Scott Allan's World

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1. Scott said: Director Hayden is probably in the best position to vouch for it’s effectiveness and has reaffirmed it in this article.
   Then why is he so vague about what specific information was learned as a result of waterboarding?  It’s not as if this administration hasn’t revealed specific information about attacks that have been thwarted as a result of the wiretap program.
   I don’t know how you can argue against the facts of success.
   It depends on how you define “success.”  What specific information was learned as a result of waterbaording?
   There is a tendency when liberals don’t have the facts on their side that if they say something loud enough and often enough that it will eventually be accepted as truth.
   That can apply to anyone, not just a liberal.  Personally I consider myself a conservative and I can’t think of anything more conservative than upholding the rule of law.

   1. Silke on January 20th, 2009 at 10:07 pm

2. Silke said, “Then why is he so vague about what specific information was learned as a result of waterboarding?”
    
   Silke probably isn’t nearly as old as I am and thus may not recall that during WWII there was a saying that “loose lips sink ships”. Thus no responsible person said anything that might provide information to those that were hell-bent on defeating the USA. The saying was true then, and it’s still true today.
    

   2. Don on January 21st, 2009 at 8:14 am

3. Scott, I’m quite familiar with that slogan.  It’s actually still used today throughout the military and especially in the intelligence community (where I worked) which is charged with education and enforcement of operational security.
   As I stated earlier the administration has already provided specific information on what intelligence has been learned from controversial programs authorized by the administration – for instance the warrantless wiretapping program.  There is far more reason to protect sources and methods for this program than the waterboarding interrogation technique.  So this cannot be the reason.
   Can you please define what “success” means other than asserting – well if he said it worked it must have.

   3. Silke on January 21st, 2009 at 8:46 am

4. Hi Silke.  You were actually responding to Don’s answer, not mine. But I will say that the word of the CIA Director is good enough for me.  I don’t need to be privy to the details of the information obtained and methods used to take him at his word.  After all he is the head of the Central Intelligence Agency.  If he’s not qualified to give his opinion on this matter than no one is.  If you are skeptical about his honesty, than you are accusing him of being a sadistic sociopath because there would be no other reason to use these techniques if he knew they were ineffective.

   4. Scott Allan on January 21st, 2009 at 9:40 am

5. And sorry about calling you a “liberal”.  It was a habit I’m trying to break.

   5. Scott Allan on January 21st, 2009 at 9:42 am

6. Sorry about that, Don.
   I’m not calling Hayden a liar.  I simply want to know how he defines success.  You’re argument in favor of waterboarding is that it works – but what does that mean?  I have never denied that people will say things when they are tortured.  The question is whether what they say is both valuable enough and worth compromising our principles over.
    
   Please tell me what specifically we learned from waterboarding three terrorists?  You can’t just say the technique was successful because the people who used it says it was.  That is circular reasoning.

   6. Silke on January 21st, 2009 at 10:34 am

7. By the way, that wasn’t a rhetorical question.  What did we learn from waterboarding three terrorists?
    
   Calling something “effective” because someone (who is inclined to say it) says it is “effective” but provides no evidence to support that claim isn’t exactly an open and shut case.

   7. Silke on January 21st, 2009 at 3:37 pm

8. It’s not clear to me what you are looking for in an answer. I do not have access to classified interrogation information at the moment. And I don’t really feel that the CIA needs to share that information to validate their claims.   However, some evidence was presented to the 9/11 commission about the interrogation of Khalid Sheik Mohammed:

   http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6452789.stm

   http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/02/05/641272.aspx

   1. The 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City that killed six people and injured more than 1,000.

   2. The 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Washington using four hijacked commercial airliners. Nearly 3,000 people were killed.

   3. A failed “shoe bomber” operation to bring down two US commercial airliners.

   4. The October 2002 attack in Kuwait that killed two US soldiers.

   5. The nightclub bombing in Bali, Indonesia that killed 202 people.

   6. A plan for a “second wave” of attacks on major US landmarks after 9/11 attacks. Alleged targets included the Library Tower in Los Angeles, the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Plaza Bank building in Seattle and the Empire State Building in New York.

