To say our government knew the “exact” plan for 9-11 and did nothing is totally absurd and lacks "real" evidence (not distortions, out-of-context quotes, misstatements, suppositions, etc) that holds up to scrutiny.

who would best know if harsh techniques, including a periodic waterboarding, are effective: interrogators. And they say they ARE effective, and if they didn't, we would not be having this argument.

Well at least your consistant, But I cant imagine what prision guards would think of the idea of taking away solitary confinment. You should probably become a prison guard at a dangerous federal prison before you advocate that one.

Trend toward solitary confinement worries experts

But some corrections experts say the trend toward solitary confinement makes their job more dangerous. Such a prisoner, they say, has no reason not to attack, maim or even kill a guard.

What concerns corrections experts and human rights activists alike is that more and more state prisoners begin and end their sentences in solitary confinement.

Doesnt make for a good comparison. Why because the other group of engineers are backed into the corner by a hush order on the conversation. We havnt heard from anyone who supports it and believes it saves lives. Why? Because that individual would lose his/her career for holding those views.

The burden is on you.

However I will say this: the people who were prosocuted came from regimes who were complicit in charges far worse and these regimes showed no interest in a system that had showed any concern for human life let alone for concern for pain.

If it's not torture, then why was a U.S. Army major convicted and sentenced to 10 years of hard labor in 1901 for waterboarding an insurgent in the Philippines? If it's not torture, then why was a U.S. Army Soldier court-martialed as recently as 1968 for waterboarding a prisoner in Vietnam?

If you go back and reread your post, maybe you'll see how it could have been taken the way I have taken it.

Are you or were you upset in what you might have seen as people not questioning something that should have been questioned- namely Iraq?

I mean after all from that line of reasoning some of those engineers in your last comparison may have exterior motives, say to have the buiding demolished for a casino to go up. So in that case is there a case where we should never at least question?

Id say no more than a minute in any given period, 12 hours 24 hours. The details could be worked out amongst people more familiar.

If the individual is a high level/mid level terrorist and is a US citizen?- yes
Not a terrorist?- no
organized crime in order to save lives- no. Ive never made a moral justification based on the ability to save lives. Ive said this over and over.

Now for the 40 seconds, I decribed a CS chamber, in which the experience lasts for several minutes, whereas the individual will feel like he'or she is dieing. This is part of the of the Army training for NBC requirements. But it leaves no perment damage (and is great for the Flu or bad colds). It does however make you temporarily vunerable.

Montreal Guy, nowhere did you deny the British used interrogation techniques that could be construed as “torture” by current definitions. That was all I was saying in my post; that the British might have used techniques far worse than water boarding. I think your "mock execution" example certainly qualified.

I served 30 years in the U.S. Army as an intelligence officer, which included extensive experience as an interrogator in Vietnam, in Panama and during the 1991 Gulf War. In the course of these sensitive missions, my teams and I collected mountains of excellent, verified information, despite the fact that we never laid a hostile hand on a prisoner. Had one of my interrogators done so, he would have been disciplined and most likely relieved of his duties.

Coming from this background, it has been disappointing to observe the ongoing debate about torture in interrogation, usually carried out be people who have never interrogated a soul. Nor is it easy to accept that the current debate is framed pragmatically by the question, "Does torture work or not?"

and other authentic practitioners of the interrogation art respect our adversaries, however wrong we may deem their cause. We know that obtaining information from a captive who is motivated by his beliefs, his country, his honor or perhaps by the very human desire to live a full life with his family, is an elusive task that requires a patient, systematic approach.

One has to "go to school" on each captive. Who is he? Can I communicate with him in his language? What are his core beliefs? His loves? Hates? Fears? Where do his loyalties lie? Does he have a family, an inflated ego, perhaps some other core vulnerability? Does he have a hobby or some passion that might get him talking? What do we know about his activities before he fell into our hands? What about his religion? Sect? Tribe? Culture? Or the history of his movement? What have other captives in our hands said about him? Did he have documents or a computer that were seized with him? What drives this unique individual?

Professional interrogation is thus a developmental process, requiring extensive preparation. It requires in-depth assessment of the prisoner, all complemented by a healthy measure of guile, wits and patience.

Seasoned interrogators know that an important first step is to disarm one's adversary by resorting to the unexpected. Treat a captured general or colonel with dignity and respect. Better yet, treat a sergeant like he is a colonel or general.

In interrogation centers I ran, we called prisoners "guests" and extended military courtesies, such as saluting captured officers. We strove to undermine a prisoner's belief system, which we knew instructed him that Americans are unschooled infidels who would bully him and resort to intimidation, threats and brutality. Patience was essential. We rejected the view that interrogators could merely "take off the gloves" and that information would somehow magically flow if we brutalized our "guests." This notion was uninformed and counterproductive, not to mention illegal, and we made sure our chain of command understood that bowing to such tempting theories would result in bad information.

