Associated Press
Obama's executive order banned torture. Would Romney reverse it?
Many of Mitt Romney's leading economic advisors are former members of the Bush/Cheney team, but the same is true of the candidate's foreign policy team. Ari Berman has a terrific piece today, for example, highlighting figures like John Bolton, Robert Joseph, Dan Senor, and Eric Edelman, all of whom were "tarnished by the Iraq fiasco," but are now advising the would-be Republican president.
Of particular interest, though, is Cofer Black.
Romney hasn't said what he'd do with a bigger military or how he'd pay for it. But it's safe to assume the money will go toward preserving or enlarging the national security state. Romney's counterterrorism adviser since 2007 has been former CIA operative Cofer Black, another controversial figure from the Bush era. The Daily Beast calls Black "Romney's trusted envoy to the dark side" and "the campaign's in-house intelligence officer."
In 2007 Romney sourced Black in refusing to classify waterboarding as torture (and also said he wanted to "double Guantanamo"). As head of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center following 9/11, Black supervised the agency's "extraordinary rendition" program, which illegally transported alleged terrorists to secret detention centers abroad, where they were tortured. "After 9/11 the gloves come off," Black infamously testified before Congress.
This raises a related question that hasn't generated much in the way of 2012 attention: with President Obama prohibiting torture, would a President Romney bring it back?
A three-year-long investigation by Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats has confirmed what we already knew: Bush-era torture did not produce valuable intelligence. With the information coinciding with the one-year anniversary of the Osama bin Laden mission, it has an even greater political salience.
But Team Romney hasn't had much to say about this, which is curious.
Greg Sargent has been covering this, and he's asking exactly the right question: "As president, would he revoke the executive order that Obama signed on his first day in office, restricting interrogation techniques to those in the Army Field Manual?"
Some cursory research suggests Romney hasn't offered a perspective on the issue. Given his preference for avoiding firm stands that might bother his Republican base, it's hard to believe he'll be bold on opposition to torture.
But voters deserve an answer on this. Romney's being advised by torture proponents, so it's hardly unreasonable to ask whether he'll be inclined to follow their lead if elected.
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PBO solved the issue of torture. First, he signed an executive order banning it. Then he started to kill suspects, no matter where they are. This way, they can't be interrogated.
And again you aren't taking the moral high ground when you state that you prefer torture.
Here's a thought: why don't you get to being tortured yourself and then let us know how you feel about it afterwards
Very funny and very true! And Mouzer, up your lorazepam.. Can't anybody crack a very poignant funny around here without being accused of being pro-torture? Of course, I have no historic recollection of nytosc's other posts..
These bygone cretins should be included in a commercial: "When you vote for him, you also get him (show all the cretins including Paul Bremer, Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney) and have it end with George W. Bush. That would even scare conservitards, who now believe that W. was too much of a liberal.
Sighs I suppose sarcasm is a lost art form
@fromnytosc has a good point. College, child care, and torture etc. are not entitlements and tax payers should not have to support them. Death by drone however is a right all terrorist earned on 9/11 - you might say - they're entitled.
We should all thank @fromnytosc for bringing this topic up for the second time this week - each time he does it we will go deeeeeper and deeeeeeper into a perrrrrfectly relaxed state. Listen to my voice as I count backwards from 9999999. 9999999,9999998, 9999997 ..... zzzzzzzzzz
Adam_Selene
I never said I support torture. I do deplore it. I was merely saying how ironic it is to issue an executive order banning torture - a practice discontinued for several years - and the order the blind killing of suspects regardless of the consequences.
Why do you think they call Mitts "Bush II on steroids"?
Same advisors and so what could be expected? If you enjoyed W's (2) terms, you'll really enjoy his third term with President Rmoney. Just think of 1) invading Iran and getting it over with, 2) big ol' tax cuts for the job creators, 3) repeal of the ACA, ...
But this time let's just forget about the non-existent compassion of W. No use bothering pretending.
