More on Torture

ignatius is so hostile to the idea of american exceptionalism that he thinks it’s okay when we act like a third-world country. he doesn’t deserve to live here.

Joe
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What you and Ignatius don’t seem to get or even consider is that its probably a GOOD THING if the CIA is now more deliberative when they decide to interrogate a subject. Or do you not believe in the Constitution? And when Ignatius says President Obama can’t have it both ways I am thinking both he and you should take a look in the mirror. You can not on the one hand say you believe in the Consitution and on the other hand say you believe torture is warranted in any circumstance because it would abrogate our responsibilities to the Conventions Against Torture which as a treaty is covered under the Constitution. There is sufficient evidence out now that the CIA knew what they were doing was wrong no matter how many ass covering memos they requested and recieved from the Bush administration. It would be nice if you Joe would finally speak truth to power and express that if there are CIA agents who are upset that they can no longer torture then perhaps they are in the wrong MFing business.
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And then there is this
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I am sure the CIA agents in the audience were just “acting” though right?
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One last thing that hasn’t been addressed. The very reason why we know thst we tortured these people is because Bush was so intent on doing something institutionally that he knew was illegal and he was forced into covering the the people who he ordered to carry out these crimes. I am not so naive to believe there aren’t still black ops going on that people never know about. However when you try to make torture a norm this is what will happen and should happen.

as far as what it “accomplished”, the so-called “plot” that waterboarding KSM “foiled” was broken up a year before KSM was captured! what idiot would believe such a thing? david ignatius.

oh, and here’s a link from an actual news source

The Bush administration put relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein’s regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist

and the ignatiuses and kleins of the world applaud, or at leat ‘keep walking’. disgusting

Keep your head down. Duck the assignments that carry political risk.
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Horse$hi^!!!
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Deciding whether to waterboard someone 183 times or if 182 is sufficient is not a question of “political risk”. It’s a quetion of sociopathy. The lesson is that if your behavior is likely to horrify 80% of the people who hear about it, you probably shouldn’t do it.
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Fortunately I don’t think most actual CIA operatives are nearly as monstrous as Dave Ignatius is arguing that they need to be. Torture is not a political question. And as has been said before, if agents don’t need to worry about what possible repurcussions their actions might have, then there’s nothing to stop them from the worst possible sorts of abuses. Free rein is NOT good for our security.

It’s such a weird, weird world in the Village.
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It is somehow a bad thing that CIA officials will be unwilling to engage in illegal, immoral acts if ordered to do so by their superiors.
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But it’s not just that it’s somehow a bad thing–it’s that it is self-evidently the case that it is important to CIA morale that they not have to worry if they commit “extra-legal” acts.

the CIA wants us to believe that its use of torture was a limited and isolated phenomenon.
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nevertheless, the disclosure of this “limited and isolated” phenomenon is somehow affecting the operation of the entire CIA organization.
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of course, this makes no sense — and the real question is why are people like Klein and Ignatius so intent on ensuring that the torturers are not held responsible for their crimes? Could it be that JK and DI are protecting people responsible for crimes against humanity because they are friends and/or sources?

It seems to me that David Ignatius, who knows a thing or two about the clandestine service, is precisely right about the impact of the torture memos on the CIA.
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lets see now. Obama releases a few Justice Department memos exploring the legal justification of the use of torture by the United States government. At the same time, the Senate Armed Services committee is about to publish a massively detailed report on the CIA’s torture operation. But the reason for the morale problem at the CIA is the legal memos…..
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at this point, the question is whether Klein is on someone’s payroll, or simply advancing a phony agenda for other reasons….

Could it be that JK and DI are protecting people responsible for crimes against humanity because they are friends and/or sources?
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plukasiak,
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Bingo! By definition, their “friends” would never do anything morally, legally or ethically questionable without a good reason.
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Whatever that reason might be . . .

Very good blog post Joe Klein. You are spot on in identifying Obama’s actions as totally shutting down our very important CIA at a critical time in history.
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Hopefully, we will not be attacked again as a result. I however, will not be surprised in the least with Obama’s actions to date on this matter as well as his appeasement foreign policy tactics.

You are spot on in identifying Obama’s actions as totally shutting down our very important CIA at a critical time in history.
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Exactly WHAT has President Obama “totally shut down”, Rusty??
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By “appeasement foreign policy tactics”, I assume you believe we should still be starting fights with ANYONE/EVERYONE who doesn’t think like we do and agree with us?
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EXACTLY how much “personal” skin have you ever had in this country’s foreign policy game, Rusty?

