We already have that with Medicare to an extent which covers far more people on a public plan than Obama is proposing. It's unfortunately part of the system when government hires any private contractor to do work for them. All we can do is hope for better enforcement and stricter penalties for those who abuse the system.

And be careful, MBBF is going to call you out for generalizing all doctors as crooks who will rob the government.

But this is a 'No Shit, Sherlock' kind of statement. Of course the insured are going to get more tests and often better treatment. The resources are available to make that happen. Of course the people who are uninsured are going to get less tests and worse treatment. In many cases, the government won't pay enough reimbursement money to cover anything more than a bare bones checkup/treatment for an uninsured person.

In many cases, especially in family practices, the doctor treat the government covered patients at cost or in some cases at a small loss. The only way they can make any money is due to private companies that can actually pay for the treatments and allow the doctors to make a profit.

In regards to the video you posted, some big time assumptions that simply don't hold water by this 'expert' in the video who 'puts aside politics'. If you have to state that, you really aren't putting it aside.

1. His life expectancy graph doesn't take into account the explosion in obesity that is the main reason in the slowdown of life expectancy. It has little to do with health care not doing its job in relation to dollars spent, as he falsely implies.

2. His assumptions regarding treatment is a VERY weak correlation. Also, the 'high spending' regions that he cites are the same places where obesity is at its highest. You'd be shocked at how many of the cheaper treatments are often not available for obese patients, necessatating the use of the more expensive versions of tests to get accurate results. He also uses very generalized statements to describe the situation that really don't encompass the true issues behind the costs.

People are just too f'n fat in America. That's the major issue. We're having to spend an increasing amount of money on people.

I do think it's a bit about pay. The military offers a stable job and opportunity for many who otherwise wouldn't have it. It offers the chance for certain people to attend school, support their family, and get out of whatever bad situation they may be in. It's why military recruitment is so high in poverty stricken communities.

That's not to say all are in it for the money as I'd wager that many aren't. But I do think it's seen as a great opportunity by some.

You are the one that said my statement was bullshit. Now you are saying "No Shit, Sherlock". Make up your mind.


I didn't post a video.

Agreed. You'll never eliminate it completely, but it's being used far too often right now.

Or rather more unnecessary tests. The system is created to encourage more and more testing when it isn't needed.

Hey, whaddya know, one of those infrequent times when we're pretty much in general agreement on something.

I just wanted to point out that since you confirmed that when you throw single quotes out around something, you think it's BS that you did indeed think the people cancelling town halls in fear were full of shit. You ARE Ridiculous and ought to admit, for once, when youre wrong.

You cant. You wont.

You are indeed an idealogue who spins like a dreidel and even when shown to be wrong by the party you support (on that particular faux-rage of the day) or their supporters which can align with you, you continually push on to the next spin.

You were wrong. I told you you might be. You threw down the "Strawman" card. Then had people show up at Town Halls with Semi-automatic weapons and not once said, "You know, perhaps I was wrong to insinuate that those that cancelled were pussies after all."

You know no bounds in your spin and cannot even admit to being wrong on the slightest thing for fear it undermines your rhetoric when you trample on your own credibility repeatedly.

I know I know some are going to say, "Flasch, leave it alone blah blah blah...youre as batshit as he is" but that shit needs to be exposed because it infects everything he says, and the spin he tries to lay out as being his opinion/fact (which are interchangeable apparently).

It wasn't created to encourage that. That's simply not true. There are some that use it for that purpose, but most doctors do not. I know it's fun to villanize the doctors, but you point out where the real reforms should be made. If we use the current opportunity properly, the first step would be to reduce many of these loopholes. If we do that, then maybe we'd actually have some money to accomplish some form of coverage for the people who don't currently have coverage. At a minimum, the premiums would be reduced to a more manageable level.

no stats to counter the above ones. nice.

Rendition of Terror Suspects Will Continue Under Obama - NYTimes.com


WTF?! :confused:

So what is the reason to engage in rendition if you are not attempting to skate around US law? Why send them elsewhere then? Seriously... its like they aren't even trying in coming up with BS reasons.

I don't remember what Obama said about this while he was campaigning, but I would bet that his supporters would have thought he wouldn't have continued that practice.

Fuck, I don't even thinking they would have thought McCain would have continued it!

Because they want to keep their options open to skate around US law.

I dont know all the details but at first blush I think that sucks.

yeah - that sucks

This type of stuff has proven (in my mind anyway) my suspiscions that the general public really has no idea "what" the President is informed of on a daily basis.

I know a lot of people think Bush was a typical chickenhawk Republican...but IMHO...he was a guy that wanted to help make the US richer and saw a lot of shit come across his desk that changed his priorities.

