Quote:
Originally Posted by spence
You guys are funny...and really missing the point.
The issue isn't if we ever got anything of value from EITs.
The issue is if getting Bin Laden proves that water boarding "works"...that was the entire point of the discussion. To "work" means that you get the intel that you wouldn't have gotten using less abusive means.
While there are certainly some who advocate torture, the expert opinions seems to be weighted the other way, that coercive and abusive methods are unreliable. If you'd like I can post dozens and dozens of quotes that reinforce this position.
Here's just one set of expert opinions from a few days ago...
To put it quite simply...to assert that water boarding "works" based on this example, where intel gained by EIT's seems to have played such a small role in an operation spanning many years is simply misleading. To do so without a serious analysis of methods to determine the likeliness of similar lintel being gained via conventional means makes it quite disingenuous.
The idea that water boarding is only to break someone to get information later is laughable...I'm sure a multitude of techniques are being used simultaneously. If you can't measure, you have no idea if the methods are successful. Again, the experts seem to run counter to conventional tough guy wisdom.
As I said before, this seems to once again be more of a political issue than a professional or scientific one.
-spence
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"To "work" means that you get the intel that you wouldn't have gotten using less abusive means. "
No, it doesn't. "Work" means that it provided something useful. No one can possibly know what would have happened if we did things differently. What we do know is, in this case, waterboarding gave us actionable intelligence that we didn't get from any other sources. We know that for a fact. Spence, you have descended into the darkness where the "birthers" live, you are simply unable to process irrefutable facts that do not serve your agenda.
Spence, at least once a week, I threathen my kids with severe punishment to get them to behave. Guess what? It works. Sometimes dangling the carrot gets you what you want, sometimes you have to swing the stick. A 5 year-old grasps this concept, but not you or your liberal ilk.
"The idea that water boarding is only to break someone to get information later is laughable"
Maybe it's laughable to you, but it's still fact. Hard, irrefutable fact. KSM started singing like a canary after he was broken. They didn't need to continue waterboarding him after he was "broken"...
"the experts seem to run counter to conventional tough guy wisdom."
WRONG. Not "
the" experts, just the ones
you choose to listen to. Is Leon Panetta (Obama's CIA chief) not an expert? He says waterboarding gave us actionable intelligence that helped kill Bin Laden.
Sometimes you need tough guys Spence. How would you have pushed the Nazis out of western Europe in 1944? Would you have stormed the beaches at Normandy with a sign that said "Visualize Peace"?
Being strong of will does not mean one lacks reason...
"As I said before, this seems to once again be more of a political issue than a professional or scientific one."
Of course it's a political issue! Because only a brainwashed, unthinking, liberal, Kool Aid-drinking zealot could possibly suggest that torture could
NEVER get a terrorist to reveal something that could save lives.