   7. Plots to attack oil tankers and US naval ships in the Straits of Hormuz, the Straits of Gibraltar and in Singapore.

   8. A plan to blow up the Panama Canal.

   9. Plans to assassinate former US presidents including Jimmy Carter.

   10. A plot to blow up suspension bridges in New York.

   11. A plan to destroy the Sears Tower in Chicago by burning fuel trucks beneath or around it.

   12. Plans to “destroy” Heathrow Airport, Canary Wharf and Big Ben in London.

   13. A planned attack on “many” nightclubs in Thailand targeting US and British citizens.

   14. A plot targeting the New York Stock Exchange and other US financial targets after 9/11.

   15. A plan to destroy buildings in Elat, Israel, by using planes flying from Saudi Arabia.

   16. Plans to destroy US embassies in Indonesia, Australia and Japan.

   17. Plots to destroy Israeli embassies in India, Azerbaijan, the Philippines and Australia.

   18. Surveying and financing an attack on an Israeli El-Al flight from Bangkok.

   19. Sending several “mujahideen” into Israel to survey “strategic targets” with the intention of attacking them.

   20. The November 2002 suicide bombing of a hotel in Mombasa, Kenya, frequented by Israelis. At least 14 people were killed.

   21. The failed attempt to shoot down an Israeli passenger jet leaving Mombasa airport with a surface-to-air missile on the same day as the hotel bombing.

   22. Plans to attack US targets in South Korea, such as US military bases and nightclubs frequented by US soldiers.

   23. Providing financial support for a plan to attack US, British and Jewish targets in Turkey.

   24. Surveillance of US nuclear power plants in order to attack them.

   25. A plot to attack Nato’s headquarters in Europe.

   26. Planning and surveillance in a 1995 plan (the “Bojinka Operation”) to bomb 12 American passenger jets, most on trans-Pacific Ocean routes.

   27. The planned assassination attempt against then-US President Bill Clinton during a mid-1990s trip to the Philippines.

   28. “Shared responsibility” for a plot to kill Pope John Paul II while he visited the Philippines.

   29. Plans to assassinate Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

   30. An attempt to attack a US oil company in Sumatra, Indonesia, “owned by the Jewish former [US] Secretary of State Henry Kissinger”.

   31. The beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped in Pakistan in January 2002 while researching Islamist militancy.

   8. Scott Allan on January 21st, 2009 at 3:59 pm

9. Scott, thank you for providing some specifics.
    
    
   Even assuming all this information came only from the waterboarding and not the laptop computer and other materials found in his possession at the time of his capture, confessing to plots after the fact and providing a wish list of possible future targets (not actual plots in the operational phase) is not exactly the ticking time bomb scenario most torture proponents claim justifies waterboarding. In fact…
    
   “One official cautioned that many of Mohammed’s claims during interrogation were “white noise” – designed to send the U.S. on wild goose chases or to get him through the day’s interrogation session.”
    
   http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2007-03/16/content_828972.htm
    
    

   9. Silke on January 21st, 2009 at 6:22 pm

10. I don’t suppose the China Daily News have any interest in trying to undermine the U.S. standing in the world?  Do you prefer to believe the Director of the CIA or the citing of anonymous officials in a foreign paper?

    10. Scott Allan on January 22nd, 2009 at 12:52 pm

11. Since the source is the Associated Press (a U.S.-owned media company just like your source, ABC News) I’m not sure what your point is.  There’s no reason why what both men said couldn’t be true at the same time.

    11. Silke on January 22nd, 2009 at 2:03 pm

12. We’ve made a pro/con article on enhanced interrogation techniques on Debatepedia. It frames the arguments in this article and others. You may want to have a look.
    http://wiki.idebate.org/index.php/Debate:_Enhanced_interrogation_techniques#Pro

