Why The Need To Wash Their Dirty Linen In Public?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2867736/Shaming-West-Devastating-report-reveals-horrific-extent-CIA-torture-covers-Britain-s-role.html

Pretty damming stuff, but who can gain from making this report public, except our enemies?

[janbee]

Do the Taliban and Al Qaeda do lengthy reports and studies into THEIR appalling behaviour ? No. They get given praise and "here, have a few more virgins "!

[weecalf]

It may have summit to do with no body is above the law .Two wrongs don't make a right.

[Slapshot]

Ahhh the PC hand wringing lefties demanding that even mass murderers get their fair share of equal rights.... shame they decided to destroy the rights of the poor *** they murdered.

Covert stuff like this is what allows us just occasionally to get ahead of these clowns so any of you who think that reports like this are a good thing just remember how good it is next time theres a 9/11 or London bombings or a soldier beheaded on the streets......

[anotheoldgit]

Does this go towards balancing the scales a little?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2867179/ISIS-s-Slavery-Dummies-Jihadists-compile-chilling-checklist-treat-thousands-kidnapped-sex-slaves.html

[Old_Geezer]

I guess because the public should have an inkling of what their 'powers that be' are doing in their name ? It must be difficult to draw a line between "this needs to be kept secret" and "this needs to be known". I think the two areas probably overlap, causing a dilemma.

[Canary42]

So janbee would rather we acted like the Taliban - count me out on that one.

[sandyRoe]

Do you think releasing this report on the eve of Human Rights Day(10th Dec) was a deliberate two fingered signal to those who might criticise their actions?

[mikey4444]

If the USA has been using torture, then yes...I think we do need to know.

America sets itself up as the planets conscience, so when they have failed then why should we not be told ? Torture should be left to third-world dictatorships, not democratic nations like the US.

[Slapshot]

Okay Mikey.... how do the security services get the critical information that's needed to ensure some psychopath fundamentalist doesn't blow the *** out of central London on the busiest shopping days before christmas???? How does the western democratic nations get the information it needs for homeland security?? Answer that??

[jno]

the American public likes to know what its government is up to. The British public of course totally trusts its politicians and knows they would never do wrong.

[ChillDoubt]

When you're dealing with an enemy as fanatical as Islamic fundies, the goalposts change immeasurably and the gloves have to come off in order to preserve democracy.

I wouldn't expect someone who hasn't served to have the faintest idea about what it costs to preserve it.

[jno]

slapshot, one of the points about the report was that torture doesn't work. So it doesn't get you the critical information you seek.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/dec/09/senate-committee-cia-torture-does-not-work

[sandyRoe]

The best information comes from informers. They might be blackmailed into becoming 'sources' or even tempted with offers of big cash rewards.
I doubt if torture ever provides much in the way of useful information. The comrades of the man in custody being tortured would know he might talk and take whatever actions they thought necessary.

[retrocop]

Here Here Chilldoubt. The Geneva convention does not apply to terrorism as Lee Rigby and thousands of victims of ISIS have found out. How else would our wringing hand lefties obtain the necessary information to prevent atrocities on our own shores.

[ChillDoubt]

And yet, from the link:

Defenders of waterboarding, which was declared to be torture by the Obama administration, claimed it led to concrete results. They said that its use on Abu Zubaydah led to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and that the latter’s interrogation using waterboarding led to the location and killing of Osama bin Laden. Former vice-president Dick Cheney claimed that the techniques produced “phenomenal” results.

My own take on it is that the waterboarding had a psychological effect on the detainees to the extent that once confronted with newly gathered evidence they were reminded of what may occur if they did not confirm the intelligence, a sort of carrot and stick.
I know it's Hollywood but the film Zero Dark Thirty covered the subject and it's widely accepted that Bigelow(director) got it pretty accurate, so I'd go with that.

[Slapshot]

What Chilldoubt said !!

[sandyRoe]

Take the case of Bin Laden. Once he knew that someone who knew details of his contact arrangements had been captured he'd have changed them.
The claim that torture led to his killing is highly suspect.

[ChillDoubt]

sandy,
What if Osama had been led to believe that a minor snippet of information came from a prisoner in a Blacksite whom Al Qaeda had been misled into thinking had been killed in a terror raid as opposed to capture?

You might benefit from watching Zero Dark Thirty to see how the manhunt progressed and the intelligence gathered that led to his location and death.

[Old_Geezer]

The way it works is that those in the position to make the decision need to weigh up the means and the ends. If doing "evil" to one person prevents "evil" being done to many, then it is debatably justifiable. Although , of course, one doesn't get the same flak for failing to save 30 people as one does for deliberately abusing 1 or 2. I'd rather they ensured it was never an issue, that there were humane ways to get all the information available. So glad I don't have to make those decisions. Leave it to the less empathic types.