Happy New Year’s Eve to all of our blog family. We will be spending New Year’s Eve at home this year — preparing for our annual New Year’s party on January 1st. I will be toasting to everyone on our extended blog family.
Tonight Leslie and I will share our traditional bottle of Schramsberg Sparkling wine. This is my wedding anniversary. Thirteen years ago, Leslie and I eloped on New Year’s Eve after eight years years of dating. (There is an ongoing dispute over calculating the event, I insist that this is our 22nd anniversary but Leslie insists on not counting the eight years of dating). We always celebrate with a bottle of Schramsberg. This was the bottle I bought after we got hitched at Alexandria City Hall. I used my house school ring to seal the deal.
The kids made it to midnight and watched the painful display of Anderson Cooper trying to restrain Kathy Griffin. It turns out the Mayan Apocalypse merely predicted Griffin’s appearance on New Year’s Eve. This included her attempt to throw cash into the crowd – a moronic idea that had to be physically stopped by Anderson to avert a disaster. If this was Griffin’s idea of a joke, it came across as an unhinged, unfunny person trying to fill time. The kids insisted that we turn to NBC instead.
We are expecting 200 friends to share in Wasabi Bloody Marys) and our traditional soup: The Bowl of the Wife of Kit Carson Soup. I have smoked two turkeys to put into the soup. I also have enough Wasabi to light up Tokyo.
Everyone drive carefully and have fun. I will be giving a toast to our entire blog family tonight (and, of course, my marriage).
History is going to look back on the last decade as one of the bleakest in US history I think. and not because a cadre of terrorists took down the twin towers. The things the US has said it stands for, domestically and abroad, have been shown to be a hollow sham, betrayed at a whim by executive connivance and chicanery, abetted and cheered on by a recumbent legislature in a manner befitting the Roman circus.
Gene, We may be arguing over a single letter. However, I doubt it matters to an idealogue. I’m saying torture “worke[d] as opposed to work[s]. I am quite certain the scientist you revere would agree that it can “work” but there are better techniques. WE AGREE ON THAT. This is quite insane and incredibly personal on your behalf. Please, I implore you, to let this go. You’ll live longer to fight the good fight if you don’t exert your energy over trivia. We agree on ~90%. Only a control freak needs 100%. So there’s that.
“However, I doubt it matters to an idealogue. I’m saying torture “worke[d] as opposed to work[s]. I am quite certain the scientist you revere would agree that it can “work” but there are better techniques. WE AGREE ON THAT. This is quite insane and incredibly personal on your behalf. Please, I implore you, to let this go. You’ll live longer to fight the good fight if you don’t exert your energy over trivia.”
My pompous ass has stayed out of this developing thread all day, but I would like to point out one thing that Nick does and that I really think he’s not aware of. due to the lack of awareness he thinks he is always being attacked, but never admits to being an attacker. In that one paragraph above he disparages Gene by calling him an “ideologue, engaging in insane and incredibly personal attacks and then is condescending.
Nick,
Your problems here aren’t that you’re being excluded from being a “regular” when you already are, but that you are blithely unaware of the fact that your whole manner is one of attack…..minor withdrawal….accusing others incivility…..and then finally playing victim. It really devolves upon your inability to perceive the consequences of your own verbal actions…..Now make yourself feel better and call me some more names…..Happy New Year.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K8_jgiNqUc
He has a wife, you know . . .
Ah rhetorical jujitsu. Works both ways doesn’t it?
Just wanted to note, I said much earlier on the thread that I wished for kindness in the New Year. I’m just noting that by way of nothing more that to say we fallible humans don’t remember very well. I’m well aware of my own mote-in-th-eye. That’s just the way we humans seem to be made.
And it has nothing to do with anything else. Carry on l-)
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was singing like a canary to the investigators questioning him. That is, until Biggus Dickus and his henchmen decided that he needed to be waterboarded…..165 or so times. After the first time they used torture, he clammed up and they got absolutely no intelligence at all from him after that. It was out of frustration that Dick Cheney and the thug wing of the CIA waterboarded him so many times. The suspect would not have told them what year it was after they started that $hit.
I probably have extracted more confessions and intelligence from suspects than anyone on this site. In forty years, I doubt I even raised my voice more than a half dozen times. I know some of the psychologists who created this monstrosity, and calling them to account is like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall.
bron
waterboarding is torture. just ask the people we have prosecuted for it.
No straw man here, nick. And the only dishonesty here is your own.
You want to say torture is bad and yet somehow responsible for a good thing – the capture of OBL – based on the report of one of the torturers instead of the CIA’s own account of what led to his capture which was human intelligence and signal intelligence, not torture.
