the Iraq War.
Many later moved to obstruct Market Street, running through the city's central business district.
"As soon as they went out there we started making arrests," police spokesman Neville Gittens said. "They were warned."
Another spokesman said police arrested 57 people in two separate San Francisco locations.
Polls show most Americans now oppose the war in Iraq, yet without a military draft like that which helped focus public opposition to the Vietnam War, public protests have been far smaller than they were in that era.
Thousands have, however, rallied against the war in recent days nationwide, including in the Washington D.C. area, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
(Additional reporting by Edith Honan in New York)
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Bass
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Re:The fruits of US torture point to above average stupidity.
« Reply #7 on: 2007-03-20 11:56:01 » |
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Quote from: Bass on 2007-03-19 21:28:12 | ...are you telling me that in the Soviet Union, even in the 70s, you could publicly protest and display your contempt for the government?... |
Quote from: Blunderov on 2007-03-20 01:40:48 | Are you telling us that this is possible in the USA? |
Not at all Blunderov; I don't think that I even hinted at this nevermind suggest it. I just take issue with some of what the Hermit has said here; and I suspect (with my above reply) that he cannot sustain some of the key points which he has made to me here, as I have mentioned in greater detail above.
But again, I'd be equally as happy to be proven wrong.
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Hermit
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Re:The fruits of US torture point to above average stupidity.
« Reply #8 on: 2007-03-20 12:52:07 » |
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It is always a debating error to assert that because of a quotation source used, that an issue is tainted. Antiwar's position is, in my opinion, founded on numerous well articulated arguments and is right out there in the form of their name. Antiwar is a very solid source of facts and a rich source of opinion with an editorial perspective from a quasi-liberal, libertarian, capitalist,. right-wing, Christian - but anti-war - perspective. They produce some analytical material which is generally written by literate in field subject experts, editorialize knowledgeably based on their extraordinarily good connections with senior military and intelligence sources, publish a wealth of news service material chosen by a remarkably broad panel of experts and are not scared of calling a spade a spade when it is, as has been too frequently the case, appropriate. While I disagree with some of their perspectives and disagree even more for the reasons behind some of their stances, they happen, in my opinion, to have produced the most consistently accurate and timely reporting of the ongoing debacles in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, the Lebanon and Palestine and the massive decline in American military, financial and political capacity. They are also doing a much better job than anyone else, including JDW on whom they draw, at contextualizing the coming debacle in Iran and possibly Syria.
Unlike most sources, I haven't seen many issues where I am knowledgeable where I have seriously disagreed with either their selection of facts or their presentation of them. This leads me to my granting them credence when they report on issues where I am not as knowledgeable. Note the qualitative and substantive difference between this "bias" and e.g. Fox News, The New York Times or Washington Post's apparently massive, but largely invisible, pro-Republican bias and well documented consequent willingness to delay or suppress stories - or promote them - apparently based on their owner's political and economic ties.
That said, I could have drawn the same information from the highly respected (enough to get elected and reopeatrdly reelected in the midst of a Republican stronghiold) Libertarian Rep. R Paul's own website, and you would probably not even had blinked. I chose not to do so, as that was not my original source for the article, and I think that Antiwar.com deserve the exopsure which his republication by them brings them. But again it weakens your case for ignoring what he has to say, rather as the fact that while some wannabe nazis might agree with some of what Iran or political analysts might say about Israel or the Israeli lobby in the US, this in no way affects the validity (or lack of) of what they have to say. Sad to say, this category of logical error, along with resort to slippery slope arguments, not only characterises but is typical (although of course they are hardly restricted to this demographic) of those raised in the American school system. Which is why, when a "friend" exhibited this error as blatantly as you did, I attempted to use it as an example not only of why it is invalid, but of how to analyse the claims such as you appeared to be advocating (including asking for confirmation given that I might have merely misunderstood your assertions). Again I recommend to your attention, "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your History Textbook Got Wrong" by James W. Loewen available on Amazon for well under $5 used. It might save you the cost of several years of military college study - or a liberal arts degree majoring in modern history at any competent University. Given that exceptionally gifted teachers occur in both environments and they don't have the political pressure to teach myth that schools do, the perspective is rather different from what I suspect you are used to.
Finally, to deal with your last queries, 70% of Germans disagreed with the appointment of Hitler's government (Election results, Statistisches Bundesamt). Very few of them, even the most vociferous, suffered from government sanctions for purely political speech until late 1941 or early 1942 ("The Third Reich in Power", 2005, Richard Evans, 1-59420-074-2). The same could, by and large be said even of massively oppressed minority groups like the Roma, Jews, homosexuals, communists and socialists. They did not form a large enough percentage of the population to act as a 1930s style Soviet - or current American style - warning to the general population to conform, under threat of imminent state sanctions (Above and other sources, supplemented by recollections from family members). By the 1970s, the legacy of Beria was largely gone though not forgotten, and Russians would privately and amongst friends joke and criticize the government far more freely - and with less reason perhaps - than I have seen or heard in public or private in America (reports by a large number of Soviets and those growing up in Soviet Republics). In public people were cautious, though not as cautious it seems of being labelled as unpatriotic or biased - as current Americans (Personal observation). Of course, Soviets had a living memory of internal purges and "disappearances" upon which to draw (Toynbee inter alia). Simultaneously, while incarceration rates were high compared to some European countries, they were low in comparison to contemporaneous American incarceration rates and insignificant in comparison to current US rates (US incarceration and comparative data compiled from US DOJ reports). Given the clear lack of a statistically sustainable use of force by the Soviets of the seventies, and a clear evidence of such force by the American government of today, is my conclusion - while you may find it unpalatable - also unreasonable?
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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
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Bass
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Re:The fruits of US torture point to above average stupidity.
« Reply #9 on: 2007-03-20 23:47:24 » |
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Heh, you debate only my side points. I like it.
It may well be founded, as I never said it wasn't, but it's still an argumentative article and should be used on a topic about debating the argument itself, not a topic about the facts and one's opinions of them. It twists the minds of those who are seeing the information for the first time. Not everyone is as much as an intellectual of the Enlightenment as you yourself afterall.
Quote from: Hermit on 2007-03-20 12:52:07 | The same could, by and large be said even of massively oppressed minority groups like the Roma, Jews, homosexuals, communists and socialists. |
Enough said 
Quote from: Hermit on 2007-03-20 12:52:07 | In public people were cautious, though not as cautious it seems of being labelled as unpatriotic or biased - as current Americans (Personal observation). |
Please don't let me be labeled as unpatriotic or biased; that isn't a repression of freedom, that's simply morons being free to make prejudgemental opinions about others. Arabs and other Muslims (domestic ones) are really the only ones that can claim the government is acting against them on this, and while I believe it's disgusting, I still don't think that it happens enough or severly enough to label America as unfree. Not yet at least.
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