I'm not religous either, for the most part, but I do know that
God would not punish someone for doing something that has to be
done in order to save lives, and I feel they will have a place in heaven
along with others.

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

Matthew 5:44
King James Version (KJV)

How many more cases of quick effective and professional interrogators at work do you need to convince you of what some of us are arguing ?

I have no respect for the opinions of those Americans who still feel America’s occupation of Iraq has been or will be a success

This can be turned around and say, most on this forum who do not support
the war are against torture of enemy combatants, which in my eyes
would make sense, according to the stance which has been taken,
it however would make NO sense if someone was against the war from
a "peace" side, and supported torture, therefore, it shows me
some are actually taking a true stance, hence the same with those
that support the war and supporting torture, which in my eyes, is a true
stance as well, whether it's agreeable or not, from either side, the4se
are true stances which are being taken.

That is your opinion but it's obvious you are only open to one side
here, and that makes you narrowminded, so what is actually worse here?
Twisted Sensibilities? Or narrowminded thinking? Both could be
equal I suppose. If you were TRULY open to other sides, you would
see that both you and I support our nation, but from different sides,
instead of seeking middle ground here, you are off on some tyrant,
that's ok, for I stand on my side supporting torture of enemy combatants,
it's that simple, and my simple point that no one will address is this,
if torture does not work, then why is our nation along with others
still using it?

Where these points of opinions by these credible characters is true, it still does not answer the question that if these particular people are Majority, then why is torture still being used?

Gee, what a surprise......

There is, however, one angle that warrants a closer look: whether torturing Zubaydah actually produced actionable intelligence. The answer is far from clear.

The torture of Abu Zubaydah has been a key White House talking point for quite a while. Last year, Bush personally discussed the interrogation in considerable detail, describing Zubaydah as “a trusted associate of Osama bin Laden,” who “had run a terrorist camp in Afghanistan where some of the 9/11 hijackers trained.”

To hear the president tell it, Zubaydah, after being subjected to an “alternative set of [interrogation] procedures,” was a font of useful information — dishing on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and at least one domestic terrorist attack in the works. Bush concluded, “Zubaydah told us that al Qaeda operatives were planning to launch an attack in the U.S., and provided physical descriptions of the operatives and information on their general location. Based on the information he provided, the operatives were detained — one while traveling to the United States.”

But there’s almost certainly more to this example. Abu Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan in March 2002. The White House has identified him as al Queda’s chief of operations. Ron Suskind reported, however, that Zubaydah turned out to be mentally ill. We were torturing a man who was, in effect, retarded.

Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be. CIA and FBI analysts, poring over a diary he kept for more than a decade, found entries “in the voice of three people: Hani 1, Hani 2, and Hani 3″ — a boy, a young man and a middle-aged alter ego. All three recorded in numbing detail “what people ate, or wore, or trifling things they said.” Dan Coleman, then the FBI’s top al-Qaeda analyst, told a senior bureau official, “This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality.”

Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda’s go-to guy for minor logistics — travel for wives and children and the like. That judgment was “echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President,” Suskind writes. And yet somehow, in a speech delivered two weeks later, President Bush portrayed Abu Zubaydah as “one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States.” And over the months to come, under White House and Justice Department direction, the CIA would make him its first test subject for harsh interrogation techniques. […]

“I said he was important,” Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. “You’re not going to let me lose face on this, are you?” “No sir, Mr. President,” Tenet replied. Bush “was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth,” Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, “Do some of these harsh methods really work?” Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety —


At this point, I have no idea who’s right about this. Either Zubaydah was an unstable schizophrenic who had no useful intelligence at all, or Zubaydah was a valuable al Qaeda asset who offered key information that saved lives. I have no reason to suspect that Kiriakou is intentionally trying to deceive anyone, though I would add that Kiriakou was not personally involved in torturing Zubaydah, but was part of an interrogation team that questioned him in a hospital in Pakistan after he was captured in 2002. I mention this because, it’s possible that Kiriakou was told Zubaydah produced actionable intelligence, when the truth might be the opposite.
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/13880.html

Ok lets start with this, please show statistics that back up this claim, how many died ,when, where, etc...how many times the procedure was utilized in relation to number of deaths...

