Forum Replies Created
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AuthorPosts
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Casca
Participant[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]
By the way, “Wonton” is a soup. I believe you were looking for “wanton”.[/quote]Congratulations, would that you had such success proofing your own work.
[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]As I mentioned in my posting, yes, there is a good deal of difference between interrogation and torture. Stress techniques, including psyops, do not qualify as torture to me.[/quote]
WTF? I swear that you claimed many postings back, that waterboarding was torture, and quibbled with my definitions. Now you fold?
[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]I find it somewhat repellent that you use the term “gold standard” when referring to the SD. Whatever respective differences that might exist between us, let me be clear when I say that anything having to do with the Nazi regime is abhorrent to me. That you find something noteworthy in how they and the Gestapo conduct torture is unconscionable, but it’s also your business.[/quote]
My boy their skill had little to do with their politics, and more to do with the ruthless efficiency of the German culture. They were so good, that we never successfully established a single espionage network in Western Europe during the war, and post WWII, when we came to our senses and realized that we were in a cold war with the Soviets, our intelligence services hired them on as contract employees. They knew everything about everybody, or as they say, where all the bodies were buried.
[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]Any violent methods used to extract or extort information or intel is torture in my book. While you might consider wanton brutality against civilians and non-combatants not to be torture is splitting hairs in my opinion. Brutal it might be, but it is also torture in my opinion. Making parents watch while soldiers nail a baby’s head to a wall is torture: The act was designed to force the witnesses to talk and it was done with that explicit understanding. Thus, brutality and torture are not mutually exclusive; in many instances they are one and the same thing.[/quote]
Good gawd, I try to clarify, and you continue to muddy the water. The question before the house is whether or not torture is an effective method.
[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]As to my little “jaunt” through Central America: I was there for three years (1985 – 1988) and during some of the hottest periods of the conflict. It was not a limited tour by any stretch of the imagination, and I have the nightmares to prove it.
I don’t know your background, but I do take issue with those that advocate war and all of it’s terrible effects, but are unwilling to do any of the heavy lifting. Like I said, my abhorrence is based on personal experience, not something derived from my readings in the comfort of home and hearth.[/quote]
Who said “jaunt”? I have said nothing to deprecate your service. I’d applaud it, but I find that sort of thing condescending. I also find it unseemly to bully your way through an argument on the basis of a military experience that is rather thin. Were I a feckless civilian, or even worse, a sailor, I might have been dissuaded by your bluster. Accept that you are surrounded in this world by many men with experiences more complete than your own. Do a bit of reading, and you might absorb some of their experience. It may even be done in the comfort of your home. As old Sakini said, “Pain make man think. Thought make man wise. Wisdom make life endurable.”
Participant[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]
By the way, “Wonton” is a soup. I believe you were looking for “wanton”.[/quote]Congratulations, would that you had such success proofing your own work.
[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]As I mentioned in my posting, yes, there is a good deal of difference between interrogation and torture. Stress techniques, including psyops, do not qualify as torture to me.[/quote]
WTF? I swear that you claimed many postings back, that waterboarding was torture, and quibbled with my definitions. Now you fold?
[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]I find it somewhat repellent that you use the term “gold standard” when referring to the SD. Whatever respective differences that might exist between us, let me be clear when I say that anything having to do with the Nazi regime is abhorrent to me. That you find something noteworthy in how they and the Gestapo conduct torture is unconscionable, but it’s also your business.[/quote]
My boy their skill had little to do with their politics, and more to do with the ruthless efficiency of the German culture. They were so good, that we never successfully established a single espionage network in Western Europe during the war, and post WWII, when we came to our senses and realized that we were in a cold war with the Soviets, our intelligence services hired them on as contract employees. They knew everything about everybody, or as they say, where all the bodies were buried.
[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]Any violent methods used to extract or extort information or intel is torture in my book. While you might consider wanton brutality against civilians and non-combatants not to be torture is splitting hairs in my opinion. Brutal it might be, but it is also torture in my opinion. Making parents watch while soldiers nail a baby’s head to a wall is torture: The act was designed to force the witnesses to talk and it was done with that explicit understanding. Thus, brutality and torture are not mutually exclusive; in many instances they are one and the same thing.[/quote]
Good gawd, I try to clarify, and you continue to muddy the water. The question before the house is whether or not torture is an effective method.
