The torture report’s one glaring weakness – The Washington Post
11 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in laws of war, politics - USA, war and peace Tags: congressional accountability, expressive voting, interrogation techniques, Left-wing hypocrisy, wawar against terror
A more honest report would have squarely faced the arguments made by former CIA officials that key members of Congress were informed about interrogation practices and, far from objecting, condoned the very CIA activities we now judge to have been wrong.
“There’s great hypocrisy in politicians’ criticism of the CIA’s interrogation program,” wrote Jose Rodriguez, the CIA deputy director who oversaw it, in last weekend’s Washington Post.
That allegation deserves a serious response, rather than the stonewall it got from Feinstein.
“The CIA briefed Congress approximately 30 times” on interrogation,according to six former CIA directors or deputy directors in an article Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal. “The briefings were detailed and graphic and drew reactions that ranged from approval to no objection.”
…History (including the latest dark chapter on interrogation) suggests that members are for questionable activities when they’re politically popular, and against them when public opinion shifts.
Ex-CIA Directors: Interrogations Saved Lives – WSJ
11 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in politics - USA, war and peace Tags: interrogation techniques, war against terror
The program was invaluable in three critical ways:
• It led to the capture of senior al Qaeda operatives, thereby removing them from the battlefield.
• It led to the disruption of terrorist plots and prevented mass casualty attacks, saving American and Allied lives.
• It added enormously to what we knew about al Qaeda as an organization and therefore informed our approaches on how best to attack, thwart and degrade it.
Offsetting behaviour alert: What did the bombing of Germany (and the CIA interrogation program) achieve?
11 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in defence economics, war and peace Tags: bombing of Germany, game theory will, interrogation, offsetting behaviour, strategic behaviour, war on terror, World War II
Both the bombing of Germany and the CIA interrogation programmes of captured Al Qaeda terrorists have one thing in common. Their main achievement was not their intention.
Their main achievement was through the offsetting behaviour of their opponent to counter the bombing of Germany and the CIA interrogation program, respectively.
Much is made of whether the bombing of Germany did much damage to its targets and disrupted the German war economy.
The main benefit of the bombing of Germany is it destroyed the German air force. More than that, and much sooner than the destruction of the German air force by 1945, much of the German air force was withdrawn from the Eastern Front and the landing beaches of Normandy to defend Germany from bombing attack. The Germans conceded complete air superiority by the time of D-Day and conceded air supremacy to the Russian air force.
Another big bonus was a large number of those famous German 88 howitzers were withdrawn from the front for home air defence.
Another bonus was a substantial part of German aircraft production was moved to defensive capabilities rather than an attack capability. Munitions productions was redirected towards production of antiaircraft shells and flak. Substantial effort had to be redirected towards the construction of bomb shelters.
What cannot be denied is that 10 years ago when captured terrorists were in a sufficiently integrated organisation that they had useful information about each other, there was bipartisan support in the US Congress to be tough in interrogations. Congress knew exactly what was happening through classified briefings to select committees.
One of the results of these interrogations is it broke up Al Qaeda as a network. It degraded Al Qaeda as an organisation capable of launching major attacks with key terrorists at the centre with the skills and determination to be able to organise these large-scale attacks.
Because captured terrorists would be interrogated thoroughly, Al Qaeda had to change into a far more decentralised and less effective network to be less at risk to captured members informing on them sooner or later.
In its early days, Al Qaeda was happy to have key people going around with lots of information in their heads and coordinating everything from the centre because they thought they wouldn’t be interrogated thoroughly if captured. That is no longer the case. Al Qaeda translates as The Base. The jihad was supposed to have a structure, leadership and central direction and financing.
Al Qaeda was far more effective when directed from the centre. These days it can barely mount a random attack in the street by a mentally disturbed, barely literate recent recruit.
Anything more than these random attacks on the street risk exposure to the authorities through electronic interception and interrogation of captured terrorists followed quickly by a missile through the car window somewhere in the Middle East while tweeting.
As President Obama noted around the time that Bin Laden was killed, 20 out of the top 30 in the management structure of Al Qaeda had shared that fate under his administration along with their replacements not long after stepping into the dead man’s shoes.
‘CIA interrogation methods made America and its allies safer’ Former CIA director contends
11 Dec 2014 3 Comments
in war and peace Tags: interrogation techniques, war on terror
The renegade Left and the laws of war
11 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in International law, laws of war, war and peace Tags: Leftover Left, prisoners of war, renegade Left, Renegade liberals, war criminals, war on terror
The renegade Left is highly selective in its recall of international humanitarian law. On torture, perfect recall, strict construction and may the heavens fall. William Levi in the Yale Law Journal in 2009 argued that
- except for water-boarding, every interrogation technique authorized by the Bush Administration had been authorized before 9/11 and considered to fall within the legal constraints of the Geneva Conventions.
- Techniques such as sleep deprivation, and standing as a stress position that were understood at times before 9/11 to be lawful for use on prisoners of war.
When it comes to the reason for being for international humanitarian law, a stout ignorance infects the renegade Left and may innocent civilians be massacred.
The purpose of international humanitarian law is to ensure strict differentiation between civilians and combatants and to provide for the detention and treatment of those captured.
Humane detention to the end of the armed conflict increases both the incentive to give quarter and to surrender when the position is hopeless.
The requirement to carry weapons openly, dress in some sort of uniform etc. is to ensure that the enemy is easy to distinguish from afar so that troops do not get trigger happy around civilians and refugees. This is the fundamental purpose of international humanitarian law: trying to save civilians from the fighting.
The most severe punishments was allowed for spies, saboteurs, infiltrators, francs-tireurs and guerrillas so that not carrying their weapons openly and not dressing in some sort of recognisable uniform etc., was a self-inflected death sentence upon capture. Combatants who do not wear a uniform that is clearly distinguishable at the distance and do not carry their weapons openly are war criminals.
In the Battle of the Bulge, the Nazi infiltrators in American uniforms lost all interest in their missions once the first few who were captured were court-martialled and shot within 24 hours.
The Hostages Trial at Nuremburg dismissed some murder charges against some German commanders because partisan fighters in Southwest Europe could not be considered lawful belligerents under Article 1 of the 1907 Hague convention. The Tribunal stated:
We are obliged to hold that such guerrillas were francs tireurs who, upon capture, could be subjected to the death penalty.
Consequently, no criminal responsibility attaches to the defendant List because of the execution of captured partisans…
Americans Have Grown More Supportive Of Torture | FiveThirtyEight
10 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture, laws of war, liberalism, war and peace Tags: interrogation techniques, terrorism, torture, war on terror
Former Head Of CIA ‘Enhanced Interrogation’ Program Defends Its Use | Business Insider
10 Dec 2014 1 Comment
in laws of war, war and peace Tags: terrorism, war against terror
Writing in The Washington Post, Rodriguez justified the enhanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA through three points:
1) The program was built against the backdrop of the September 11 terrorist attacks and other security threats;
2) The program effectively produced actionable intelligence that saved American lives;
3) The program was judged legal by the Justice Department.
via Former Head Of CIA ‘Enhanced Interrogation’ Program Defends Its Use | Business Insider.
Let’s not kid ourselves: Most Americans are fine with torture, even when you call it “torture” – The Washington Post
10 Dec 2014 1 Comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, laws of war, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, war and peace Tags: interrogation techniques, torture, tourism, war on terror
Useful idiots for Palestine–Pat Condell
09 Dec 2014 2 Comments
in politics, war and peace Tags: Israel, Palestine, Pat Condell, useful idiots, Zionism
A soldier’s goodbye to his family
09 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941
07 Dec 2014 Leave a comment
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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