This is bizzaro America. The victims are the people who tortured? The victims are those who crafted the policy? The moral/ethical sewer of the last 8 years will take a long time to crawl out of.

Another quesion is did the CIA torture BEFORE the Bybee memo?
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http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2009/04/levin-torture-interrogation-senate-report.html

Another quesion is did the CIA torture BEFORE the Bybee memo?
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sgwhite,
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Yes. This has been another episode of SATSQ.

Maybe if “shadow warriors” had slow-rolled on interrogations in the first place, there wouldn’t be any interrogation memos whose release would be so damaging to morale. They asked for the job because they liked it,for the power because they wanted it, and morale is damaged now because it all seems not everybody shared their opinions on what was necessary for god and country. Plenty of people could have told them where this was heading a long time ago. Plenty did, but I guess they weren’t patriots.

Ignatius sounds like Jack Nicholson.

Forgive my stupidity if I missed something in the article, but the main thesis seems to me to be that because of the release of memos justifying illegal and inhumane treatment of people during interrogation, CIA operatives are now reluctant to engage in legal, humane interrogation of subjects. Even so far as pocket litter and examination of cell phones. I missed any points presented that logically explain the concern. On a 1-10 BS scale, this is about a 7 or 8. Not off the chart, but not helpful, either.

Ignatius writes, with Klein’s strong approval:
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“Put yourself in the shoes of the people who were asked to interrogate al- Qaeda prisoners back in 2002. One former officer told me he declined the job, not because he thought the program was wrong, but because he knew it would blow up.”
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By his imprimatur of “precisely right”, Klein is saying that, like Ignatius, he can accomplish the feat of putting himself in the shoes of that officer. He can easily imagine declining to waterboard a man who started out half-insane for the 70th, 80th, 90th time – not because he thought it was wrong, but out of a patriotic concern for his own skin.
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So Ignatius and Klein don’t think torture is wrong. They don’t think the 70th, 80th, 90th, 180th waterboarding after all the previous ones came up dry is wrong. Or at least, not so obviously wrong that they can’t feel deep empathy for a guy who is sure it’s the right thing to do, that the country is placed in the gravest danger by a failure to do it, and that he’d rather subject the country to that grave danger than endanger his personal career.
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No one with a simulacrum of conscience could imagine himself in that guy’s shoes, because the simulacrum would warn him the very first time, to say nothing of the 160th, that this was torture, this was inhuman and this was wrong. Even were he convinced the act was somehow both necessary and permissible, no one with a scintilla of patriotism would prefer his own security to his country’s.
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But to Joe and David, these are the heroes to whom we owe undying solicitude. To the tortured, we owe nothing, not even the prospect that anyone will hesitate to torture again when the next President orders it.

I thought the argument against following the constitution and the law was there were too many progressive policies on the table that might be slowed down. Now we learn it is really because we may upset the moral of people who presumably are hired to uphold the law.
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This things gets wackier all the time.
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How about this as a solution? Why don’t people in the government simply not break the law so as to avoid shocks to their moral in the future?
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Let’s see the evidence that torture actually works and then explain why using it justifies breaking the laws we have sworn to uphold. In the process explain why the objectives obtained by torture could not be obtained in any other way.

I guess we’ll never see the article titled “How Bush/Cheney’s Decision Hurt the CIA.”
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Right now I feel a bit like the animals at the end of Animal Farm. The Beltway insiders knew all along that “rule of law” was an empty slogan. They never took it seriously, and now they are genuinely surprised that the hicks believed it meant something.

