In the midst of all the celebrations that good finally defeated evil yesterday, there is this fact: the U.S. got the leads that allowed it to find and kill Osama bin Laden from two men: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Al Qaeda “operations chief” Abu Faraj al-Libi. These men have been kept in secret CIA prisons in Europe. They have been kept at Guantanamo in Cuba. And they have both been tortured. So, yes, nearly a whole decade after the United States renounced its ethics of war, torture may have finally worked. Many liberties have been shredded; many human beings have been tortured. And now a zombie mermaid with a bad kidney named Osama bin Laden is frolicking with dolphins at the bottom of the ocean. So we got what we wanted? Is this “winning”?
This has been the costliest manhunt in human history; not only in the money and lives spent gathering intelligence and bombing Al Qaeda, but in waging an unnecessary war in Iraq and in the costs suffered by America’s diminished standing in the world and its diminished standing in the eyes of its own citizens. There are numerous signs the once proud nation is declining otherwise even when you set aside its inability for so long to merely find where its greatest enemy lived. Along the way, the United States lost a lot of what it was. Its future remains murky. And so does the world’s.
What happened to global warming this past decade? Yeah.
While zombie mermaid Osama bin Laden is down there singing upbeat duets with crustaceans about his hatred of the West, we have to take a look at America. It may no longer be great. It’s probably not even good. Does what we were fighting for still really exist? (If it was for KFC to stick cheese and bacon between fried chicken patties and call it a sandwich, then yes. But otherwise? Hmm.)
We got the bastard. So close the overseas prisons. Stop the torture. And become human beings again. It’s a start.
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So, the message here is "torture works."
Well, more like "torture works*", but that's besides the point.
More to the point, it's also the case that Josef Mengele made a number of important discoveries about the way the human body reacts to extreme conditions. Yes yes, I know, Godwin etc, but once we decide that outcomes matter more than how we get them, that's pretty much where we are, isn't it?
So to phrase it in a more manner more appropriate for Wonkette, what you're saying is basically, "You know who else said torture worked?"
Dammit! I'm so bad at the meems.
No, wrong tense. Torture *worked*. This doesn't mean it works as rule, or that another means wouldn't also have worked.
Torture enough people and once in awhile you get lucky!
If you torture a broken clock all day you will get correct information. Twice!
Awesome. I can't wait to try that!
Now maybe we can send Bush and Cheney to Gitmo?
pretty please?
cheney just had his first heartbeat since 9/11
I've been wondering all day what was the last thing that went through Bin Laden's mind once he realized the NAVY SEALS were there. I settled for the answer-a bullet.
"Well. I guess all that fiddling with the TiVo last night was a waste of time."
"I've been wondering all day what was the last thing that went through Bin Laden's mind once he realized the NAVY SEALS were there."
I picture it something like this: "Fuck me. This is just like in that cheesy Michael Biehn/Charlie Sheen movie."
"Should have gone to the villa in the south of France this week"
"Any of you guys virgins?"
"hmmm what's that landing on my roof…is it santy claus?"
it was probably a relief, what with all the virgins and all.
"Damn, only women to hide behind. They're all too short!"
I only regret never tasting a McRib.
I wonder why he never had one; I don't believe the meat that the "animal" they're made from is forbidden for Muslims to eat.
Eh, you going soft on us there, Stuef??!! Are ya??
OK, for the record, I agree.
Next target: Downfisty McTroll's Fortress of Tarditude.
Sorry the world's not as beautiful as you want it to be.
So let's start torturing people to get our outcomes because that will prove we are better than everyone – right?
RIGHT?
You'll notice in this piece that there's a hyperlink to the article about these guys being tortured. What you won't find is a link to the article about their torture leading to the location and expiration of Osama Bin Laden.
It's just more of the Jack Stuef whining that started with that gallery of knuckleheads who didn't react the way Jack did. It's the narrative that Jack wants so we can stop feeling good about this outcome.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/02/osama-bi...
How about a link to an article that states that the intelligence did not come during the time these men were tortured but much later during more conventional interrogation. Torture is abhorrent and ineffective. Even if some good information comes of it, the act is still wrong. An exception does not invalidate a rule. If a starving man steals food, the theft is still theft. The means do not change from bad to good just because we agree with the outcome.
