Clean up the evidence

[Plane]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23120362/

FBI and military interrogators who began work with the suspects in late 2006 called themselves the "Clean Team,"

I don't think this is going to work , especially on the guys that got waterboarded.

It will be painfull and ironic to have to release the worst of them .

[The_Professor]

I don't know, Plane, if this will happen. They are apparently going before a MILITARY court. These courts have similar but also different rules they go by and are generally tougher on the accused. We'll see...

[Michael Tee]

If these guys have already been tortured and gave up the information, it's obviously because they preferred to give up the information rather than go through the torture again.

If a new bunch of friendly faces shows up and asks the same questions again, I think unless these guys are total morons, they'd figure that they better give the same answers to the "nice guys" as they gave to the torturers, otherwise it's back to the torture chamber.  At least, that's the story I'd give and I'm sure they're at least as smart as I am.  Although it probably would have been smarter for them to stonewall the "good cops" - - as the article indicates that some of them did.

Personally, I don't see how any reliable information comes out of torture.  The guy will say anything to stop the torture, and he figures the best bet is to say what he thinks the torturers want to hear.  A confession is good, and implicating the other prisoners is good too.  Also if the schmucks were dumb enough to destroy the tapes of the torture, the victim can say that they virtually dictated the whole confession to him.  Who's gonna believe the word of a bunch of torturers if they deny it?

[Plane]

If these guys have already been tortured and gave up the information, it's obviously because they preferred to give up the information rather than go through the torture again.

If a new bunch of friendly faces shows up and asks the same questions again, I think unless these guys are total morons, they'd figure that they better give the same answers to the "nice guys" as they gave to the torturers, otherwise it's back to the torture chamber.........." 

Yes exactly, the CIA was more concerned with rounding up more of the gang than they were trying to build a case against the one that they had. I don't disagree with their choice either , if we wind up releasing Kalid as a POW when hostilitys are over I won't be glad of that , but satisfied that what had to be done was.

[Michael Tee]

<<Yes exactly, the CIA was more concerned with rounding up more of the gang than they were trying to build a case against the one that they had.>>

Yeah but with the tapes destroyed, the victims can claim that they implicated whoever they were told to implicate.

[The_Professor]

If these guys have already been tortured and gave up the information, it's obviously because they preferred to give up the information rather than go through the torture again.

If a new bunch of friendly faces shows up and asks the same questions again, I think unless these guys are total morons, they'd figure that they better give the same answers to the "nice guys" as they gave to the torturers, otherwise it's back to the torture chamber.........." 

Yes exactly, the CIA was more concerned with rounding up more of the gang than they were trying to build a case against the one that they had. I don't disagree with their choice either , if we wind up releasing Kalid as a POW when hostilitys are over I won't be glad of that , but satisfied that what had to be done was.

Well, we can always ZAP him once he's "let loose". Beware those Predator Drones!

[Michael Tee]

<<Well, we can always ZAP him once he's "let loose". Beware those Predator Drones!>>

Why wait for the trial?  Why not just kill them in their cells?

[Xavier_Onassis]

In the Middle Ages people testified under torture that they had flown to the moon, had sex with goats and flown back. Torture really proves nothing, other than the people using it are morons.

[The_Professor]

<<Well, we can always ZAP him once he's "let loose". Beware those Predator Drones!>>

Why wait for the trial?  Why not just kill them in their cells?

Too obvious and might seem a bit, well, unseemly. Better to wait a few months and then ZAP him when he's on the lamb.

[Michael Tee]

<<Too obvious and might seem a bit, well, unseemly. Better to wait a few months and then ZAP him when he's on the lamb.>>

When nobody knows whose predator drone got him?  Nothing unseemly 'bout that.

Fact is, it doesn't matter what you do to them.  They were resolved to die the moment they joined the struggle, and there will be dozens, if not hundreds more to replace them.

I'm like Lincoln - - I believe you destroy your enemies by making them your friends.  These guys have major beefs against the U.S.A. and you should listen to them.  Otherwise, they'll always be able to inflict little mosquito bites on you (like the WTC/Pentagon attacks) and you'lll bust your balls trying to get them, in the process alienating most of the world, solidifying their movement with every "success" you have against it and in the end falling back to third-ranking or tenth-ranking position in the world while your rivals, China, the EU, India and maybe Russia and Brazil, soar past you, unburdened by the ever-escalating costs of fighting a self-renewing hatred engendered by their own actions.

[The_Professor]

That's YOUR view, of course. Not mine. I do advocate sitting down with them and discussing the relevant issues. Even bringing in a faciliator, a neutral party like JS's Danes, perhaps. Or a "moderate" Muslim leader of some renown. I seriously doubt much would come of it as the positions are too opposite. If they still perssi, oh well.

After that, however, the guy with the biggest and baddest weapon wins. Call it the Law of Nature, if you will.

I am perfectly willing to leave them alone if the reverse holds true by not stationing troops in the Middle East, for example. And similar acts. But, if we were to do that, and they still want a war, then that's fine. I gave 'em their shot, now they can eat mine. Fair, I believe.

[Plane]

I'm like Lincoln - - I believe you destroy your enemies by making them your friends. 

Was that what Lincon really wanted Grant and Sherman to do?

Lincon must have been severely dissapointed.

[Michael Tee]

<<Was that what Lincon really wanted Grant and Sherman to do?

<<Lincon must have been severely dissapointed.>>

Lincoln is hard for a liberal to discuss.  He went to the right war for the wrong reasons.  To a liberal, slavery could have been the casus belli but it wasn't.  So to back Lincoln is to really back a war for forcible preservation of a union - - basically an unjust war.  But trapped because we believe the war could have been justified by anti-slavery.

If you are fighting slave-owners, you are fighting the lowest form of humanity.  There is nothing that you can't or shouldn't do to them (except torture them) - - you can kill them, burn their homes to the ground, etc.  These people are EVIL.

OTOH, if you are fighting secessionists, you shouldn't even fight.  They've got a right to secede.  How can you justify killing them, burning their homes, etc.?

We have to say, Lincoln did the right things for the wrong reasons.  He should have sent his generals after them and he shouldn't have tried to befriend them - - you can't befriend racist slave-owners.  They have to be beaten into the ground.  But Lincoln himself didn't feel that way about them.

So I like Lincoln's approach to destroying your enemies by making them your friends.  He was talking about people that HE hoped to be friends with.  Whether or not he misjudged the kind of people who he should aspire to be friends with is a different issue.   Once the Nazis were gone from power, I have seen very few people we couldn't be friends with.  Some leaders who should have been shot, but no societies based on such contrary principles that we couldn't have bridged our differences.

[Plane]

The North was not peopled with a diffrent species than was the south , nor were slave owners entirely bad people .

Licon was always against slavery , but he was willing to compromise for the sake of peace , the unwillingness of the Southern leaders to compromise further than they already had frustrated Lincons early plan.


I imagine Lincon working within the system to encourage slavery to diminish by degrees, become less important economicly and become less popular was likely his intent ,but John Brown was the one who really had things his way .