[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]As to my little “jaunt” through Central America: I was there for three years (1985 – 1988) and during some of the hottest periods of the conflict. It was not a limited tour by any stretch of the imagination, and I have the nightmares to prove it.
I don’t know your background, but I do take issue with those that advocate war and all of it’s terrible effects, but are unwilling to do any of the heavy lifting. Like I said, my abhorrence is based on personal experience, not something derived from my readings in the comfort of home and hearth.[/quote]
Who said “jaunt”? I have said nothing to deprecate your service. I’d applaud it, but I find that sort of thing condescending. I also find it unseemly to bully your way through an argument on the basis of a military experience that is rather thin. Were I a feckless civilian, or even worse, a sailor, I might have been dissuaded by your bluster. Accept that you are surrounded in this world by many men with experiences more complete than your own. Do a bit of reading, and you might absorb some of their experience. It may even be done in the comfort of your home. As old Sakini said, “Pain make man think. Thought make man wise. Wisdom make life endurable.”
Participant[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]
By the way, “Wonton” is a soup. I believe you were looking for “wanton”.[/quote]Congratulations, would that you had such success proofing your own work.
[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]As I mentioned in my posting, yes, there is a good deal of difference between interrogation and torture. Stress techniques, including psyops, do not qualify as torture to me.[/quote]
WTF? I swear that you claimed many postings back, that waterboarding was torture, and quibbled with my definitions. Now you fold?
[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]I find it somewhat repellent that you use the term “gold standard” when referring to the SD. Whatever respective differences that might exist between us, let me be clear when I say that anything having to do with the Nazi regime is abhorrent to me. That you find something noteworthy in how they and the Gestapo conduct torture is unconscionable, but it’s also your business.[/quote]
My boy their skill had little to do with their politics, and more to do with the ruthless efficiency of the German culture. They were so good, that we never successfully established a single espionage network in Western Europe during the war, and post WWII, when we came to our senses and realized that we were in a cold war with the Soviets, our intelligence services hired them on as contract employees. They knew everything about everybody, or as they say, where all the bodies were buried.
[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]Any violent methods used to extract or extort information or intel is torture in my book. While you might consider wanton brutality against civilians and non-combatants not to be torture is splitting hairs in my opinion. Brutal it might be, but it is also torture in my opinion. Making parents watch while soldiers nail a baby’s head to a wall is torture: The act was designed to force the witnesses to talk and it was done with that explicit understanding. Thus, brutality and torture are not mutually exclusive; in many instances they are one and the same thing.[/quote]
Good gawd, I try to clarify, and you continue to muddy the water. The question before the house is whether or not torture is an effective method.
[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]As to my little “jaunt” through Central America: I was there for three years (1985 – 1988) and during some of the hottest periods of the conflict. It was not a limited tour by any stretch of the imagination, and I have the nightmares to prove it.
I don’t know your background, but I do take issue with those that advocate war and all of it’s terrible effects, but are unwilling to do any of the heavy lifting. Like I said, my abhorrence is based on personal experience, not something derived from my readings in the comfort of home and hearth.[/quote]
Who said “jaunt”? I have said nothing to deprecate your service. I’d applaud it, but I find that sort of thing condescending. I also find it unseemly to bully your way through an argument on the basis of a military experience that is rather thin. Were I a feckless civilian, or even worse, a sailor, I might have been dissuaded by your bluster. Accept that you are surrounded in this world by many men with experiences more complete than your own. Do a bit of reading, and you might absorb some of their experience. It may even be done in the comfort of your home. As old Sakini said, “Pain make man think. Thought make man wise. Wisdom make life endurable.”
Participant[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]
By the way, “Wonton” is a soup. I believe you were looking for “wanton”.[/quote]Congratulations, would that you had such success proofing your own work.
[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]As I mentioned in my posting, yes, there is a good deal of difference between interrogation and torture. Stress techniques, including psyops, do not qualify as torture to me.[/quote]
WTF? I swear that you claimed many postings back, that waterboarding was torture, and quibbled with my definitions. Now you fold?
