In Adopting Harsh Tactics, No Inquiry Into Their Past Use

[Stuart G]

Source: New York Times

By SCOTT SHANE and MARK MAZZETTI
Published: April 21, 2009

WASHINGTON — The program began with Central Intelligence Agency leaders in the grip of an alluring idea: They could get tough in terrorist interrogations without risking legal trouble by adopting a set of methods used on Americans during military training. How could that be torture?

In a series of high-level meetings in 2002, without a single dissent from cabinet members or lawmakers, the United States for the first time officially embraced the brutal methods of interrogation it had always condemned.

This extraordinary consensus was possible, an examination by The New York Times shows, largely because no one involved — not the top two C.I.A. officials who were pushing the program, not the senior aides to President George W. Bush, not the leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees — investigated the gruesome origins of the techniques they were approving with little debate.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us/politics/22detain.html?hp

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Incredible if true...

[The Stranger]

1. "Harsh Tactics"?!!?!? Holy fucking Orwellian Newspeak!

You couldn't make this shit up.

[Stuart G]

2. ,,No you can't...truth is stranger than fiction.. This story gets more

unbelievable each day..this one really is something...

[Overseas]

3. Harsh tactics a.k.a. agressive techniques a.k.a. torture were known to be ineffective

More from the article:


According to several former top officials involved in the discussions seven years ago, they did not know that the military training program, called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, had been created decades earlier to give American pilots and soldiers a sample of the torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War, methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans.

Even George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director who insisted that the agency had thoroughly researched its proposal and pressed it on other officials, did not examine the history of the most shocking method, the near-drowning technique known as waterboarding.

The top officials he briefed did not learn that waterboarding had been prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II and was a well-documented favorite of despotic governments since the Spanish Inquisition; one waterboard used under Pol Pot was even on display at the genocide museum in Cambodia.

They did not know that some veteran trainers from the SERE program itself had warned in internal memorandums that, morality aside, the methods were ineffective.

[Stuart G]

5. These fools could have easily talked...to some other so called experts, like the Isreal

secret police...They would have told them the truth..shit..
How stupid can anyone be..well pretty stupid..just look at Bush..

[Overseas]

7. And when you've got conservative-dominated media to back you up

to the point of defending a war of choice against a country that wasn't involved in 9/11 and didn't have WMD, you must feel pretty safe in doing whatever you want.

Heck, the torturers even got a cool TV drama to push their point of view. I could never watch "24" because I had heard its hero practiced torture under the weekly ticking time bomb scenarios.

[No Elephants]

4. "Without a single dissent from cabinet members or lawmakers, the United "

"In a series of high-level meetings in 2002, without a single dissent from cabinet members or lawmakers, the United States for the first time officially embraced the brutal methods of interrogation it had always condemned.

This extraordinary consensus was possible, an examination by The New York Times shows, largely because no one involved — not the top two C.I.A. officials who were pushing the program, not the senior aides to President George W. Bush, not the leaders of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees — investigated the gruesome origins of the techniques they were approving with little debate.

According to several former top officials involved in the discussions seven years ago, they did not know that the military training program, called SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, had been created decades earlier to give American pilots and soldiers a sample of the torture methods used by Communists in the Korean War, methods that had wrung false confessions from Americans.

Even George J. Tenet, the C.I.A. director who insisted that the agency had thoroughly researched its proposal and pressed it on other officials, did not examine the history of the most shocking method, the near-drowning technique known as waterboarding.

The top officials he briefed did not learn that waterboarding had been prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II and was a well-documented favorite of despotic governments since the Spanish Inquisition; one waterboard used under Pol Pot was even on display at the genocide museum in Cambodia. "

We prosecuted others for waterboarding, but will not prosecute our own President and Vice President, etc. for it. SHAMEFUL.

[Mari333]

6. Nancy Pelosi was right in there cheerleading

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/258258

[Overseas]

8. Yes it is sad that Democrats didn't stop the torture before President Obama took office.

Was that because Republicans and their media had hounded Democrats as being "soft on defense" for so many years that they were afraid to oppose any aggressive military plans? Would they let the Republican administration trample our nation's reputation and engage in torture just to protect their own political fortunes?

Could they have been hounded for speaking out against torture being contemplated because the discussions took place in classified briefings?

[Mari333]

9. might have been

and everyone was in gung ho mode. I wasnt. of course, I was run off the road and spit on and yelled at. but who knows why the dems went belly up on this or signed the patriot act crap or supported illegal wiretapping....they are inside the beltway, and completely out of touch..maybe it was just about votes..or better yet, MONEY...yeah, follow the money...