Mr. Klein, I understand your concern however I think you are giving Mr. Ignatius’ reasoning too much credit. To whit:
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The lesson for younger officers is obvious: Keep your head down. Duck the assignments that carry political risk.
Stay away from a counterterrorism program that has become a career hazard.
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I understand that would be a possible, perhaps even likely, reaction by many. However, the potential longterm negative fallout is predicated on POTUS and his administration leaving it at that. The President has shown a tremendous talent for managing human relationships. I expect that he is keenly aware of the potential consequences in the field of his choice to release the memos. I would be shocked if he did not continue to carefully manage and ameliorate the damage on a very personal, even individual, level. He’ll lose some but not all is my prediction. The recent Langley rah-rah was an opening strategy, not the entire game plan.
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Obama was deferring to the attorney general whether to prosecute “those who formulated those
legal decisions,” whatever that means.
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There is no confusion about what POTUS meant. The author is engaging in hyperbole. Obama’s aim, and I believe DOJ’s aim, will be at those legal Machiavellian’s who distorted the research data to justify their ends. Those implementing the orders in the field are safe and I believe both he and the DOJ will continue to emphasize that message.
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Obama seems to think he can have it both ways — authorizing an unprecedented disclosure of CIA operational
methods and at the same time galvanizing a clandestine service whose best days, he told them Monday, are “yet to
come.” Life doesn’t work that way…
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His conclusion is based on a false argument. No, that would NOT be a typical outcome BUT I don’t have any reason to believe that POTUS is that simpleminded. This is not a one shot deal. A relentless patient approach is his watchword. I’ll buy the first premise, that he has made such an authorization. I’m not a CIA historian so I don’t know if it is entirely unprecedented. However, it is entirely reasonable to expect that POTUS can shift, remobilize, and, yes, galvanize his clandestine troops. If you assume Obama will take no other action to build a stronger, effective relationship with CIA personnel then you choose to ignore one of his strongest, most effective skills. Given his past experience in the urban trenches as a professional organizer, the effectiveness of his campaign, and the adroit manner he has thus far demonstrated in the foreign relations arena, how could one make that assumption?
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IMHO, this issue will run its course and I predict that one year from now concerns about poor morale and covert operators choosing to be less than effective due to political concerns will be nearly non-existent. The focus will be consumed by investigations of the real culprits in the Executive Branch of he who shall not be named.
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Comments welcome.

Dang. I hate HTML codes. S/B italics closed after “Life doesn’t work that way.” Forgive me.

Shorter Ignatius: The CIA needs a free hand to carry out misguided policies that ultimately harm America’s national interests.
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The fact that the U.S. trained and supported Guatemalan death squads is a blot on our moral conscience. But in Ignatius’ twisted view, ending that support counts as a “chilling effect.”

“You can not on the one hand say you believe in the Consitution and on the other hand say you believe torture is warranted in any circumstance because it would abrogate our responsibilities to the Conventions Against Torture which as a treaty is covered under the Constitution.”
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“I am sure the CIA agents in the audience were just “acting” though right?”.
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It’s not difficult for authoritarian followers to hold an ideal in their heads while, at the same time, violate that ideal in the act of following authority. It’s actually a feature, not a bug (see: Republicans). Those rank-and-file CIA employees who were thrilled to see Obama turn over the rock they’ve been living under are not part of the power-elite that Klein and Ignatius worship. Those people are at least partially represented by the smaller group of clandestine officers who were willing to follow their orders no matter how pointless and sadistic. Get the picture?

But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there.”
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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66622.html
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Just in case anyone wonders why I was always adamant that McCain’s embrace of Randy Scheunmann as a foreign policy guru was the number one reason to oppose his candidacy.
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related:
http://phd9.blogspot.com/2008/07/must-publicize.html

Joe Klein asserts: “David Ignatius, who knows a thing or two about the clandestine service, ….” About as much as members of the Washington press corps know about the United States military and military operations, to wit: nothing.

remember all you twits in here that cited the WaPo article to “prove” so-called torture didn’t work–I got a word for you–
pwned.

You gotta love it when a wingnut reflexively rejects someone that actually is agreeing with them simply because they think the person is a “silly lib”
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BUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

OK, I read Ignatius’ column. He obviously thinks of himself as a hard realist. So, what’s cynical and what’s naive?
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1) “We all knew the political wind would change eventually,” he recalled. Other officers who didn’t make that cynical but correct calculation…
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That’s cynical? Gimme a break, and spare us the violins for CIA career-path conundrums. Bush/Cheney policies were loudly criticized all over the world from the start. As stated, “We all knew..”
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2) “…he (President Obama) must give up the idea that he can please everyone on this issue.”
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Nice condescending notion of President Obama’s mindset, based on…nothing. Free advice to the right-wing: just give up your meme about the President’s naivete. Nobody but Dick Cheney and the tea bag crowd are buying it.
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3) Finally, that overarching GOP staple: It’s never the horrible facts that are the problem. It’s that someone exposed them.
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Bottom line: I don’t know if I’m naive or cynical, but I ain’t buying Ignatius’ premise that President Obama “hurt the CIA.”

“The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means,” Admiral Blair said in a written statement issued last night. “The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security.”
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I don’t actually want to beleive that spob is an amoral moron, but he keeps preventing me from having any choice in the matter.
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Only in wingnut world is “did more harm than good” synonymous with “worked.”

[...] post, please subscribe to read more content on this topic.Joe Klein thinks that David Ignatius is “precisely right” in how President Obama’s “decision” to release the Bush torture memos make certain “veteran [...]