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.

It also tells us that our young soldiers take away lessons from today's pop culture. Self-styled "experts" on interrogation frequently cite the "ticking bomb scenario" (featured on shows like "24") to justify the Jack Bauer-like tormenting of a prisoner. According to this construct, it is necessary and acceptable to torture in the name of saving an American city from "the next 9-11." This has a magnetic appeal to legions of Americans, among them future soldiers.

But the so-called ticking time bomb scenario is a Hollywood construct that I never encountered in my 30-year career. Even so, it has become the rallying cry of many well-intentioned but ethically challenged military and civilian personnel. And it has been hawked by a large constituency of senior government officials, from the White House to the Department of Justice to Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon, and is most recently evidenced in the surfacing of a January 2005 memo, written almost a year after Abu Ghraib, that characterizes face slapping and waterboarding as acceptable conduct.

Question: What do these three men have in common?

A wounded North Vietnamese Army sergeant, captured only after he exhausted his ammunition, brags that his Army is "liberating" the South and refuses to cooperate under harsh treatment by South Vietnamese interrogators. He then provides Americans with information about his unit, its missions, its infiltration route. He even assists in interrogating other prisoners. Granted amnesty, he serves in the South Vietnamese Army for the duration of the war.

A captured Panamanian staff officer, morose and angry, initially lies and stonewalls his American interrogator but ultimately reveals his role in his leader's shadowy contacts with North Korea, Cuba, Libya and the Palestine Liberation Organization. He provides information about covert arms purchases and a desperate attempt to procure SAM missiles to shoot down American helicopters in the event of an American invasion.

An Iraqi general, captured and humiliated during Operation Desert Storm, is initially frightened and defiant but eventually cooperates, knowing that Saddam Hussein's penalty for treason was certain death. Before repatriation, the general hands his captor his prayer beads and a scrap of paper bearing an address, saying with emotion, "Our Islamic custom requires that we show gratitude to those who bestow kindness and mercy. These beads comforted me through your Air Force's fierce bombings for 39 days, but they are all I have. When Saddam is gone, please come to my home. You will be an honored guest and we will slaughter a lamb to welcome you."

Answer: All three were treated by their American captors with dignity and respect. No torture; no mistreatment.

-- Stuart Herrington

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07294/826876-35.stm

Abu Ghraib was an atrocity that should never have been allowed to happen. You have no quibble from me about that. The whole chain of command was asleep at the wheel and we’re paying the propaganda price by its use as a recruiting tool for terrorists.

Five former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff have spoken out publicly urging that the U.S. not deviate from the humane treatment provisions of the Geneva Conventions. While some argue that this “new war” has outgrown the “quaint” rules of the Geneva Conventions, as military professionals, we learned that every war is a “new war” in some respects. It is certainly true that the nature of the threat has changed. But nothing in our logic or experience tells us that, by necessity, everything has changed. The basic obligations of an occupying power, a matter of settled international law, have not changed. The standards we apply to ourselves when dealing with captives — like those we expect our enemies to observe in dealing with captives they hold — have not changed. And, unless we are willing to concede defeat, who we are as a nation — our character and the values we espouse — has not changed.

Gen. David Petraeus, responding to a survey that revealed a troubling level of acceptance of abuse against noncombatants by U.S. soldiers in Iraq, underscored this in an open letter to the troops in May. “Our values and the laws governing warfare teach us to respect human dignity, maintain our integrity, and do what is right. Adherence to our values distinguishes us from our enemy,” Petraeus wrote. And while “some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy, they would be wrong.”

We agree. Whoever the next occupant of the Oval Office is, he or she will be the person to whom the men and women of our armed forces will look, not only for their orders but for the guidance and standards that inform those orders. Our troops need clear and consistent standards, and the military provides those to them. But if the commander in chief muddies that message by saying that he or she would be willing to authorize torture in exceptional circumstances, we cannot expect our troops on the battlefield, who face death every day, to eschew it.

Our country cannot hope to lead the world if it forsakes the most fundamental rules and standards it insists other countries uphold. And no candidate can effectively lead this country without a deep understanding of and respect for the values on which it was founded. We owe a duty to those serving our country in uniform to do what we can to secure that leadership.

Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar (retired) was commander in chief of U.S. Central Command from 1991 to 1994.

Gen. David M. Maddox (retired) was commander in chief of U.S. Army Europe from 1992 to 1994.

Op ed piece, Stars and Stripes
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=125&article=50764

I have no problem if water boarding is banned tomorrow. Will that suffice?

The utilization of waterboarding, and other harsh info-gathering techniques, is certainly a Democratic-politician-evolved-get-Bush concocted issue.
Not a moral issue.

