The Science of Torture

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Waterboarding Doesn’t Work, Scientists Say

Severe interrogation techniques like waterboarding, sleep deprivation, stress positions and the exploitation of phobias aren’t just morally reprehensible, they’re based on bad science, destroying the very memories they’re supposed to recover.

“There is a vast literature on the effects of extreme stress on motivation, mood and memory, using both animals and humans,” writes Shane O’Mara, a stress researcher at Ireland’s Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience. “These techniques cause severe, repeated and prolonged stress, which compromises brain tissue supporting memory and executive function.”

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Exclusive: Senate probe finds little evidence of effective "torture"

A nearly three-year-long investigation by Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats is expected to find there is little evidence the harsh "enhanced interrogation techniques" the CIA used on high-value prisoners produced counter-terrorism breakthroughs.

People familiar with the inquiry said committee investigators, who have been poring over records from the administration of President George W. Bush, believe they do not substantiate claims by some Bush supporters that the harsh interrogations led to counter-terrorism coups.

The backers of such techniques, which include "water-boarding," sleep deprivation and other practices critics call torture, maintain they have led to the disruption of major terror plots and the capture of al Qaeda leaders.

One official said investigators found "no evidence" such enhanced interrogations played "any significant role" in the years-long intelligence operations which led to the discovery and killing of Osama bin Laden last May by U.S. Navy SEALs.

happy jack wrote:

It’s refreshing to see that your president, he of the pure and lily-white hands (figuratively, of course), is finally forced to admit that he used those hands to utilize and take advantage of torture in order to pull off the high point of his presidency – the killing of bin-Laden.
Oh, my.
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Dishonesty rewarded by wingnut welfare

The Dumbest Man on the Internet resorts to a flat out lie today, and is rewarded with a headline link at Drudge Report: Defense Secretary Panetta Admits Information From Waterboarding Led US to Bin Laden (Video) | the Gateway Pundit.

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Yes, waterboarding worked.
Today on Meet the Press Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta admitted that information gleaned from waterboarded detainees was used to track down al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and kill him.

“The real story was that in order to put the puzzle of intelligence together that led us to Bin Laden, there were a lot of pieces out there that were a part of that puzzle. Yes, some of it came from some of the tactics that were used at that time, interrogation tactics that were used. But the fact is we put together most of that intelligence without having to resort to that.”

Jim Hoft is such an amazing dimwit that he actually includes the quote that exposes his own brazen lies.

First, Panetta did not even use the word “waterboarding,” and he certainly did not say that information from waterboarding “led to bin Laden.” Hoft simply made that up out of nothing. Panetta specifically said that most of the intelligence that led to bin Laden was put together without using torture.

Second, Panetta’s very next sentence, after the section that Hoft clipped for his misleading video, was:

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I think we could have gotten bin Laden without that.

This is an absolutely blatant, in your face example of how the right wing blogs tell each other lies, circulate them, and turn them into unquestionable articles of faith. It’s a microcosm of the reality-denying reactionary sickness at the heart of the conservative movement.

Here’s the clip from NBC of Panetta’s actual statement, including the critical sentence that Hoft edited out.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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The Dumbest Man on the Internet resorts to a flat out lie today, and is rewarded with a headline link at Drudge Report:

happy jack wrote:

I don't know or care what someone named Jim Hoft said; I don't even know who he is.

Artie60438 wrote:

happy jack wrote:

I don't know or care what someone named Jim Hoft said; I don't even know who he is.

Yet you posted his lies,right?
Guess what? That entire link completely disappeared from Drudge's page. Gee,I wonder why?

edge540 wrote:

Try this on for size?

"Panetta: Enhanced interrogation did not lead to bin Laden"

No problem

happy jack wrote:

edge540 wrote:

Try this on for size?

"Panetta: Enhanced interrogation did not lead to bin Laden"

No problem

See my previous post.
No problem.

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But two prisoners who underwent some of the harshest treatment — including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times — repeatedly misled their interrogators about the courier’s identity.

edge540 wrote:

I don't see anything saying that the intel that led to getting binladen was the result of waterboarding, do you?

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

edge540 wrote:

Republican Senator John McCain, in a Washington Post opinion piece ....

edge540 wrote:

“Not to my knowledge,” Brennan explained.

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“It is pathetic,” he says. “This case is the biggest proof that waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques did not work at all. And I saw it firsthand. It actually delayed the hunt for bin Laden. A name of his courier came up in 2002, before Khalid Sheik Muhammad was arrested. He knew everything about the guy, and he lied about it! If waterboarding worked, KSM would have said the guy’s real name back in March 2003.”

edge540 wrote:

Sorry jack, Leon Panetta's "first-hand knowledge or certainty" is not any more credible than John McCain's, Donald Rumsfeld's , or Diane Fienstein's, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, "first-hand knowledge or certainty."