Waterboarding is slow motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of black out and expiration –usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch and if it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia. When done right it is controlled death.

Most of the alleged facts offered by those of you who are against waterboarding or torture are merely opinions offered by those who are admittedly against torture for moral not practical reasons.

In all the interrogations in all of history your contention is that torture never provided reliable intel?

yes I agree noone should support torture, but coersion in the form of 40 seconds using the cellephane method of waterboarding is a different story

I agree with you, torture is a deplorable activity,
no matter how short or how long it is conducted, but if it saves
lives, and obviously it has, or else it would not still be
utilized, that is the point I keep making and everyone is ignoring
that point.

if there was an alternative
to make enemy combatants talk, I would be all for it, but there isn't,
until then, torture aka,,,,waterboarding will be utilized,

I would like to stress for the hundredth
time on this thread, that if it didn't work, we would not still
be utilizing it.

the majority of people within the fields you mentioned in your reply still support torture, and this can be summed up basically because it works.

I wanted to add, these are great examples of alternatives, but they are not realistic in dealing with the majority of combatants, where this works or worked for a minority,

They can say this untill they are blue in the face, but as I have stated
again and again, torture is still being utilized not because our
nation along with other nations are sadists, it's because it works,
even if not 100% effective.

You are speaking of having a conscious, well sometimes in service
for your country, a conscious is not necessary nor required,

I want to point out that quoting bible verses to terrorists is not a great way to gain information, that's just me though lol

yes, I agree about grammatical errors, and stated earlier it was
no big deal, therefore, on a thread about torture, why do you keep
bringing up these points?

Where torture is NOT 100% effective, it's obviously effective enough
due to the fact, it's still being utilized, and I have driven this point
home many times here.

If you had kept up with the thread, or read the posts I recommended, you would have already seen this.

And if you want precise statistics, I would suggest that you ask him.

Waterboarding is slow motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of black out and expiration –usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch and if it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia. When done right it is controlled death.

Actually, anybody who has done research on the subject knows that people can, and do, die from waterboarding. The information is here, but nobody can force you to learn. Only you can do that.

Proposed solution #2: conventional methods of interrogation.Con's:
Takes more skill

former CIA agent who participated in interrogations of terror suspects said Tuesday that the controversial interrogation technique of "waterboarding" has saved lives, but he considers the method torture and now opposes its use.

The former agent, who said he participated in the Abu Zubayda interrogation but not his waterboarding, said the CIA decided to waterboard the al Qaeda operative only after he was "wholly uncooperative" for weeks and refused to answer questions.
All that changed -- and Zubayda reportedly had a divine revelation -- after 30 to 35 seconds of waterboarding, Kiriakou said he learned from the CIA agents who performed the technique.
The terror suspect, who is being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, reportedly gave up information that indirectly led to the the 2003 raid in Pakistan yielding the arrest of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an alleged planner of the September 11, 2001, attacks, Kiriakou said

You are endorsing the method that is less effective and less moral over the method that actually works consistently

Offering opinions of interrogators who support your postion does not make your postion any more compelling.

One thing that most of your examples dont take into account is that if intel is needed quickly many of those interrogation techniques are not possible.

I have been keeping up, and have yet to see any facts to prove any of your assertions. Opinions are not fact regardless of who offers them.

You should not make assertions that are unfounded and portray them as if they are based on fact.

I have done some research and have found no examples of someone actually dying from waterboarding.

You still have not addressed the issue as to the effectiveness of conventional methods when the intel is needed ASAP.

Persuasive? I'd always thought so, and it certainly worked for us in contingency after contingency in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. But when I explained these immutable principles to an auditorium of young Army interrogators last year, one reaction puzzled me. "Sir," a young soldier queried, "that 'tender-loving-care approach' sounds all well and good, but it takes time. What do we do when the chain of command sends out a requirement and says they need the information by the end of the day, and that thousands of lives may depend upon it?"