[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]I find it somewhat repellent that you use the term “gold standard” when referring to the SD. Whatever respective differences that might exist between us, let me be clear when I say that anything having to do with the Nazi regime is abhorrent to me. That you find something noteworthy in how they and the Gestapo conduct torture is unconscionable, but it’s also your business.[/quote]
My boy their skill had little to do with their politics, and more to do with the ruthless efficiency of the German culture. They were so good, that we never successfully established a single espionage network in Western Europe during the war, and post WWII, when we came to our senses and realized that we were in a cold war with the Soviets, our intelligence services hired them on as contract employees. They knew everything about everybody, or as they say, where all the bodies were buried.
[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]Any violent methods used to extract or extort information or intel is torture in my book. While you might consider wanton brutality against civilians and non-combatants not to be torture is splitting hairs in my opinion. Brutal it might be, but it is also torture in my opinion. Making parents watch while soldiers nail a baby’s head to a wall is torture: The act was designed to force the witnesses to talk and it was done with that explicit understanding. Thus, brutality and torture are not mutually exclusive; in many instances they are one and the same thing.[/quote]
Good gawd, I try to clarify, and you continue to muddy the water. The question before the house is whether or not torture is an effective method.
[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]As to my little “jaunt” through Central America: I was there for three years (1985 – 1988) and during some of the hottest periods of the conflict. It was not a limited tour by any stretch of the imagination, and I have the nightmares to prove it.
I don’t know your background, but I do take issue with those that advocate war and all of it’s terrible effects, but are unwilling to do any of the heavy lifting. Like I said, my abhorrence is based on personal experience, not something derived from my readings in the comfort of home and hearth.[/quote]
Who said “jaunt”? I have said nothing to deprecate your service. I’d applaud it, but I find that sort of thing condescending. I also find it unseemly to bully your way through an argument on the basis of a military experience that is rather thin. Were I a feckless civilian, or even worse, a sailor, I might have been dissuaded by your bluster. Accept that you are surrounded in this world by many men with experiences more complete than your own. Do a bit of reading, and you might absorb some of their experience. It may even be done in the comfort of your home. As old Sakini said, “Pain make man think. Thought make man wise. Wisdom make life endurable.”
ParticipantOne would think that you’d be more rightly incensed at the prospect of democrats forcing Americans to join labor unions, which is the plight Walmart seeks to avoid.
ParticipantOne would think that you’d be more rightly incensed at the prospect of democrats forcing Americans to join labor unions, which is the plight Walmart seeks to avoid.
ParticipantOne would think that you’d be more rightly incensed at the prospect of democrats forcing Americans to join labor unions, which is the plight Walmart seeks to avoid.
ParticipantOne would think that you’d be more rightly incensed at the prospect of democrats forcing Americans to join labor unions, which is the plight Walmart seeks to avoid.
ParticipantOne would think that you’d be more rightly incensed at the prospect of democrats forcing Americans to join labor unions, which is the plight Walmart seeks to avoid.
ParticipantOne would think that you’d be more rightly incensed at the prospect of democrats forcing Americans to join labor unions, which is the plight Walmart seeks to avoid.
Participant[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]Casca: Where to begin? First off, at 43, I’m a little young to be a “retiree”. I was invalided out of the Army in 1988 as a result of being involved in a helicopter crash. I spent five years in (three as a Ranger), and then sayonara. So, while I had planned being a lifer, it didn’t work out that way.
I have friends in Iraq, Colombia and Afghanistan. While no one divulges anything of a sensitive nature, I get enough information to have a good sense of what is going on. All of us came up during the Reagan years (military wise), so there are no illusions about politicos or why we are doing what we are doing.
As far as the comparison between a civil war/insurgency in Central America and WWII, well, there really isn’t one. Our goal was extremely simple: Win the hearts and minds of the people and thus eliminate support, aid and sustenance to the FMLN movement. Our first step was getting the government of El Sal and the right wing death squads (such as Mano Blanco) to stop killing and torturing their own people. I’m sure the SD and Gestapo had proven methods of torturing, but the Salvadoran government and military didn’t. At least I don’t think they did: Nailing a baby’s head to a wall seems extremely ineffective.