RUMSFELD: NO WATERBOARDING LEADING TO COURIER; TIMELINE DOESN’T MATCH UP
http://radio.foxnews.com/2011/05/02/rumsfeld-no-waterboarding-leading-to-courier-timeline-doesn%E2%80%99t-match-up/

Senate Intel Chair: Torture Did Not Lead To Bin Laden In Any Way
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/05/senate-intel-chair-torture-did-not-lead-to-bin-laden-in-any-way.php

jack, here's the guy that actually HAS "first-hand knowledge or certainty,"
ex-FBI Interrogator Ali Soufan. He was actually there, Leon was not.

Did Waterboarding Lead to Bin Laden’s Lair? Ex-FBI Specialist Says ‘No Way’

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“It is pathetic,” he says. “This case is the biggest proof that waterboarding and enhanced interrogation techniques did not work at all. And I saw it firsthand. It actually delayed the hunt for bin Laden. A name of his courier came up in 2002, before Khalid Sheik Muhammad was arrested. He knew everything about the guy, and he lied about it! If waterboarding worked, KSM would have said the guy’s real name back in March 2003.”

Pathetic indeed.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2011/05/did_waterboarding_lead_to_bin.html

jack, if you want to believe the bullshit that torture works, that's fine, wouldn't be the first time that a conservative is gullible enough to fall for it.

edge540 wrote:

jack, if you want to believe the bullshit that torture works, that's fine, wouldn't be the first time that a conservative is gullible enough to fall for it.

Artie60438 wrote:

edge540 wrote:

jack, if you want to believe the bullshit that torture works, that's fine, wouldn't be the first time that a conservative is gullible enough to fall for it.

Another case of Drudge blowing the dog whistle and uninformed wingnuts immediately start grabbing their pitchforks and torches. However this particular fake outrage was so ridiculous that even Drudge took down the link. Only the most gullible are still beating the drum.

It's a shame that the righties just can't get over the fact that Obama eliminated Osama.

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Last week, Senator McCain published a widely discussed Op ed in the Washington Post calling into question claims that torture was instrumental in tracking down Bin Laden. McCain cited Panetta as a source for his information, but didn't release any material provided to him by Panetta, and conservatives like former Bush attorney general Michael Mukasey subsequently dismissed McCain’s account. The CIA has not publicly taken sides in the dispute.

But Panetta’s letter, dated May 9th, bears out McCain’s version of events.

. . .

The case being made by conservatives — that Bin Laden’s death vindicates torture — was spelled out last week by former Bush AG Mukasey in an Op ed in the Wall Street Journal. Mukasey argued that the trail to Bin Laden “began with a disclosure from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who broke like a dam under the pressure of harsh interrogation techniques that included waterboarding. He loosed a torrent of information — including eventually the nickname of a trusted courier of bin Laden.”

The account in Panetta’s letter clearly contradicts this. Here are the operative three paragraphs from the letter, which represents a response from Panetta to McCain’s earlier request for information about torture and Bin Laden’s death:

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Nearly 10 years of intensive intelligence work led the CIA to conclude that Bin Ladin was likely hiding at the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. there was no one “essential and indispensible” key piece of information that led us to this conclusion. Rather, the intelligence picture was developed via painstaking collection and analysis. Multiple streams of intelligence — including from detainees, but also from multiple other sources — led CIA analysts to conclude that Bin Ladin was at this compound. Some of the detainees who provided useful information about the facilitator/courier’s role had been subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques. Whether those techniques were the “only timely and effective way” to obtain such information is a matter of debate and cannot be established definitively. What is definitive is that that information was only a part of multiple streams of intelligence that led us to Bin Ladin.

Let me further point out that we first learned about the facilitator/courier’s nom de guerre from a detainee not in CIA custody in 2002. It is also important to note that some detainees who were subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques attempted to provide false or misleading information about the facilitator/courier. These attempts to falsify the facilitator/courier’s role were alerting.

In the end, no detainee in CIA custody revealed the facilitator/courier’s full true name or specific whereabouts. This information was discovered through other intelligence means.

Emphasis mine. Panetta’s account contradicts Mukasey’s claim that the trail to Bin Laden “began” with disclosures from Khalid Sheikh Muhammed that were achieved through the “pressure" of torture.

Panetta’s account also represents public, on-the-record confirmation from the CIA of — and adds new detail to — a careful and thorough investigation by Scott Shane and Charlie Savage of the New York Times, which was based on anonymous sources and concluded that torture “played a small role at most in identifying Bin Laden’s trusted courier and exposing his hide-out.” Shane and Savage also quoted unnamed sources claiming torture resulted in bad information — also confirmed in Panetta’s letter.

Conservatives will argue that little is known about the “other intelligence means” used to secure the courier’s name or whereabouts. They will also point out that Panetta’s letter also indicates that some detainees who “provided useful information about the facilitator/courier’s role” had been subjected to torture. In saying this, Panetta is expanding on an earlier claim in an interview that torture, waterboarding included, produced info that played some kind of role at some point in tracking Bin Laden.