Democratic politicians who see nothing wrong with PBAs, a.k.a. killing a fullterm fetus at the point of birth, by methods such as puncturing the skull. This disconcordance betrays a clearly apparent insincerity about the whole issue of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation procedures.

Is waterboarding or other forceful interrogations useful? Leave that call up to the US military, with accountability for the actions.

it was used by Dem pols to try to sink Mukasey

In msg 162, mpaul said:
If this is true, then explain why the military officers that MG cited in msg 158 say that you are wrong? What do you know that

1. Stuart Herrington
2. Five former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
3. Gen. David Petraeus
4. Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar
5. Gen. David M. Maddox

do not know? Their combined experience is probably in the neighborhood of 200 years.

200 years of military experience makes one no more qualified to speak to this question

Their experience with professional interrorgation as might be practiced by an intelligence agency? Zero. 200 years of military experience makes one no more qualified to speak to this question than it would weighing in on the health of the high tech industry just because the military has bought and developed a lot of military equipment under their watch.

Stuart A. Herrington was an American intelligence advisor assigned to root out the enemy in the Hau Nghia province. His two-year mission to capture or kill Communist agents operating there was made all the more difficult by local officials who were reluctant to cooperate, villagers who were too scared to talk, and VC who would not go down without a fight. Herrington developed an unexpected but intense identification with the villagers in his jurisdiction–and learned the hard way that experiencing war was profoundly different from philosophizing about it in a seminar room.

40 seconds using something like cellephane which does not require jamming a rag down someone's throat is not in my book passing the threshold of an immoral infliction of pain and suffering.

McCain urges new interrogation specialty
Jim Davenport
Associated Press
Dec. 15, 2007 03:55 PM

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Republican White House hopeful John McCain said he wants "a crash program" in civilian and military schools that emphasizes language and creates a "new specialty in strategic interrogation" so the nation never feels the need for torture.

McCain, a former Vietnam prisoner of war who suffered mistreatment, talked about the new proposal at a Columbia campaign stop Saturday.

McCain said he wanted to create an Army Advisory Corps of 20,000 soldiers to act as military advisers and a new Office of Strategic Services to fight terrorists. He said he wanted them to pursue "a crash program in civilian and military schools" to prepare more experienced speakers in strategically important languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Farsi and others, and to "create a new specialty in strategic interrogation - a new, a new group of strategic interrogators so that we never have to feel motivated to torture anyone ever again."





When asked if he knew whether U.S. forces had engaged in torture in the past, the Arizona senator said he didn't.

"I do not know whether they've been involved in torture because I don't have that kind of information," McCain said. "I do know that when tapes are destroyed of interrogations, it contributes enormously to the cynicism, the skepticism, and also is further damaging to the image of the United States of America in the world."

The CIA recently acknowledged that in 2005 it destroyed videotapes made three years earlier of the CIA's interrogations of two terror suspects. The tapes were made to document how CIA officers used new, harsh questioning techniques approved by the White House to force recalcitrant prisoners to talk.

Intelligence officials have said the methods that were shown on the videotapes included waterboarding, an interrogation tactic that causes the sensation of drowning and is banned by the Pentagon.

McCain also said he met with a "high ranking member of al-Qaida in Iraq" who told him that post-invasion lawlessness and images of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib helped recruit insurgents. The latter was "a great recruitment tool," McCain said. "He said it and I believe it."

He also said he'd go after terrorists with a new military force. "I'll set up a new agency patterned after the old Office of Strategic Services that will be a small, nimble, can-do organization that will fight" terrorist anywhere in the world and on the Internet, McCain said.

Later, at Newberry College's commencement ceremony about an hour away, McCain talked about the response to torture being a measure of character.

"These tools are not American tools and the easy way is not the American way," McCain told the graduating class.

McCain said the people he spent time with as a POW in Vietnam were tortured and encouraged to make statements to stop their suffering, but didn't even when promised no one would find out. McCain said they would know what they'd said.

"That, my friends, is character," McCain told the graduating class.

What specifically about the actual procedure do you find to be so unbearable? That is what is being revisited here

Waterboarding is a controlled drowning that, in the American model, occurs under the watch of a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a trained strap-in/strap-out team. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning. How much the victim is to drown depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim’s face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral.

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. Its lack of physical scarring allows the victim to recover and be threaten with its use again and again.

http://smallwarsjournal.com/blog/2007/10/waterboarding-is-torture-perio/

As a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California I know the waterboard personally and intimately. SERE staff were required undergo the waterboard at its fullest. I was no exception. I have personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people. It has been reported that both the Army and Navy SERE school’s interrogation manuals were used to form the interrogation techniques used by the US army and the CIA for its terror suspects. What was not mentioned in most articles was that SERE was designed to show how an evil totalitarian, enemy would use torture at the slightest whim. If this is the case, then waterboarding is unquestionably being used as torture technique.

