Obama Administration Argues Against Releasing Bush-Era Detainee Information

===The American public has a right to know the full truth about the torture that was committed in its name.”===
I know I’m on pins and needles waiting to find out who exactly blew cigar smoke in a detainee’s face.

We “scared” them and gave them a bath. Woooh, I am scared now.

===the rest of us are still in the battle to maintain and be victorious against the enemy===
I hope you are right. Word is the CIA agents are afraid to do their jobs now, even with direction and authority from the current president. That worked out well for them in the past, didn’t it?

Do the dance, BO.

I wonder if the ACLU will just start releasing the photos they’ve taken of CIA agents.

I had to marvel at comments that came from someone named “Marcy”. Whether you are a Dem or a Rep, it should be clear that changes are needed in our country on so many fronts. None, repeat none, of these are going to be smooth,and they most certainly won’t be easy. Nothing near the ease with which the past administration and its supporting cast framed and implemented our current diasater.
If you “tongue in cheek”, or otherwise, called the current president the “messiah”, then you should also be able to see the past president as “the destroyer of the American economy”.
However there is hope, for the knowledgeable Republicans and their followers, who are afterall the only true Americans, have a solution. Led by mental scholars like Rush and Sarah, they will certainly rid of us these horrid policies of this administration. Should, in the name of hell, they EVER come to power, we can all be certain of moving to the land of total meltdown.

“While some on the left as well as the right (George Will) are “loosing” faith, the rest of us are still in the battle to maintain and be victorious against the enemy in Afghanistan, secure Iraq, continue anti-terror operations with dozens of countries, and find out what the bad guys are doing”
That’s cute, you probably still believe in the tooth fairy and Santa. We lost Afgan, and Iraq. The war a terror was just to keep you looking at the left when the right was reaching in your pocket. It was all about oil, defense contracts, and political manuvering. You probably also believe the 8 years of spending in the Bush admin had nothing to do with the trillion dollar debt. Let me guess, it was Obama’s first stimulus package that was signed in by Bush and cash for clunkers?

I’m a Democrat and I voted for President Obama and I totally agree with him on this. We should not have the “right” to know everything that happens in the security of our nation. To think otherwise is naive. He is trying to do exactly what he promised during the election – keep our nation safe and rebuild our reputation in the world. I do not see how releasing these documents and risking CIA operations can help us. Conservatives tried to portray him as an extremist liberal during the elections and I think the extreme Left bought it since they are repeatedly surprised and disappointed when he doesn’t follow their agenda. He is governing in the center (which I think is good) but for those on the far left – it could be much worse. We could have McCain/Palin.

We lost Afgan, and Iraq. The war a terror was just to keep you looking at the left when the right was reaching in your pocket. It was all about oil, defense contracts, and political manuvering. You probably also believe the 8 years of spending in the Bush admin had nothing to do with the trillion dollar debt. Let me guess, it was Obama’s first stimulus package that was signed in by Bush and cash for clunkers? Posted by: SmarterThanU | Sep 2, 2009 3:15:11 PM
______________________________
I must be pretty empty in the IQ dept if you’re smarterthanI. I haven’t lost any Afgans, have you?, well it’s summer, I haven’t looked.
No we haven’t lost either Afghanistan yet or Iraq, and I am confounded at your defeatist attitude. Are you really a truther that there was no Osama just Bush/Cheeny, but now you have to replace it that there is no Osama just Obama.
No, despite the current WH linguistics, it realizes it is still in a global war on terror. And I don’t see what that has anything to do with the current 1.5 trillion deficit or the next trillion a year for the indefinite future.
Why don’t you look around and see who in the world wants to do us harm? Then get back to me, Smarter.

“simply to show the entire world that they violated the principles of which this country was based and such actions will not be supported as a nation”
What standing does the world have collectively or as individual nations to stand in judgment on us?
The UN did nothing in Rwanda and next to nothing in so many horrors from Bosnia to Somalia to Sudan / Darfur.
The countries that stand to accuse us are communist dictatorships (China), authoritarian oligarchy (Russia) and both radical and conservative Islamic regimes. In none of those countries are rights of their own citizens observed let alone that of foreign terrorists.
The rest of the world has been saved at least twice by US resolute commitments and sacrifices to freedom and democracy from WW II onward.
Behind the scenes many countries have provided assistance on the intelligence front as well are active in their own defense and some in the Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. That covert international assistance would disappear with grants FOIA requests on terror is discussed above, READ it again