Stop harshing my buzz man!
P.S. Probably the reason we couldn't find him for 10 years was because our "ally," Pakistan, didn't notice that OBL was living 60 miles from its capital city, a couple hundred yards from their military academy in a $1 million mansion built in 2005 in the middle of a town full of retired generals.
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/05/02/how-did-bin-...
I gotta say, Lindsey Lohan needs to hire the dude who plans/planned Osama's press and public appearances, 'cuz the dude rocks! And, Kudos ot Osama's personal shoppers.
At least Pakistan and India can finally get down to the important business of having their nuclear war over Kashmir.
Oh please, I'm sure a 6-foot tall guy with a gimpy leg and his face on Wanted posters all over the world hardly stands out in a crowd. I say we throw Pakistan a couple billion more, it's not like we need it at home.
Wondering who was paid off? Obviously, they were getting more than the $25 mill they'd have gotten for turning the bastard in.
Gawd, Jack. You're harshing our mellow here. I think this falls under the 'ends justify the means' principle. But, yeah, torture sucks and maybe we can find our moral compass again.
OT but Martin Bashir should stick to interviewing pedophile singers & princesses. He's horrible on MSNBC.
I'm not buying the "torture produced actionable intel" bullshit. Those guys have been in custody for a long damn time……and this little bit of loveliness came about in the last 8 months. Just another justification for keeping Gitmo open. Sorry guys, not buying it.
"We can do anything we put our minds to."
Perhaps Seal Team 6 would like to take over the Fed, then.
SIX large private banks, please. And no prisoners there, either.
Take over? No……Neutralize? Maybe.
We can do anything we put our minds to… except end a recession, save the middle class, stop global warming, create meaningful finanancial reform or health care, educate our children, or have anything resembling a meaningful political discourse. Other than that….
"We can [do anything] *kill anybody* we put our minds to."
Fixed.
I guess now is as good a time as any to say goodbye to the friends we lost along the way.
Ephedrine
Fake-and-bake weed (thanks, Miley)
Four-Loco
ummm…yeah, I think that about does it.
Full-size toiletries on airplane flights?
A brown neighbor?
Fear Factor.
A billion aborted feti! Oh woe is those of us unburdened by children.
The word "down"?
Uh, my youthful optimism? Well, that went out the door in late 2000, so I guess it doesn't qualify.
Wasn't there a couple amendments I used to hear about, like the fourteenth?
Geeze, what a Debbie Downer. So, we took a few liberties with our al quada party guests. Thats not the point.
I'm not going to sit here and let you badmouth the Corporate States of America, Inc!
Good Day, Sir.
Glory, glory hallelujia, his truth is marching on.
What have they got?
A lot of sand!
We've got Bin Laden's rotting left hand.
Everything's hotter after the slaughter
under the sea
–Osama's sea–
under the sea
–Osama's sea!–
win!
So, yes, nearly a whole decade after the United States renounced its ethics of war, torture may have finally worked.
Hold on for just a fuckin' moment.
We have mountains of evidence that regular (i.e. non-torture) methods work better.
Dick Cheney and company are sadistic liars, and we can and ought to presume that regular methods would have gotten the same results, at least.
~
And if it does work, why the fuck does it take so long?
this means only one thing. "24" was real.
uh – more like 3519 * 24 = 84456. I'm pretty sure Jack Bauer would have gotten sleepy sometime during that period.
A real pos.
To be briefly snarkless, global warming is a subtle and complex issue, and there is little hope for a reasonable action on it until there is some semblance of rationality in our public discourse. Obama's handling of the birth certificate issue maximized the marginalization of the right-wing fringe, and offing OBL removes a dark bogeyman from the xenophobic id of the nation that has been used to justify all sorts of irrational measures. These are steps toward a more rational public discourse.
Canada's getting a new Prime Minister soon, either directly in this election or shortly after (it's the Westminster system and everyone knows Harper is done by one procedure or another). This is significant, because Canada pound for pound is one helluva CO2 producer and carbon exporter and Jack Layton's mustache is the very image of a rational public sphere. Srsly, it's a big fucking deal to get Regime Change in Canada for climate change.
