Zubaidah info hilzoy forgot to include
Apr 17, 2009 by
DaveC
[quote] In the late 1990s, Abu Zubaydah played a lead role in one of the 2000 millennium attack plots, and a possible tangential role in a second. There were plans to bomb a fully booked Radisson hotel in Amman, Jordan, and three other sites. This targeted tourists from the United States and Israel. But on November 30, 1999, Jordanian intelligence intercepted a call between Abu Zubaydah and Khadr Abu Hoshar, a Palestinian militant, and determined that an attack was imminent. Jordanian police arrested 22 conspirators and foiled the attack. Abu Zubaydah was sentenced to death in absentia by a Jordanian court for his role. There is also evidence that Abu Zubaydah approved the Los Angeles airport bomb plot in 2000. This plot was also foiled.
In March 2001, Condoleezza Rice was informed by the CIA that Zubaydah was planning a major operation in the near future. This was one of the first of many reports in the spring of 2001 that increased the threat level and indicated that an attack was coming. Many of these reports mentioned Zubaydah by name. The attack finally came in the form of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
The U.S. government believes [b]he became al-Qaeda's top military strategist following the death of Muhammad Atef in November 2001.[/b] A later plot to bomb the U.S. embassy in Paris failed.
American intelligence officials alleged, in October 2001, that six Arab men, living in Bosnia, had been plotting to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo, because they believed one of these men had made calls to a phone number in Afghanistan that had once been used by Zubaydah.
Middle East sources have told the Associated Press Abu Zubaydah developed a unique talent in mortars and other heavy weaponry that attracted the attention of bin Laden. [b]He was apparently named bin Laden's second deputy in 1995, responsible for screening recruits and devising terrorist plans.[/b] Where bin Laden and deputy Ayman al-Zawahri would set policy, Abu Zubaydah would implement it. U.S. officials said when the inner circle would order the bombing of an embassy, Abu Zubaydah would select the embassy, cell and method of attack. Ahmed Ressam, convicted April 2001 of smuggling, terrorist conspiracy and other charges in the Los Angeles millennium plot, described Abu Zubaydah's role as a recruiter during court testimony. "He is the person in charge of the camps. He receives young men from all countries. He accepts you or rejects you. And he takes care of the expenses for the camps. He makes arrangements for you when you travel coming in or leaving," Ressam said. Prospective recruits in Pakistan would meet Abu Zubaydah, who would assign them to camps. When they finished training, he placed them in cells overseas. Zubaydah is also believed to have been a field commander for the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen, in which 17 U.S. sailors were killed, and intelligence and police officials have linked him to at least five al Qaeda plots. Middle East sources said Abu Zubaydah helped set up the terrorist cell in Jordan charged with carrying out the millennium plot to attack American and Israeli targets.[3][/quote]
Comments
Apr 17, 2009, 13:03:36 Turbulence wrote:
What point are you trying to make?
Apr 17, 2009, 22:47:57 john miller wrote:
Same question. I don't think anybody has tried to claim that he was some innocent bystander in all this.
If you are trying to say that his record justifies torturing him, even though it is illegal, immoral and totally useless, then I have to say that you are definitely not the Christian you have claimed to be.
Apr 18, 2009, 02:50:54 Larv wrote:
Also, a link or cite to the source would be nice.
Apr 18, 2009, 02:58:12 libjpn wrote:
It's the wikipedia entry
http://en.wikipedia.org/wik...
Apr 18, 2009, 05:11:22 Ugh wrote:
I think DaveC is d'd'd'dave.
Apr 18, 2009, 06:03:43 russell wrote:
Hmmmm... I can't remember ever seeing them in the same place at the same time....
Apr 18, 2009, 06:21:35 DonaldJ wrote:
I don't think he is--didn't we get into a d'd'd'dave identifying discussion some weeks back? I thought it was established he was some real estate developer and some of you were pretty sure you knew his name.
This current argument is just the obvious rightwing response--I'm sure there must have been many righties who independently thought of the Abu Ghraib=fraternity hazing argument and this is the even more obvious "Bad guys deserve a little torture and it's not torture anyway" argument. Probably millions of Americans think this.
Apr 18, 2009, 06:32:50 Ugh wrote:
They both quoted almost the exact same portion of Zubaydah's wiki entry, DaveC here and DDD at ObWi (I forget which thread there).
Apr 18, 2009, 08:46:49 DaveC wrote:
I'm not anybody else but DaveC. Actually, I have commented once on ObWi since I was banned. about a week ago there was something I couldn't pass up. I think that my banning is enforced by an honor system; I used the same DaveC handle, fake email sddress, and the hocb.net url when posting the 1 or 2 line comment. So, I do still read the posts, and yes sometimes not so carefully, but by and large keep out of the comments threads and don't generally read the comments.
[i]this is the even more obvious "Bad guys deserve a little torture and [b]it's not torture anyway[/b]" argument. Probably millions of Americans think this.[/i]
Donald, that's pretty close to accurately describing my take on things. (not exactly on the "hazing" aspect). But certainly there are a lot of right-wingers, and most likely very many left-winger and moderates, that look at the context of what guys like Zubaidah and KSM did and thought that putting the bad guys under [b]durress[/b] is worth it to obtain information. As I have noted in some long ago comments, I've been detained by police and put under a certain amount of durress when they were questioning me. There is a suggestion made that something really bad is going to happen to you if you don't "spill the beans" It's the whole good cop bad cop thing, and yes it is distressing psychologically. What they are trying to do is to frighten the suspect into telling the truth, not to physically harm the suspect or to coerce a bogus confession.
Whatever the suspect confesses to has to be independently verified, if the interrogators are professionals. That is, they get all the suspects' stories, compare them for common statements, and then go back to questioning along those lines, obliquely, repeating until there is a set of what appears to be generally agreed upon facts.