I suspected we would see the same thing from Obama...a smart guy that wanted to help the less fortunate...and is starting to see things that convince him that he can't help anybody until he deals with the threats around the world.

Ding ding ding.

Ayup :(

SI

I remain unconvinced that we need rendition.

FWIW Pawlenty is on CNBC saying that Obama is supposed to be the great Uniter yet it looks like now he'll have to force the Health Care program 'down our throats'. I find this highly hypocritical when the GOP has been adamantly opposed to compromise. Theyre going to try to play both sides of the coin.

At the same time 'Leader Army' (Dick) is saying that States cant handle and have bungled programs that we've seen so far. So now it's not able to be done on the state level either. He also has wiped out the Co-op as an option as well. He says it's not about the focus on the health safety and security of the American People but about the Focus of Governmental Power (again blending the two arguments together). Compromise is not in the cards...probably never was.

-CNBC, my watching

Here's what was listed on his campaign website.........

http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/Count...mFactSheet.pdf

i had high hopes this would happen, and honestly i think it's still his personal belief, but the reality is (and likely always was) that in the current environment, given the "momentum" behind the "national security state" (man that sounds really nazi-esque), the high degree of autonomy enjoyed by the intelligence organizations and such, that it would be difficult for any president to make such a change.

i hoped Obama would have the balls to do it, but it really doesn't surprise me that he didn't.

Obama's problem was that he made an idealist blanket statement to pander to his base without getting a full understanding of the complexity of the system in place that handles these kinds of things. This is something that was pointed out when he made the statements. It shouldn't be surprising that he was wrong. It should be surprising that he made the statement during his campaign to garner votes rather than make a well-informed campaign promise. Or maybe that shouldn't be surprising either.

The more things 'change', the more they stay the same.

How did we get to the point where a promise to stop using torture in interrogations is an unrealistic campaign promise?

We got to the point where we were forced into an unconventional war not of our choosing and had to figure out how and when the conventional rules of war apply to an enemy that does not subscribe to any of those rules.

I'd add that, at some level, we are still trying to figure out that balance eight years later.

No kidding. From a purely moralistic sense, it's horribly wrong and should be stopped, end of story. But for people who that isn't good enough and want a "practical" reason, there's a much larger body of evidence that torture provides bad information and shouldn't be used for that reason. I don't see how it's defensible at all.

SI

Word. Sad and sorry state on our country.

Because when dealing with an enemy or even an ally of an enemy, no option is ever realistically off the table. Some are preferable to others, but nothing should ever be categorically rejected and most especially not publicly.

That's not completely true. While there were some ugly things that came out in the report released yesterday and there is some bad information received at times, there also was information that confirmed what Cheney had been saying. There were some terror attack plots that were foiled by interrogation techniques termed as torture.

I'm not a huge fan of it personally, but they definitely did not come up empty.

Just to show you how far Obama has fallen, a Drudge Report poll shows that 91% of those polled don't think Obama's Presidency can be saved.

Margin of error on that poll?

isn't trying to cite a drudge report poll for obama like trying to cite a dailykos poll for bush?

Your sarcasm meter needs immediate repairs.

lol aaah okay.

well...immediate repairs or just another coffee...

Some more fact checks on a couple of recent claims. First, Obama got a little overexcited in his estimte on what a reduction in obesity would do for the Medicare bottom line. It would help, but not nearly as much as he claims.

PolitiFact | Obama says lower obesity rates would save Medicare $1 trillion

Senator Sanders also needs to be reeled in a bit. America pays quite a bit on insurance, but we aren't spending nearly as much in comparison to other countries as he would like you to believe. In fact, the average amount spent per capita on health care actually went down between 2007 and 2009 while other countries continued to see increases.

PolitiFact | Sanders says U.S. doubles every other country in per capita health spending

Before we jump to conclusions:


This is from the NYT article on the front page about the reports.

Let's take the CIA's analysis with a grain of salt. This is the agency whose shitty intelligence cost us 5,000 dead Americans and several trillion dollars to create a quasi-theocratic Iranian client state in Iraq.

The CIA likes rendition and torture because it's a relatively easy way to procure intel, even if the intel procured has been shown to be faulty or just plain wrong. This as opposed to developing actual human intel on the ground and concentrating on picking up the right people, as opposed to, say, kids.

This is the same agency that was caught by surprise by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, had no idea India would conduct nuclear tests, failed to take Al-Qaeda seriously prior to 9/11, repeatedly lied to Congress at least since 2001 and has been known to just make shit up. At some point you have to wonder if their actions make the U.S. less safe, not more.