You’re saying torture works. According to experts, it doesn’t. According to the CIA, it didn’t lead to OBL’s capture either.
Can’t have your cake and eat it too.
If you want to believe the fairy tale that torture is a good technique and led to OBL’s capture?
Knock yourself out.
Just don’t expect rational fact based beings to agree with you.
“A vested interest in avoiding prison.” Vegas has no line on that bet because it ain’t going to happen, and only a stupid person would.
ID, I refer you to my statement that both are professional liars. That should be dispositive.
“pols w/o a vested interest” is a recurring theme here. I need to bookmark this thread for future discussions.
Bron, PLEASE read what I’ve said @ least 3 times about torture. A straw man has been erected by an intellectually dishonest commenter who constantly accuses others of erecting them. I’m thinking of an Alanis Morrisette tune.
Bron, Also, if you read trhe book by Rodriquez you’ll see saavy terrorists like KSM learned how long they needed to last until the water stopped. He would count the seconds on his hand.
NickS,
Did I miss your blanket excuse: “Don’t trust nobody.” 😉 Just evaluate!!
I thought is what we are doing. I, mostly by posing counterclaims, which are only referenced in Russ Baker’s book, and other places forgotten now.
And we should all understand that the documents released by the CIA to the committee were not complete in ref to the list asked for. And they were in many cases heavily redacted under the usual cover excuses.
So the full and complete truth will never come from the CIA.
pete:
you arent curious about waterboarding as torture? I was, people were hotly debating it so I did it. I didnt like it, so I will assume KSM didnt much care for it either. Especially when he couldnt say stop.
Bron
1, January 1, 2013 at 5:45 pm
I asked my wife to put a towel over my face and pour water on me. It isnt very pleasant and I gave up pretty fast.
=======================================================
aaaah yeah
tmi bron, tmi
I see you’ve choose to believe a war criminal with a vested interest in avoiding prison instead of the CIA’s own contradictory account as relayed by pols without a vested interest in avoiding prison for their role in said torture.
nick:
Marines are tortured using waterboarding as part of their training to know what it is like to be captured and held as a POW.
I asked my wife to put a towel over my face and pour water on me. It isnt very pleasant and I gave up pretty fast. I am not even sure that is how you waterboard.
Although I will say I think I would find electrodes clipped to my gonads much more unpleasant. And I wont experiment with that.
We, as a country, should not engage in torture. That is what our enemies do. Just kill the enemy on the battlefield and be done with it. Winning quickly and overwhelmingly is the best thing to prevent military casualties, torture, civilian death and excessive property damage.
Ahhh civility. Pols “Without a vested interest”. I see you’re doubling down on 14.
nick,
The statement isn’t valid simply because it came from pols. It’s valid because it came from pols without a vested interest in protecting their own turf and keeping their own out of prison and based upon the CIA’s own reports to the Senate Intelligence Sub-committee regarding what led to OBL’s capture (old-fashioned OTG human intelligence and signal intelligence).
Of course Rodriguez is going to say that not only what he did worked but that it wasn’t torture because it was “authorized” – his crooked ass would be going to prison otherwise. Strange about how he claims it wasn’t torture, it was key to catching OBL and yet he destroyed the videotape evidence (in direct contradiction of express orders from his boss Porter Goss) and contradicts the CIA own telling of what actually led to OBL’s capture. Which wasn’t the detention and interrogation program.
I suppose you believe that Nixon’s tapes magically edited themselves too.
And take your kool-aid comment and stick it. You whine about civility and yet appear to be perfectly incapable of not using ad hominem when the facts don’t fit what you want to believe – which clearly is some form of “torture works”. Jose Rodriquez isn’t a hero. He isn’t a trustworthy source for information. He’s a war criminal. But you believe him if you like. It’s not against the law to be stupid.
ID, If you read what I have said we should not trust anyone, but we should read everything, and then make or own assessments. Both intelligence people and politicians lie for a living. That’s what makes “facts” as elusive as bin Laden was.
NickS,
Good points all, I made my reservations and stand by them for the while.
Trust a pol? Never, but I so hope that at least one true patriots in the analysis group would dare to contact the press.
But why should we trust the man who DID the torture interrogations? What polsition did he sit in? What was his function? Was he interrogator, analysist? Commander/Chief. It all is relevant. I am sure that you can answer.
As for signing off. that and a lot of other things are relevant to evaluating and judging the report and the press release and letter to CEO. If you got facts, then give’m to us. Opinions obviously won’t do.