There is also a huge difference between torture and interrogation. The information and intel yielded under torture is not, generally speaking, of high value. The subject will tell you virtually anything to get the pain to stop and the nature of the questions will eventually led him to give you the information he believes you want. We got more solid intel by breaking someone down over several days with intensive questioning and using a variety of psyops then by tying them to a chair and going after them with a phone book and a 2 liter of Bubble Up.
When I brought up the question regarding Gitmo and prosecutions, it was solely because that was one of the stated intents of that facility’s existence. We are warehousing all of those supposed terrorists, but gaining little intel and putting almost none of them away, in terms of incarceration.
As far as the number of them that will “live to fight another day”: Why are so many now slated for release? Is it because the Administration is bowing to outside pressure from NGOs, or is it because only a miniscule number of them are even remotely tied to terrorist organizations? I’ll let you and your bulls**t detector go look that one up.
I thought Dershowitz wrote an excellent piece on torture using his potential nuke threat as a rationale for torturing to gain information. I still didn’t agree with him, though. The senior NCOs and officers I worked with down south were all former Vietnam hands who had faced the North Vietnamese Army and Vietcong. They were very familiar with both torture and interrogation and, almost universally, chose interrogation as the best means to gain solid and usable intel. They were all products of the HARD school of experience and most of them were Special Forces. Not a gentle bunch and not squeamish, either. You use those means that are most effective. Our record in that war speaks for itself, and we were able to accomplish it without sacrificing our honor or humanity. Both of which were in very short supply amongst the Nazis, whose record speaks for itself as well.
At some point, with torture and rendition, you become what you behold. So what is the gain if we “win” the War on Terror and sacrifice all that we hold dear in the process?
There are only a handful of us left from the group I served with. We’ve lost people in Somalia, Iraq, South America and Afghanistan. All of us believe in this country in a way you probably don’t understand. I think of the quote: “For those that fight for it, Freedom has a flavor the sheltered never know”.
It is easy to pontificate about torture and whether waterboarding is or isn’t, along with whether or not rendition is acceptable, and do so from the comfort of your den. It is quite another to have seen these things firsthand. I’m sure it pains your towering intellect to have to deign to deal with us mere mortals and our decided lack of neuronal plasticity, but someone of us actually do know of what we speak and why some things are just WRONG. No need to reason or argue about it.[/quote]
I’m in the awkward position of arguing transubstantiation with an alter boy. You keep setting yourself up as having some level of expertise based on what amounts to one tour of duty in the very narrow universe of El Salvador. Be honest with yourself and face the fact that your connection with the Army was a long time ago, far, far away, and it didn’t last for very long.
Now I don’t wish to hit you too hard here, because I think you’re the right sort of fellow, just a bit limited by your limited experience. If you had been an officer, then you’d know something about the law of land warfare. And had you spent a full career, you might have a better idea of what you don’t know. You’re like the fellow who once took the bay ferry, and now wants to tell you of his life at sea.
You’ve bought the line that torture doesn’t work, which just isn’t true. I’ve also given you the gold standard of an example in the SD. Then you lurch all over the place into wonton brutality, which is not torture. It’s just brutality.
Then, you make the mistake of lumping all stress techniques together as torture. Torture is maiming and killing in the interrogation process. We don’t do that, at least not at Gitmo.
Now go to Netflix, and order up “Colonel Blimp”. Watch it all the way through, and see if you recognize any of the characters.
Participant[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]Casca: Where to begin? First off, at 43, I’m a little young to be a “retiree”. I was invalided out of the Army in 1988 as a result of being involved in a helicopter crash. I spent five years in (three as a Ranger), and then sayonara. So, while I had planned being a lifer, it didn’t work out that way.
I have friends in Iraq, Colombia and Afghanistan. While no one divulges anything of a sensitive nature, I get enough information to have a good sense of what is going on. All of us came up during the Reagan years (military wise), so there are no illusions about politicos or why we are doing what we are doing.
As far as the comparison between a civil war/insurgency in Central America and WWII, well, there really isn’t one. Our goal was extremely simple: Win the hearts and minds of the people and thus eliminate support, aid and sustenance to the FMLN movement. Our first step was getting the government of El Sal and the right wing death squads (such as Mano Blanco) to stop killing and torturing their own people. I’m sure the SD and Gestapo had proven methods of torturing, but the Salvadoran government and military didn’t. At least I don’t think they did: Nailing a baby’s head to a wall seems extremely ineffective.