So having interrogators and lawyers discuss what they can and cannot do to frighten somebody who has committed heinous crimes and acts of terrorism doesn't really surprise me or bother me. I may not be correct but I believe that hilzoy was particularly angry that in these discussions a specific technique was suggested that was ultimately not used.
Apr 18, 2009, 10:08:57 DaveC wrote:
Here's a [url=http://www.qando.net/?p=2120]link to a post similar to my previous comment[/url]
Apr 18, 2009, 10:55:31 DaveC wrote:
One of the problems that I have with releasing the "torture memos" is that it gives information to our enemies. This is similar to the demand that our military publicly release the Army's Rules of Engagement. The argument against publicizing this for political gain is that our enemies, who by the way are brutal and evil, know the parameters of what our military and intelligence will do and will not do to protect our country. The bad guys can then take advantage of this to kill our military and intelligence personnel or perpetrate violent acts that our country cannot respond to, or can respond only the threat of litigation rather than more dire consequences.
Apr 18, 2009, 11:49:30 DaveC wrote:
Duh, come to think about it, I probably got a comment through because I have a new IP address when I switched from ComCast to an ATT Uverse provider recently. My suggestion is that the Kitty look up one of publius's posts where he called people opposed to Koh "nativists", the latest ObWi epithet, and then it will be possible to ban my new IP address. That's easier for me than the honor system, and it will of course uphold free speech because it will block the disruptive opinions.
Apr 18, 2009, 12:29:17 dr ngo wrote:
[i]uphold free speech because it will block the disruptive opinions.[/i]
Dude, not this again!
You know full well you've never been banned for "disruptive opinions," but for being a complete asshole to other people.
Claiming it's "your opinions" (thus making you a political martyr) won't wash, unless it is your considered "opinion" that you have an unrestricted right to be rude to and lie about other people on any blog you choose.
When you're simply voicing your support for torture lite, as here, but not otherwise being obnoxious, you should be perfectly OK at Obsidian Wings. Free speech and all that. Of course you shouldn't expect a lot of support for your views . . . but then you wouldn't, would you?
Apr 18, 2009, 13:37:55 DaveC wrote:
[i]You know full well you've never been banned for "disruptive opinions," but for being a complete [b]asshole[/b] to other people.[/i]
Think about it just for a while. Think about about how many times I've been called an asshole, or vile, or a liar, or all the swear words the commentariat have sent my way. This is how discipline of thought is implemented on blogs. Look, I don't have to worry about getting a bad grade from you, and that would mess up my college career. I'm well past that now, went through that in high school in the 70's. It's pretty wild to think that teachers have graded against students with conservative opinions for almost 35 years, but it's true.
My experience is that most educators in liberal arts think that imposing their discipline of thought by intimidating the students to at least appear to agree with them, whether by comments from the educator or by grading according to political preference, is perfectly all right.
Now, you may righteously disagree with this, but from comments that I have seen in the past on Crooked Timber and elsewhere, there is an organized effort to deny people the right to speak their minds on the basis that they do not have enough expertise (granted by the same people who disagree with them). Hence this disparaging or dismissal the Tea Party demonstrations. I would say that Tea Party vs Zubaidah, Tea Party wins, but I'm somehow not qualified to say that.
But if there isn't acceptance of open discourse, then the game is rigged, and that is what my protestations, whether well reasoned or rants, have always been about.
So you will think about my reasoning or not; did I try to explain my perspective, or was I just being an asshole?
Apr 18, 2009, 23:01:05 DonaldJ wrote:
DaveC, you're arguing here, but at ObiWi you were frequently just an asshole. You've even said you used the place to vent.
Not that I think this is a big moral issue--you broke the rules, you got kicked off, it doesn't make you a terrible person IMO but you're also not the martyr to free speech that you imagine yourself to be. There are other people at ObiWi with unpopular views (one is left leaning and I had an insult-trading session with him once)--they manage not to be kicked off. It's not that hard. What might be hard, depending on your personality, is sticking around at a place where most people despise your viewpoint.
Apr 19, 2009, 00:42:29 tgott wrote:
DaveC: I haven't been in a college classroom since 1984. And while I am sure there are some professors who practice the art of intimidation, I find it hard to believe that Hilzoy or Dr. Ngo would intimidate students "to at least appear to agree with them, whether by comments from the educator or by grading according to political preference."
Neither of them seem petty, egotistical or righteous enough to do so.
---bedtimeforbonzo
Apr 19, 2009, 01:54:01 John Thullen wrote:
I can attest that brainwashing by teachers doesn't work.
In my fifth grade cursive lesson, Mrs. Muirhead walked the aisles looking over our shoulders, stopping just behind me with a gasp as she noticed that rather than practicing my hand-writing, I was adding eye-patches, moles, boils, moustaches and goatees to the pictures of superbly postured cursive students in the front of the handwriting workbook.
She calmly suggested I take the pictures to Mr. Young's office and show him my work, so off I went, like a Lawrence Harvey zombie in the "The Manchurian Candidate" having been shown the Queen of whatever tortured into me during the Korean War.
I entered Mr. Young's (Principal) office, showed him my work, and he got up from his chair in a preternaturally calm sort of way, opened his desk drawer, and took a out a paddle the size of a Viking's rowing apparatus and asked my nicely to bend over his desk, which I did, and he gave me three whopping thwacks with the club.
I thanked him (I think I really did) and took the long walk back to class, sat down in my chair and added a pince-nez and horns to one of the kid's pictures for good measure.
I've printed everything ever since.
So there.
Apr 19, 2009, 05:30:35 dr ngo wrote:
<i>So you will think about my reasoning or not; did I try to explain my perspective, or was I just being an asshole?</i>
That was a reasoned response, no doubt. You're wrong about how I employed my power in the classroom (Back In The Day when I had it), but since you didn't specify me as an abuser of power, I can live with it.
