James Mitchell on enhanced interrogation
One of the fellows who had the honor of waterboarding Khalid Sheik Mohammed, James Mitchell, interviewed with Megyn Kelly and expressed his extreme displeasure with the release of the Senate’s report on torture on Fox News.
The man who waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the so-called mastermind of the Sept. 11 terror attacks, told Megyn Kelly on Tuesday that the CIA’s program of using enhanced interrogation techniques did not amount to torture, despite recent accusations in a Senate-issued report.
“If it was torture, I would be in jail,” James Mitchell said on “The Kelly File.” “This thing was investigated over and over. I was told by the highest law enforcement agency in the land that we were going to walk right up to the edge of the law, and that all of the things we had included in that list were legal.”
Mitchell, a former Air Force psychologist, said in the days following the Sept. 11 attacks, the country was gripped with fear that new attacks were forthcoming and both the public and the U.S. government were desperate to prevent them.
Mitchell claims that his work saved lives and I have no doubt of that. What’s really telling about this interview is that the Senate never asked Mitchell anything during their investigation.
The report and it’s release was purely political and has nothing to do with security of this country and the Senate’s responsibility in that regard.
Category: Politics, Terror War
Spew alert….
Completely justified.
http://img.fark.net/images/cache/850/3/36/fark_36SH1zmg0jXGbyPTu2TUD5Mkxko.jpg?t=_AZMivZ5NF-5TtvzgZxH8g&f=1419224400
HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!
Over!
One of the more interesting topics to arise from all of this has been America’s reaction to all of this. Impressively, a majority of Americans agree with what the CIA did to detainees over the course of a couple of years.
So, the reason no one is going to get charged over this is really because America is mostly hunky dory with the CIA’s actions.
And I’m tired of people like Pelosi acting like she wasn’t read in on this early on. Bullshit. It’s obvious she was told everything. You don’t get to have it both ways. If it really bothered her she should have went to the press immediately with what she knew and immediately condemned it. And if by some SMALL chance she really didn’t know anything, it was her job TO KNOW. If people mislead you so easily, maybe you should reconsider who you trust and how well you really know your own job.
I really feel sorry for the CIA. They get thrown under the bus so often, I’m surprised that their offical seal doesn’t include a tire tread design.
They were poorly equipped and poorly trained to deal with a post 9-11 world. The interrogation policy was a result of their attempt to make up for poor intelligence in the early stages of the conflict. Even to this very day we still don’t have enough intel on the ground in the middle east to deal with all the current conflicts. The breakout of ISIS took our intelligence agencies completely by surprise, but it shouldn’t have. We should focus more on turning people. Anyone can be bought, it’s just a matter of price.
Actually, it didn’t take the intell community by surprise, just the Administration who wasn’t reading/getting the PDB.
funny how it is only the Democrat administrations(remember the Church commission?) who get butthurt. They all feel the ends justify their means when it comes to social engineering etc, but never for national defense.
Even funnier is these are the same people who were screaming when Valerie Plame was “outed” (not)
Gina – you mean, when her husband outed her by bragging to everyone on the DC cocktail party circuit that his wife worked for “the Company”? Or when she outed herself by working openly at CIA HQ for a couple of years?
Drip…drip…drip. Fuck em.
Any of us lucky enough to attend SERE school can tell you all about this stuff. Maybe if we give these bozos an “I’ve Been There” patch we can make them feel better. Better yet, let’s send the politicians to experience what our own military folks experience first hand so they can make an informed decision and STFU.
Yup. Absolutely the longest night of my life. Thank God it was only one night.
The only thing that came even close was my CPO initiation.
Ahh SERE school what fond memeories. /sarc
/sarc indeed.
When it comes to privacy and accountability, people always demand the former for themselves and the latter for everyone else.
-David Brin
Mark L. is correct in his assertion that a majority of Americans support enhanced interrogation when the need for information is compelling. Check out this Washington Post/ABC News poll on the topic:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/16/from-moderate-democrats-to-white-evangelicals-nearly-every-demographic-group-believes-torture-can-be-justified/
Of course that majority does not include the America hating loons on the Left.
A few on the left “get it”, PT. Google “Alan Dershowitz” and “torture”.
I have a lot of respect for Dershowitz. He is swayed by politics in the least that I can tell. I remember his comments on Trayvon Martin and would be very interested to know what he has to say about Ferguson and Mr. Garner.
“He is NOT swayed by politics…”
Sheesh!
I haven’t chimed in on any of the torture discussions here yet because … I don’t know how I feel.
On the one hand, put me in a scenario where friends are in harm’s way and I truly believe that their only chance of being saved is doing bad things to worse people, I have no qualms -at a personal level- of doing so.
However, there’s a couple of assumptions here. There is the notion that it’d work, and there’s plenty of evidence throughout history to say it’s a pretty ineffective way, with limited investigative resources, to acquire useful information. There’s also the time factor – if ‘torture’ works 10% of the time, but works fast, and something else works 25% of the time, but works slow, then my decision rests on how quickly I need the information.
On the whole, though, the biggest issue for me is one of personal vs. governmental responsibility. If my family is starving and there’s some freshly baked bread just sitting on a table with nobody around, I can take it, and steal -committing a crime- and you know what? I’d be just fine with that, since my family comes first. But this doesn’t mean the government should make theft be legal. Similarly, I can see scenarios where I’d be inclined to go beyond the law in interrogations, but I’d still think the law should be pretty firm that torture is illegal.
Reconciling those two different attitudes is difficult, maybe impossible, and I think part of the problem is that people here -the military community- are very much in tune with the ‘family in danger’ mode that operates at a personal level, whereas many on the Left don’t have that up-close and personal view of things, and thus see it purely at a governmental policy level.