We'll find another bogeyman ASAP.
Well, hold on, JS. The NY Times says this today: "Detainees at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had given the courier’s pseudonym to American interrogators and said that the man was a protégé of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the confessed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. " http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/02/world/asia/02re...
We don't know that we got this information from the torture. I agree with every point you make, but let's keep inferences tied closely to facts. Otherwise, we're in Wingnut-World.
We are in wingnut world, in that every wingnut on the Intertoobes is going to take this and run with it, "Torture worked! Liberals are pussies! Yee-haw!"
Best to be prepared for that.
Too right, unfortunately.
"Detainees at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba"
That to me says torture was used. If torture isn't part of the Gitmo regimen, why bother with a prison that's deliberately outside the purview of the Eighth Amendment to begin with?
I'm not saying Jack's wrong. I'm saying we don't know the specifics of our discovery of this particular information. Gitmo was – and still, is, by virtue of its continuing existence – a disgusting immoral enterprise (along with Bagram and all our other black sites); I agree about that.
I just want to know exactly how we got what we got on this subject.
4th Amendment, 5th Amendment, etc.
I think Go6 has in mind the prohibition in 8A of cruel and unusual punishment.
I thought they were all there because the Supreme Court ruled we couldn't illegally prosecute them through military tribs and jail them for life (which was Shrub's plan.) Then in 2006, when the jig was up, the G-mo inmates' "home" nations told the Bushies they did not want them back.
I mean of course torture went on, but how can we know torture worked in this case? It could be that the torture failed and led to bad info, then once the torturing stopped in 2007, we got better intel from KSM ?? maybe..?
Needs more water-boarding… electrodes?
Since nothing like this ever happened under Bush's watch, maybe Hopey's people did just what you're suggesting. After all the shit they'd been put through, if a CIA agent sat down with these guys and offered them some fresh falafel and a cup of mint tea, maybe they told what they knew.
Or am I too filled with hope?
I'd tell you what I know for some fresh falafel and a cup of mint tea. Not the bill o'reilly kinda falafel tho, right?
My guess is Hopey talked to them himself in Arabic and got all of the information while discussing the Koran and Shariah law.
In fairness, the Man does know the law…
Jack doesn't get it. Here in America we look up to the forefathers. We look up to Jesus. We torture because the forefathers and Jesus commanded it.
Amd Jesus demands electrodes on muslim genitalia, dammit!
After the deal he got, it's not hard to understand.
But it weren't them muslins what done it to Jeebus. Opinions vary as to the faith or allegiance of the actual perps, but there warnt no muslins in 33 AD.
True,. but when you lash out, sometimes you hit the wrong people.
The Founders spelled it out pretty clearly. MOAR TORTURE.
One day, I walked in my grand mothers house and forgot to close the door behind me. My good christian church going grams asked me, "Were you born in a barn?". Smart ass kid that I was, my retort of "If it was good enough for Jesus…" caused her to bust out laughing. Now somebody somewhere will make the same case for torture; It was good enough for Jesus…
No snark here. We have lost our way. We have allowed ourselves to become as amoral as the rest of the world and we will never find our way back. We're entering our Late Roman Empire phase. Welcome to the American gutter.
Your point meshes seamlessly with my view – released only in dark moments – that we're the AIDS virus of the universe, which is why our Lizard Overlords won't let us have FTL.
There should be more orgies, then.
There will be…but you won't like them. (Neither will I)
Well…we seemed to be getting fucked on a daily basis, so there's that.
We can stop the torture when all teh evil is gone.
Till then, fuck human rights and our enemies.
Unless they sit on a pile of oil or have some monies to share with our pols – then it's okay.
God, I hate this country sometimes…
On the other hand, it appears we gave OBL a respectful Islamic funeral, and I love this country for that. We're just a little schizo, that's all.
Betcha somebody yelled "Cannonball!"
My guess is the Wingnuts are going to tear that little piece of class to shreds in no time.
But know what? throwing his dead ass in the ocean was very smart…there will be no grave site to protect or for the faithful to visit or steal back the remains and it followed his religious traditions as far as timing.
Barry been taking smart pills of late or all the three dimensional chess.stuff is true….lord, let it be true.
