The terrorists are not dumb and they follow the media closely. They have proven very adept at manipulating the media for their own purposes.

It has been obvious for some time that “torture” is a hot button issue. Why wouldn’t they claim torture even if it had not occurred just to start the kind of frenzy that is going on now. We know they train their people to claim torture and abuse whether or not it happened, what makes it so certain that this is not another piece of disinformation.

They certainly won’t take anyone connected with the American or British governments at their word, why should they accept this information from an unknown “source” in Pakistan as the truth?

Of course it’s because it is something they want to believe.

Some people want to get all moralistic on us, such as Duane in #60.

“I can live with the threat of terrorism before I can live with the ethical vacuum that torture creates.”

How noble! Tell me Duane, have you explained to your family and especially your children (if you have any) that you would much rather see them dead or horribly mutilated than compromise your ethics by making a terrorist uncomfortable?

Or are you just certain that any deaths and suffering caused by allowing attacks to go undetected would be suffered by people that you don’t know?

Also, he conducts his hearings like an autocrat….. not allowing visitors to even clap their hands or make a sound. He thinks he is on Capital Hill when he is in El Paso (a different culture).

His demeanor is awkward…rugged, and overbearing. He seems to talk at (or down to) people, rather than with people.

The Republicans, especially Sensenbrenner, are more concerned with putting on these Show Trial Hearings, to make it look like they are really working on the Immigration problem before the elections, when in reality, the Republicans have been ducking and dodging real, fundamental, enforceable, comprehensive changes in immigration policy.

Ummm…. could you elaborate on that just a tad, Angry?

http://www.c-span.org/VideoArchives.asp?z1=&PopupMenu_Name=Congress&CatCodePairs=Issue,C;

Video of Congressional Hearing (Held in El Paso TX) on subject of Immigration.

Held by the House Judiciary Committee on August 17th

Rep. Sensenbrenner is crazy!

Link- Copy and Paste if needed

rtsp://video.c-span.org/project/im/im081706_immigration.rm

You are a British customs official during World War II. Three people are in your waiting room. One is a middle-aged white woman in a floral dress. Another is a Catholic nun. The third is a young, heavyset blond man with a Nazi armband, who peppers his conversation with words like “donnerblitzen!” and “judenfrei”(Jew-free).

Whom do you question and search the most?

Answer: The nun. The German was probably abused as a child, and is only expressing his natural anger at a world that doesn’t understand his genius, and anyway, nuns are suspicious.

I suggest you study methods developed by brigadier general David Irvine (Ret.) which are a kinder, gentler interrogation style: Legal under international military law, effective against the most stubborn enemy, and – above all – moral.

You still don’t get it. What about a soldier makes them “not innocent”? What crime did the man in uniform who I will kill by reflex or with scant thought commit?

You seem to think that only one interrogation is going to render up life-saving information while the hundreds or thousands of other ones for everyone that yields info are “useless moral vacuums” or similar lefty/libertarian drivel. You neglect that militaries put huge resources into interrogations and some of their most intelligent officers instead of assigning them elsewhere to fill critical needs. Because from the dawn of time militaries know they get needed info from interogations and THAT is the critical need justifying staff and resources that could go elsewhere. And they do not go through hundreds or thousands of useless interrogations before they get the “one” who hasn’t resisted, “was” (ha! ha!) an “innocent enemy”, or wasn’t one of the Hollywood myth prisoners who “always outsmarts the other side’s best minds”.

Admit it. You position is purely grounded in your emotional prejudices, not by facts or logic.

According to an article in the Washington Post, the Arab American men who were recently arrested in two states with hundreds of prepaid cell phones are not linked in any way to terrorists or terrorism. I suppose it’s possible that the men paid re…

You live in a civilian world Duane. Where it is wrong to kill an innocent man.

Many civilians simply cannot mentally grasp a separate reaity of humankind – warfare – where soldiers or former soldiers like me kill innocent men as our job, and morally hold our heads up. Kill any innocent women and children and little puppy dogs to if they have the misfortune to be on the wrong bridge or target at the wrong time. In war, there are certain rights co-signing nations agree to give. We also signed a noble treaty some years back agreeing to outlaw torture. Similar agreements exist to end genocide, world hunger, racism, sexism. We recognize in war that the Constitution permits suspension of habeas and Article III Courts, if declared by the Executive, hopefully backed by Congress.

Every investigator and lawyer knows the most important tool a liar and criminal has to block disclosing details of a criminal act is the 5th. In wartime the most potent tool the enemy has to avoid revealing intelligence is the Ill-informed, ill-educated US citizen’s presumption that enemies are no different than criminals – a mindset encouraged by the Left and NYC ACLU types.

Unless we are cosigned to Geneva with the enemy’s country, and grant POW status, we have a right to question terrorists outside Geneva. They do not have a right to silence beyond what blubbering liberal Democrats and Euroweenies and the “angry Muslim community” demand.

The myth that ill-informed Americans have of a single story from a single informant or suspect fooling guillable counter-terror operatives is generally not true. Because we generally interrogate several supects with common knowledge and cetain unique knowledge – the truth is constant in stories, but lies cause variance when the story is repeated over time or especially in cross-checking other terrorist’s stories. “Whatever comes out of their mouths” is not automatically believed. And from 5,000 years of practice, coerced interrogation even leading to torture, generally gets to the truth.

“Experts” testifying for liberal Congressmen are generally of the belief that HUMINT can be odious, dirty…we can absorb a certain acceptable amount of American deaths, well above WTC levels, without playing dirty ourselves so later generations will see how good and pure we were and accepted many deaths rather than “be like our enemy”. They also hope satellites and other technology will bypass having to deal with terrorists themselves to stop terrorist activity. Of course they wont say what they believe publicly…only wear their “conscience and “higher morals” on their sleeves as they dance for Schumer, Durbin, Kennedy, Roth, Strosser of the ACLU and the Euroweenies..

In recognition of that historical truth, spy and terror networks are built on the assumption that even hardened, dedicated ideologues will break in a few days and betray the cell and activities.

If the Pakis or Filipinos or Indians or Jordanians or French or Israelis, etc. say they have several Islamofascists singing like birds and now telling the truth…you can have high confidence in their counter-terror intelligence.