- Ibid

That is what is being revisited here. 40 seconds using something like cellephane which does not require jamming a rag down someone's throat is not in my book passing the threshold of an immoral infliction of pain and suffering.

I guess by your line of reasoning that since people were at one time charged under prohibition, that they now should be as well.

What I am asking you people as individuals is: what specifically about the method makes it torture to you? Go into the detail of the actual procedure. What specifically about the actual procedure do you find to be so unbearable? That is what is being revisited here. 40 seconds using something like cellephane which does not require jamming a rag down someone's throat is not in my book passing the threshold of an immoral infliction of pain and suffering.

Why shouldnt the military engage in this? For one the military is used for political capital, and serves as embassador role. The potential risk for propaganda is much higher with greater repercussions.

Effective interrogation without torture 101

HH: Now specificity matters a lot when we’re talking about terms like this, so I’d like to run down some of the “interrogation techniques” that people have debated, people who don’t know what they’re talking about, and get your opinions on them.

SH: Okay.

HH: Prolonged periods of standing.

SH: Generally speaking, stupid, as are virtually all techniques that involve making a person, you know, trying to get information from a person by making the person physically in a hurt.

HH: Do you consider that, as a professional, torture?

SH: No, I don’t think that’s torture. I don’t think that’s torture, but I think it’s stupid.

HH: How about sleep deprivation?

SH: I never did it, never had to do it. I realize that it’s in the “repertoire” of a lot of people who fancy themselves interrogators in that it breaks down the defenses, the physical and they hope the psychological defenses of a subject. But again, I never had to resort to that stuff in Vietnam, Panama or the Desert.

HH: Is it torture?

SH: I don’t think it’s torture, not in the sense of torture as commonly understood, i.e. water boarding, pulling out fingernails, electric shock, and stuff like that. I just think it’s counterproductive and stupid.

HH: How about the playing of music, either loudly or repeatedly?

SH: I think that’s stupid as well.

HH: Torture?

SH: Depends on how loud, I guess. I mean, I could conceive of a level of decibels in a speaker right next to someone’s ear which is causing…

HH: Physical pain, yeah.

SH: …physical pain, and possibly irreversible damage, and I certainly wouldn’t go there. A lot of these techniques that are on various lists, some of which, you know, have to be approved at a certain level in order to be carried out, I don’t sign up to, even if someone else has.

HH: What about temperature deprivation, you know, extremes of hot and cold, though not of course the sort of extremes that kill people?

SH: Cruel and stupid.

HH: Torture?

SH: Could be, depending on how cold, depending on how hot.

HH: So how do you define torture, Colonel?

SH: Well, everybody’s got their own definition, I guess, but to me, torture is brutal, possibly physically and or psychologically extremely damaging treatment, demeaning, but demeaning to the extreme. And it’s one of those things that as the pundit once said, for me, anyway, I know it when I see it.

HH: Yeah, Justice Stewart in being asked to define pornography said that, I know it when I see it.

SH: Exactly. That’s the famous quote.

HH: Now given all that, do you believe that the military is consistently applying what you believe to be good judgment now in its interrogations at Guantanamo and in Iraq?

SH: You know, I really can’t speak from firsthand experience in Guantanamo or Iraq right now, because my Guantanamo visit was within three months after they started it in ’02. My Iraq trip was in December, ’03. That said, there have been so many visitors, including a lot with a lot of credibility, to Guantanamo, who have pronounced that it’s the most human, cleanest, high tech, safest incarceration facility that in some cases, the inspectors have ever seen, that I would tend to believe that in the wake of everything that’s happened, and in the wake of huge investment in Guantanamo, that the American people don’t have to worry about how people are being treated there.

HH: A little bit more background on Col. Herrington. His military awards include the Distinguished Service Medal, five awards of the Legion of Merit, two Bronze Stars, the Air Medal, Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with two Bronze Stars. He was also twice awarded the CIA’s Agency Seal Medallion in connection with key national counterespionage cases in his actions during Operation Desert Storm. He’s the author of several books, including Stalking the Vietcong: Inside Operation Phoenix, and Traitors Among Us: Inside the Spy Catchers’ World. Colonel, is it true you were on the Embassy roof in 1975 in Vietnam?

SH: That’s very true, and very sad, yes.

http://www.martinfrost.ws/htmlfiles/feb2007/effective_interrogation.html

: I think the first piece of advice for anyone who really wants to understand interrogation is to zero out and ignore virtually everything that they’ve ever seen on either television or in Hollywood movies, because that’s not interrogation as we know it, as professional interrogators, at all.

- retired Army Colonel Stuart Herrington