It should be noted that MBBF's statement is not an accurate representation of what is on the PolitiFact page linked. You cannot compare WHO statistics to OECD statistics accurately without knowing exactly how they are derived. They may include/exclude different things that affect the valuations. Nevertheless we can probably conclude that in the absence of two sets of numbers from the same organization they are at least open to discussion. Maybe it's comparing Red Delicious apples to Granny Smith apples.

And while it's true we aren't spending twice as much as everyone else, we are spending twice as much as either 2/3 or 1/2 (depending on if you adjust for currency value) of the other developed nations (2006 WHO numbers published in 2009 report). In 2007 OECD numbers it was twice as much as 25 of the other 30 developed nations.

There's also this little nugget that you overlooked MBBF (to be fair I overlooked it on a quick read-through too the first time):


So the numbers that you said were 2009 were actually 2006 numbers. Healthcare spending continues to rise.

I'll agree. I'm sure we'll hear more about it in the coming days. We should withhold judgement until we get further clarification on what that entails.

Good catch. I misread that part of it.

No worries. Not trying to play gotcha-ball or anything. Like I said, on my first read-through I missed it also. Hence why I had to go back and edit my post to add in the bit about it.

Having said that, Holder's investigation is also disappointing. I don't have anything to link as I'm going off of what I heard on NPR this morning, but I assume the details are on all the major websites.

Basically the investigation will be narrow and will focus on whether or not specific interrogations violated the law. And apparently no technique will be considered "against the law" if the interrogation team asked if a particular technique was OK to use in that case and was told so by HQ or by the various legal counsels (Justice or otherwise).

Let's count the problems:

1. So we're going to target just the low-level interrogators, who were clearly carrying out orders to torture with either the explicit or implicit approval of their superiors. What does this accomplish? Especially in the cases where (as noted in the report) the interrogation teams continued to torture even when they felt there was nothing else to be gained from that witness, but they had "pressure from HQ" to do so. I thought Obama said he wasn't going to go after low-level CIA folks who were doing their jobs?

2. So if someone's got a memo from John Yoo saying you can strip the skin off a detainee during an interrogation (example hypothetical), they have a get-out-of-jail-free card?

3. Among the people who think the regime of torture at the CIA was/is a problem, the number of people who think the problem was bottom-up is vanishingly small. This wasn't the result of a few rogue actors, it was clearly the result of a coordinated effort by key people in Justice, the White House and the CIA to put into place a regime of torture and find lawyerly ways to justify it. Many of the principals (Yoo, Bybee, Addington) have come out and said as much. If we have a problem with this regime, shouldn't we be looking at them?


What a bunch of ridiculous bullshit. Bill and Hillary Clinton get involved in some shady land deals in who-the-fuck-cares Arkansas and the GOP gets a special prosecutor to spend years and tens of millions of dollars to confirm that yes, Bill Clinton fucked an intern (completely unrelated to the original accusation).

A few years later the Bush White House systematically undermines many of the civil liberty tenets upon which this country was founded, potentially breaks a great many laws, and obfuscates this information including just plain lying to Congress and the American people and the best Holder can do is start an investigation to see if Random Joe CIA Torturer waterboarded Random Terrorist a little too much?

NEWSFLASH Eric & Barack: WHO THE FUCK CARES?!?! I couldn't give a shit if Joe Random Terrorist got waterboarded. And to be honest I don't really care all that much if Joe Innocent Muslim also got waterboarded. You're missing the fucking point. While each individual instance of torture is bad, surely, it's the overall interrogation program employed by the CIA on the advice of the White House and Justice that was clearly more interested in either a) retribution or b) being Jack Bauer than getting good intel. And by the way, this is the program you're going to, by and large, let them continue with the rendition program? Have none of you learned anything from the huge quantity of investigations on the efficacy of torture over the past years, the overwhelming conclusion of which has been that IT DOESN'T WORK?


I'll be honest, in my wildest dreams I would have liked Obama, on Day One, to appoint a Special Investigator to do an in-depth investigation into exactly how many laws were broken, and ethics violations made by the Bush Administration over the past 8 years with a goal of bringing a great many of the principles to court or at least in front of Congress. And I honestly wouldn't have cared if convictions were secured - it would be enough to unearth, without ambiguity, the extent to which these people felt the power of the Presidency was their personal sinecure, to do with as they wished and further to have a bunch of these people's lasting reputations sullied as much as they richly deserve.

Now, I never expected such a thing would really happen. But this? This is a slap in the face.

I agree with umm...everything you said here.

Yeah. Short of the GOP being taken over by pod people, I can't see me voting for that party for the foreseeable future. But Obama pulling pussy-ass stuff like this weak investigation is the difference between me merely voting for him in four years and me spending my time working on his behalf, donating to the campaign, etc.

