Cheney's Admissions to John King

[Woody]

Let me see ...

Killing someone vs. spilling water on their face.

[carolaa]

That's not funny. I'm sure you know better. Waterboarding is basically suffocation. It is cruel. And, yes, people have died from it.

[Woody]

Sorry. I hardly see the two on a par.

[Neil D]

I am told by a little old lady that to excuse sin is to justify the devil...So, justifying the sin of the US is ok when "they" do something bad to us..?

[Woody]

Have you ever read the O.T. ?

[carolaa]

Wow, are you saying that God tortured innocent people?

[carolaa]

Sorry. I hardly see the two on a par.

Me neither. I guess if I had to choose, I'd rather be killed in a quick plane crash than be tortured to death over a long period of time.

[Neil D]

Yeah, and that's why I rejoice that I am under the NT covenant....

[carolaa]

Today's edition of Democracy Now! had an interview with the author who made excerpts from the Red Cross report public. Here is a link: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/3/18/mark_danner_bush_lied_about_torture

Or you can go straight to their webside - www.democracynow.org.

[Woody]

Jesus is the same ... yesterday today and forever. Amen.

[there buster]

Well, here's the NYTimes

Quote:

A Pentagon report requested by President Obama on the conditions at the Guantánamo Bay detention center concluded that the prison complies with the humane-treatment requirements of the Geneva Conventions. But it makes recommendations for improvements including increasing human contact for the prisoners, according to two government officials who have read parts of it.

The review, requested by Mr. Obama on his second day in office, is to be delivered to the White House next week.

The president’s request, made as part of a plan to close the prison within a year, was widely seen as an effort to defuse accusations that there were widespread abuses at Guantánamo, and that many detainees were suffering severe psychological effects after years of isolation.

The report, by Adm. Patrick M. Walsh, the vice chief of naval operations, describes steps that could be taken to allow detainees to speak to one another more often and to engage in group activities, the government officials said. For years, critics have said that many detainees spend as many as 23 hours a day within the confines of cement cells and often were allowed to exercise alone in fenced-off outdoor pens.

The report is being presented to a White House that some government officials have described as caught off-guard by the extreme emotions and political crosscurrents provoked by its plan to close the Guantánamo prison. Some critics said the report’s conclusions could intensify the debate about the prison, and put the Obama White House for the first time in the position of defending it.

The report came as officials separately said on Friday that the Obama administration had decided on the transfer of the first Guantánamo detainee since the president took office, a former British resident, Binyam Mohamed. Lawyers for Mr. Mohamed had drawn wide attention with accusations that he was tortured in Morocco on instructions from American intelligence agencies.

Mr. Mohamed, who is to be returned to Britain, was originally charged with plotting to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb” inside the United States. But the Pentagon official in charge of the Bush administration’s military commission system for conducting war-crimes trials dismissed those charges in October.

Also on Friday, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced the creation of a task force to begin reviewing the cases of the remaining 245 detainees. The group, which is to include representatives of military, intelligence and other agencies, is to be led by a career federal prosecutor, Matthew G. Olsen, who has been a senior Justice Department lawyer dealing with national security issues.

The administration’s plan to close Guantánamo includes a new effort to decide whether detainees can be released, transferred to the custody of other countries or prosecuted. In the report on the conditions at Guantánamo, Admiral Walsh reviewed many accusations of abuse that critics have made about the prison, said one Pentagon official who has seen the report.

The report concluded that the Pentagon was in compliance with the requirements of the Geneva Conventions. The review included some of the most contentious issues, including the forced feeding of hunger-striking detainees and claims that many prisoners were suffering from psychosis as a result of conditions in the detention center.

According to one official, the report noted that some detainees had difficulty communicating from cell to cell, a contention that many detainees’ lawyers have also made. The Pentagon has long insisted that no detainees are held in solitary confinement. Military officials have said instead that the prisoners are held in “single-occupancy cells.”