The very question tells us that intelligence professionals have failed to educate their commanders that detainee interrogation is not like a water spigot. "Give the inquisitors the freedom to push the envelope of brutality and good information will follow" seems to have become the watchword since 9-11.

Thank you! by your own admission torture is sometimes effective although in your opinion not as effective as conventional methods of interrogation.

All that changed -- and Zubayda reportedly had a divine revelation -- after 30 to 35 seconds of waterboarding, Kiriakou said he learned from the CIA agents who performed the technique.

The terror suspect, who is being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, reportedly gave up information that indirectly led to the the 2003 raid in Pakistan yielding the arrest of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an alleged planner of the September 11, 2001, attacks, Kiriakou said.

The CIA was unaware of Mohammed's stature before the Abu Zubayda interrogation, the former agent said.

Khalid Sheik Mohammed

Mr Mohammed is the uncle of Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted in 1997 of bombing the World Trade Center four years earlier.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed first achieved notoriety with the discovery of the plot to blow up US airliners over the Pacific in 1995 - known as Operation Bojinka.

The plan was reportedly foiled when police found incriminating computer files during their investigation into a separate plot to assassinate the Pope.

The French magistrate Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere issued an arrest warrant for him in connection with a suicide bomb attack on a synagogue in the Tunisian resort island of Djerba in 2002.

And the Australians have been interested, because of their investigation into the Bali bombing in 2002 in which 202 people died.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/2811855.stm

Sheikh Mohammed's arrest in Rawalpindi, Pakistan on March 1, 2003 marks one of the most important breakthroughs in the fight against al-Qaeda. The two key factors leading to his arrest was a bribe to an Al-Qaeda operative in the amount of $27 million, as well as information gained from the NSA electronic surveillance network, Echelon. Although the arrest was solely a Pakistani operation the FBI observed the arrest and was to a large degree invovled in the interrogation process. Pakistani officials claim that KSM remained in Pakistan for 3 days and then was subsequently moved to an undisclosed location by US officials.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/para/ksm.htm

According to evidence presented in court, Australian and U.S. authorities bungled at least six chances to learn what Roche knew, including the whereabouts of alleged terrorist mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who, it is said, was even then plotting the Sept. 11 attacks. U.S. authorities had been trying to catch Mohammed since the mid-1990s.

"He had their phone numbers," said Hylton Quail, Roche's lawyer. "He had their e-mail addresses. He knew where they lived. He knew how they worked. He was like a spy who tried to come in from the cold and found the door was locked."

Authorities said that when they finally questioned Roche after the Bali bombing, they were surprised that he gave them so much useful information.

"Basically, he was putting a noose around his own neck by participating in those long interviews," intelligence agent Michael Duthie said outside the court, according to the newspaper the Australian. "Certainly, from our perspective, the type of information that he was passing on was fairly unique."

The Bali bombing on Oct. 12, 2002, awakened Australian authorities to the danger posed by Islamic extremists. On Oct. 30, tipped off by members of the Islamic community, police raided Roche's home. They had learned his name from others in the Muslim community and did not know he had once offered information.

Roche spoke freely with police for nine hours. Videotapes show that the investigators didn't know the names of many of the key players in the terrorist networks and needed Roche's help to spell them.

Roche was jailed for 18 months before going on trial May 17 on charges of conspiring with Mohammed, Atef and Adel to blow up the Israeli Embassy. His own statements to police were the main evidence against him. Two weeks into the trial, he changed his plea to guilty and was sentenced to nine years.

