You don’t say? Guess even Obama understands that it’s no use building a client state if your clients begin getting blown up in mall bombings.
Pragmatism.
Nuance.
Search
Archive Calendar
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | |
Archives
Categories
- A Government That Can Force You to Buy Health Insurance Can Make You Do Anything (3)
- a protein wisdom philosophy primer (3)
- academics (25)
- armadillo (8)
- Friday Fiction 100 Word Challenge (51)
- from the protein wisdom conceptual series (136)
- identity politics (33)
- If Republicans Win the Senate in 2014 (1)
- in which celebraties comment on current events (67)
- language / intentionalism (88)
- legal (6)
- My brief conversations with inanimate objects (130)
- NSA / FISA (46)
- One Term to Serve, the 2012 Revival (6)
- Overheard in a Fallujah bunker (27)
- Poems from 196x, Revised by the Ghost of Richard Brauti (27)
- protein wisdom's DNC coverage (30)
- protein wisdom's RNC coverage (29)
- protein wisdom: the movie Lists (20)
- Provocateurism (16)
- real-time empirical observations (51)
- red pills found behind the sofa cushions (42)
- Scenes from my driveway (61)
- Talking back to 80s music (41)
- The Martha Stewart Chronicles (58)
- The protein wisdom interviews (10)
- The protein wisdom original poems (142)
- Uncategorized (20,046)
- Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, abridged (34)
Recent Comments
- In The Mailbox: 02.28.23 (Afternoon Edition) : The Other McCain on Hey, longtime pw readers…
- In The Mailbox: 12.23.22 : The Other McCain on Patrick J. Carroll truly IS a sad, embittered psychopath
- Danger on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
- Danger on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
- In The Mailbox: 07.18.22 : The Other McCain on Patrick J. Carroll might be a psychopath
Where’s he going to put them, if he closes Gitmo? This could get as troublesome as those Marielito detainees, back in the 80s.
Sullivan has to give Obama a pass:
Your curly chest hairs
That sly come hither stare
Your swimming in the bare
Its whiplash
And Ive got no defense for it
Even waterboarding is mild compared to it
What good would common sense for it do
cause its whiplash, wicked whiplash
And although, I know, its strictly taboo
Obama arouses the need in me
My heart says yes indeed in me
Proceed with what your leading me to
It may be considered decedent
And perhaps one without any precedent
But there’s no nicer President than you…
I agree that most of this is BS. It has dawned on Team Obama that it cannot simply release murderous thugs into the Country and at the same time they have to appease the left and the Sullivans out there clamoring for war trials against the Bush Administration. So watch for the Gitmo closing order to get delayed, to buy Team Obama more time. Obama will fein national security to keep the CIA and Military happy on release of photographs, and then will let the courts do his dirty work on disclosing documents, detaining terrorists, etc. So long as the pretense is maintained, Andrew Sullivan and others pundits of the left will turn into cirque du soleil performers in dealing with Obama and his contradictory policies.
I got to personally deal with many Marielitos. They were wonderful human beings with terrific personal hygiene.
The Sanity Inspector, many of the Marielitos were bad, but they were still common criminals. The detainees at Gitmo are mostly terrorists. That is a hell of a lot worse. That our Arab and European allies do not want them says it all.
Obama is like a teenager realizing Dad wasn’t as stupid as he thought.
Being “present” isn’t the same as being responsible.
Huh, who’d of thought?
Its almost like his campaign was an exercise in empty moral posturing to the effect of not taking National Defense seriously, or something.
But he’s not Bush, you’ll recall.
Can’t anyone offer to just shoot or hang the fuckers and be done with it?
Is there any element of foreign policy remaining in which Teleprompter Jesus and the mouth-breathing left have not revealed themselves to have been a bunch of nakedly political infants over the last eight years?
Eight years?
Its almost like his campaign was an exercise in empty moral posturing to the effect of not taking National Defense seriously, or something.
Fortunately for him, his constituency is morally empty and considers empty moral posturing to be a virtue.
But they won. That’s all that reallly ever mattered.
