ATL is torture today.

Yawn! I miss Lat.

"MOTHER F'IN FIRST!"

Well played my friend. You've won this round.

Fourth!!!

Atlanta to 35k!!!

Great, now we're into politics here. Don't quit your day job.

I'm going to congratulate Merck for this post. It's good that he's sticking to his principles.

I get the feeling that Lat would defend torture as long as the person doing it had the letter "R" next to his party affiliation.

Good job going against the pro-torture Republicans Merck!

I love it. "Torture" starts at "organ failure."

Republicans have NO SHAME. None.

You're a lousy bunch of pinkos.

How great is it that someone is posting "FIRST," then also posting 3rd or 4th or whatever and congratulating "FIRST" on a job well done.

How many times does this person have to hit refresh during the day?

The "FIRST" posters can't get it right because they're commies (and most likely homosexuals).

Great to see that pro-torture crowd is only capable of ad hominem attacks.

I mean if I were trying to defend an indefensible position, I would resort to name calling too. Alas, all the name calling in the world won't make them right.

Get a grip. I suppose a Democrat can't be for using the means necessary to prevent people from causing mass havoc and death within our borders. If I have to be a Republican to favor making people who want to kill Americans and chop heads off to get their jollies suffer non-life threatening pain so that we can stop them, then sign me up!

Bloomsberg-Schartzenegger '08!

Bloomsberg-Schartzenegger '08!

Your post assumes that torture is effective. This is false. Torture yields bad information and makes us allocate counter-terrorism resources inefficiently. We wind up chasing down leads based on information that was made up by someone who only wants the torture to end.

Not only is it ineffective, but, in a free society, the government should not have the power to do it. Limited government means more than "low taxes are good."

Finally, this isn't a Democratic or Republican issue. It's a decent human being versus pro-torturer issue. Are you sure you're on the right side?

Ooops. Before I get absolutely killed on here for not being able to spell by some pretentious fuck:

Bloomberg-Schwarzenegger '08

What did the President know and when did he know it?

Touture for Billy Merck anyone?

4:32 -

Please do not lose sight of the fact that we are talking about injuring real people here. And the group with the power to hurt are inherently the same ones who define the person they injure to the world as "people who want to kill Americans and chop heads off to get their jollies".

That is too delicate a situation for a justification as broad and flippant as the one you are championing.

Merck has already been subjected to torture--his brain has been significantly damaged such that it functions at a 5th grade level.

FIRST!

Ah, crap!

Hmmmm . . . I don't think that you guys quite understand how the first game works.

JESUS CHRIST:

Don't be angry. Jesus, Allah, Buddha: I love you all.

-4:41
-4:45
you both assume that water boarding and tension holds are "torture." Is questioning someone in a threatening demeanor "torture"? If a room is too hot/too cold, is that "torture"? are you so unwilling to live in the real world that you are paralyzed to act against monsterous behavior?

As for your claim of ineffectiveness, again, clueless. Khalid Sheik Mohamed ring a bell???

This guy isn't really a "career CIA attorney," fyi.

"Waterboarding consists of immobilizing an individual and pouring water over his face to simulate drowning, which produces a severe gag reflex, making the subject believe his death is imminent while ideally not causing permanent physical damage."

"Republican United States Senator John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, [said] waterboarding is 'very exquisite torture' and a mock execution, which can damage the subject's psyche 'in ways that may never heal.'"

By comparing the above to altering the temperature of a room, or a person's demeanor, you have shown who is and who is not living in the real world.

God help you if someone ever reverse-inclines your body, wraps a soaking-wet towel tight around your head and beats you as they repeatedly deluge your covered face with buckets of water. You cannot breathe a half-breath, but you are expected to respond to questions you may or may not know the answer to. I think that you would think that was torture.

The real test should be: if we discovered an Iranian or a Syrian was doing this to one of our soldiers, would we retaliate? If so, it's torture.

I think that makes waterboarding torture.

4:39- Holy fuck, how can you fuck up their names THAT BAD?!

4:43- Who did the President blow, and when did he blow them?

All- these comments to Merck's posts are a hell of a lot funnier than previous days' comments to Lat's posts. Keep up the good work!

FIRST!!!

"physical pain equivalent to" does not = actual organ failure or any of the described things. In other words, torture is defined as anything that makes you feel as if you are experiencing serious physical injury, organ failure, or death, even if, actually, you are not being physically harmed at all.

In other words, even the cool guy from 24 who gives you injections that make you feel pain, but cause no actual harm, would be cuasing "torture" under the definition that anti-Bush lunatics complain about.

Get over it people. You lost in 2000, lost in 2004, and ever since have turned into conspiracy-spinning nut-cases not unlike the right-wingers of the 80s and early 90s.

Policy over politics people. The "torture memo" above actually takes tools away that some would consider less than torture.

10:45 = dumb.

"Would you expect anything less from a CIA lawyer?" I hope (and think) we can expect something more. Outside the hackistocracy (sure, sure he's career, but he's acting GC), I've got a pretty good feeling that there are lawyers at the CIA who from time to time tell the spooks NOT to do something nasty.

"Your post assumes that torture is effective. This is false. Torture yields bad information and makes us allocate counter-terrorism resources inefficiently. We wind up chasing down leads based on information that was made up by someone who only wants the torture to end."

What is the source of the assertion that "torture yields bad information"? In other words, who says?

Also, is not any information, whether volunteered or obtained through any manner of coercion (i.e., "we can release you now if you just give us a few details"), going to be subject to verification from an independent source, before being acted upon?

You always, always, chase down leads, based on information that could be made up. That's inherent in intelligence gathering. The point you should all understand is that the possiblity of being fed misinformation is a starting assumption, and that verifying any received information is inherently part of a sound methodology for acting on that information.

Physical torture may be morally wrong, but neither it, nor any other form of coercion, is inherently going to give the interrogator bad information.

Current US inetlligence practices don't work.

http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=12004

"Current US inetlligence practices don't work."

The cited newspaper article, like any other assertion of fact, is subject to verification.

For example, the article lauds WW II interrogation practices, and that German and Japanese prisoners were effectively interrogated without coercion. Let me give you an example of that I recall from another source of those WW II methods: three German prisoners were lined up for interrogation. Tough SOBS, they would not talk. So the U.S. interrogator took out his pistol and shot dead the first one in line, with the others watching. After that, the ones remaining alive talked.

The most preferred interrogation technique used today is patient questioning. You go over the story again and again, asking for detail after detail. Even the nonsense answers reveal something, if you have done your homework.

But sometimes you don't have the time, because lives are at stake. The interrogator, if he is a conscientious individual, does not have the luxury of assuming that if a suspected attack goes forward, only those whom he cares little about will die.

So what then?