    12. Brooks on April 29th, 2009 at 8:43 pm

13. Scott said: “Director Hayden is probably in the best position to vouch for it’s effectiveness and has reaffirmed it in this article.”
    However, Scott also acknowledges “Hayden was not CIA Director at the time that the enhanced techniques were [used].” which totally undermines his assertion about Hayden “being in the best position to vouch for” the effectiveness of EITs.  In fact, there are many people in better position to judge their effectiveness, starting with these guys (some of whom actually were involved in interrogating some of the “high value targets” that were subjected to EITs.
    -“The proponents of torture say, ‘Look at the body of information that has been obtained by these methods.’ But if K.S.M. and Abu Zubaydah did give up stuff, we would have heard the details,” says FBI agent Jack Cloonan. “What we got was pabulum.” [Vanity Fair, 12/16/08]
    -According to a former senior C.I.A. official, who read all the interrogation reports on K.S.M., ’90 percent of it was total f*cking bullsh*t.’ A former Pentagon analyst adds: ‘K.S.M. produced no actionable intelligence. He was trying to tell us how stupid we were.’” [Vanity Fair,12/16/08]
    -Ali Soufan, a FBI interrogator who interrogated Abu Zubaydah said that “I was in the middle of this, and it’s not true that these [aggressive] techniques were effective,” he says. “We were able to get the information about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a couple of days. We didn’t have to do any of this [torture]. We could have done this the right way.” [Newsweek, 5/4/09]  Soufan also said that Zubaydah revealed KSM’s Identity BEFORE being tortured and that ““Abu Zubaydah was making progress before torture techniques” and that “Nothing gained from torture of Abu Zubaydah produced information that wouldn’t have come from traditional techniques.”  Remember, Ali Soufan is a guy WHO WAS THERE, unlike Michael Hayden who wasn’t even on the job yet.
    - “And most importantly, it serves as a great propaganda tool for those who recruit people to fight against us. And I’ve seen concrete examples of that talking to former high-ranking al-Qaeda individuals in Iraq.“ [Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on Fox News, 4/20/09]
    -“I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq.” [Matthew Alexander, leader of a Special Operations interrogation team in Iraq, 11/30/08]
    -“I don’t know how you could say we’re safer and more secure. If you torture somebody, they’ll tell you anything. I don’t know anybody that is good at interrogation, has done it a lot, that will say that that’s an effective means of getting information. … So I don’t think it’s effective. To that extent I don’t see how it’s made it safer. It has not made it safer for our soldiers when they’re captured.” [Major General Thomas Romig, former Army JAG, 11/19/07]
    -Alberto Mora, general counsel of the U.S. Navy in 2001]: “I never met a senior military officer that didn’t object to these policies. They caused the senior military to hold the Bush administration in contempt.” [New York Times, 5/3/09]
    -“Adherence to our values distinguishes us from our enemy. This fight depends on securing the population, which must understand that we – not our enemies – occupy the moral high ground.” [Gen. David Petraeus, Letter to Multi-National Force-Iraq, 5/10/07]
    -“The fact that America is seen in a negative light by so many complicates our ability to attract allies to our side, strengthens the hand of our enemies, and reduces our ability to collect intelligence that can save lives.” [Conclusion of Senate Armed Services Report, p.27]
    -“We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani,” said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case” for prosecution. [Washington Post, 1/14/09]
    -“Using those techniques for interrogating detainees was also inconsistent with the goal of collecting accurate intelligence information, as the purpose of SERE resistance training is to increase the ability of U.S. personnel to resist abusive interrogations and the techniques were based, in part, on Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to elicit false confessions.” [Senate Armed Services Report, p.28]
    Needless to say, I think you’re wrong Scott and the fact that you are relying on the word of men like Cheney and Rumsfeld (who literally (and legitimately, I think) are worried about facing charges for their actions if they go to certain countries around the world) and Hayden (WHO WASN’T EVEN ON THE JOB during the time in question) just shows how weak your position really is.

    13. SquawCraw on May 8th, 2011 at 4:09 pm

14. -“The proponents of torture say, ‘Look at the body of information that has been obtained by these methods.’ But if K.S.M. and Abu Zubaydah did give up stuff, we would have heard the details,” says FBI agent Jack Cloonan. “What we got was pabulum.” [Vanity Fair, 12/16/08]
    EXACTLY.  If Cheney, Rummy, Rice, Hayden et al had ANYTHING concrete they could point to and say “that piece of info came from that man as a direct result of “enhanced interrogation techniques”" then I think everyone can agree that we would have heard about it.  Instead we have Michael Hayden (Former Bush CIA Director) saying “I am convinced that the program got the maximum amount of information. Particularly out of that first generation of detainees.” When asked “No question that how we were led to Osama bin Laden was through enhanced interrogation techniques?” Hayden said “Well, what I’m at liberty to say is, what we got, the original lead information—and frankly it was incomplete identity information on the couriers—began with information from CIA detainees at the black sites, And let me just leave it at that.”
    In other words, “I would if I could, but I can’t, so I won’t.”  And before anyone says that “he couldn’t be more specific without giving away secrets/strategic info” then why have we heard so much about the plots to crash a plane in LA, or Padilla’s plan to explode a dirty bomb or the Seattle airport threat?  If there was ANY piece of info that Cheney/Rummey et al could point to as coming directly from EITs THEY WOULD HAVE COME FORWARD WITH IT A LONG TIME AGO. Case closed.  As usual, the simplest answer is the right answer…
     

    14. SquawCraw on May 8th, 2011 at 4:23 pm