Is it just me, or have the teevee news run out of anything to say when they start interviewing relatives of the 9/11 victims and asking how they feel. Perhaps I'm cruel and heartless, but I don't think that's news.
You're correct. It isn't news. My god(s), they were already doing that on NPR at 8 this morning. Pathetic.
Still not as bad as showing the party animals at the WTC site.
Repeatedly, with the morons at the WH, to the exclusion of any other footage.
They interviewed a legless Republican Iraq war veteran state senator on MN public radio today. Will someone tell me exactly what gives this guy bona fides to pronounce on the killing of bin Laden?
I quit watching TV news 30+ years ago. I recommend it highly.
Thanks, Jack.
Could we have a do over where we don't have war criminals for the first 8 years of "looking?"
Could we secure loose nuclear material and focus on 911 comission recommendations instead of cowboy/retard/evil minds that devise ways to scare and disenfranchise us without making us safe?
I'm harshing my own buzz here.
I may have voted to get my country back, but it seems different from when we last met.
Ok, back to snark. Sarah? Donny? Trig?
You can't go home again. The world kept moving and we moved with it. Eight years of craziness changed all of us.
No war criminals? Securing loose nukes? Enfranchised voters? go back to Russia, commie!
If Osama isn't dead, it'll be the biggest conspiracy since the 50 Year old Kenyan plot to usurp the US Presidency
Barry's grandparents built that compound in Abbottabad 25 years ago, and Soetero-Ng lured OBL there with promises of sexy time. This is all a huge hoax, sheeple!
But in the end, they just asked the dudes at the Pakistani Military Academy.
So Bush's Torture Squad got Bib Laden's courier's name from Sheikh Mohammed, under torture, we presume.
OK, now what? Are we suppose to throw that bit of actionable intelligence away after Obama did away with torture on his watch?
I am no fan of Obama's gitmo backpeddling or indefinite incarceration. But, if I was in charge, I'd feel it a sin against humanity to not use this info to kill Osama.
That's where the rubber hits the road, isn't it? Again, however, we're assuming we got the first actionable bits of intel via torture. If we did, we have the ethical issue you've highlighted. If we didn't, we don't.
And, even if we did get that intel from torture, we used it effectively, so your last point bears weight.
What a f*^#ing mess.
"OK, now what? Are we suppose to throw that bit of actionable intelligence away after Obama did away with torture on his watch?"
We're supposed to get it in ways that would stand up in court so that we don't have to deal with this "shot while resisting" nonsense that will usher in 50 years of sightings of him with Elvis.
Well said. We went down this road, and Here. We. Are.
Dunno Jack, gonna be awfully hard to put the tard back in the bottle.
If taking this long to find one guy who was living in a Pakistani suburb is called "success", then someone's metrics are really really off.
Hey now, the CIA spent a long time getting ready for this. Do you know how hard it is posing as an Amway rep? It takes extensive theatrical training to get even a CIA operative to lie that convincingly.
Not to mention all the legwork required on okcupid. Do you people have any idea how many questions you have to answer before you are matched up with al qaeda leadership?
I have had a friend requesting pending with OBL on facebook for about 6 months now. It would kill me every time I would see that he had changed his profile pic, or added a bunch of friends but not me.
well fuck you buddy. fuck you.
It's not a question of whether torture "worked" in this instance.
It's the fact that under the U.S. Constitution, torture by U.S. citizens (or military) is illegal.
As far as The Powers What Am are concerned, "illegal" only matters if we're trying to prosecute them legally. If we just want to kill people, well, the sky's the limit, isn't it?
So Jack, you always thought Ariel was kinda' hot, didn't you.
While we're on the subject of America losing it's way, we also have to come to terms with the fact that we went after Bin Laden with the goal of killing him rather than capturing him and bringing him to trial. Somehow, I'm cool with that. Oh my god! Now I'm infected with it!
"Put your hands on your head! Put your hands…" *bangbangbang* "– shit, nevermind."
I'd like to be a better person and be all upset if that's how it went down, but really…
Well, there is that whole matter of "where will the trial be held" and "which public defender gets the honor of representing him in court" and "holy shit, the liberals are just handing him a platform from which to spread his views!" So yeah, all things considered, fuck all that.