I know that you're capable of reasoned arguments, which is why I continue (sporadically) to engage with you, which I don't with those I regard as outright lunatics and trolls.
I have, as I tried to suggest, no problem with your attempt here to justify the mistreatment of Zubaidah. I disagree with it, but I would never call you an asshole or a liar for the kind of argument you have made there.
I thought about working up a response to the substance of your comments, but others had already done it better. At the heart of my response would be the gut feeling that I don't want to be responsible, even indirectly, for torturing other people, even reprehensible ones. I think it's wrong; I think it does *me* harm, as well as the society in which I live. Obviously you disagree.
My only response, however, was to the implication that you had been banned from Obsidian Wings because of your "disruptive opinions." I believe that is wrong, and the only reason I'm not calling you a liar is that I haven't made the effort to go through the archive to verify my recollection.
My recollection is that every time you were banned - every time at least that I was aware of - it was NOT for your "opinions" as such, but for your intemperate allegations and accusations against other members of the ObWi community. (Please correct me if I'm mistaken.) You "ranted" - to use what I believe is your own term - more loudly and rudely than the rules over there permit, and so you were banned.
This, IMHO, has nothing at all to do with what I believe to be your underlying grievance, that conservatives such as you are given a hard time over there. Yes they are, no doubt about it. Your assumptions are challenged, your conclusions are denied, vague allusions are made to your intelligence, lack of ethics, and perhaps even misbegotten parentage. (I say "vague allusions" because the Kitten has been pretty good about prohibiting direct personal attacks. But still.)
All of this is tough for you, and I can understand why you, and others of similar political bent, might feel unwelcome there and choose to withdraw from that particular community. Fair enough. It's not much fun living in "enemy" territory.
But that's not the same as being banned: kicked out of said territory.
That's my only point, really. You were banned (IIRC) for being an asshole over there, by your own admission.
You're allowed to be an asshole here without such risk, if you want. But you don't have to be, and usually you aren't.
Again, I'm only responding at length because often you add "reasoned" variety to the conversation, even if your reasons don't convince me. I'm just trying to help you distinguish between (1) the conservative opinions for which you get flak, and probably always will; (2) the occasional assholishness for which you get banned. I think if you can keep these separate your engagement with others will be more productive.
Apr 19, 2009, 06:15:29 russell wrote:
[i]Donald, that's pretty close to accurately describing my take on things. [/i]
Deserve torture or not deserve torture is not the point. It's not about the person who was tortured, it about the person doing the torturing.
And it f**king well was torture.
[i]As I have noted in some long ago comments, I've been detained by police and put under a certain amount of durress when they were questioning me.[/i]
I'm sorry, but this is asinine.
Apr 19, 2009, 07:04:53 libjpn wrote:
I'm still insanely busy and it won't let up till the beginning of May, but I feel compelled to say something.
I saw that post that went up with your name and I was going to ask if you had been allowed back in. I'm really baffled. Are you typing out responses to things in ObWi and then getting steamed because you can't send them? If that helps you deal, fine, but I think if you would just write to the kitty and promise to do your best to not try to accuse large sections of people such as 'liberal', 'People on this blog' 'all of you', you would probably be let back in. I don't know if you would have to make a public statement saying that you would do so, but if you are pounding out responses on the keyboard, you might really want to consider this. Unfortunately, it would mean that you accept that your self confessed attempts to 'stir the pot' and 'bend the posting rules' (I think those are your words, but I'm not going to go back to verify it) is what got you banned and not some sort of difference of opinion. That might be something that you are unable to admit (though in some posts, you freely acknowledge it) but if you are trying to post knowing that you can't, you might really want to reconsider.
Apr 19, 2009, 14:11:26 DaveC wrote:
[i]Are you typing out responses to things in ObWi and then getting steamed because you can't send them?[/i]
No, actually it was just the one time, and I was a little surprised myself.
[i]promise to do your best to not try to accuse large sections of people such as 'liberal', 'People on this blog' 'all of you', you would probably be let back in.[/i]
Look, the post in question was explicitly accusing the Bush administration, Republicans, war on terror supporters of being a bunch of sadists, with concurring comments. That's a [b]typical post[/b]. If you read the blog regularly and post after post is about how this or that Republican or conservative is so evil, and [b]you don't get it[/b] that these are amount to broad generalizations for political purposes, day after day after day, then I guess that you just don't get it. I thought that people would [b]get it[/b] if an in-kind or even unkind response seemed too harsh. Perhaps they would tone down the rhetoric a bit. On review, that didn't work out so well. I don't think that people who pump out the blog posts are introspective enough to get it, or perhaps they know exactly what they are doing, attacking certain people and policies with vigor, and downplaying or ignoring other events.
It's funny how d'd'dave stupidly appeals to the kitty for some relief. Get real d'd'dave! He doesn't get it either that he's both generally and specifically seen as the bad guy, and it's open season. But the deal originally with ObWi was that there would be both liberals and conservatives so that the pot would be stirred often. And there would even be venting (sometimes the nether regions of Thullen, or sometimes a burp depending on whether it's Coors or cabbage).
I don't feel like I have to either apologize or that I need an apology. I think that having people disagree with you is [b]good[/b] and it[b]should bother you[/b]. That's something that everybody should try in some way. It's not really that bad for people to hammer on you if it makes you think about things a bit. But you aren't really obligated to change your mind, either.
So the state of affairs with me posting on hocb occasionally and stirring things up is fine by me. I don't resent people for disagreeing with me, in fact I want them to disagree. That's the whole point.