Prosecutors asked for a sentence close to the 25-year maximum. But Quail, his lawyer, pleaded for leniency. He said Roche believed that information he gave police in 2002 led to the arrest of Mohammed in Pakistan and of Hambali in Thailand. Roche will be eligible for parole in 2007.

http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/4/4765

United Press International, 30 September 2002

“The ex-police chief told [CIA veteran and terrorism expert Bob] Baer that [Khalid Shaikh] Mohammed ‘is going to hijack some planes.’ The ex-police chief said his basis for this was evidence developed by police and Qatari intelligence… Baer sent this information [before 911] to a friend in the CIA Counter-terrorist Center who forwarded the information to his superiors. Baer heard nothing. ‘There was no interest,’ he said…. After Pearl’s murder [for which Omar Sheikh has been unfairly tried and convicted], Baer said, he took his information about Mohammed to the Justice Department, but again, as with the agency, he never received a call nor did the department express any interest.”

http://911citizenswatch.org/?p=301

Only with the publication of Yosri Fouda’s interview with Khalid and Ramzi Binalshibh in The Sunday Times last September, to mark the first anniversary of 9/11, did the world learn for the first time of Khalid’s role as the mastermind of the attacks....

http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/WATKSMarrest.htm

Fouda interviewed Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Binalshibh in Pakistan. Fouda tells Simon that, during the interview, Mohammed admitted Sept. 11 was his idea.

“Immediately, Khalid introduces himself as head of the military committee of Al Qaeda,” says Fouda. “That committee actually was the arm of Al Qaeda, which decided, first of all, according to Khalid, to strike America inside America and to eventually choose the targets, which were actually hit on Sept. 11.”

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed continued working on his plan. Fouda tells Simon that, according to Mohammed, Al Qaeda originally planned to attack American nuclear facilities. “The first thing that jumped into their minds, according to Khalid [Shaikh Mohammed], was striking at a couple of nuclear facilities in America,” says Fouda. “That, according to [Mohammed], was later taken off the list for fear it might get out hand… He just said, ‘We decided not to consider this for now.’”

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/08/60II/main524794.shtml

The CIA was unaware of Mohammed's stature before the Abu Zubayda interrogation, the former agent said.

When Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was strapped down to the water-board, he felt humiliated -- not by the treatment but by the fact that a woman, a red-headed CIA supervisor, was allowed to witness the spectacle, a former intelligence officer told ABC News.

The al Qaeda mastermind, known as KSM, stubbornly held out for about two minutes -- far longer than any of the other "high-value" terror targets who were subjected to the technique, the harshest from a list of six techniques approved for use by the CIA and Bush administration lawyers, sources said.

Then KSM started talking, in idiomatic English he learned as a high school foreign exchange student and polished at a North Carolina college in the 1980s, sources said.

"It was an extraordinary amount of time for him to hold out," one former CIA officer told ABCNews.com. "A red-headed female supervisor was in the room when he was being water-boarded. It was humiliating to him. So he held out."

"Then he started talking, and he never stopped," this former officer said. KSM was never water-boarded again, and in hours and hours of conversation with his interrogators, often over a cup of tea, he poured out his soul and the murderous deeds he committed.

"He was sitting across the table from his interrogator, and he just blurted out, 'I killed Daniel Pearl. I killed him Hahal (slit his throat in a ritual fashion).' There was no water-boarding, no belly slapping; just two guys sitting across the table having a cup of tea."

A current CIA official says that KSM actually told interrogators the only reason he confessed was because of the water-boarding.

But what if that one episode of water-boarding KSM had not occurred? It is a question at the center of the debate over the harshest technique in the CIA's repertoire that has raged for three years now, a time frame, intelligence officials note, in which the technique has not been used.

Would the agency have eventually worn KSM down? Would the confessions have poured forth about Daniel Pearl's beheading, about his role in the 1995 plot by his nephew, master bomber Ramzi Yousef, to assassinate Pope John Paul II during a visit to Manila, and detailed information about his role as mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks?

"If one water-board session got him to talk, you could have gotten him to talk (without it), given time and patience," said Brad Garrett, an ABC News consultant and former FBI agent. Garrett has 30 years of experience interrogating terrorists such as Yousef, the Pakistani man who killed two CIA employees at the gates to the agency's Langley, Va. headquarters in 1994 and hundreds of violent criminals.

