Those Pesky CIA Memos
August 26th, 2009 by CJ
We've been through this before – both during the 2006 and 2008 elections. Yet, the media and political hacks in Washington just can't move on. They keep hammering this whole issue of supposed torture of detainees. They are chiseling away our national security by releasing sensitive memos that give insight into our tactics to the enemy. Interestingly, the more that is released, the better we look. It turns out that things weren't as bad as everyone made it look to get elected. But that is no excuse to release this information even for "our" side.
The problem with most of these media reports is that they make it appear as if the government is the one that stepped in to end the evil actions of the CIA. The truth is completely the opposite. The agency conducted their own Inspector General review of the effectiveness and value obtained through their interrogation techniques. When allegations of misconduct were discovered, those were referred to the Justice Department by the agency – not the other way around. The Agency has done nothing wrong throughout this entire process yet they are being castigated in the halls of Congress and in the court of public opinion. The Agency itself was righting its own wrongs.
I keep all these media reports about what is supposedly contained within the recently released report.
Sleep deprivation, "insult slaps", water dousing and "walling", or slamming a detainee's head against a wall, were techniques used by CIA interrogators to break high-value detainees, according to an agency memo.
Reuters, from which this paragraph was taken, is completely ignorant. "Walling" is not "slamming a detainee's head against a wall." I've been walled by what I perceived to be a 400 pound guerilla during aspects of my training and it wasn't my head being slammed against a wall. Walling involves having your entire body slammed against a wall. What good is an interrogation if your subject is unconscious, which is what Reuter's version of walling would result in.
I still maintain, and will never be convinced otherwise, that sleep deprivation is is not "torture." Obviously, I won't practice it if it's considered illegal and against established policy, but there is nothing torturous about denying someone sleep. The military does it all the time. My neighbor's dog does it to me all the time. If you have a baby, you understand sleep deprivation, but your baby isn't torturing you.
What the heck are "insult slaps"? Good question. I've been slapped a few times in training while being insulted. The slaps consist of either a few taps on the cheek to snap me out of my sleep deprivation or chest and gut slaps with an open hand. Torture? The insult slaps I'm thinking of – that I have experienced – didn't really hurt. They were more annoying than anything. There's nothing worse than being slapped by a grown, heterosexual man.
Of course, then there's the over-hyped water dousing. This is another tactic in sleep deprivation. You tell a detainee to stay awake. When you see him nodding off, you throw a bucket of water on him to snap him out of it.
In the military, we don't use any of these tactics in interrogation, but I still don't see anything wrong with them. The memos themselves claim that very valuable intelligence was gathered using them. Obama appointed CIA Director Leon Panetta even said himself that "the CIA obtained intelligence from high-value detainees when inside information on al-Qa’ida was in short supply" using these tactics.
We need to stop watering down what constitutes "torture" in this country. This constantly changing and shifting definition of what "rights" are and what "torture" is really has me all wee-weed up! I can't even imagine how my CIA brothers and sisters are managing.
President Obama has said on numerous occasions that he wants to look forward, not back. Yet, he has given HIS Justice Department carte blanche and tacit approval in looking back. He could end the witch hunt with one word to HIS Attorney General: enough!
I side with former Vice President Dick Cheney in this: "The people involved deserve our gratitude. They do not deserve to be the targets of political investigations or prosecutions."
I'll speak about the Abu Ghraib incident again separately. I'm almost done with Gary Winkler's new book, "Tortured: Lynndie England and Abu Ghraib and the Photographs That Shocked The World." I'll have a review up this week as well as an interview with the author tomorrow night on our You Served Radio Show.
[Note: The information contained in this post is the express opinion of the author, CJ, and does NOT reflect any official policy or position. Read the disclaimer!]
I'm afraid that the political hacks are going to ruin what security that we do have against terrorism by demonizing the CIA and those who work to keep us safe!
If the CIA agents are being prosecuted for interrogations then what is to keep them from slacking on doing their jobs so they won't get in trouble.
I agree with you CJ, some of the things they call torture simply are not.
I guess the politicos in Washington want the CIA to give the terrorists milk and cookies and then expect results.
C. J. Please allow me to re-print this from the Investor's Daily:
War On Terror:
Americans strongly oppose prosecuting U.S. officials who got tough with detainees to get information about future terror plots. We should be at war with terrorists, not the heroes saving us from them.
According to the IBD/TIPP national poll of 927 adults, who were surveyed from Oct. 5 to 10, some 58% of Americans are against prosecuting those in the U.S. government who used enhanced interrogation techniques against captured terrorists.
That is a heavy indictment against those who would demonize, as former Vice President Dick Cheney described them this week, "dedicated professionals who acted honorably and well, in our country's name and in our country's cause."
Even among Democrats, those favoring prosecution still numbered less than a majority, the poll showed — 46%, compared with 40% opposed. At 65%, independents registered even more disapproval over taking legal action against the interrogators. Some 74% of those calling themselves Republicans opposed prosecution.
Making human sacrifices to the god of politics out of those responsible for saving hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent lives is exactly what's on the mind of Attorney General Eric Holder and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Cheney's striking back. Since leaving office, he has quickly become the most effective opposition figure in Washington. Speaking before the Center for Security Policy in Washington on Wednesday, he accused those who call U.S. interrogators torturers of "slandering people who did a hard job well."
But Cheney went much further. Brandishing the Bush Administration's successes in protecting the homeland, he quipped, "you would think that our successors would be going to the intelligence community saying, 'How did you do it?'"
Instead, those on the left, as "an article of faith," have falsely contended that enhanced interrogation methods failed, and that the information extracted could have been discovered by other means.
"We did try other means and techniques to elicit information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other al-Qaida operatives," Cheney said, "only turning to enhanced techniques when we failed to produce the actionable intelligence we knew they were withholding."
When those lesser methods failed, "our intelligence professionals, in urgent circumstances with the highest of stakes, obtained specific information, prevented specific attacks, and saved American lives."
To call those lifesaving actions torture, according to Cheney, "is not only to disregard the program's legal underpinnings and safeguards," but to commit "a libel" against a group of patriots.
To Cheney, it's but one component in a "drift of events under the present administration."
The U.S. reneging on its promised missile defense shield in Eastern Europe is "a strategic blunder and a breach of good faith," the defense secretary of the George H.W. Bush Administration charged.
"Our Polish and Czech friends are entitled to wonder how strategic plans and promises years in the making could be dissolved — just like that — with apparently little, if any, consultation," he said.
The former Russian satellites "thought they had a close and trusting relationship with the United States."
That was violated. Now, Cheney noted ominously, "the impact of making two NATO allies walk the plank won't be felt only in Europe. Our friends throughout the world are watching and wondering whether America will abandon them as well."
Tehran's Islamofascist regime is on track toward obtaining nuclear weapons. Today, Cheney points out, "even Iran experts who previously advocated for engagement have changed their tune since the rigged elections this past June and the brutal suppression of Iran's democratic protestors."
The White House "clearly missed an opportunity to stand with Iran's democrats, whose popular protests represent the greatest challenge to the Islamic Republic since its founding in 1979," Cheney said. Instead, the White House reacted to Tehran's violence against demonstrators with silence "and has moved blindly forward to engage Iran's authoritarian regime."
The IBD/TIPP survey shows that Americans can tell the good guys from the bad guys. Looking at Russia's resurgence, Iran's growing atomic ambitions and the insidious threat of al-Qaida, it's those now running Washington who seem confused.