Apr 19, 2009, 15:58:38 libjpn wrote:
Dave, you'd been warned about your behavior several times. In fact, in previous times, I would try to run a little interference cause it seemed clear to me that you were upset about something, and I tried to ask you some questions to get you away from the blanket accusations you have tended to make. I didn't stick my oar in when you got banned cause I was busy at the time, but I'm sorry that I didn't.
d3dave is a liar who came in on one handle, said he was leaving, and snuck in on another. There is some truth to some things he says (and that should be no surprise, no one can be a 100% fabulist), but I think he is someone who thinks that pissing people off who disagree with him proves that he is right. If by bad guy, you mean jerk, well, it is sad that he can't figure that out, but when he tries to invoke the rhetoric of 'everyone is picking on me so you all are a bunch of big hypocrites' after trying to push as many buttons as he can is so rhetorically threadbare that it is lucky he is in real estate, any profession that requires an awareness of how other people perceive the situation is going to be beyond him.
And finally, I don't think you 'have to apologize'. I do think that if you want to make comments over there (and it seems like you do), you have to. That's a very different proposition.
I personally think that having people disagree with you and realizing that it is not the end of the world is good. I think that it is good to have people disagree with you, and one realizes it is from a genuine difference of opinion, and you move on. I don't think it is good if you disagree with someone and use that to draw any number of conclusions about the people who tend to stand on the opposite side and that seems to be what you think is valuable. It's not really, and it deprives people of a potentially valuable point of view. But your point of view is not so precious that you get to be the exception to the rule. If that's fine with you, cool, but if you keep complaining about it, as you have done here, that suggests that it is not fine. And that's my whole point.
Apr 20, 2009, 12:03:46 DaveC wrote:
[i]But your point of view is not so precious that you get to be the exception to the rule. If that's fine with you, cool, but if you keep complaining about it, as you have done here, that suggests that it is not fine. And that's my whole point.[/i]
My point of view on the whole torture and rights issues, is to a large extent a result of my belief that Jose Padilla and Al Marri actually were going to accomplish some big terrorist attacks in Chicago, and if they were only prevented from doing so by questionable methods, that does not particularly bother me. I do resent the sentiment that the very people responsible for our protection are evil and [b]should be hanged[/b], and the suggestion that people sharing my point of view are evil as well.
[i]I find it hard to believe that Hilzoy or Dr. Ngo would intimidate students[/i]
Agreed, that came off badly. I was taking a veiled shot at their institutions, one in the top 5 anti- free speech schools, and another that incorrectly and almost catastrophically did "make an example" of some innocent students. Guilt by association is not always true, and should only be applied to Republicans and conservatives ;-)
[i]then I have to say that you are definitely not the Christian you have claimed to be.[/i]
A short summary of my religious beliefs: I do not that that God is always good, as far as humans are concerned.
To the extent that I believe that Jesus is my personal saviour and lord, My take is this: God (as we conceive with somewhat human motivations) was dissatisfied with human imperfection and decided to create a God/Human with the idea that this would be the great example, and that people would see the correct way to live and all the people would give up their sins and so forth;, but then everything went haywire, even for the son of god, so god became a bit more understanding of the human condition, hence grace.
I don't particularly agree with worshipping Jesus or praying to Jesus, but think think that it's a good idea to bring up his name when dealing with God as someone who interceded in our behalf.
Apr 21, 2009, 02:53:57 russell wrote:
[i]if they were only prevented from doing so by questionable methods[/i]
Padilla was held for years in a state of almost complete isolation from any form of normal human contact. He's a vegetable, and probably will be for life.
No evidence has ever been produced to show that he was or was not involved in terrorist activity, what kind of activity it was, or how credible a threat it actually was.
He's a US citizen.
I can point you to names right now of people who openly belong to a variety of organizations that advocate the violent overthrow of the US, that advocate violence against Americans, and that have actually participated in murders and other violent acts.
They are generally extreme racial separatist organizations, of various colors.
Why don't we go grab all of those people, waterboard them three times a day for a month, then place them in near-absolute solitary confinement until they lose their minds and any sense of their own identity and personality?
If you don't agree that this is a good idea, I'd like you to tell me why not.
And when we get through with those folks, maybe we should look at folks who don't actively attack Americans, but who resist the policies you think are protecting us.
ACLU, Quakers, radical Catholics, various peace and anti-war movements. Round them up and render them insane for life.
Seriously, why not? There's nothing in your position that would prevent that, or in fact do anything other than recommend it.
So why not, Dave?
Apr 21, 2009, 06:55:14 libjpn wrote:
You know, I've always pictured Padilla to be a lot like you, DaveC. Someone who wanders in some place, ends up getting stuck in some place and then flails around trying to get out. I realize that this make ObWi the equivalent of Al Queda in this scenario, but I think the same dynamic applies. Fortunately, your flailing isn't going to attract the attention of the US government, though Gary and Jes might be playing that role in this scenario, so you should be glad that they don't have the wherewithal (and, of course, the desire) to stick you in total sensory deprivation for the majority of the day.
Apr 22, 2009, 05:08:34 John Thullen wrote:
Gotta say:
The first sentence,"You know, I've always pictured Padilla to be a lot like you, DaveC", if leading off a novel, would make me want to keep reading.
Apr 22, 2009, 11:09:55 DaveC wrote:
I think we'll see if this is correct:
[quote] The Post also acknowledges that Zubaydah’s “interrogations led directly to the arrest of Jose Padilla” but dismisses Padilla as the man behind a fanciful “dirty bomb” plot and notes that Padilla was never charged in any such plot. In fact, Padilla was a hardened terrorist who had trained in al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan, and was a protégé of al Qaeda’s third in command, Mohammed Atef. And when he was captured, Padilla was being prepared for a much more sinister and realistic attack on America.
In June of 2001, Padilla met in Afghanistan with Atef, who asked him if he was willing to undertake a mission to blow up apartment buildings in the United States using natural gas. He agreed, and was sent to a training site near the Kandahar airport to prepare for the attack under close supervision of an al Qaeda explosives expert, who taught him about switches, circuits, and timers needed to carry it out. He was training in Afghanistan when Coalition forces launched Operation Enduring Freedom. Atef was killed by a Coalition airstrike, and Padilla joined the other al Qaeda operatives fleeing Afghanistan.
