Quote:
Originally Posted by Raider Ronnie
Why is it that that Boston Globe report left out the fact that because of the use of waterboarding on one of these friggin TERRORIST another 911 type attack that was planned to Los Angeles never happened ???
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this is excellent, of course, we won't know for sure until Obama has all of the memos released rather than just the memos that suit him politically...
Lloyd Mann
LA Legal Profession Examiner Lloyd is one of...
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Lloyd S. Mann has been an attorney for more than 25 years. His law firm, Mann & Zarpas, LLP, was recently listed as one of the top 30 firms in the San Fernando Valley Business Journal, and for his entire career he has been passionate about explaining the law, lawyers, and the legal system to others - which is precisely what he intends to do with his column. He can be reached at
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Next ArticleLA Legal Profession Examiner Did Waterboarding save Los Angeles lives?
April 21, 5:57 PM · Add a Comment
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Was Los Angeles saved from a 9/11 type brutal attack as a result of the controversial tactic of "Waterboarding?" According to a report on a popular website that is exactly what happened.
CNSNews.com, a conservative leaning website, is claiming that waterboarding, which has now been banned by the Obama administration, induced captured terrorist, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, to give American interrogators information that enabled authorities to prevent a major attack upon Los Angeles that could have resulted in the murder of tens of thousands of American citizens and others living in Los Angeles.
CNSNews.com is the creation of the conservative lobbying group, Media Research Center. Its leader, L. Brent Bozell III, certainly makes no claim of being an Obama supporter. According to the CNSNews story, the Central Intelligence Agency continues to defend an assertion it made that appeared in a May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo to the effect that the use of "...enhanced techniques" of interrogation on Mohammed led to this invaluable information getting into the hands of American intelligence officials which, in turn, saved Los Angeles from a major terrorist attack by Islamic extremists.
As reported in the CNSNews report, Mohammed, who was the master-"mind"-if you can call it that-behind the first hijacked-airliner in the 9/11 attack upon New York and Washington D.C., was not cooperative after he was captured by the American military.
The American officials had reason to believe, given Mohammad’s position as such a significant leader in the Al Qaeda terrorist organization, that he would have information regarding potential imminent attacks upon Americans. Under the Obama administration edict on waterboarding, this tactic is beneath the dignity of the American people. Under the Bush administration, where-under a limited number of circumstances-it was permitted, the CIA claim, as reported in CNSNews, is that it saved lives of Los Angeles residents.
According to the May 30, 2005 memo, which quoted from an August 2, 2004 letter that CIA Acting General Counsel John A. Rizzo had sent to the Justice Department, waterboarding could only be used on a "high value detainee" if the CIA had "credible intelligence" that a terrorist attack was imminent, substantial and credible indicators that the subject has actionable intelligence that can prevent, disrupt or deny the attack, and where other interrogation methods have failed to elicit this information within the perceived time limit for preventing the attack.
The CIA memo contends that prior to waterboarding being used Mohammad was not only "...uncooperative but also appeared contemptuous of the will of the American people to defend themselves." However, the CIA contends that after Mohammad was subject to the waterboard technique, he became "...cooperative, providing intelligence that led to the capture of key al Qaeda allies and, eventually, the closing down of an East Asian terrorist cell that had been tasked with carrying out the 9/11-style attack on Los Angeles."
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal is suggesting that President Obama should "...immediately declassify all memos concerning what intelligence was gleaned, and what plots foiled, by the interrogations of high-level al Qaeda detainees in the wake of September 11.
It sounds nice when President Obama talks about how certain American values that distinguish us from the terrorists are what allow us to say how proud we are to be Americans. That sounds fine. It is nice to know that President Obama evidently and correctly believes that Americans are morally superior to the Islamic extremists. Here, however, are the relevant questions if this legal issue involving an interrogation technique had ever reached closing arguments in a courtroom:
Under what circumstances was waterboarding permitted? Was it only in rare instances where "high value detainees" were believed to possess invaluable information concerning imminent attacks upon Americans?
Have there been instances where waterboarding has saved American lives where other techniques were used which were not successful in obtaining information that led to saving Americans?
If the answers are that waterboarding was a technique that was used only in extraordinary instances where nothing else was working, and where it was believed that the captured terrorist suspect had information about imminent harm to Americans, and American lives have actually been saved in the past by such techniques, would it not now be reasonable to conclude that in an effort to be and sound reasonable, in an effort to be Americans and not terrorists, we have actually caused serious harm to our goal of fighting terrorism and saving American lives?
Let us hope that these questions are simply hypothetical, and that we won’t get definite answers during the remainder of the Obama administration by way of additional 9/11 type attacks.