“This could get as troublesome as those Marielito detainees, back in the 80s.”
Oh no you don’t say! Plenty of them were held up at Fort McCoy. Nothing like having a female NCO walk by as some crazy dude is hanging from a chain link fence, skinning his carrot and smiling at her…
I really don’t want detainee duty, thanks.
http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/05/10/death-star-destroys.html
I doubt releasing the Gitmo folks will yield quite so many third basemen and middle relief pitchers.
OT: speaking of baseball, a visual illusion too cool for school. Curveballs. h/t Rachel Abrams at WSBlog
Dunno, Alec. I bet some of those jihadis can pitch pretty well. All that practice stoning adulterers…
Andrew Sullivan today at the Daily Dish.
I assume that last line was a joke, albeit a poor one. Whiplash!
Instead of asking Baracky how much of your time is left ask him how much of your mind I think baby cause in this life things are much harder than in the afterworld. In this life you’re on your own.
So, Barcky is now being pragmatic, but Bush was evil for having taken the same course. Leftist logic, it burns.
Whiplash!
The Dish Reader above makes a good point, Obama may be following bad policies, but he is bright enough to realize war crimes against Bush are a fight he cannot win. The question is what happens when Obama does not “fix the economy, fix healthcare, get a handle on the two wars he’s dealing with”?
Oh yeah, Whiplash!
recognize that posts about the unhinged Sullivan usually prompt a smattering of comments wondering why anyone should care about his little rants. Thus, it is worth noting that he has one of the biggest blogs on the Internet. He accounts for well over half the traffic to The Atlantic’s website, which implies that he has hundreds of thousands of readers daily. He is still taken seriously by the establishment media, despite trafficking in bizarre conspiracy theories for years. And Pres. Obama reads his blog — and gets misinformed by it. Indeed, for all we know, Sullivan may be desperately bidding for attention in the hopes that Obama or one of his flunkies will exert influence regarding his immigration status. Regardless, it is worth noting the enabling of the Internet’s version of a sandwich board-wearing lunatic, spewing nonsense at random pedestrians.
Whiplash!
I’m very glad Obama was lying about this during the campaign.
Palamino!
Ace says he looks forward to seeing if SNL can manage the guts to attack Pelosi when she’s in real political peril.
Because he wants to see if SNL will be hypocritical.
Ace also points out that Democrats have gasped and proclaimed, we should look into these false reports the Speaker has mentioned. This, this is exactly what John Boehner’s reaction should have been.
**Gasp!***False Reports!***We should have a serious hearing on this!**
iowahawk
?
Olbermann melts down? Say it aint so Keith, say it aint so.
Nothing to do with Obama, other than KO should be having a terminal case of whiplash anytime soon.
Honestly,if you don’t understand the difference between detaining someone and imprisoning them, you simply cannot grasp the brilliant nuance of this plan…I mean, it has a whole different name…
Elevators trying to break down can also cause whiplash …
Honestly,if you don’t understand the difference between detaining someone and imprisoning them, you simply cannot grasp the brilliant nuance of this plan…I mean, it has a whole different name…
You could kinda see this line of bullshit coming when the Donks started calling jihadis “Man-Made Disaster Facilitators with Legitimate Grievances Against the Bush Administration.”
if de-elevator tries 2 bring u down, go crazy – punch a higher floor I think
Campaign promises melt like ice cream in the summer sun, only faster? You mean that he
Said it is only a paper moon
Sailing over a cardboard sea,
But it wouldnt be make believe
If you believed in me.
Say it is only a canvas sky
Hanging over a muslin tree,
But it wouldnt be make believe
If you believed in me.
Without your love,
Its a honky-tonk parade.
Without your love,
Its a melody played in a penny arcade.
Its a barnum and bailey world,
Just as phony as it can be,
But it wouldnt be make believe
If you believed in me.
Without your love,
Its a honky-tonk parade.
Without your love,
Its a melody played in a penny arcade.
Its a barnum and bailey world
Just as phony as it can be,
But it wouldnt be make believe
If you believed in me.