There is also a huge difference between torture and interrogation. The information and intel yielded under torture is not, generally speaking, of high value. The subject will tell you virtually anything to get the pain to stop and the nature of the questions will eventually led him to give you the information he believes you want. We got more solid intel by breaking someone down over several days with intensive questioning and using a variety of psyops then by tying them to a chair and going after them with a phone book and a 2 liter of Bubble Up.
When I brought up the question regarding Gitmo and prosecutions, it was solely because that was one of the stated intents of that facility’s existence. We are warehousing all of those supposed terrorists, but gaining little intel and putting almost none of them away, in terms of incarceration.
As far as the number of them that will “live to fight another day”: Why are so many now slated for release? Is it because the Administration is bowing to outside pressure from NGOs, or is it because only a miniscule number of them are even remotely tied to terrorist organizations? I’ll let you and your bulls**t detector go look that one up.
I thought Dershowitz wrote an excellent piece on torture using his potential nuke threat as a rationale for torturing to gain information. I still didn’t agree with him, though. The senior NCOs and officers I worked with down south were all former Vietnam hands who had faced the North Vietnamese Army and Vietcong. They were very familiar with both torture and interrogation and, almost universally, chose interrogation as the best means to gain solid and usable intel. They were all products of the HARD school of experience and most of them were Special Forces. Not a gentle bunch and not squeamish, either. You use those means that are most effective. Our record in that war speaks for itself, and we were able to accomplish it without sacrificing our honor or humanity. Both of which were in very short supply amongst the Nazis, whose record speaks for itself as well.
At some point, with torture and rendition, you become what you behold. So what is the gain if we “win” the War on Terror and sacrifice all that we hold dear in the process?
There are only a handful of us left from the group I served with. We’ve lost people in Somalia, Iraq, South America and Afghanistan. All of us believe in this country in a way you probably don’t understand. I think of the quote: “For those that fight for it, Freedom has a flavor the sheltered never know”.
It is easy to pontificate about torture and whether waterboarding is or isn’t, along with whether or not rendition is acceptable, and do so from the comfort of your den. It is quite another to have seen these things firsthand. I’m sure it pains your towering intellect to have to deign to deal with us mere mortals and our decided lack of neuronal plasticity, but someone of us actually do know of what we speak and why some things are just WRONG. No need to reason or argue about it.[/quote]
I’m in the awkward position of arguing transubstantiation with an alter boy. You keep setting yourself up as having some level of expertise based on what amounts to one tour of duty in the very narrow universe of El Salvador. Be honest with yourself and face the fact that your connection with the Army was a long time ago, far, far away, and it didn’t last for very long.
Now I don’t wish to hit you too hard here, because I think you’re the right sort of fellow, just a bit limited by your limited experience. If you had been an officer, then you’d know something about the law of land warfare. And had you spent a full career, you might have a better idea of what you don’t know. You’re like the fellow who once took the bay ferry, and now wants to tell you of his life at sea.
You’ve bought the line that torture doesn’t work, which just isn’t true. I’ve also given you the gold standard of an example in the SD. Then you lurch all over the place into wonton brutality, which is not torture. It’s just brutality.
Then, you make the mistake of lumping all stress techniques together as torture. Torture is maiming and killing in the interrogation process. We don’t do that, at least not at Gitmo.
Now go to Netflix, and order up “Colonel Blimp”. Watch it all the way through, and see if you recognize any of the characters.
Participant[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]Casca: Where to begin? First off, at 43, I’m a little young to be a “retiree”. I was invalided out of the Army in 1988 as a result of being involved in a helicopter crash. I spent five years in (three as a Ranger), and then sayonara. So, while I had planned being a lifer, it didn’t work out that way.
I have friends in Iraq, Colombia and Afghanistan. While no one divulges anything of a sensitive nature, I get enough information to have a good sense of what is going on. All of us came up during the Reagan years (military wise), so there are no illusions about politicos or why we are doing what we are doing.