People like Jim Rod like to throw the term socialist around every time they don’t like someone’s stance on an issue. So, I’d like to know in detail how he comes to the conclusion that the ACLU is “socialist”? Does the ACLU advocate the socialist doctrine of the state controlling the means of production and the proceeds divided equally among the working class? Does the ACLU sue in court in order to restructure the social order so that class distinctions based on power and wealth are eliminated in favor of a single equal class of people? At least know the definitions of the words you like to throw around. And by the way, what about unions? By using collective bargaining power to equalize the power disparity between the “capitalist” business owners and the workers,achieving equal and fair pay for equal work, isn’t that “socialist”? Are you against unions as well? Why don’t you do some research into what the ACLU has accomplished on behalf of Blacks and other minorities whose civil rights have been blatantly violated for decades. Or are you a racist as well?

That is precisely why the world needs to know for a fact that the Bush administration did indeed break our own and international laws by subjecting prisoners to illegal torture tactics.
Posted by: CarpeDiem
I get a kick out of you Bush Bashers not reading your own posts. So, are you saying no Democrats broke the law? Why such emphasis on Bush? Pelosi knew and let it happen. Hmmmm! Our CIA is covert. Please look that up in the dictionary. Your revenge for Bush is done and he is continuing the same ways, you just don’t want to see it yet.

Posted by: lfrichar | 3:51:57 PM
“I get a kick out of you Bush Bashers not reading your own posts. So, are you saying no Democrats broke the law? Why such emphasis on Bush? Pelosi knew and let it happen. Hmmmm! Our CIA is covert. Please look that up in the dictionary. Your revenge for Bush is done and he is continuing the same ways, you just don’t want to see it yet.”
I don’t care who gets tarred and feathered. If the evidence suggests others were involveded, they should also pay.
I’m an independent. It won’t matter to me who in our government is implicated. Being a public servant to the people of the United States doesn’t give a person immunity from our laws.

CarpeDiem——— I am also an Independent and have to disagree. 1st, I don’t believe waterboarding is torture. 2nd, how do you expect to keep a fair fight when a terrorist can simply cut your throat and all we can do is ask questions. 3rd, we “scared” known terrorists and then gave them a bath. 4th, CIA is covert for a reason. If all our adversaries know all we can do is talk, they would be shaking in their boots to get caught. That would, without any doubt, embolden them to attack more with less risk when they are interrogated.

I say we waterboard the ACLU.

Robert, I understand where you are coming from. However, have you ever heard the term “Lead by example”?
What do you think we are “teaching” other nations? Our example needs to be exemplary.
________________________________
Lincoln emancipated slaves by invasion, suspending habeus corpus, and ordering reprisal on Rebel POWs for Southern mistreatment of Union POWs
FDR emancipated half the world by detaining US citizens, coordinating with the villainous Stalin to divide Europe, and ordering (which Truman executed) the deaths more innocent civilians in one blow than anyone before or since.
They are my examples, difficult as they are, of heroic action of America. We have to live with the contradictions, (and not outright condemn or especially prosecute what we didn’t have to decide), so should the world.

I agree with Obama national security and well being of our soldier is more important than knowing what happened.
Let is go people

Fear not, libbies. I expect the New York Times will reveal all of this information before long.

Why do we want to “be better” than other people? Isn’t the very concept racist, in and of itself? You have to be very careful when you take the high road, because you have a longer fall than anyone else does.
You need to accept the fact that this is how things are done. It’s always been that way, not with us, but with anyone else who maintains intelligence agents. I’m struggling to see how anyone can take issue with making someone uncomfortable in order to keep people ALIVE.
There are things the average citizens shouldn’t know about. It’s why we have governments, after all: to do things that are necessary, most of which we can’t or won’t do for ourselves.
Be glad you have that buffer-zone for your conscience.

must be some really terrible stuff to make such a big effort to repress it…… if there are crimes they must be exposed and punished….no matter who committed the crimes…

When high ranking members of our own military, and from within our own CIA, make statements telling the public that what was done to prisoners by order of the executive office of the US was wrong and gained us nothing worth while, why would you think otherwise?
Posted by: CarpeDiem
So you immediately discredit Cheney? How convenient for you because you don’t like him. He was our VP which is pretty high up there. You say we got nothing worth while? They blanked out a third of what they released and they won’t release the rest, so how could you come to that conclusion? Corruption in the govt has nothing to do with running our CIA.