You don’t say?
you do know that islamic science created the elevator
The Russians say they were first.
Okay, I am against waterboarding. Sleep deprivation and other EIT, if taken too far could constitute torture too. I have been called a wuss and idiot for saying so, but what the heck. I am also against the left’s push for Bush war crime prosecutions.
But Mother Jones listed the top songs the US uses to torture. Jeez Louise, to think I tortured myself with a couple of these songs.
Bruce Springsteen may weep to know he made the top twenty.
The men the American public admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.
H. L. Mencken
Okay, I am against waterboarding. Sleep deprivation and other EIT, if taken too far could constitute torture too. I have been called a wuss and idiot for saying so, but what the heck. I am also against the left’s push for Bush war crime prosecutions.
Wuss is something you call a friend who doesn’t want to do shots of tequila. You’re a huge fucking pussy.
Being tortured would suck but there are steps you can take.
Abe Froman, go bend over and suck your own cock, sausage king.
I am against it as a matter of policy. I do not think it is right. If I am a pussy for saying so, well my position is the same as General Petraeus and Michael Yon and other fellow “pussies.” I think it is better to kill terrorists and al Qaeda scum honorably on the battle field and for those high value terrorist leaders who are captured that there are better ways to get information from such individuals than torturing them. I also do not consider milder forms of EIT torture. Are you some Obama fascist who demands absolute agreement with your position? I am also for not demonizing or attacking the Bush Administration over it.
So when you get into your Yogi position and clamp down on that Vienna Weiner of yours, just remember not to chew too hard.
I’m not going to call you a pussy Joe, but a couple things for you to consider.
I think it is better to kill terrorists and al Qaeda scum honorably on the battle field…
One thing about terrorist scum is that they are less likely to actually show up on what you might conventionally call a battlefield, and are more likely to kill themselves in the process of whatever act of madness they are up to.
and for those high value terrorist leaders who are captured that there are better ways to get information from such individuals than torturing them.
I hear this one from time to time, so I wonder if you might explain what these better ways are? Thanks.
So,I suppose it has no bearing that all US military flight crews are water-boarded when they go through SERE school. They seem to come through it okay. Then why would it be worse to do it to “unlawful combatants”. Selective morality, or what? If it’s good enough for our men and women in the military, why not for these a**holes?
Relativism? Or what?
Cheers!
ChrisP
The hateful hating terrorist haters should Refresh Everything and then we wouldn’t have to make them talk and tell us about the terrorisms and stuff they are planning in their little terrorist heads.
Good comeback Joe. We’re well aware of your position since you bore people with it on an almost daily basis. When you say there are better ways to extract information than torture you are playing the same infantile game as the leftoids do because nobody here is advocating torture, let alone as a routine policy. But when you get all kinds of squeamish over a few people being subjected to what all military aviators go through in training as well as things like sleep deprivation which are staples of fraternity pledging, I don’t see how you can be anything other than a pussy.
I suppose it could get down to your “personal” definition of torture. To me, drilling holes in your patella with the handy Makita I would call torture. Water-boarding, not so much. Sleep deprivation is, admittedly, a pain in the a*s, but you will recover. Most of us have undergone that during ‘finals-week’. We’re still here.
It all comes down to semantics, doesn’t it? What IS “torture? To me, water-boarding, while it will scare the sh*t out of you, is NOT “torture”. The drilling holes in your anatomy would certainly rank right up there. Ask Saddam. He knew what worked, as did his sons…
Cheers!
ChrisP
Is this an official flame thread?
Please say yes, please say yes, please say yes…
So, you think we did wrong by Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Joe?
Smoke ’em if you got ’em, bh.
Sweet!
Hey, did you guys know that happyfeet keeps a secret stash of Big Booty, Dirty Moderates periodicals under his bed?
i like using navy seals to shoot terrorists on a life raft
i like the communist in chief using predator obama drones to kill muslims in pakeestan
I heard he reads Dirty Socialist Nurses In Heat. For the articles.
Years ago, Joe once placed another child under citizen’s arrest after witnessing particularly gruesome Indian burn.