Not to mention the big depression the GOP was pining for. I mean, as one Wall Street trader said a few months back, a world wide depression would mean "a few people would get very, very rich."
So you think assassinating people is more compassionate than waterboarding?
KSM is still alive and kicking, the subjects of drone attacks, not so much.
Shooter thinks that by justifying torture he is making a compassionate argument.
I'm not making a compassionate argument, I'm making an observation. Would you prefer to be alive or dead after being pinpointed by the US? What about the "collateral damage" drone strikes bring?
I understand you're trying to be a moral scold, but the real world couldn't care less.
You contradict yourself: first you make a moral claim, then attack me for making a moral claim....only to follow up w/ an additional moral claim.
Apparently the whole world couldn't care less, but you sure do
Sorry, but this is such a silly argument. If my choices are torture someone or assassinate them, I choose neither. Both are morally repugnant, neither should be used in a civilized society, and since they are both crimes in this country, people who commit them should be arrested, tried, convicted (if guilty) and imprisoned. That includes Bush and his cronies, and now that includes Obama and his cronies.
When you're at war, you kill your enemy or you capture and hold them; you don't torture them, period.
Sorry folks but "neither" isn't an available choice, it has to be one or the other. Meanwhile Mouzer evades the real world consequences of US policy. Living in fantasyland isn't an option for most people.
I never made a claim in either case shooter. This is what cracks me up: because I did not state that I agree w/ you 100% and that you are 100% correct this must, invariably, mean that I disagree w/ you 100%. This is what I can't stand about highly authoritarian people: the world is not black and white. It's not either I'm against you or I'm with you. I'm not evading real world consequences of US policy: I never made a claim about US policy in this regard (at least not on this thread). All I did was point out that when you attack the PBO Administration for killing people instead of capturing and torturing them you are, inadvertently, justifying torture. The argument you are making is an argument stating in essence that you agree w/ the premise of torturing people so that you can capture more people to then torture. This is why I beg people not to engage in red herring arguments. Red herrings do not point out hypocrisy and they often leave you in a position that is far weaker than the position you would have otherwise been in had you formed a cogent argument instead of a computationally corrupt one.
@M. Fehrman: this is what frustrates me about conservatives attempting to attack PBO on this ground. I swear people are so eager to win the argument, so eager to make the other party look bad that they never stop for a second to consider what it is they're actually saying. The false dichotomy is either you can torture or you can kill. People just want to set this argument up as if it's black and white and as if only those 2 options exist when in reality there are other possibilities.
Of course other possibilities requires admitting complexity and we seem to have become a nation complacent on simplicity. Sighs.
Need more information.
Is Shooter for or against the death penalty?
It is related to the discussion.
I'm still thinking about this - perhaps @fromnytosc and shooter have information about this topic that we do not have. Wait - instead of torturing captured prisoners we are staking them out in a field and using them for drone practice?
Perhaps it is the "down on the farm" chicken dinner problem. If you want to torture someone, you have to first catch them. Chickens - last time I checked, do not have AK 47's or what ever is popular these days in terrorist circles. So we have a choice of losing American lives to capture a possible terrorist or bombing them. In both cases there is the risk of "collateral damage" - you could torture an innocent person you could risk American military lives - you could bomb innocent civilians. Oh - yeah - that one where you accidentally torture an innocent man - what do you do with him after you are finished? If it were done to me - I think I might hold a grudge.
There is of course a third course of action - you could do nothing - fair bet that would cost us lives some time.
So there we have it - 3 crappy choices - all come with a probability that people will die who you do not wish to die. Where is that 3 sided coin of mine?
Oh - I nearly forgot - the torturers - do they get to come home and teach Sunday school class?