In other words, it isn’t that they ‘hate America’, it’s that they’re looking at an optical illusion and seeing an old woman, and you’re seeing a duck. It’s hard to keep both in view at once.
I’ll say this much about what that report ALLEGES that we did: Nothing in that report, and I mean absolutely nothing, meets any possible definition of the word “torture”.
If the examples given in that report rise to the definition of “torture” than we can include most of what we hear on the radio and see on TV these days.
Everything done was legal, and within prescribed boundaries. What galls me most is that EVERYONE in a leadership position in Congress was briefed about all of this, and said nothing. Not one word. They knew. They all knew.
Pelosi knew. Boxer knew. Reid knew. All of them knew, and didn’t say a word until now. Why would that be? Politics, plain and simple. They got beat in an election, their man in the White House is neutered and this report, this damaged, slanted report, was feloniously released to score political points and undermine the new Congress.
Every single person who aided in this release ought to be in jail. From the Senators who let it out, to the newspapers and TV stations who passed it along, they should all suffer some serious repercussions.
Anyway, that’s my 2-cent’s worth.
I’ll agree that ‘torture’ is ill-defined, but we can’t on the one hand say the Japanese tortured people in WWII via waterboarding, but when we do it now it’s in no way similar. Also, while we typically think of ‘torture’ as a physical thing -flaying skin, electrocution, etc.- the reality is there’s a huge psychological component, so the mental effects do need to be considered, not merely discarded. You want to keep a guy awake for 48 hours? I have no problem with that. Blasting him with incredibly loud music the instant he falls asleep, telling him you’re raping his daughters, and keeping him naked for weeks on end? I … don’t know. And it’s not out of sympathy for him, but more a question of whether that’s right.
And, ultimately, the biggest thing for me is what’s the goal? I think we can all agree that we’re not going to get much operational intelligence out of a guy that’s been locked up for the past five years. So what’s the goal? As I said above, I can be swayed on a personal level if there’s an immediate need for information and I’m fairly certain my actions will improve the chances of people I care about, but if we gain nothing actionable by doing this (and arguably lose a lot, from the dim view the world has on such actions), then regardless of whether it’s ‘torture’ or not, I don’t see any value in ‘enhanced interrogation’ in that scenario.
As for the politicians like Pelosi, Boxer and Reid, I find them utterly contemptible and beyond useless. Not for this in particular, but for everything. But I don’t see this as a purely political move. Plenty of people wanted answers, and Udall was ‘threatening’ to read the report in Congress, or so I hear. This was going to come out one way or the other.
It’s not an overwhelming majority by any stretch who think this was worth it.
44% either don’t know if it prevented terror attacks or don’t believe it prevented terror attacks while 56% believe it prevented terror attacks.
On the matter of whether or not it was justified the approval is a thin 51% with 29% thinking not justified and the too stupid for primetime 20% who have no idea.
Also a very thin margin on whether or not it was a good idea to release the report, 43% think it was a wrong decision, 42% think it was right to release and of course 15% are too fucking stupid to have any opinion.
At least that is what Pew was reporting…
http://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/files/2014/12/More-Say-CIA-Interrogation-Methods-Were-Justified-than-Unjustified.png
I am not squeamish about dunking a few terrorists in a water tank with a towel on the face,
I had, and continue to have, reservations about trusting our government with state sponsored “enhanced interrogation” procedures.
As our own government recognizes veterans as a potential recruiting ground for right wing terror groups I can envision a scenario where a single bad actor like McVeigh creates an environment where those associated with that bad actor (whether involved or not) could be interrogated using “enhanced” techniques even if American citizens and without due process. Especially under the infamous “time is of the essence” excuse for justification.
Aside from the sore loser angle, I fail to see what political points democrappers like pelosi and difi think they will gain. But maybe it’s because I still think this is the USofA and not some offshoot of the extinct USSR.
If they didn’t release it now, there was the real posibility that the next Senate might release a more comprehensive report that included that showed Congress’s culpability in the program.
That is now a non issue, as no one want to spend any more time on this.
Okay, that makes sense.
But is this one of those ‘protests too much’ episodes?
They released it to once again raise the Bush / Darth Cheney spectre. They are basically trying to smear the Republicans. Think “keep the WH for the Dems at all costs,” and you’ll get the idea.
One thing that stood out in the interview was when he said how KSM told him that one day the liberal media and politicians would turn on him and the CIA and basically hang them out to twist in the wind. All without a crystal ball. They know this country well and know how to use it against us and the left will never get a clue.
It is a fact that under extreme duress the subject will tell you just about anything to make the pain stop. Info gained this way must be veiwed with a fine scope…it is not dependable.
Interesting to note that John McCain, a hawk in every sense of the word and the only one in Cngress with any type of firsthand knowledge oof torture, says this is torture and stands against it. Many of those who support our actions would scream for the nuclear option if it was discovered that one of our s was treated in such a way.
Those of you who are debating the meaning of the word torture are deluding yourselves. What we did to these guys is, was and forever shall be, torture. How in the world can sleep deprivation, long term exposure to heat, cold and insanely loud and bad music, not to mention waterboarding, not be torture? Come on, wake up and speak the truth. Debatet eh legality of the treatment, not the treatment itself.
On the treatment…I am against it. What we do to them will inevitably be done to our troops who fall into enemy hands. We have justified barbaric treatment by using it.
In todays day and age, there must be a better, more nuanced way to extract information…phsycological mind fucking, truth serum or studies of the ways of Hans Scharff…something, anything must be better than outright torture.
HOWEVER…if, and I stress if, it saves lives of good people to torture one bad person, I am for it.