I hear happyfeet was the photo editor of a short lived periodical called Rich Girls, RINO Daddies.
I hear happyfeet was the photo editor of a short lived periodical called Rich Girls,PROGG
RINODaddiesAbe, a few days of sleep deprivation is tough but doable. I did it all the time in college. Beyond three days things get weird. You start keeping someone up beyond that, say a week, it is torture. That is why meth heads go psychotic, they generally haven’t slept for a week.
I am against waterboarding and extreme interrogation because I think it was more counter productive than anything else. The Rumsfeld DoD taking of the gloves routine was mostly stupid and definitely counter productive. The CIA program was fairly controlled and for the most part was not torture.
Do I care KSM was waterboarded? While I disagree with water boarding, no, I do not really feel the least bit of remorse about KSM. I would have prefered he got a bullet in the head.
If I am a pussy like Gen. Petraeus, well then I am a pussy. Michael Yon is a pussy. Col. Herrington is a pussy.
Well once I beat a fellow student, who was a couple of years older than me, senseless by pounding his face into the ice because he kept fucking with me during a pick up hockey game. Does that count?
The real reason SBP is tough on thor and meya? His regrets over being such a lax, hippy father when they were children.
I don’t even subscribe to any magazines I swear. I would never be part of the problem like that. What is the worst thing I do? The worst thing I do is I buy books at the airport sometimes. Mostly though the dirty socialist media never ever gets monies from me to where I can help it. It kind of sucks but it’s a question of integrity and also they are hurting our little country a lot mercilessly.
thor has gone away I wonder if he is adventuring in foreign lands
Flame thread, Joe.
For instance, I have it on good authority that Dicentra took up gardening because unlike real pets, plants can’t walk away from her.
My money says he’s in jail.
I heard cynn’s real name is Stanley.
thor? He’s developing super powers in the lab. So far, he’s come up with x-ray vision that only works on men’s clothes.
Did we do wrong by him? Did we do a bad thing that we really shouldn’t do?
For the record, if I had my druthers, I’d rather be waterboarded than shot. But I’m funny like that.
dude plants suck up co3,000,000,000,000
Joe, all those links seemed to involve discussions of detainee abuse by untrained, overheated soldiers. Know anyone here who condones that?
cynn? Dropped out in the first grade because penmanship had an ABCs prereq.
#62
You sure it’s not Cleveland?
Yeah, I’m voting for waterboarding over being shot too. Unless I had important secrets I didn’t want to divulge…
Oh, now I get it.
stanley steamers to “save the planet ™”
If the pay was good I’d be waterboarded for money.
But a Black an Decker to the kneecaps? Pass.
why is O! killing people in Afghanistan?
Pablo. We did not torture Saddam. We milked him for intellgence by appealing to his ego and manipulating him psychologically, then we turned him over to the Iraqis and they hung him.
We are never going to torture like the Saudis and Egyptians do and even they did not stop bin Laden and Zawahiri. I think it is honorable to kill the enemy on the battlefield and honorable to convict a captured irregular enemy combatant in a military tribunal and then execute them. It is not honorable to torture a captive, no mater what they did. But the fact some waterboarding happened to KSM is shit that happens in war. I am not going to wallow about it.
I may not have agreed with the firebombing of Dresden at the end of WWII, but I still consider Churchill a hero. I do not think we should have detained Japanese Americans in WWII, but again I understand that times were different. It does not make FDR a war criminal.
My bet is he is an involuntary mental health consumer having issues with commitment.
Or possibly had a meet up in Dallas with SDN and others. He was traveling last thing I remember.
I’m still waiting for you to explain those ‘better ways’ to get info from captured terrorist Joe.
Me too. I have enough trouble not doing myself in with power tools. I don’t want assistance.
I think it is honorable to protect my family. I will do whatever that takes.
ThomasD, read Col, Herrington’s explanation.
The real reason Jeff bought a 100lb weight vest?
Best way to simulate an angry midget on your back. He’s often beat up by midgets.