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The best refutation of Dick Cheney’s insistence that torture was necessary and useful in dealing with threats from al-Qaeda just died in a Libyan prison. . . .

Al-Qaeda operative Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was captured trying to escape from Afghanistan in late 2001. He was sent to Egypt to be tortured, and under duress alleged that Saddam Hussein was training al-Qaeda agents in chemical weapons techniques. It was a total crock, and alleged solely to escape further pain. Al-Libi disavowed the allegation when he was returned to CIA custody. But Cheney and Condi Rice ran with the single-source, torture-induced assertion and it was inserted by Scooter Libby in Colin Powell’s infamous speech to the United Nations.

If torture can mislead you into launching a war that results in hundreds of thousands of deaths, then it should be avoided, quite apart from the fact that it is illegal and that the United States is signatory to binding treaties specifying its illegality. (It is coming out that Bush-Cheney’s own CIA Inspector-General expressed the view that the Bush-era torture was medically unsound, did not produce the desired results, and contravened the UN Convention against torture.

Here is what Condi Rice told the Lehrer News Hour in 2002, based on the torture-induced statements of the late al-Libi:

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‘ “We clearly know that there were in the past and have been contacts between senior Iraqi officials and members of Al Qaeda going back for actually quite a long time,” Rice said. “We know too that several of the [Al Qaeda] detainees, in particular some high-ranking detainees, have said that Iraq provided some training to Al Qaeda in chemical weapons development.” ‘

In my book, Napoleon’s Egypt: Invading the Middle East, I note that Gen. Bonaparte forbade the use of torture by French military interrogators in Cairo, on the grounds that it produced too much misinformation. Napoleon was not exactly squeamish. And even he would have been ashamed of the crew we had in Washington before last January.

Heretic wrote:

Multiple streams of intelligence — including from detainees, but also from multiple other sources — led CIA analysts to conclude that Bin Ladin was at this compound. Some of the detainees who provided useful information about the facilitator/courier’s role had been subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques. Whether those techniques were the “only timely and effective way” to obtain such information is a matter of debate and cannot be established definitively. What is definitive is that that information was only a part of multiple streams of intelligence that led us to Bin Ladin.

I wrote:

This isn't anything we didn't know several years ago

happy jack wrote:

It’s refreshing to see that your president, he of the pure and lily-white hands (figuratively, of course), is finally forced to admit that he used those hands to utilize and take advantage of torture in order to pull off the high point of his presidency – the killing of bin-Laden.
Oh, my.

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White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters Wednesday that locating bin Laden required years of painstaking work that eventually led to discovery of the address of the Pakistan compound last August.

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"I can say with certainty that no single piece of information, with the exception of the address of the compound, was ... singularly vital to this, because we're talking about tiny bits of information that were compiled by unbelievably competent professionals over nine and a half years," Carney said. "And it's impossible to know if one piece of information came from one source and was corroborated in another way; if, you know which thread held the cloth together, with the exception of the location of the compound."

Carney acknowledged that some information came from terrorism detainees, which he called one of many ways that information was gathered.

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"Now, I can't categorically rule out that one piece of information" played a key role, "because we don't know," Carney said.

Heretic wrote:

And again...

I wrote:

This isn't anything we didn't know several years ago

Artie60438 wrote:

happy jack wrote:

It’s refreshing to see that your president, he of the pure and lily-white hands (figuratively, of course), is finally forced to admit that he used those hands to utilize and take advantage of torture in order to pull off the high point of his presidency – the killing of bin-Laden.
Oh, my.

"finally forced to admit"?


May 4,2011

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White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters Wednesday that locating bin Laden required years of painstaking work that eventually led to discovery of the address of the Pakistan compound last August.

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"I can say with certainty that no single piece of information, with the exception of the address of the compound, was ... singularly vital to this, because we're talking about tiny bits of information that were compiled by unbelievably competent professionals over nine and a half years," Carney said. "And it's impossible to know if one piece of information came from one source and was corroborated in another way; if, you know which thread held the cloth together, with the exception of the location of the compound."

Carney acknowledged that some information came from terrorism detainees, which he called one of many ways that information was gathered.

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"Now, I can't categorically rule out that one piece of information" played a key role, "because we don't know," Carney said.

But what of this?

http://www.today.com/id/42880435/ns/today-today_news/t/cia-chief-waterboarding-aided-bin-laden-raid/

CIA chief: Waterboarding aided bin Laden raid

WASHINGTON — Intelligence garnered from waterboarded detainees was used to track down al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and kill him, CIA Chief Leon Panetta told NBC News on Tuesday.
“Enhanced interrogation techniques” were used to extract information that led to the mission’s success, Panetta said during an interview with anchor Brian Williams. Those techniques included waterboarding, he acknowledged.