Let’s see what an actual interrogator has to say about all this.
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http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/probes-of-bush-administration/professional-interrogator-rejects-bushies-argument-about-release-of-torture-memos/
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Torin Nelson — a former U.S. Army civilian adviser and soldier who served as an interrogator at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Gharib and Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan from 2002-2008 — largely rejected the Bushies’ arguments in an interview, claiming the release of the memos wouldn’t tip off terrorists to torture secrets or compromise our long-term security.
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Nelson offered a nuanced take, agreeing with one key claim of torture backers. Asked if terrorists can train to resist torture if they know the interrogators’ “outer limits,” Torin told our reporter, Amanda Erickson: “Yes, definitely. They can resist physically and physiologically.”

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But he rejected the argument as irrelevant. Such trained detainee, he said, is more likely to get tortured for longer, which makes it more likely that he’ll volunteer falsehoods. The question is not whether “they can totally withstand torture,” Torin said. “The question is the quality of information that they give up. The information is most likely false,” designed to “make the immediate treatment stop.”

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Torin also rejected another key Bush argument: That terrorists don’t know about the “outer limits” of torture techniques. He said that much info has already been public, that released inmates readily communicated such info with comrades, and that he’d personally dealt with detainees who knew these “outer limits” already.

Mr. Klein and Mr. Ignatius should realize that the release of the memoes was ordered by a federal court, so the administration’s “decision” to release them was really a decision to comply with a federal court order rather than coming up with some ridiculous Bushian excuse not to so comply. Moreover, virtually all of the information contained in the memoes (other than “walling,” insertions of scorpions into cell boxes and the precise amount of times individuals were waterboarded) was already known. That is, the release of the horrific memoes, per se, did not cause any of the so-called ramifications claimed by either Ignatius or Klein. (It’s kind of like Mr. Thiessen’s Bushian claim that a plot allegedly foiled in 2002 resulted from the torture of a captive caught in 2003). If, in fact, CIA officers are now more reticent to engage in crimes or other illegal behavior than they were prior to the release of this information from 2003 to 2009, then they are reacting to much more than merely the release of these despicable memoranda; they are reacting to the fact that the American people do not agree with them, the American courts do not agree with them, torture is prohibited by international and domestic law, torture is violative of each and every single religious tradition and torture is violative of every applicable moral standard that humanity has ever devised.

If Mr. Ignatius’ CIA sources are *really* more reticent to engage in politically sensitive subjects, then they are taking the wrong message from the courts, the Justice Department, the entire civilized world, President Obama, every religious tradition, all moral precepts and consistent and long-standing international legal standards. We just want them to stop the torture and the hamhanded lying, logic-challenged ridiculous and idotic justifcations of torture.

It is extremely telling that Mr. Ignatius and Mr. Klein seem to be more upset about the mere release of memoes in compliance with a federal court order than they do about the torture itself and the rampant and deplorable destruction of America’s image and reputation resulting therefrom.

History will not look kindly on those that tortured, those that authorized torture, those that defended torture, those that justified torture, those that apologized for torture or, like Mr. Klein and Mr. Ignatius, those that seem more upset about the 6-year-on release of some minor confirming information about the torture than they are about the torture itself.

Walling was known. It was in the Red Cross report published in the New York Review of Books.

Centrist pablum, completely devoid of moral weight and quite possibly carcinogenic to American values.
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Could the members of the CIA that were “hootin’ and hollerin’” when President Obama addressed them possibly be demonstrating that they AGREE with him about torture and don’t like the actions of the few tainting the work that they do? If they disapproved might not they have just sat there or politely applauded? This might be a case of the barrel not approving of the actions of a few bad apples.

Ignatius’ column reminds me of when James Baker, on 9/11/01, blamed the attacks (or our vulnerability to them) on the Church Commission’s investigation of CIA abuses in the 1970s. Disgusting then and now, never mind Ignatius’ disingenuous disclaimer that “maybe the release of the torture memos was necessary”, and I can’t imagine why Joe (who I generally admire) would approve of it.

Maybe Jim Baker, or Ignatius, or even our own Joe, could point to one single covert op that actually made Americans safer, rather than merely scored a couple of points in a propaganda contest, because I have never heard of one.

I wonder how many undercover operatives gave up their jobs after Cheney endangered Valerie Plame’s life as well as the lives of the people she worked with?