Seriously. I am no expert on interrogation. I assume most of you are not either. Col. Herrington is. I also trust Michael Yon and General Petraeus on this issue.
Perhaps water boarding isn’t really all that effective. What do you reckon the average splodey-dope’s oral hygiene is like? Probably could use a little dental work I am guessing.
OK, so I read the Colonel’s explanation Joe, now let’s hear yours.
I am sure Col. Herrington likes to say that, Joe, but unfortunately for you and him the dudes that actually interrogated KSM disagree. Since they were there, I tend to take their word for it.
So Joe, you ‘better ways’ basically boils down to ‘get Colonel Herrington on the job’ because, although you admit you are not an expert, you like what he has to say.
You will probably be happy to find out we didn’t, then.
B Moe, #85, please explain.
B Moe,
No, not my childhood dental visits.
In the 50’s it was not unusual for dentists to do drilling on children without any Novocaine. Theory was their teeth hadn’t developed the nerves to cause pain, so I was told later in life. I can say the theory sucked from more than a few personal experiences.
bh
100 Lbs has to be a dwarf, or even a petite woman. Midgets go smaller I think like the 50Lb vest he had.
Okay, in the interests of the flame thread, I retract. Two midgets? That could get dicey.
Japanese-American weren’t relocated, Japanese citizens living on the west coast were. And they weren’t detained or imprisoned, they were ordered to evacuate the coast. Many of them had no where to go, so they were relocated to refugee camps. They were free to leave if they had other accommodations inland.
Read Malkin’s book.
Had the same experience in the 60s. I can barely watch that movie because of it.
I’m a lying sack of contradictory impulses on this issue.
Im with Joe generally, but lets face it, you cant treat a KSM or a guy like him as if he was a federal detainee.
he is a religously indoctrinated psychopath that generates internal satisfaction from the amount of stress we place on him. Extreme measures are all that worked.
torture is an absolute moral wrong, except of course for the moral effect of the mass slaughter a KSM has in store for us.
so we do what needs to be done.
it is the human way and i believe most nations do it.
I hope to God we do it rarely, and I hope some good comes of it.
maybe we will know authoriatively some day.
Re Obama: this is his first honest move as POTUS. It was bound to happen.
Thanks, B Moe. The things I don’t know fill many libraries.
I must respectfully disagree, intent must come into play. Do you believe the examples I linked above from Marathon Man were torture? Was it also torture when dentists did exactly the same thing to geoffb and I as children? Are dentists immoral?
Female and add some Jello and you have a money making proposition.
what the? can we get a day off from the “I” word?
j/k
intent is key, i agree.
I think we’re on the right side of the trade, but, I’ll warrant that things got out of control for a bit at Gitmo.
If we have to do something to KSM or the like, then we have go north of protocols. Thats life.
and like i said, the immorality of torture is readily invalidated by the necessity of protecting innocent American life.
The word on the street is that happyfeet subscribes to Two Midgets, One Weight Vest.
As long as he stays away from RealityCheck I think he will be okay.
The COL wasn’t asked the right questions.
COL Harrington is absolutley correct in every statement, except in his absolute assessmentof waterboarding as torture. He’s conflating it with other practices, like the one he described used by the North Vietnamese, but that’s a differetne subject.
Enhanced interrgation is aggressive for only one reason, to reduce the time it takes for the interrigator to establish the kind of raport with the subject that the COL describes. That’s a process that takes time to do. The guys that hold the subject down and pour the water are not the guys who ask the questions. The interrogator is the guy who comes in and lets the subject up, and offers him a towel, dry clothes. In other cases mentioned, he’s the one who lets the subject lay down and sleep or have a seat after standing long periods. It’s about developing an association in the mind of the subject that the interrogator is okay.
And it’s dicey. All of it is; even the COL’s methods may never get the information that you’re really looking for, but this moreso, in that if it doesn’t work, you’ve probably blown the chances for less aggressive techniques to work.
All of which is expressly why there were a large body of rules to follow about authorization, where, when, who, how long…. That stuff isn’t just an attempt to dodge legal liability, it’s about tailoring the methods to the appropriate cases and maximizing effectiveness when it is used.