"If in fact it's true that they water-boarded him once and then he started talking and provided reliable information, then he falls under the category of the small minority of people on whom it works. But torture seldom works. Most people start talking...to get the pain to stop," Garrett said

But in many cases, the harsh intelligence techniques led to questionable confessions and downright lies, say officers with firsthand knowledge of the program. That included statements that al Qaeda was building dirty bombs.

"It is true that the person who was saying the nuke stuff said it under pressure. The analysts believed it was not true; it did not conform to other information," one former intelligence officer told ABC News.

As these targets were subjected to the increasingly harsh interrogation methods -- in some cases including water-boarding -- KSM sat in his cell in Poland, writing poetry in English, writing letters to the president and to the head of the CIA, and debating the merits of Christianity and Islam with his captor.

"Using torture says that we aren't any better than countries that historically tortured people. What are we telling the world about the United States?" Garrett, who has lectured on the subject of interrogation and torture and the perception of a nation, asked.

And just yesterday, an intelligence source told ABC News that the dapper man behind the most successful terror plot against America was not rumpled and disheveled when he was apprehended. He was as well-kept as ever.

But the CIA, conscious of the propaganda value of appearance, messed his hair and pulled his shirt from his pants, leaving us with the image of KSM we have today, and according to days of NSA intercepts, leaving his fellow al Qaeda terrorists chagrined over the changes to their esteemed colleague.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/09/how-the-cia-bro.html

1) Torture does not extract useful intelligence.

2) Torture is, by nature, immoral.

3) There are more effective means of extracting intelligence.

4) Just because someone does something, doesn't make it good or valid!

If torture
was so incompetent, it would not still be utilized, in fact, please
inform me why it is still being utilized if this means is so incompetent?

Where the alternatives which have been presented is commendable, it
is not realistic in speaking that it would work for majority of
enemy combatants, therefore, your alternative is not a good alternative
obviously.

Actually you are wrong on this point. For to be with an agency such
as the CIA, one has to be educated and more times to none recruited
from the military or other means in which you have gained our country's
attention, we are not talking about local punks, we are talking
about educated men/women who are trained by experts and yes, this
more times to none includes techniques of torture, and this includes
understanding how to torture someone without killing them, for if
someone is dead, they can't talk, therefore, it takes training in
order to understand those limitations, therefore debunking your theory
that CIA agents as well as FBI agents are stupid thugs,

Actually, one would think that since torturing of people still occur, then it's only common sense that the majority still support it,

you speak of wanting facts, but all you prove is assumptions and opinions, therefore, comparing my common sense assumptions to YOUR not so common sense assumptions, it's obvious who is making false statements.

You are stating that these people are a majority, they are not, and I base my claim on good ole common sense,

Coming from this background, it has been disappointing to observe the ongoing debate about torture in interrogation, usually carried out by people who have never interrogated a soul.

There is No Debate Except for Torture Apologists

I would like to know how YOU of all people would be able to make such a claim?

If it was less effective, once again for the thousandth time, they would not be utilizing waterboarding.

You speak for soldiers? I find that funny,

Pillaging and killing indiscriminately? Oh, you mean
like the very terrorists that our nation tortures in order to save lives?
Gotcha

Actually, one can quote philosophical quotes from Kant if they want,
but this will not work, nor will quoting the Quran, the only thing
which works more times to none, with few exceptions, is dealing
with the terrorists with the same brute force that they have bestowed
upon our people,

otherwise, they will not respect the interrogator
enough to talk, fear brings information, not sitting down and having tea with them.

you asked for evidence, I presented as such,

and it's obvious
you have never served, for if you did, I"m sure your opinion would be more realistic,

torturing saves lives, even if not always effective
and that is the one point which you ignore time and time again

If an entire group of structural engineers were to say, "This building design is seriously flawed", my response would not be, "What do you guys know? That's just your opinion, and mine is just as good as yours".

I have asked for evidence

"has obviously made up their mind using not facts and logic, but emotion. At the point somebody is willing to ignore verifiable facts in favor of the unseeable and unknowable, it becomes almost like a religion