Obama lies again!!!
He just released some photos regarding Afghanistan to appease the left so this is a bold faced lie.
Don’t worry lefties, Obama will release more photos later. He just wants news stories that don’t focus on the details of his government takeover of every aspect of your lives through his health care “reform”(and of course ABC News complies with his wishes).

CarpeDiem – We have also taught the bad guys that we won’t tolerate their behavior. Wow, didn’t you think of that?

CarpeDiem———- Just curious, because I believe your world is on a different plain than mine. What did you think of our assassination of 3 pirates at Obama’s order?

lfrichar, your true colors are starting show through. You are no independent. How in the world can you say “Corruption in the govt has nothing to do with running our CIA”? Ever heard of the SS? Did corruption in their government have anything to do with their tactics? There needs to be checks and balances in all levels of the government, including and especially the CIA.
Yep, Cheney is an unbelievable tool. He’s scared he will be investigated, otherwise he wouldn’t give a rats backside if there was to be an investigation.
The list of things that should not be made public should not include breaking of laws.

Posted by: lfrichar – Just curious, because I believe your world is on a different plain than mine. What did you think of our assassination of 3 pirates at Obama’s order?
They were warned repeatedly and given plenty of time to give back their captives. I feel they got what they deserved.

“And a general — McClellan ran against him in 1864 telling the US (and the world – which was important to running the embargo against the South) that Lincoln was wrong in all aspects of the war, including the rising protests on repressions of civil liberty.”
ROFLMAO!
These neoconfederate revisionism’s are amusing.

They were warned repeatedly and given plenty of time to give back their captives. I feel they got what they deserved.
Posted by: CarpeDiem
They were warned at the risk of being killed right? The pirates NEVER killed a captive before, so why would we believe they would do it now? We waterboarded terrorist masterminds responsible for many deaths. Is there a difference in saving more lives whether on open seas or interrogation rooms?

Ryan C——- You just described the majority of our politicians.

Your argument only holds water if torture works. It doesn’t. Never has. Never will. Ask anybody who does the torturing. Cookies…yes, the ones you eat…were more useful than torture, the CIA found. Torture…in the history of torture…has never stopped a terrorist plot anywhere. If you’re willing to die for your cause, you’re willing to get tortured.

And, one more thing torture backers…So you think it is ok for a foreign country to torture soldiers from the USA, correct? To strip them down, take away their humanity, and torture them. All that is just fine for you, correct? Torture works both ways. Take away somebody’s eye and you better watch out for yours. You reap what you sew.

It is amazing how many people have went back to the Constitution since Obama has been in office. Sound pretty funny too me.I guest we should be consider 3/5 person again……. Stop the hate and get over it.

Yep. Obama is a liar. And Bush was such a truth-teller, yeah, ok. Republicans…you are aware that the last guy you trotted out was, like, oh, the worst President the United States has ever seen, right??? So, at this point, your opinion on the validity of a President is worthless. Listening to a Republican talking about a President would be like Matt Millen broadcasting a football game. Your credibility is in question, to say the least.

Posted by: lfrichar – They were warned at the risk of being killed right? The pirates NEVER killed a captive before, so why would we believe they would do it now? We waterboarded terrorist masterminds responsible for many deaths. Is there a difference in saving more lives whether on open seas or interrogation rooms?
———-
What you are trying to do will not work. There is a big difference between what happened with the pirates and what happened with the “detainees”.
The information obtained from illegal torture is not reliable. “studies have also shown that people will say anything when subjected to intense pain, and there have been several examples of people detained in the war on terror who have given false information under duress. Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, who ran Al Qaeda’s Khalden training camp in Afghanistan, told authorities that Iraq provided chemical and biological weapons training to Al Qaeda operatives, and that information wound up in Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Feb. 7, 2003 speech to the U.N. making the case for war in Iraq. Al-Libi later recanted, saying he made it all up under coercive interrogation.”
And then, due to erronious information, we go to war with a country that had nothing to do with the twin towers. Where did they find those WMD anyway…. Oh yeah, they never found any.