I also have to disagree with Harrington about the effectivenes of sleep deprivation/loud music. At the tail end of fraternity pledging we were kept up for 72 hours. The last 4-6 hrs. of which involved us sitting indian-style while blindfolded. You had no idea if you were alone or not until you failed to stay upright, at which point you’d get shaken. The whole time incoherent psychedelic noise was blasted in our ears and the combination of everything literally made you feel like you were on the brink of madness. After hours of this I was led into a room, blindfold removed and then subjected to a mock interrogation and you’re so out of it, broken and defenseless that I don’t even know if it’s possible to resist telling the truth. That’s actually the whole joke of it as we all came to laugh about afterwards and got to watch subsequently as brothers, but the obviously different stakes involved in juvenile college shenanigans is pretty much irrelevant. Broken is broken.
I agree with and disagree with Joe.
Explanation: time.
from the interview:
SH: Yeah, that’s the so-called ticking time bomb scenario. The difficulty with that is that that question poses a hypothetical which in my experience, I never ran into a hypothetical like that. If you pose the rectitude, or lack thereof, of torture based upon that hypothetical, you’re not really dealing in the real world. That’s my answer to that.
Interviews with KSM convinced interrogators that an attack – later called the West Coast Attack (on the Liberty Tower, LA) – was eminent. With no time for the rapport techniques to be engaged, harsher techniques were used.
Of all the detainees (in American jurisdiction) only 3 were water boarded. Many had stress positions, etc used; but many had Harry Potter read to them by little old ladies.
In other words, when there is time to use psychological techniques, we DO use them. It is easier/less stressful on the interrogator, easier to train the interrogator to do, and frequently will reveal more detail.
However, as long as EIT is used in a controlled manner – every escalation had to be authorized, remember – and EIT outside of channels was punished – bringing down those at Abu Grahib and their supervisors – on subjects for whom ‘time bomb’ is not a hypothetical, then go for it & remember that there but the Grace of God, go I.
Oh don’t look now but all those military tribunal things Obama said Bush was abusing and were horrible? I guess someone hit the reset button again. What a fuckin tool.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090515/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_guantanamo_trials
Mr. Pink – insh’allah it was “reset” not “vaporize” or whatever Sec Clinton gave the Russians…
Joe’s a muddle-headed child. He’s operating based off what feels right, rather than anything written in any laws anywhere.
So long as you restrict yourself to feeling, facts of the cases do not matter.
You may think that, but there’s no requirement for a conviction in the laws of war.
And there’s a difference between an irregular combatant and an unlawful combatant. But you wouldn’t know that, because you’re running off of feelings rather than the facts.
KSM was not tortured.
WTF are you talking about?
Rob, Joe thinks that waterboarding is torture, so there is no middle ground. I’m not sure we would torture our own people, so waterboarding, to me, isn’t torture. Plus the whole no lasting effects thing.
You might not have a ticking time bomb but terrorists are going to react when they figure out that you’ve captured someone who knows a lot. Extracting info like the locations of bases and safehouses needs to happen quickly if it’s to lead to rounding up more terrorists. Taking terrorists out of circulation saves lives doesn’t it? If we won’t play to win then we will just lose.
I know he does. But he’s wrong.
“like to say that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed probably didn’t give up a lot of the information that he gave up because somebody started water boarding him and beating him up.”
I am not sure who wrote this but were you aware that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed admitted to Chopping off Daniel Pearl’s head? He provided the location of his head to interrogators to confirm it.
So who was guilty of torture in this story?
Careful, Danger. (heh)
You’re conflating execution with torture and that’ll open up a whole other can of worms.
Being as we haven’t had a terrorist attack in America since, I tend to disagree with you.
Also, on this subject, Joe is a big ‘ol wet, quivering pussy.
#74, 8-)
RTO
Perhaps; however, when you have to use two knives to chop a head off (because the first one gets dull) the lines tend to blur between torture and execution.
I suppose I could bring up the “fun and games” the Qusay and Uday Hussein participated in as a better example.