It was at this time that he met Abu Zubaydah, who helped arranged his passage across the Afghan-Pakistan border. At the time, Padilla told Zubaydah of his idea of a “dirty bomb” plot. Zubaydah was skeptical but sent him to see KSM, and told KSM he was free to use Padilla for his planned follow on operations in the U.S. Instead of the dirty bomb plot, KSM directed Padilla and an accomplice to undertake the apartment buildings operation for which he had initially trained. KSM’s right-hand man, Ammar al Baluchi, gave Padilla $10,000 in cash, travel documents, a cell phone, and an email address to be used to notify al Baluchi once Padilla arrived in America. The night before his departure, KSM, al Baluchi, and KSM’s nephew and 9/11 plotter Ramzi bin al Shibh hosted a farewell dinner for him and his accomplice. Think about that for a moment: Padilla was feted at a dinner the night of his departure for America by the mastermind of 9/11, and two of his key accomplices.
Padilla left Pakistan on April 5, 2002 bound for the U.S. by way of Zurich. En route, he spent a month in Egypt, and then arrived in Chicago’s O’Hare airport on May 8 where he was apprehended — because, even the Post acknowledges, of the information provided by Abu Zubaydah. At the time of his apprehension, he was carrying the $10,000 given him by his al Qaeda handlers, the cell phone, and the email address for al Baluchi. (For a detailed account of Jose Padilla’s activities, see this speech by former Deputy Attorney General James Comey. [/quote]
[url=http://nefafoundation.org/m...]We will see if this part of the story is investigated[/url]
Apr 22, 2009, 20:42:32 libjpn wrote:
DaveC, the fact is that we cannot know if Padilla was telling the truth or if he was saying what his interrogators wanted him to say. His testimony, as is the testimony of any number of others (Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in one month) is hopelessly tainted because it is simply impossible to know what was said to simply get them to stop. I'm not sure why that is so hard to understand.
[quote]But the big show was former CIA man John Kiriakou, whose message was: torture works.
“From that day on, he answered every question,” Kiriakou said of Abu Zubaydah, captured in 2003. “The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.”
“Maybe” is the key word here.
Kiriakou was a Pakistan-based CIA operative who neither witnessed Zubaydah’s interrogation or could have known first-hand how its results were used, unless the agency suddenly violated all its rules for compartmentalizing information.
In any event, Zubaydah’s value had been debunked years ago, even as he was choking on the water forced down his throat in a back room of a Pakistani hospital, according to Dan Coleman, the FBI’s top al Qaeda analyst at the time.
“This guy is insane, certifiable, (a) split personality,” Coleman was telling his bosses in Washington while Zubaydah was being interrogated, as reporter Ron Susskind told it in his much heralded 2005 book, “The One Percent Solution.”
Coleman, now retired, confirmed the same to me last year.
“They got nothing useful from the guy,” he said.
Far from being a top al Qaeda operative, Coleman and other sources said, Zubaydah was more like Osama bin Laden’s go-fer, somebody who booked flights and took grocery deliveries.
Last week, the White House was still insisting he was a player.[/quote]
http://www.cqpolitics.com/w...
Apr 22, 2009, 21:03:47 libjpn wrote:
or this
[quote]Also, we essentially said, "You've got to give us a body, somebody we can go get," and he gave us [Jose] Padilla. Padilla turned out to not be nearly as valuable as advertised at the start, though, and I think that's been shown in the ensuing years. So that's what we got from Zubaydah.
At the same time, I think we oversold [Zubaydah's] value -- the administration did -- to the American public. That's indisputable. As well, what folks inside the CIA and FBI were realizing, even as the president and others inside the administration were emphasizing the profound malevolence and value strategically to the capture of Zubaydah, is that Zubaydah is psychologically imbalanced, he has multiple personalities. And he was not involved in various events that we thought he was involved in. During various bombings in the late '90s, he was not where we thought he would be. That's shown in the diaries, where he goes through long lists of quotidian, nonsensical details about various people and what they're doing, folks that he's moving around, getting plane tickets for and serving tea to, all in the voices of three different characters; page after page of his diary, filled, including on dates where, I'm trying to think, it was either the Khobar Towers or the Cole, where we thought he was involved in the bombing and he clearly wasn't.
So that's the real story of Zubaydah, more complicated than the administration would like, and maybe more complicated than the president at this point feels comfortable saying in an election season. It's one of the many instances where you could shine a light through this prism and see an awful lot about some of the dilemmas of the war on terror.
In the case of Zubaydah, when it comes to some of the harsh interrogation tactics he was put through, what occurred then was that he started to talk. He said, as people will, anything to make the pain stop. And we essentially followed every word and various uniformed public servants of the United States went running all over the country to various places that Zubaydah said were targets, and were not.
Ultimately, we tortured an insane man and ran screaming at every word he uttered. [/quote]
http://www.salon.com/news/f...
Apr 23, 2009, 00:41:58 john miller wrote:
People are ignoring, or at least not making declarative statements about, the secondary thrust of DaveC's arguments. The first thrust is, of course, these people are bad, dangerous people and deserved to be tortured.
That has been answered, although it will never be answered in a way that will change DaveC's mind or the mind of others.
The second point is that the torture produced some valuable information. We can argue until the cows come home as to whether or not that statement is accurate. But the real point is that it is irrelevant. Torture either is okay or it isn't. DaveC thinks it is, I and others disagree. And that's all. The information produced, valuable or bogus, is not part of the equation.
Apr 23, 2009, 05:54:33 russell wrote:
<i>We will see if this part of the story is investigated</i>
The folks who did the first WTC bombing are in jail, now, today, and no torture was required to put them there.