What if OBL's version of 9-11 events was interestingly different from usa's official version?
Can't risk any unseemly revelations at trial.
Very true.
Some of the reports trickling out seem to indicate that it was an actual firefight, so if I were an operative, I'd have capped that fucker toot sweet. At least that's how it goes when I'm playing Call of Duty.
I think the one thing that could not be allowed was bin Laden's escape (again), and while many of us would have preferred his capture, his death will do just fine.
He's dead. I dunno… I guess I feel better… My allergies are acting up… I dunno… I had a bowel movement this morning… Drank some coffee… Ate some left over pizza… I dunno… I guess I feel better… I dunno…
Some fuckbrain celebrated Got 'Im Day by phoning in what local cops called a "credible bomb threat." This is supposed to make me feel better?
Uhh..freedom…America…fries…bombs!
Traitor…commie…nazi…fascist…socialist!
*munch* *drink*
Torture works – It does. Right now my officemate is playing "Contemporary Christian" muzak on her computer. I would admit to killing Lincoln right about now.
Think of how many cold cases are sitting in the files of municipal police stations, right now, at this very moment, that could be cracked and closed with a little "Blessed Assurance"!
Blanche Lincoln, maybe – even without the music.
Which a good illustration of why torture doesn't work. (I'm assuming here you didn't actually kill Lincoln.)
But isn't that exactly what a Lincoln-killer would want you to believe?
What a party pooper.
I just want to live long enough to see the New Horizons photos of Pluto and Shawna Forde get executed. Then I can check out smiling, I guess.
Osama dead? Hell, I still feel lousy.
Is this Bin Laden's true legacy? An interminable internet discussion on whether or not it is okay to gloat over his demise?
i prefer it to the interminable (and inevitable) internet discussion on whether he's really dead.
No, his true legacy is the on-going collapse of the US economy and society.
Looks like someone was worried he'd written so many gloating blog posts in the last fifteen hours that the liberals were going to revoke his membership card.
Substitute "Ken" for "the liberals" and I think you've got it–note the gratuitous reference to disgusting, fat ass foods that disgusting, fat ass Americans eat!
While zombie mermaid Osama bin Laden is down there singing upbeat duets with crustaceans about his hatred of the West…
God damn it, Stuef, now I have a rewrite of The Little Mermaid in my head, with OBL as Sebastian the (non-Halal) crab.
Undah da see,
Undah da see,
Starfish ah dozing
Where ah'm decomposing;
Damned USMC…
Don't worry. We've made arrangements with King Triton. Merpeople are anal raping OBL with dead coral as we speak.
With any luck, the damage we do in this universe will be confined to this planet.
And then we will be eaten by the Overlords.
–And now a zombie mermaid with a bad kidney named Osama bin Laden is frolicking with dolphins at the bottom of the ocean.–
So Bin Laden got his 72 virgins and they turned out to be dolphins?
Nope, ratfish.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_5CaCgz5Pyxo/S40pU6ZB8KI...
If any of them looked like Darryl Hannah in Splash I am going to be so pissed.
You must be so ashamed of yourself. The Constitution only applies when it's convenient — thought everyone knew that. Doesn't apply to commies, muslins, and other existential threats du jour.
How're these bad guys, who've been in captivity for years, supposed to know where an artful dodger like OBL is currently hanging out anyway? I think somebody who knew somebody in the Pakistani Army finally weaseled on Bin Laden.
Torture probably had nothing to do with it. More like a fistful of Benjamins.
Then again, maybe the bad guys in question knew whose palm in the Pakistani Army/Pakistani Intelligence to grease.
We can probably agree that KSM and al-Libi didn't just give us a day planner with bin Laden's new mailing address once we slapped their balls enough.
We have captured the terrorist … and he is us.
Or Fred Hiatt's grave. That would be okay, right?
See, this is why Fred wouldn't use the word "torture." Proves he was right!
If he conceded anything was torture, he'd have to concede that reading the WaPo, which I stopped ~ a year ago, is torture.
Am I the only one with Outkast songs going through my head today? I mean, memory lane with Bombs Over Baghdad.
Does Chonkyfire count?