Some Pentagon officials have continued to press the case that the Bush administration’s approach to detainee issues — and the Guantánamo Bay prison itself — should not be abandoned. The report is likely to accelerate that behind-the-scenes struggle.

The White House had no comment Friday.

One Pentagon official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivities involved in challenging the White House plan to close the prison, argued that the report showed that the Bush administration had created a humane detention camp. Speaking of the remaining detainees, this official said the report showed that if the men were moved, they might “go from a humane environment to a less humane environment.”

The word 'torture' has been invoked (not by anyone here, but by the left generally) for inflammatory purposes. Not everything that causes discomfort is in fact torture.

[Woody]

Thank you for setting the record straight Ichabod. Appreciate it.

[there buster]

Quote:

I'd rather be killed in a quick plane crash than be tortured to death over a long period of time.

A. There is not one single case of anyone being "tortured to death."

B. How about being roasted by burning aviation fuel 100 floors up, or, finding the fire so terrifying it forces you to jump?

C. The people on the planes and in the towers were simply going about their business. They were not plotting to kill their neighbors, or incinerate innocent people.

[Jeannieb43]

The word 'torture' has been invoked (not by anyone here, but by the left generally) for inflammatory purposes. Not everything that causes discomfort is in fact torture.

The article I posted referred to a prisoner being forced to watch his son's testicles being smashed with a hammer.

[Woody]

Quote:

The article I posted referred to a prisoner being forced to watch his son's testicles being smashed with a hammer.

For certain ... that would be in the catagory of 'discomfort'.

[carolaa]

C. The people on the planes and in the towers were simply going about their business. They were not plotting to kill their neighbors, or incinerate innocent people.

Yup - and so were many of the "enemy combatants."

[carolaa]

Thank you for setting the record straight Ichabod. Appreciate it.

No, no. That report is talking about Guantanamo Bay - today. The torture the Red Cross is talking about happened in the beginning - 2004, 2005, etc. Supposedly we quit doing the "enhanced" interrogation a while back - um, because there was too much controversy over its legality.

[carolaa]

The word 'torture' has been invoked (not by anyone here, but by the left generally) for inflammatory purposes. Not everything that causes discomfort is in fact torture.

I'm confident the Red Cross knows what torture is.

[Gerr]

The one thing I'm totally against the Gitmo situation is the keeping of prisoners for so long without charges or trial, or why it has taken so long to bring any of them to trial.

That to me defies all civility and morality.

[carolaa]

I agree. But I always felt that if they were going to keep them, they might as well keep them at Guantanamo, which supposedly stopped the enhanced interrogations, as opposed to transferring them to some secret prison where that is not the case.

[there buster]

Quote:

- and so were many of the "enemy combatants."

If these people were picked up from office buildings or on ordinary business trips that would make sense. That they were picked up on battlefields while armed changes things considerably.

[there buster]

Quote:

prisoners for so long without charges or trial, or why it has taken so long to bring any of them to trial.

That to me defies all civility and morality.

How long were POW's kept during WWII? Without charges or trial. Until the war was over. And some longer.

[there buster]

Quote:

I'm confident the Red Cross knows what torture is.

Amazing, like Jimmy Carter, they never seem to find it in Cuban jails. Oh,wait! They don't go there.

[there buster]

Quote:

But I always felt that if they were going to keep them, they might as well keep them at Guantanamo, which supposedly stopped the enhanced interrogations, as opposed to transferring them to some secret prison where that is not the case.

Then you must be similarly concerned about the Obama administration, which has explicitly stated it will continue rendition, where they are taken to places like Syria, where, no doubt, the Geneva Convention is scrupulously adhered to.

[Gerr]

Quote:

prisoners for so long without charges or trial, or why it has taken so long to bring any of them to trial.

That to me defies all civility and morality.

How long were POW's kept during WWII? Without charges or trial. Until the war was over. And some longer.

I don't believe the comparison is quite valid. With WWII there was an official declaration of war. There were nations officially in conflict. Now there is no official declaration of war. And what nations are we at war with?