Do you really think people would still be upset if they really believed Obama won’t release the info. We have already lost faith. Actions speak louder than words.
We all know he is the President. Its time he looked out for all of us and not just a few of his radical buddies.
Its easy to critize those who don’t agree with you, but it takes a real leader who can work with and come to some kind of agreement with them.
Look at both sides of an argument and try to understand where both are coming from.

So, Ryan,
Are you willing to sacrifice victory or at least an honorable effort to crush Taliban / Al Qaeda at the Afghanistan / Pakistan border – for the sake of moral purity by sacrificing our intelligence operations domestically and internationally?
Posted by: robertb
**** Straw argument ALERT … see above
robertb
are you willing to nuke Iran, N. Korea, Russia, Iran, China right now, and adhere to the Bush Doctrine of preventive warfare: depose foreign regimes that represent a potential or perceived threat to the security of the United States, even if that threat is not immediate;
to get 10,000 terrorists?
It’s the only way to be sure……

They need to drop this ‘it’ll hurt national security’ bs.

This is where he angers the liberals.

What kind of numbskull actually thinks torture doesn’t work. Of course it does. Thousands of lives in Iraq were saved by interrigations. You can also count in finding out about possible terrorist attacks here in our own backyard. In general, the ACLU needs to get a life. In matters like this they are clueless. Let the military and the shadow operations people do their job. The fact that you are sitting there working on your second “Tini” and watching “true blood” reflects what a good job is being done. We had great intelligence in Vietnam. It was called the ROK Tiger Division (Korea) I can guarantee you that a vietcong would rather light himself on fire while running 10 miles before being ‘talked to’ by those folks. This country is becomming a bunch of bumbling, media fed sheep. Our crisis of the day is openly worrying if the government should impose a fat tax on that second Big Mac. You better hope it stays that way.

Some of these comments are making me laugh, I can’t tell who a Dem or a Repub.

After just seeing this report and blog, and at almost the same time a report about Phillip Garrido, a sickening parallel is evident. This individual was obeying ‘protocol’ by following the rules for sex offenders, but no one knew he was harboring a kidnapped girl (now woman) in his back yard! How many Americans knew about the 12 year old detainee at Guantanamo Bay that was kept for almost 7 years, and then released? This now 19 year old young adult missed key years of their life. Again, that is one reason there is something called ‘due process’ that is a keystone of our legal system. Openness and independent oversight is required in situations like this. If: “disclosure of the questioning procedures and methods used by the CIA as part of the detention program would allow al-Qa’ida and other terrorists to more effectively train to resist such techniques, which would result in degradation in the effectiveness of the techniques in the future.”, as Ms. Hilton argues. Then independent oversight should be employed. If a part of the government is unwilling to reveal their techniques to anyone, then there must be something wrong with the techniques. Where I work, I sometimes have two witnesses ensuring the quality of the procedures/work being performed.
During the days after the 9/11 attack, the ‘Black berets’ took over the entrance to the army base where I work, with their automatic weapons. Having to pass before these stately people daily instills a great amount of respect for them. Many in that business are not hired consultants, but have a shield (badge) and go to work daily to perform a great service for our country. I truly believe the atrocities in question were performed by a select few renegades for no ‘good’ reasons.
Imagine the procedure to be followed for waterboarding or other techniques that have been used: 1) If detainee does not provide any valid information from waterboarding, perform the following: a) find drill in top drawer of toolchest; b) Affix number 19MM drill bit to end of drill with drill key; c) Run drill next to detainee’s head, ensuring the drill or bit does not touch the detainee — This is ridiculous and shameful. To hold a drill to someone’s head is like a bad scene from a horror movie — the representatives of our country do not need to exhibit that behavior. If we treat human beings as ‘animals’ then that is what we have become ourselves. Just because someone has no morals does not mean we need to throw ours out the window! Oversight and openness in a process like this is essential!

It was all a political game with Obama from beginning, let’s make Bush look real bad. It was investigated going back but he had to look like the tough guy. Way to put our soldiers in more danger telling the world how you think we tortured people. Tired of this change, it’s not what we wanted. We were safer under Bush

“It was all a political game with Obama from beginning, let’s make Bush look real bad.”
Lie.
Nobody had to make Bush look bad. His approval rating was about the lowest any President had ever hit!
Get in touch with reality.

This is like “good cop bad cop”. We don’t want to do this but “they” are making us do it!

CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN!!!!! Yesiree bob. Bwahaaahaaahaaahaaa…