As far as the comparison between a civil war/insurgency in Central America and WWII, well, there really isn’t one. Our goal was extremely simple: Win the hearts and minds of the people and thus eliminate support, aid and sustenance to the FMLN movement. Our first step was getting the government of El Sal and the right wing death squads (such as Mano Blanco) to stop killing and torturing their own people. I’m sure the SD and Gestapo had proven methods of torturing, but the Salvadoran government and military didn’t. At least I don’t think they did: Nailing a baby’s head to a wall seems extremely ineffective.
There is also a huge difference between torture and interrogation. The information and intel yielded under torture is not, generally speaking, of high value. The subject will tell you virtually anything to get the pain to stop and the nature of the questions will eventually led him to give you the information he believes you want. We got more solid intel by breaking someone down over several days with intensive questioning and using a variety of psyops then by tying them to a chair and going after them with a phone book and a 2 liter of Bubble Up.
When I brought up the question regarding Gitmo and prosecutions, it was solely because that was one of the stated intents of that facility’s existence. We are warehousing all of those supposed terrorists, but gaining little intel and putting almost none of them away, in terms of incarceration.
As far as the number of them that will “live to fight another day”: Why are so many now slated for release? Is it because the Administration is bowing to outside pressure from NGOs, or is it because only a miniscule number of them are even remotely tied to terrorist organizations? I’ll let you and your bulls**t detector go look that one up.
I thought Dershowitz wrote an excellent piece on torture using his potential nuke threat as a rationale for torturing to gain information. I still didn’t agree with him, though. The senior NCOs and officers I worked with down south were all former Vietnam hands who had faced the North Vietnamese Army and Vietcong. They were very familiar with both torture and interrogation and, almost universally, chose interrogation as the best means to gain solid and usable intel. They were all products of the HARD school of experience and most of them were Special Forces. Not a gentle bunch and not squeamish, either. You use those means that are most effective. Our record in that war speaks for itself, and we were able to accomplish it without sacrificing our honor or humanity. Both of which were in very short supply amongst the Nazis, whose record speaks for itself as well.
At some point, with torture and rendition, you become what you behold. So what is the gain if we “win” the War on Terror and sacrifice all that we hold dear in the process?
There are only a handful of us left from the group I served with. We’ve lost people in Somalia, Iraq, South America and Afghanistan. All of us believe in this country in a way you probably don’t understand. I think of the quote: “For those that fight for it, Freedom has a flavor the sheltered never know”.
It is easy to pontificate about torture and whether waterboarding is or isn’t, along with whether or not rendition is acceptable, and do so from the comfort of your den. It is quite another to have seen these things firsthand. I’m sure it pains your towering intellect to have to deign to deal with us mere mortals and our decided lack of neuronal plasticity, but someone of us actually do know of what we speak and why some things are just WRONG. No need to reason or argue about it.[/quote]
I’m in the awkward position of arguing transubstantiation with an alter boy. You keep setting yourself up as having some level of expertise based on what amounts to one tour of duty in the very narrow universe of El Salvador. Be honest with yourself and face the fact that your connection with the Army was a long time ago, far, far away, and it didn’t last for very long.
Now I don’t wish to hit you too hard here, because I think you’re the right sort of fellow, just a bit limited by your limited experience. If you had been an officer, then you’d know something about the law of land warfare. And had you spent a full career, you might have a better idea of what you don’t know. You’re like the fellow who once took the bay ferry, and now wants to tell you of his life at sea.
You’ve bought the line that torture doesn’t work, which just isn’t true. I’ve also given you the gold standard of an example in the SD. Then you lurch all over the place into wonton brutality, which is not torture. It’s just brutality.
Then, you make the mistake of lumping all stress techniques together as torture. Torture is maiming and killing in the interrogation process. We don’t do that, at least not at Gitmo.
Now go to Netflix, and order up “Colonel Blimp”. Watch it all the way through, and see if you recognize any of the characters.
Participant[quote=Allan from Fallbrook]Casca: Where to begin? First off, at 43, I’m a little young to be a “retiree”. I was invalided out of the Army in 1988 as a result of being involved in a helicopter crash. I spent five years in (three as a Ranger), and then sayonara. So, while I had planned being a lifer, it didn’t work out that way.
