As if Judith Miller wasn't enough of an object lesson in how NOT to do journalism, the Washington Post gives us TBs top posted article <link>
which Glenn Greenwald proceeds to dismantle in Salon.


What makes the Post's breathless vindication of torture all the more journalistically corrupt is that the document on which it principally bases these claims -- the just-released 2004 CIA Inspector General Report -- provides no support whatsoever for the view that torture produced valuable intelligence, despite the fact that it was based on the claims of CIA officials themselves. Ironically, nobody has done a better job this week of demonstrating how true that is than the Post's own Greg Sargent -- who, in post after post this week -- dissected the IG Report to demonstrate that it provides no evidence for Cheney's claims that torture helped obtain valuable intelligence.

Here are the Greg Sargent posts mentioned for those of you too damn lazy to click the internal links yourself:

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And thanks.

Shep

Did you see how Sam Donaldson cut Liz Cheney down this morning? He actually laughed at her. And she did not get a lot of support from the other panelists.

Dang it, I missed that. What show? WHat network. Shoot, I didn't even know Sam was still in broadcasting! I always liked him... met him once in Ruidoso.

Shep

Another score for mom! Great post!

It would have been much better if I'd posted the Salon link, wouldn't it?

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Your links were already pretty damned damning. Still, Greewald's updates make for nice little cherries on my Sunday sundae. YUMMIE!

Shep

Sam was on with George Stephenopolis .His old show on ABC.He comes on fairly often and is quite outspoken now that he does not have to go down the middle.

Suggesting what "might have happened" had things been done differently in the past is always fun, especially when done by those who have no real way of being proven wrong.

In the real world we have actions and the results. What the results were is that the US gained valuable information from those who were waterboarded. Whether you agree with the method or not, the fact remains that results were produced.

Given who we were dealing with, the odds are that no other tactic would have worked in a timeframe that would make the information useful.

Ruidoso????? The one and only, famous, Ruidoso? By gum, Shep, I had no idea you fancied Quarterhorses. It's amazing how many people from different walks of life have so much in common.

Gramps

The report found that the interrogations obtained critical information to identify terrorists and stop potential plots and said some imprisoned terrorists provided more information after being exposed to brutal treatment.

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Even the New York Times -

Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, according to the 9-11 commission report, was the mastermind of the Oct. 12, 2000, attack on the U.S.S. Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors.

Nashiri was also the target of an "unauthorized" CIA interrogation technique (that had not been legally vetted by the Justice Department) that is described in a May 7, 2004, CIA inspector general's report that was partially declassified by the Obama administration this week.

CIA officers blew smoke in Nashiri's face, according to the report, and they used cigars.

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But you will let some Liberal fucking blogger tell you how terrible it was to be tortured and that nothing was gained from the techniques. How very intelligent of you Libarals.

IF there is another 9/11, I wish there was a way to be sure only Liberals pay the highest price with their ¨innocent lives¨.

I've got Salon right at the top of my home page and rarely miss Greenwald's articles. I am somewhat troubled over the torture controversy though.

Even people like Greenwald have been suckered into the struggle over whether torture worked or not when it should simply be an issue of whether torture was performed or not. Cheney has us all running in place over non issues in an attempt to soften public opinion towards tortures legality.

....in the overall picture of the discussion about waterboarding. One is the question of whether it worked, the other is whether it is considered inhimane or torture.

Flying jetliners into buildings, it could be claimed, is an effective means of doing something, so might be lining up a suspects family members in front of a ditch and holding guns to their head threatening to shoot them if the suspect did not talk or actually shooting them one by one until the suspect talked. Because any of any number of means might be effective would not seem to be an automatic reason to engage in them.

I believe one needs to look at the objective or objectives one wants to accomplish when engaging in any treatment of a suspected criminal or terrorist. There are short term and long term goals.

In many ways it might be similar to what are the short term outcomes of "teaching a lesson" to a child not to slap others, by slapping the child. In the short term the child says to themselves, hey, that hurt! I shouldn't do that again or I'll get slapped. They have learned something else though at the same time which in many ways confuses the other "lesson" they learned and that is that slapping is an effective way to control someone, thus the message is muddled because it suggests slapping others is both good and bad at the same time.

How many times have we heard about the outrage or been outraged ourselves to here of the horrendous treatment of Americans or any human being by others? Were we not making use of waterboarding and other techniques, but discovered other were doing so to captured Americans, what would be our reaction? If each of us is allowed to decide what is and what is not torture, then what is our complaint when others torture our people? In addition, if an innocent person is caught up in the dragnet and subjected to horrendous treatment, what do we think their impression of our nation will be? Will they understand that we had to do to them what we had to do or will they note a double standard and hypocrisy and when home speread the news, even recruit MORE people to be against us, not for us?

It would seem we have at least two objectives and each are important to the importance of saving American or any innocent lives. In the short term, the rapid extraction of useful information is important to thwart any attacks that might be in the works already and ones already in plannign stages. In the long term, the mission is to minimize the creation of any actions that could be used to legitimize anger against our nation. It would appear there are enough people out there who have found reasons to be angry at us, it would seem to defeat the purpose of fighting them if our means and methods for fighting them actually breed more of them, not fewer and produce reasons for them to recruit anyone against us.

I find it interesting that to many of the same people that believe the government is inept, inefficient, expensive and something we need less of, there seem to be no such feelings about the CIA and waterboarding. I also find it interesting the number of people who say they believe in the "Golden Rule" who don't act as if they believe in it. Whether they are consciously ignoring how they effect a double standard, knowing they are being hypocritical, but not caring or whether they lack the intelligence needed to think in more than one direction at a time, I'm not sure.

Perhaps there is a correlation between how many times their parents had to tell them "no" or send them to there rooms as a child before they "got" the message or perhaps their parents did not explain to them the reasons for their being prohibited from doing things and that it was to be a pain in the butt, but to help them survive life. The Golden Rule kinda says, if you want someone to kick you, kick them. If you don't want someone to kick you, don't kick them. It's not really rocket science, but some don't seem to get the concept or maybe they were the ones that liked to pull the pigtails of others, just to get a reaction.

One of the best ways to fight people doing bad things to other people is to teach the lesson that doing bad things to others is unacceptable and one of the best ways to do that is to lead by example and not engage in doing bad things to other people. One might have thought that by the year 2009 with as many "religious" right wing folks as there are around, that we'd have learn that lesson long long ago, yet it seems that a fair number of those who seem to like to constantly remind us of how moral they are and how moral we should all be, are practicing something far different than they preach.

Have a Grrrreat Sunday mom!

Why won´t the President simply declassify the results? That is the only thing Cheney has requested - quit cherry picking what if politically expedient and let America see the results.

If you were looking for information that supported your pre-conceived or wished for notions, then torture worked. That's what torture is used for...to get the information you want, not necessarily TRUE information. However, if you want to get at the truth, gaining trust works far better.

Secondly, as to the legality of torture...It seems that everyone on the CIA and former administration side is relying on memos of a lower-level justice department lawyer. Seems to me that just because some dude says something the government wants to do is A-OK does not really make it A-OK in the legal sense.

Cheney, et.al., have put themselves in a box with this one. And I'm sorry to say that if the level of intelligence, in the normal sense of the word, in the CIA is such that they relied on this one lawyer's "judgement" then we're in far worse shape than anyone can imagine. I was under the impression that we hired educated individuals to do CIA work. Apparently not.