Comey's a guy I generally find credible, but we'll never know how much of Padilla's curriculum vitae is real, and how much is just shit he made up because they were driving him nuts.
Bottom line is, I don't really care if torture occasionally produces useful intelligence. Lots of things produce useful intelligence without requiring us to brutalize people.
Let's do those things instead.
Here's the nut of it:
[i]My point of view on the whole torture and rights issues, is to a large extent a result of my belief that Jose Padilla and Al Marri actually were going to accomplish some big terrorist attacks in Chicago, and if they were only prevented from doing so by questionable methods, that does not particularly bother me.[/i]
Well you and I differ. It bothers me.
You tell me, Dave, where you personally draw the line.
Waterboarding, beating, hypothermia, you are on record as being OK with.
How about mutilation? Cut off one finger at a time until the suspect talks. When you run out of fingers, go for toes, ears, nose. Then gouge out eyes.
How about rounding up family members and torturing them in front of the subject? They may be innocent, but lives may be saved.
How about killing family members in front of the subject?
Burning alive?
Acid?
The rack?
You tell me where your line is.
Apr 23, 2009, 06:53:35 libjpn wrote:
While I agree with the drawing of the line, the fact that Comey's statement was later viewed as unsupportable (given the fact that none of the allegations made by Comey made it into the final indictment of Padilla when he was quickly shuffled around to avoid having to deal with the constitutional questions) should at least give DaveC pause. It probably won't, more's the pity.
Apr 23, 2009, 07:26:53 Slartibartfast wrote:
Oh, my.
DaveC does have a certain point that ObWi does tend to be tolerant of behaviors from its longtime commenters that are not tolerated coming from the newer crowd. That said, even though some people dip vituperation like so much Red Man, most of them at make more than a token attempt at making an argument, and defending it. DaveC, I think you were banned because you'd show up, drop a stinkbomb in the thread, and then [i]utterly fail to defend it[/i].
I'd have to look up some examples. Frankly, I'm not very interested in doing that, just as I'm not interested in responding to people who are just looking for a verbal fistfight.
As for Zubaydah, I wouldn't mourn if he tripped and fell into a tree shredder, or was shot in combat, or was simply executed. I would not be in favor of roasting him alive or any other kind of deliberate abuse.
As for the so-called torture memos, I'm all for releasing any and all information, except that which might endanger sources or agents. People already pretty much know what they need to about what our methods have been, so I don't see any harm. And while we're at it, I'd tend to want to see the so-called NSA wiretapping issue turned out to the light. By now, literally everyone who could possibly understand what to look out for is already informed enough to have changed their behaviors, so it'd be a good thing to get the facts behind the news.
Dave, you really need to make better arguments. This business about you making crappy arguments because other people are doing it just doesn't fly.
Apr 23, 2009, 07:58:18 OCSteve wrote:
“some people dip vituperation like so much Red Man”
I love that line. I am [i]so[/i] going to steal it. ;)
Apr 23, 2009, 10:05:40 russell wrote:
[i]As for Zubaydah, I wouldn't mourn if he tripped and fell into a tree shredder, or was shot in combat, or was simply executed. I would not be in favor of roasting him alive or any other kind of deliberate abuse.[/i]
That's about where I stand.
slarti, you are my conservative doppelganger. It's a pleasure.
Apr 23, 2009, 10:36:17 DaveC wrote:
The thing that angers me so much about my relative being unjustly accused, indicted, and fighting for his very life, was that the newspapers and blogs only wrote about the allegations. There was one newpaper article that explained the situation, but it disappeared from the internet in a week or less. After that all you could find were the sensational accusations of sadism and the hatred directed towards him. Never mind that the very eyewitnesses that you least expect gave exonerating eyewitness evidence when the story first broke. Their accounts were expunged from all the media and blog accounts of the matter. Even given the agreed upon facts of the incident, the case was pursued against all involved by ex post facto arguments that the procedures were illegal, even if approved and not proven to be cruel. As a last insult, 18 months into the investigation, a front page headline repeating the unproved and false allegations, and not describing the facts of the case was printed on the front page of a midsized city daily newspaper based only on the remaining press and blog accounts, as a personal vendetta. This did happen at the same time as th Duke lacrosse team and the Haditha investiagtion. Even now, after all charges were dropped and after complete exoneration, you can read only the accounts about the accusations. There is no publicly accessible explanation about the facts that ultimately led to all the charges being dropped. That is why I get so angry about not having both sides of the story being told, about those who would incite the people with the pitchforks without telling the whole story.
I'm angry about the people who make these types of accusations and then deliberately don't acknowledge or even try to hide the contradictory accounts and evidence, and this happened to my relative on a liberal witch hunt. Whether it is slander to present only one side of the story, I don't know. I'm not a politician, lawyer or political activist. But I do know that people will tell you one side of the story and purposely try to keep the other side from being told, by shouting down, or by simply not acknowledging, or by controlling the access to that information.
Apr 23, 2009, 10:49:15 DaveC wrote:
Probably was not a good idea to post since there might be a liberal lawyer or two, who would want to use any and all methods to personally attack me and my family to get the approval of the consensus audience. You might want to consider the fact that I am an ordinary person before you do this, and speculate about me publicly. Think about it, I'm entitled to my opinion based on personal experience.
Apr 23, 2009, 11:28:12 Turbulence wrote:
[i]Probably was not a good idea to post since there might be a liberal lawyer or two, who would want to use any and all methods to personally attack me and my family to get the approval of the consensus audience.[/i]
This is some serious paranoid shit right here. You might want to see a psychiatrist if you consistently have these weird persecution fantasies.
To put it another way: Slarti and OCSteve are no less conservative than you, but I'm pretty sure they'd never write shit like this. You might want to ask yourself why.
Do you really think Charley Carp is going to put down his gitmo docket or Francis is going to put down his CA water works to come after you?