The thing is, Joe Klein, that your opinion and Ignatius’ opinion are irrelevant here. Your opinions are nothing but substance-free partisanship, taking the side of absolving your friends and colleagues from the consequences of their criminal actions. The ICRC has determined these acts to be torture. That is their franchise, not yours. It isn’t up to you and the rest of the corrupt Washington elite to determine whether acts constitute torture. And it isn’t up to you and your Washington elite to decide whether there is to be investigations and, if warranted, prosecutions of people who committed war crimes.
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Here’s a question for you, Joe Klein. Is there ANY crime that one of your cronies can commit that you will not defend? Any at all? You defend those who outed Valerie Plame, who perjured themselves and obstructed justice, who tortured and designed programs of torture that resulted in prisoner’s deaths. You defend your friends who have committed war crimes under US and international law. Is there ANY bad act AT ALL that you will not defend?
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You and Ignatius are crackpot columnists untrained in international and constitutional law, and utterly without morals or ethics or scruples. Please tell me why your opinion should hold any weight whatsoever.
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Here’s a little video of Philip Zelikow, who has something to say about what he thinks should be done here. I hope you’ll consider his closing words there as a position you yourself might want to consider.
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Condi Aide: Bushies Told Me Anti-Torture Memo Was "Inconvenient" | TPMMuckraker

Joe remarks on Ignatius’ knowledge of the clandestine service. How can this be possible? Ignatius isn’t cleared and he (like Joe) has no need to know.

I find it hard to believe that anyone who could present this with a straight face can be said to be precise about anything:

“But by Tuesday, Obama was deferring to the attorney general whether to prosecute “those who formulated those legal decisions,” whatever that means.”

We know who formulated those legal decisions: Bybee, Yoo and their ilk. Ignatius is lazy, and overly concerned with the feelings of the psychopaths who tortured a group of people, many of whom were innocent of anything worse than pissing off a cab driver in Pakistan who wanted US reward dollars.

Do we really want to feel bad for the torturers? I know that’s not the substance of Ignatius’ piece, but it sure seems to be the tone. What’s next — are we going to see an Ignatius column intimating that we wouldn’t have needed to torture anyone if they’d just been more cooperative, so shame on them for making us do such nasty things! (Especially the ones who knew nothing of value in the first place. Shame on them for being ignorant and innocent!)

No, it’s clear that what we need is to go through Langley with a flamethrower to toast the careers of anyone who *didn’t* duck out of the torture assignment. They’re not patriots, they’re sadistic monsters who should be tried for their crimes against their victims, against America, and against humanity.

The torture techniques adopted by the Americans on sleep deprivation and stressing body postures are not new techniques. The Israelis have been doing them for years since the Intifada and was reported extensively by Human Rights Watch in 1994.
Obviously the Israelis have copied the torture programs from studies conducted in various institutions in Europe and North America. Perhaps the Americans refined them using boxed-up compartments rather than tying interrogated participants to a chair or hog-tied them in different positions. This will eventually lead to stress and the pains from the joints or nerves will set in and discomfort and aches occur.
The Americans make it clinical and precise so that torture activities may not be easily detected with a pair of naked eyes. The American way of giving a substantial timing is to delineate any physical injuries that may result from the posture stress. However, from an autopsy, a coroner is perhaps able to determine the cause of the resulting internal injuries.
There was a claim that medical technicians and clinicians are involved in acts of torture. I am not surprised at all, in fact, in the death penalty by lethal injection, the procedures of administering a catheter, drugs and medical apparatus are the work of medical technicians, clinicians and a medical officer (doctor). Their expertise is required so that the death penalty is carried out efficiently, clinically and ‘without a glitch.’ So my argument is if these people can administer this sort of procedure, torture is only a level below death and not close to it. So what’s the difference? The previous administration may be thrilled by their expertise and the knowledge of properly inducing a suspect through pain and eventually a “response” whether corrigible or incorrigible.
There is a question in relation to the ticking time bomb. Again, arguments pose for the principle of against torture and for torture. Some fence sitters argue that perhaps we do need torture at this instance some present a flat response of NO! Somehow the scales of justice become the scales of humanity and economics. Which is moral; which is proper and which is correct. None. As long as the scales are balanced then perhaps its the appropriate meaning, there is a need as long as a very severe threat is on the horizon. Giving a criminal, a terrorist or a bandit the advantage will not be able to save a life or lives. Because at the end of the day, if we do not action on it, the politicians will gripe about their truths, the media will have a hay day for whatever follies and the family , loved ones or relative/s is or are going to campaign and bring back uglier laws and regulations governing torture or investigation or interrogation. Its only a matter or time! Remember an adverse action will have a negative reaction.
I do not like torture and I think its an affront to any human dignity but there comes a time we still have to do it but only IF!