Mouzer, this is not a "false dichotomy" I'm talking about. These are the actions men have taken. Bush's people are on national news programs crowing about how they tortured people, doing everything but baring their chests and beating on them. Reports of drone attacks and how many people were killed (innocent by standers included) is an almost daily event lately under the Obama administration. I'm not making this up or speculating about possibilities. It is. I am not attempting to attack Obama, or be more or less critical of him than of Bush. I have no desire "to win the argument" or "make the other party look bad". I'm simply stating the truth. The Bush administration tortured people. The Obama administration is engaging in assassinations in foreign countries and reserves the right to arrest and hold, without due process, any one in any country, including this one. I don't need to waste my time trying to make these two presidents look bad. They are doing an excellent job of that themselves.
My point is, I choose neither of these options. Please stop sighing for a moment and take a look around you. There are other people who see that there are other possibilities to these complex problems, and are seeking solutions. The first step in that is identifying the problem. The second is not excusing anyone who is doing something wrong or illegal, no matter who he is, stopping him from doing it and bringing him to justice if he has broken the law.
I did not mean that YOU were choosing the extremes M.Fehr and I apologize for not making this clearer. What I meant was that everyone ELSE was limiting the scope of which our means had. You and I both believe that we can capture people and interrogate them and try them by normal means. Everyone else seems to want to limit this reality to a false dichotomy of either we kill them or we torture them. And I was saying that this is, in fact, false and wrong. I apologize sincerely for not making myself more clear: what I was saying was that I agree w/ you Fehr. You and I hold the same attitude about this issue.
Looking to touch with RM on this and something else of equal importance. R -- if you can please get back to me to establish contact on an important matter --- Dj
It's extraordinarily misleading to say that Obama "prohibits torture"- he signed an executive order giving lots of lip service and zero teeth to that pledge. Much like the rest of his pro-human rights campaign promises (see failure to investigate or discontinue warrantless wiretapping for instance). Policy has not been meaningfully altered and civil liberties of those detained (including US citizens thanks to NDAA) have been consistently eroded. Pretending the Obama administration has advanced the cause of human rights in this area is dangerously deluded.
For the "Most radically leftist president this country has ever had," (Quoting Mister Noot), President Obama frequently has been remarkably supportive, and sometimes surprisingly expansive, of kind of a lot of the Bush administrations idiocy.
-Discworld- -Terry Pratchett-
Generally law enforcement is compelled to throw out information collected after illegal means are used, not just what was collected but any of the surrounding evidence (poison fruit, if you will). Did the Obama administration discard all the intel collected during the time "torture" was used?
Don't take the easy way out and say "none was gathered" because then I would have to assume you are saying "yes, they made the determination to start from scratch and all the information used to kill Osama was gathered under Obama."
Considering that bin Laden wasn't living in his place in Pakistan when the Bushies closed down their shop that was looking for him, it isn't at all unbelievable that yes, indeed, Obama DID gather all the information leading to finding bin Laden. Remember that it was a vaccine campaign organized under Obama that eventually found him.
The one forty char twitter: If TORTURE was the way to solve Al Qaeda problems, we spent a whole lot of money & lives? Who should pay, except those wanting War and Oil?
Revised:
If torture were worth doing, you'd have to know ahead of time the likelihood of information being in the suspect and of getting the information out of the suspect. (You cannot tell just by looking.)
Lacking a specific suspect, you might do as the Romans once did and decorate Appian Way with the symbol of the power of the state (the crucifixion), but since they weren't the ones you wanted, then you'd lose the Empire by squandering resources. (Both human and material).
Having a known suspect could also be problematical, because we already have many such suspects who are, let's say, political, and while they are holding on to ideologies so strongly, that you can foresee that the futility of getting to the truth, for the simple reason that any truth opposite their ideologies are just not there. The value of a confession is worthless since it's just a statement to stop the torture, and there's not much truth in that. (Beware the suspects.)