Apr 23, 2009, 12:01:36 DaveC wrote:
[i]This is some serious paranoid shit right here. You might want to see a psychiatrist if you consistently have these weird persecution fantasies.[/i]
A snarky response to Ugh, who is apparently trying to figure out who I am, and speculating about what I do for a living, etc.. Francis did accuse me once upon a time of committing a crime, and gave the whole "ignorance of the law is no excuse" argument; it's before your time and he didn't pursue it. I don't know if he gave me a pass because of my heroic efforts to protect the environment on other occasions, which I would not wish having to do that upon anybody else. Charley kind of knows where to find me if he wants to do so (has my work phone number, which I don't answer because I'm never at my desk anymore).
Apr 23, 2009, 12:21:54 DaveC wrote:
Ugh is an acquaintance of Charley, I suppose he could get the info. Come to think about it, GF may have my name and address from my past contributions. Various other people have different parts of my personal info, and even know the exact case that I was discussing in my comments. The fact that they have enough discretion not to use that information against me doesn't mean that there are not [b]other people who would do so if they could[/b]. That's why I would never pay for any psychological counseling or psychiatrist with insurance. Not ever a good idea, right? I'm sure that you would use any evidence of that against me if you could.
Apr 23, 2009, 13:11:30 Turbulence wrote:
[i]I'm sure that you would use any evidence of that against me if you could.[/i]
See, now this is the part that's totally insane. Well, this part and all the other parts too actually. I've got no interest in using any "evidence against you" (wtf does that even mean?). I. just. don't. care. You're just another idiot on the internet. Even if I could hurt you and even if I wanted to hurt you, doing so would not make my life better in any way. You just don't get it: people are too indifferent towards you to ever hurt you.
Apr 23, 2009, 21:48:45 russell wrote:
Dave, this is some crazy shit.
Nobody is after you. Time to chill.
Apr 23, 2009, 23:21:51 John Thullen wrote:
I know roughly what you do for a profession, Dave, but you gave that information up right here, numerous times.
Incidentally, I can still see your green Valiant in the driveway, moldering away.
Apr 24, 2009, 00:54:41 russell wrote:
Also, on the "torture gave us Padilla" tip:
[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2009...]One of the folks involved in Zubaydah's interrogation[/url] says he identified Padilla and KSM as a result of normal, non-coercive interrogations, before the terror stuff was introduced.
This stuff was just wrong, no matter how you look at it.
Apr 24, 2009, 01:34:04 libjpn wrote:
[i]I'm sure that you would use any evidence of that against me if you could.[/i]
I don't want this to be taken as a threat, cause it is not, it is simply an observation.
Part of anyone's 'protection' as a commenter on a blog is that the other regulars will come to the defense of a regular. However, if that person keeps shitting on the other regulars, they are less likely to take the time and energy to stick up for said person.
You post here in the relatively protected confines of ObWi, and everyone puts up with you, but accusing folks that they would use information against you if they could is going to dry up that well of goodwill real fast. I'm really sorry about your relative, but if you think every liberal commentator (but no conservative?) partakes in the blame is some seriously f-upped sh*t.
Apr 24, 2009, 21:16:17 OCSteve wrote:
Dave – you have admin rights here. Why not just delete the comment if you had second thoughts after hitting post?
Apr 25, 2009, 00:12:11 russell wrote:
just to return briefly to my prior comment, and to change its tone a bit:
you seem to think folks here want to find out personal information about you in order to do you harm.
speaking for myself, that is categorically not true. I'm sure I speak for everyone here when I say that.
I don't believe anyone here wishes you any harm. Folks get annoyed with you, even angry with you, but I would be extraordinarily surprised if it went beyond that.
Quite a few folks like you, including myself.
I mean no disparagement of you when I say this, but to be perfectly honest, your comments here seem to approach real paranoia. Maybe you're stressed out, maybe you're upset about what happened to your relative, but your actual comments here seem extremely fearful compared to the actual context.
Maybe it's time to take a break, or maybe write about stuff you enjoy more.
take it easy
Apr 25, 2009, 05:08:11 dr ngo wrote:
DaveC: FWIW, add me to the list of those who disagree with you about almost everything, yet wish you well.
When your remarks irritate me - as you know - I respond with refutations and/or snark. (BFD, I suspect.)
If I ever felt you've wandered off the reservation entirely, my response would probably be silence. Why waste time on a lost cause? But you're not there yet.
Never, ever, in my most frustrated and furious moments, would I imagine actually trying to do you harm.
I know it's not much help to say to someone in your state, "Lighten up" (I keep thinking of Charlie Brown saying to a totally snow-covered Snoopy, "Be of good cheer, Snoopy!"), but do whatever you can to take it easy.
There's a quote from Ann Lamott (attributed to a priest, I believe) about how to cope in trying times:
"Left Foot. Right Foot. Breathe."
Apr 25, 2009, 07:14:40 OCSteve wrote:
For a little context Dave…
Hilzoy, LJ, Gary, and Turb all know my real identity. CC not only knows but has my street address and phone number. It never once crossed my mind that any of them would ever try to “out” me over some political disagreement.
And any of them could hurt me, badly. My boss’s boss is very very liberal and needless to say I keep my political opinions to myself. I have little doubt that if he saw many of my ObWi posts I’d be on the street in a minute.
I don’t sweat it. Even on-line (it takes longer), you can tell if someone is trustworthy in that regard.
If I totally crossed some line, I assume they would just choose to ignore me. No matter how much I disagree with them or even pissed them off, I’d be shocked if any of them went after me personally. Personal integrity comes through, even on line. These are really good people even if many of their ideas are whacked. :)
Apr 25, 2009, 07:28:55 OCSteve wrote:
Hell – come to think of it – CC even has a copy of my signature from when we worked on that joint letter to our Congress-critters.
Doesn’t keep me up at night…
Apr 25, 2009, 11:11:48 john miller wrote:
Nor should it keep you up at night.
