Posted on 01/14/2009 1:18:12 AM PST by gondramB
A Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo Bay says the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the Washington Post reported.
"We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani," Susan J. Crawford told the Post. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution.
Crawford is the first senior Bush administration official who investigates Guantanamo dealings to publicly say a detainee was tortured.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
“The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual,” she told the Post. “This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for.”
Interrogation techniques used on Qahtani included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold. He was hospitalized twice.”
This was the 20th hijacker. Poor baby, he suffered so. But not more than Barbara Olsen and all DC children on that plane that headed from Dulles toward the Pentagon. Or the passengers on Flight 93. Too bad he missed his flight that day, he’d have been in real hell all this time.
I have no problem with causing pain to whatever degree is deemed necessary to extract information which will help protect innocent lives.
I am not confusing the difference, I happen to have no problem with it. It doesn’t bother me in the least. I would be very upset if I discovered that this was not being practised as part of defending our country. I consider it a form of self defense...pre-emptive, if you will.
I think your definition of torture is a bit over the top, but whatever.
“I hate those people for what they did to my Country, and to my Countrymen on that day. Anything we do to rid the earth of them will be just short of enough.”
Well said, and I’m in full agreement.
Yea, well listening to Hillary guffaw for the next 8 years as Secretary of State meets the legal definition of torture, too, and nobody's doing anything about that.
I think that a good definition of torture could be found in the record of the Hanoi Hilton...
And until we are willing to get in touch with our inner ba$tard, we will not be able to throw off the gloves, pull their shirts over the backs of their heads, and starting sending in uppercuts.
And we will continue to self-flagellate our national pysche until something REALLY big happens to us...
The ONLY thing these vermin understand and respect is the extensive and overwhelming use of force. As the Romans used to say:
"Odierunt, dum timerunt" (maybe a tad rusty on the lingua latina, but pretty close...)
(Let them hate us, so long as they fear us)
...which was just dandy for fighting an enemy with a corresponding sense of morality.
Which we are not facing in this war.
I was communicating with my brother who is in Baghdad all through the election, I won't speak for all but, with the family and friends I have over there, they say the same thing. They were horrified by the election of Obama.
We read the papers and watch the news but, the majority of us have NO IDEA of what we are actually dealing with. My brother was back for Christmas, along with another Marine friend who just got done with a tour. The stories I have had told to me from the people living it day in and day out lets just say, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
> The person is still alive which translates to he was
> not ‘tortured’ enough.
About a year after the Beslan massacre, where Islamic Chechyan terrorists murdered over 300 school children and adults, I read in the Moscow Times that they had captured a Chechyen terrorist who was implicated in the planning of the attack.
They were able to glean information from him that led to the capture and extermination of other Beslan massacre conspirators.
Near the end of the article, it simply said that the terrorist had “died during interrogation”.
Very little that has been done anywhere would qualify in the Founding Fathers minds as cruel or unusual punishment. They could waterboard a guy 20 times, and not meet my definition of torture.
How do you define torture?
The only torture is the announcement by our government, to the world and our enemies, that there is a place THEY WILL NOT GO to protect our population.
That is sick.
“A Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo Bay says the U.S. military tortured...”
WTF is going on with this administration? Are their any Bush admin officials who aren’t complete idiots, or is that a job requirement?
“Please madam, that is like saying a prostitute who gets paid $50 is somehow different than one that makes $500.
Either way it remains prostitution.”
What is proportional for those who hide in civilian populations, and who try to kill thousands? It seems to me that a few weeks of interrogation followed by execution would be about right.
Worse, they are actually proud of doing it, patting each other on the back, self affirmation, self esteem, and tolerance are virtues now.
alinsky, stalin, goebbels and castro... nice company you study and emulate. When Israel kills ALL of the palis... the war will be won... when we destroy islam as a death cult... the war will be won... until then... we apply band aids to cancers.
LLS
Indeed. When we can't even trust the government to oversee Freddie, Fannie, Madoff, or TARP funds, why give those clowns in DC (not the field agents doing the hard work) a blank check on this issue??
You have to be carefull of your terms. Is 'lack of sleep' worse than killing?
The article noted: "The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual," she told the Post. "This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for."
Interrogation techniques used on Qahtani included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold.
So, the acts were authorized, which meant that the folks in question had decided that the acts were NOT torture, since torture is illegal.
This Bush official is just inserting her private opinion here. She'd probably label any questioning without the word 'Please' in every question to be torture.
Note how she say's "When you think of torture", to imply torture as most folks think of it, and then go on to admit that she can't point to a single act of torture but implies a gestalt as the totality was "abusive and uncalled for". So, apparently she didn't have any friends in NYC on 9/11 so it was uncalled for.
Another chapter in the sad tale of the pussyfication of America.
let me see, if a family member was killed by these BOZO’S, would you STILL feel like we should give them cookies and milk?
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