No snark for a moment.
Torture is awful. It's illegal and it's wrong. The Jack Bauer bullshit is just that. So much for first principles. Consider a concrete situation: you have in your custody someone who knows something. That knowledge, if you had it, would enable you to save a life, protect a city, prevent an atrocity, &c. Your captive will not share willingly, because he really wants to kill, or to cause that atrocity. Nothing is working and time is passing. What do you do? You torture as much as you have to, and you regret doing it because it's wrong. Got a better approach?
Torture conscientiously.
um how do you know that the info is gonna save a life, protect a city, save gas, or keep dinner from going cold?
couldn't you make yourself believe that was the case in ANY situation, thus justifying torture ALL THE FUCKING TIME? Jesus, cops would love to use that rationale….but but gangs are bad mmkay.
And the more practical hangup is most of the time you don't have the guy that knows what you think you need to know. You end up torturing some guy who can't help you, even if you crack him.
How about –
Step 1. Don't needlessly piss off a bunch of religious, suicidal fanatics by building huge, superfluous military bases in their "holy" land.
Step 2. Don't bomb the shit out of nearly unrelated countries that happen to be populated with muslims (one billion strong, and growing!).
Step 3. Pursue the obvious (following up on people interested in taking off but not landing large commercial aircraft; people buying large quantities of fertilizer with no farms; etc.)
and finally, if that fails
Step 4. "We've got 72 naked virgins in the next room RIGHT NOW – spill the beans and you can have them all – no need to wait for the afterlife."
QED
While I am humbled by the size of your p-ness, I'm just 'gonna throw out my favorite philosophy professor's standard retort to similar moral dilemmas/ situations:
Would you want them to do it to you?
We've just jumped into the fucking rabbit hole:
…President Obama single-handedly understood what was at stake here. He alone understood the need to get DNA to prove the death … it was President Obama single-handedly and alone who came up with the strategy that brought about the effective assassination of Osama bin Laden," the radio host said, concluding, "Thank God for President Obama."
Who said it? Fucking Rush Limpbaugh
As I won't listen to him, ever, was he being sarcastic?
I didn't listen, but the first part of the statement would imply that he wasn't. Obama did need the DNA which is hard to find when you blow up a bunch of people at once
According to the most recent parsing of RL's comments (e.g, Washington Monthly's Steve Benen), it appears he was being, as usual, sarcastic.
Benen: "Limbaugh, in other words, was mocking, not praising, the president. These reporters have it backwards. (Indeed, the right-wing host is now laughing at these news organizations on the air.)
"What amazes me about all of this is the fact that, even now, after all these years, many in the media don't yet understand Rush Limbaugh. They still think he's capable of decency, willing to honor a Democratic president he hates when the situation warrants it."
Sorry. Shit is still brown and assholes still pucker.
Frankly, Obama should be ashamed for thinking he had anything to do with this. It was the troops who killed Osama, not the Kenyan usurper who ordered the mission.
I predict Obama's resignation within days.
This is standard for Rusty. Whenever a Dem does something good he sanctimoniously lays on praise with a trowel, as if to suggest that the whole world's sick of talking about it already. What's a guy gonna do, he's got a lot of time to kill each day between selling lawn-watering devices.
No.way. Seriously?
OK, I was punked. Rush is a sarcastic motherfucker and unreconstructed racist asshole. I should have known. Must be losing my edge. Must find bottle.
"If Obama Were A Shoo-In For Re-Election Osama Bin Laden Would Still Be Alive Today" http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201105020004
I think Jack should up the right-wingnut ante with a post titled "We Are All Osama bin Laden Now"
You can always go to the beach and pee in the ocean.
Yeah, but we all do that anyway.
After ten years, the torture kicked in, don't thin' so…
You might be right on this, judging from a timeline I just saw analyzed on Daily Kos. The torture might have been way earlier – several years earlier, but still during W's administration – than the acquisition of the information about the courier.
So in other words, torture actually delayed the information.