DaveC, God knows how many times I have disagreed with you, sometimes with some pretty nasty comments, but i would still hope that sometime in the future when my own life calms down, we may still take that canoe ride.
OCSteve, since we all know that all liberals are the very epitome of tolerance and open-mindedness (After all look at Jes) I am sure your boss's boss would just laugh at your comments and give you a pass on them.
But now that I know that secret and know who knows your secret identity, you beter be nice to me. All those people you mentioned (other than hilzoy probably) are quite bribeable.
And there is no secret what my identity is. I don't hide behind any kind of a nicname or anything. Of corse I probably have the 3rd most common name in the country. But I have given out enough secrets about my life tht if somebody wanted to, they could ind me easily enough.
Apr 25, 2009, 22:02:32 DaveC wrote:
[i]i would still hope that sometime in the future when my own life calms down, we may still take that canoe ride.[/i]
I'm giving that some thought. I don't have many vacation days, and am anticipating spending most of my summer weekends in Michigan. I think that the Kishwaukee River, which I'm most interested in, might be doable on a June or July evening after work: put-in around 6:00 and shoot for take-out around 8:00-8:30.
Other possibilities would be the Fox River take out at Carpentersville which would have the easiest logistics, but I'm not sure how much motorboat traffic there is between Algonquin and Carpentersville.
A section of Nippersink Creek (Pioneer Landing to Spring Grove) or the Des Plaines River between route 120 and Independence Grove F.P. are places I know that are pretty nice.
Apr 25, 2009, 22:20:38 DonaldJ wrote:
Just avoid talking politics when you're on the river. Fights in a canoe don't end well.
Though, otoh, there are worse things than capsizing in a river in July. If you don't drown, that is.
I used to live in Missouri (for several years). Summer weekends, you had virtual traffic jams on some of the local rivers, with canoes and inner tubes almost bank-to-bank. Some people would have a separate canoe to carry the beer.
I went with a church group once. This girl capsized and clung panic-stricken to the branch of a partially fallen tree that stuck out in the water. She was in no actual danger, because though the current was very strong where she was, if she let go (which she eventually did), she'd just float about 10 feet to where the current was feeble and she could walk out. But a friend got onto the bank, climbed out on a higher tree limb and offered his hand down to her. This 150 lb guy was going to pluck out a girl who outweighed him with one arm. Or thought he was. There might be people who could do that, but he certainly wasn't one of them. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if she'd let him try it.
Apr 26, 2009, 21:29:17 DonaldJ wrote:
arrgh. Forgot the punchline. Even when a story is true, I muff it.
The punchline was that the woman told us afterwards that when she looked up and saw this skinny guy in a tree branch offering to hoist her up with one hand out of the water, she realized this was the sort of rescue attempt she would have expected from us and decided to take her chances with the river.
Apr 28, 2009, 10:03:46 Jeff wrote:
[i]My boss’s boss is very very liberal and needless to say I keep my political opinions to myself. I have little doubt that if he saw many of my ObWi posts I’d be on the street in a minute.[/i]
Let me take this opportunity to say how very wrong I think this is. While I disagree with a loty of your ObWi posts, they're usually crafted to be as unoffensive as possibe.
In light of her constant slamming of Slarti and Sebastion, I wouldn't cry many tears if jesu was given an extended time-out.
Apr 29, 2009, 08:59:20 Slartibartfast wrote:
I'm not in favor of doing that, Jeff. It's just not worth banning her over.
Thicker skin is the key. That, and the realization that she really can't help it.
Apr 29, 2009, 11:03:39 libjpn wrote:
I concur with Slarti, but one bad side effect is that any number of people just don't engage with her when she goes off on someone from the conservative side which is then taken as agreement and given the imbalance, it skews things. Look at how much pushback John Emerson got. If that had the handle of Jes attached everyone would have yawned and said 'whatever'.
Apr 29, 2009, 11:06:12 russell wrote:
[i]Thicker skin is the key.[/i]
As is so often the case, I agree with slarti.
We all have our hot buttons. Ask cleek about me and the question of whether the Rolling Stones are an R&B band.
When someone goes off on their personal hobby horse, best thing to do is just move on to the next comment.
Apr 29, 2009, 12:46:21 DonaldJ wrote:
"If that had the handle of Jes attached everyone would have yawned and said 'whatever'."
I don't see that. When Jes goes too far someone generally calls her on it. Sometimes they'll call her on things even when she's right. I don't want to get into this, but also didn't want silence, as you say, to be taken as consent.
Apr 29, 2009, 13:35:28 dr ngo wrote:
[i]any number of people just don't engage with her when she goes off on someone from the conservative side [b]which is then taken as agreement[/b] [/i]
Is it? By whom?
It never occurred to me that any regular reader of ObWi would assume that everyone who didn't speak out against Jesurgislac when she's on one of her rants agreed with her. I suppose a newcomer might think that, but I hardly think that warrants an explicit "The views expressed herein are not those of the management" label every time she posts.
I find that I agree with Jes in substance about 90% of the time, but am so irked by her customary style of argumentation that I only comment rarely, and then with great apprehension. I suspect I am not alone.
But I see no real gain in banning her, and the potential for considerable loss.
Of course I might have felt differently back in the days when "bandwidth" was considered to be a finite and valuable commodity! ;}
Apr 29, 2009, 21:18:55 russell wrote:
[i]I find that I agree with Jes in substance about 90% of the time, but am so irked by her customary style of argumentation that I only comment rarely, and then with great apprehension. I suspect I am not alone.[/i]
No, you're not alone, although having grown up in a largely Italian family in the NYC area I'm probably less put off by her style of argumentation than most.
Look, if we're gonna start banning people for being cranky and in your face we might as well shut down the internets.
Some folks are just going to rub you the wrong way. Read the other folks.
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