Imagine two ideological, motivated foes, at odds and suspicious of each other, no need for truth at the outset, but with both faced off against each other, they are motivated by the fear that they may want to endanger or to kill each other. Both will invoke the "stand your ground" principle and take careful aim, and not do the honorable thing, and hopefully both pull the trigger and succeed. The possible outcomes, both miss, one misses, or whatever delivers no valuable truth. The ideological bound possess no truth, however strong your beliefs, no truth. This is a form of self-deported torture. (Facts are self-deported from Ideology.)
The Roman solution was torture and as a random act of terrorism. Had the Romans themselves been hung on the symbol of power, they might have congratulated themselves by showing approval, so brave and so ideological, and so not likely to work.
The "known suspect" tortured, may or may not provide some small piece of information; however since it impossible to be sure, you are required to escalate affairs to a state of war, since you cannot be sure. (Torture like reading tea leaves, guides a war?)
We have plenty of "known suspects" who are political and who believe ideologically that they are right, again no amount of torture is going to get the truth. Just imagine taking our illustrious Senators or Representatives and try to get them to change their ways and to rejoin a more productive society. Yes, we might use torture to get these elected representatives to act on the behalf all those who they represent, as opposed to just those who donated or voted in their favor. (Winning a family reunion by one vote, means you have to invite everyone.) As the subject to torture our Representatives, would begin spewing out donor lists, secret meetings and more confessions per minute that the world information infrastructure can handle. But you really don't expect to find truth, since ahead of time; you've discovered it's a political survivor game where the best paid pathological liars have survived.
If this is amusing, I have another game show just for you, it would called Monopoly except that name is already taken, it's CEOreally, if you have ever heard a CEO give a talk and you have a brain, the lie detector in it goes into overdrive. It sounds wonderful, but the talk is devoid of meaning, it's perfectly delivered lines are heard only by the faithful believers with reflective head nods, and reads so like the company's glossy handouts. If you can torture CEO to admit the truth, it is silly, first because it so sordid, you don't want to know, but in essence there is nothing in it that is truth, and of no use completing your assignment.
To get back to the spectrum of things torture is personalized terrorism, and if it worked it should be coincident, with meeting an implausible set of conditions, if a, and if b, and if c and, if d down through 40 levels were true then you'd have your information. But to be sure, then all the "ands" become "ors" and general warfare is required, I suppose war is mutually shared terrorism or a least transformative.
There's a far more general way of seeing; it political debate is based on nonsense conditions, if a singular example is cited as fact, then rebuttal is to deflate the fact with an opposing generality; if a generality is cited as fact, then rebuttal is to deflate the generality with an opposing single fact. In either case no information is learned and the truth cannot be found. The torture method of debate is a form of warfare where there will be winners and losers but general warfare (a campaign) where nothing is learned.
If you applied torture to powerful oil executives to extract information about oil supplies, worldwide resources, region by region, country by country, hoping to find truth, you will just find that there is no relationship between oil and warfare, no relationship between regional animosity and oil, or any country and another in a state of belligerence and oil, nor any relation between financial power and oil, or the fact that oil is energy. The reason is clear; the oil executive just does not have this information, and cannot produce the information, and cannot be compelled to demonstrate otherwise.
Why? It because that is not how to extract the most profit from a given resource, the knowledge of that resources is not material, the only hint you have is when one war after another is started with all the players on board. Then and only then will the players put the energy chips on the table and rush to buyout the next critical resources, I suppose that is the Sun, where it delivers 2.4 billion times as much energy as lands on the Earth. Dry land in clear weather sunny countries would be next, but no mind, since the truth cannot found in a dozen wars.
Stop the torture I'll do anything you ask and say anything to get elected, the I can torture.
I'm confused now. I didn't think this semantics were necessary to discuss in this thread but there we are. I would love to have torture, Guantanamo, human rights, civil liberties, the military budget and the Israeli/Palestinian conflict central campaign issues in this campaign, however Americans across the political spectrum are just too stupid to hold their leaders actually accountable for anything demonstrably important. Did I miss anything?