I'm sure it helped that out of all the homes surrounding it, this one had no phone lines, no cellular communications coming in or out of it, was ten time the size of surrounding homes and was fortified to the bejeezus with barbed wire on the fence surrounding it etc. You have to know that sattelites, planes, drones and everything short of trained fucking pigeons were overflying that house checking who was entering and leaving for a good while before they pulled the trigger. I'm figuring he started losing value and someone decided to whisper in someone's ear: "Psst, look here!"
I don't think KSM or al-Libi's information would've been terribly useful anyway — first off, they've been incommunicado for nine years, so how fresh could any information they had be? Most likely some Cheney troll put that information out there — erroneously, probably — to add to the growing list of lies that somehow justify torture.
But your point still holds — as Matthew Alexander documented in How to Break a Terrorist, the soft form of interrogation is way more useful than the I-got-it-from-an-episode-of-24 kind.
Now back to being snarkily briefless.
There seems to be no rational pattern to Downes Fisty's downfistiness.
What, you think he has time to read the posts?
See the current lead on Daily Kos for an attempt to analyze the timeline from torture to discovery of the courier information.
When our first thought on this is fear of retaliation, when we do things we always said were wrong and justify them because they worked, when we willingly give up our freedom a little at a time so we can be "Safe", When all these things happen, then we have truely looked too long into the abyss.
That's unfortunately why they did the burial at sea thing. Half the world would be busily pissing on his grave, the other half digging it up for relics for the faithful. Dumping the bastard with a brief prayer beforehand and a "Ploosh!" as he hit the surface was far better than he deserved, but it gives his followers that much less to rage about. If they would have hid the body somewhere, it would have been the great Islamic Easter Egg Hunt, if they would have stored it anywhere on US soil it would have been bombed etc. Turning him into bacteria snax in the Marianas Trench or wherever the hell they dumped his sorry ass doesn't allow for any stupid stuff. As for Fred's final resting place, I hope that the soil is sandy for a long ways down, there's going to be a lot of piss around them parts.
Bury him real deep, make it easy for him to get where he's going.
Republicans would certainly like to apply these tactics to the "fifth element", that is ME and YOU, or others who disagree with torture. Eventually, we will all look forward to turture, especially when applied by a right wing cro-magnon lunatic. Turture is fun!
Tainted fruit? Sure. Torture I am against it.
I think better results come from treating captives like humans – It worked with Nazi's. But would I use info gained in this way before I was in charge to find and kill Osama – you betcha.
Tainted Fruit by Billie Holiday. What a disturbing song that was.
I, too, have been tortured. For last week, I was forced to watch Celebrity Apprentice.
Salvia's okay if it's a drought with no end in sight — otherwise, it's just slightly trippy with an intensive gentle throbbing that seems to be an amplification of your pulse inside your head or ears, some minor hallucinations and then it's over. Doesn't come anywhere close to the hype, unless you're an impressionable teenager.
This proves that George W Bush was right all along, and that he should be returned to office.
Sorry Doc, I was at Uncle during the first term.
I was surprised when he left.
The tone of discussion is weirdly awkward over at Red State. Like a combination of conspiracy theory and strange ways of trying to say Obama's foreign policy is exactly like Bush's and is also dangerous for the nation that Obama had no actual involvement in Osama's death. Rather confusing.
Sounds fascinating. If only I had the masochistic self-loathing to go to that site and actually read it…
It's actually rather exhausting. I don't entirely recommend it although right now might be one of the few times when the Redstaters are strangely quiet.
hey, by taking credit for the operation, Obama implicitly took credit for the torture as well. No torture no nickname no operation.
Jack is up to his idiotic rants again. Doesn't he know its a nasty world out there? Kill or be killed. I think Jack would be a good bottom for some radical Islamists. You do realize that sodomy is mentioned and condoned in the Quran?? Check it out.
I wonder if Jack would keep his badass stance (tough grimance, folded arms per bio picture) while being repeatedly violated by the Muslim Brotherhood? Doubt it, probably will squeal like a pig.
you sound like spike from 'buffy the vampire slayer'.
sorry, don't know spike. I'll research him/it and get back with you.
How does it feel to be on the same side of Osama bin Laden?
wow, I knew you guys were idiots over here, but I had no idea of the extent of your collective cluelessness.
LMAO
I am just noting you are too much of a coward to give me a correct answer.