I have friends in Iraq, Colombia and Afghanistan. While no one divulges anything of a sensitive nature, I get enough information to have a good sense of what is going on. All of us came up during the Reagan years (military wise), so there are no illusions about politicos or why we are doing what we are doing.
As far as the comparison between a civil war/insurgency in Central America and WWII, well, there really isn’t one. Our goal was extremely simple: Win the hearts and minds of the people and thus eliminate support, aid and sustenance to the FMLN movement. Our first step was getting the government of El Sal and the right wing death squads (such as Mano Blanco) to stop killing and torturing their own people. I’m sure the SD and Gestapo had proven methods of torturing, but the Salvadoran government and military didn’t. At least I don’t think they did: Nailing a baby’s head to a wall seems extremely ineffective.
There is also a huge difference between torture and interrogation. The information and intel yielded under torture is not, generally speaking, of high value. The subject will tell you virtually anything to get the pain to stop and the nature of the questions will eventually led him to give you the information he believes you want. We got more solid intel by breaking someone down over several days with intensive questioning and using a variety of psyops then by tying them to a chair and going after them with a phone book and a 2 liter of Bubble Up.
When I brought up the question regarding Gitmo and prosecutions, it was solely because that was one of the stated intents of that facility’s existence. We are warehousing all of those supposed terrorists, but gaining little intel and putting almost none of them away, in terms of incarceration.
As far as the number of them that will “live to fight another day”: Why are so many now slated for release? Is it because the Administration is bowing to outside pressure from NGOs, or is it because only a miniscule number of them are even remotely tied to terrorist organizations? I’ll let you and your bulls**t detector go look that one up.
I thought Dershowitz wrote an excellent piece on torture using his potential nuke threat as a rationale for torturing to gain information. I still didn’t agree with him, though. The senior NCOs and officers I worked with down south were all former Vietnam hands who had faced the North Vietnamese Army and Vietcong. They were very familiar with both torture and interrogation and, almost universally, chose interrogation as the best means to gain solid and usable intel. They were all products of the HARD school of experience and most of them were Special Forces. Not a gentle bunch and not squeamish, either. You use those means that are most effective. Our record in that war speaks for itself, and we were able to accomplish it without sacrificing our honor or humanity. Both of which were in very short supply amongst the Nazis, whose record speaks for itself as well.
At some point, with torture and rendition, you become what you behold. So what is the gain if we “win” the War on Terror and sacrifice all that we hold dear in the process?
There are only a handful of us left from the group I served with. We’ve lost people in Somalia, Iraq, South America and Afghanistan. All of us believe in this country in a way you probably don’t understand. I think of the quote: “For those that fight for it, Freedom has a flavor the sheltered never know”.
It is easy to pontificate about torture and whether waterboarding is or isn’t, along with whether or not rendition is acceptable, and do so from the comfort of your den. It is quite another to have seen these things firsthand. I’m sure it pains your towering intellect to have to deign to deal with us mere mortals and our decided lack of neuronal plasticity, but someone of us actually do know of what we speak and why some things are just WRONG. No need to reason or argue about it.[/quote]
I’m in the awkward position of arguing transubstantiation with an alter boy. You keep setting yourself up as having some level of expertise based on what amounts to one tour of duty in the very narrow universe of El Salvador. Be honest with yourself and face the fact that your connection with the Army was a long time ago, far, far away, and it didn’t last for very long.
Now I don’t wish to hit you too hard here, because I think you’re the right sort of fellow, just a bit limited by your limited experience. If you had been an officer, then you’d know something about the law of land warfare. And had you spent a full career, you might have a better idea of what you don’t know. You’re like the fellow who once took the bay ferry, and now wants to tell you of his life at sea.
You’ve bought the line that torture doesn’t work, which just isn’t true. I’ve also given you the gold standard of an example in the SD. Then you lurch all over the place into wonton brutality, which is not torture. It’s just brutality.
Then, you make the mistake of lumping all stress techniques together as torture. Torture is maiming and killing in the interrogation process. We don’t do that, at least not at Gitmo.
Now go to Netflix, and order up “Colonel Blimp”. Watch it all the way through, and see if you recognize any of the characters.
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