Maybe you should go back to Big Failure and share a crying jag about the death of Osama bin Laden with your pal Andy Breitbart.
C'mon Dr Bob, just admit it, you want to bone Jack. You're the one who brought it up, after all. "A good bottom…etc" Obv you see yourself as a top.
"by taking credit for the operation"
Yeah, that was pretty cheeky of him, taking credit for an operation that he gave the orders for. What a glory hog.
"Obama implicitly took credit for the torture as well. No torture no nickname no operation."
Durrr, yeah, because without using torture, there's no way that the CIA could have figured out that watching couriers could lead to Osama. Also, as we all know, torture always produces reliable intelligence, and there's no way to catch terr'ists without torture. Lord knows it would have been impossible to take out al-Zarqawi without torture, right? Or would you suggest that interrogator Matthew Alexander, whose investigation used smart interrogation but no torture, was some sort of liberal wimp?
Hell, I dunno, maybe I should give you partial credit for a Wonkette post, since you did at least mention buttsechs.
Heh, we've seen that one so many times we should all write our our own parodies of it to post in comments when he puts it up.
But aren't they fun, in a totally nihilistic, "I need a drink!" sort of way? Isn't it sort of, "Oh, there goes crazy Uncle Ken, that crank! He's talking about the Illuminati again!" at the family reunion? I mean, he makes me cry from soul-crusthing despair, but I do roll my eyes fondly first. And that's why I am morally weak.
America still produces the greatest new ideas:
Google. Facebook. iPhone.
Suck on that, World!
Jeez, Jack, get a grip; leave the Republican memes to Republicans.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/02/972387/-...
No kidding. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in 2003. He gave up the name of the OBL courier two or three years later. So torture is effective as long as you don't need the information the prisoner has for another 30 months or so.
more likely that an uncovered apostate Muslim woman would be stoned in Dearborn, Michigan.
Fuck it. My hatred for Donald Rumsfeld burns hotter than ten thousand suns but…
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/02/rumsfeld-bin-...
he says DoD got the info on the courier through "normal" interrogation methods.
Fuck it. Torture is still immoral and evil.
killing 3000 on 9.11 is not immoral and evil?
we live in a much more dangerous world than that before the end of the cold war.
well, we still have country buffets, right?
This is something I can completely agree with.
What I still don't get is this belief that even going into Afghanistan was entirely to get Bin Laden. No matter what we were told, everyone eventually came to realize, if they hadn't already, that we went into there for many and more reasons than that. I didn't support any of these wars, but all of this death and destruction wasn't just to get him. He offered us as good an excuse as any for what our government wanted to do, anyway.
So, this idea that all of this was the result of our earnest want to catch Bin Laden is a strawman as far as I'm concerned.
While I do consider myself a (now irrelevant) proponent of seeing OBL tried at The Hague and languishing away in prison, I gotta say:
"…zombie mermaid Osama bin Laden…" should garner Mr. Stuef yet another Pulizter nomination (if the world were just).
Actually, I kind of pity red state fuckwits. A red staters life consist of nostalgia of their heros like St. Ronald of Reagan, Shrub, McCarthy, Ticky Dick, Adolph Hitler. Red staters love the great depression, great recession, guns, death, torture, oppression. Their sense of humor would include cruelty on an unimiginable scale, and they look forward to the apocalypse, were mad max Jesus returns to punish people that are for truth and justice, equal rights and fairness. What a miserable existance.
OBL started an avalanche. It won't stop just cuz he's dead.
We will never go back. Torture and tribunals will become more and more common for ordinary Americans and the old-fashioned judge and jury will be reserved for plutocrats like Madoff.
1. For the record, torture only works to achieve compliance, not acquire information. See my article in opednews for chapter and verse as to why.
2. This crap about the courier and the years of detective work are not whole lies, only half lies designed to provide cover for the ISI Colonel or Paki General who is today $25 Million richer. Get it? The minute detailed intelligence about the layout of the Compound and where folk were sleeping did not come from following a fucking courier there.
3. There were over twenty folk there. Most are still alive but none are still in Country, and you can rest assured they are not too pleased with their current circumstances and prospects.
I shouldn't feel this glad when someone is killed, but i am taking a moral mulligan on this one.
NPR!
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