Props for that post flere.

pod poeple...hahaha

I have a friend that was married to a wife who spent money like this.

Deficit, economic shrinkage worse than expected

They just finalized their divorce.

I would say that statistically divorce rates rise during recessions period.

Are you basing that on gut instinct or actual data? I haven't researched it myself but would tend to believe the opposite to be true.

I think that I heard a while back the opposite was true actually. With people making less money or even out of jobs who has the money for a lawyer and to be paying bills on two households (let alone one)?

Just highlighting a few of your points to ask the question....why do you think Obama & Holder would do this? Yes...they might be pussies...but maybe it's a bit more complex.

Do you think it unreasonable that they might be helping to cover for a systemic complicitness shared by high ranking Dems during this same time period? Or perhaps they have reluctance based on what they feel they need to do in order to keep the US safe. I know this sounds like rhetoric...but maybe...just maybe...the President actually knows what he's doing. And maybe...that goes for the last one.



I don't want to come off as gloating at your dissappointment at all...but this does not surprise me one bit. When faced with the decision of...

(a) Enforcing ideals at the risk (as informed by career intelligence officials) of not doing "everything allowable" could ...completely end my prospects at a 2nd term if a plot were to happen here on my watch... have significantly negative historical ramifications...send the American public into a bloody vengeance not ever seen...prove Repubs right about my foreign policy...take your pick.

or

(b) I don't care what these career intelligence wackos think...we are Americans and WE don't do that regardless of the percieved risk to these knuckleheads...

I think he made the same decision every one of his predecessors in the last ~30 years would have made (ironically, since Carter...the guy he was compared to by Repubs).

Now, I'm not going to debate the merits of torture as I do not believe it "typically" gathers worthwhile information. I do not personally think it should be our policy per se, but also not off the table completely if for no other reason...deterrance.

What I would submit is that once again...my distrust in politicians and government's "official" story seems to be once again well deserved.

I mean...there has to be a better reason than the "here and now BS" reasons Dems and Repub Presidents alike all tend to take similar foreign policy measures regardless of what they say when they are not in office.

Yeah...kinda the reasons our grandparents' & earlier generations just tended to "tough it out".

It was based on gut instinct but after getting into work, I found some data that I think muddies the waters. It would seem proceedings are done in this study:


This says the Recessions have a minor effect on the numbers but dont say which way the effect is. Should I assume upwards?

http://www.totaldivorce.com/news/art...orce-link.aspx


and another says in NJ the numbers showed a decline (or perhaps more using mediation - but I would consider that having the same result)

http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/news...recession.html


This article confirms that during the recession it would make more sense to stay together during the recession...

http://www.coloradoconnection.com/ne...aspx?id=272784


In summary, it was my gut instinct based on the "when times are tough, money gets tight, leading cause of breakup, hence increase in divorce." I failed to account for the costs involved with divorce.

I was wrong it would appear.

Edit to add: after further reading it would seem the divorce rate actually goes up once were firmly in Recovery. I guess it bottlenecks or something.

Or...it could just mean that recession plants the seeds for divorces in the booms? :)

yeah im reading that too.

Oh, I know exactly why this has come about. First, Obama's on record as not being terribly interested in investigating the abuses of the Bush Administration, preferring instead to "move on". I can see why he prefers this route, certainly, even if I would prefer it if a great number of the criminals in the Bush Administration see some jail time.

Second, I'm going to guess that Holder is responding to immense pressure from the ACLU torture investigations that have been going on for years now, bolstered by FOI requests, leaks, newspaper investigations, etc.... I'm sure Holder views an investigation into the criminality of torture acts as a first step towards doing away with all these pending lawsuits. Whether it is or not is a question for the lawyers.

So I know exactly how this conjunction of decisions has come about. It doesn't change the fact that as a (possibly unintended) policy, it feels shitty.



I doubt it. First of all, it's pretty clear the CIA & Bush Administration didn't tell Congress everything (or anything) and lied about the stuff it did share. Second, in such an investigation, you really think Joe Random Democratic Senator is going to come off worse than Woo, Bybee, Addington, et. al.?



Presidents are people too, fallible and all the rest. To assume that they know better than the rest of us is to prefer monarchy.

Having said that, neither Bush nor Obama has, in my mind, made a convincing case for the necessity of rendition or torture, even in the hypothetical for national security that isn't contradicted or dismissed by a myriad of former intelligence operatives with proof to the contrary (see one of the many "torture" or "GITMO" threads in the past for an array of quotes on the subject).


So Obama's letting the CIA continue to have rendition because he doesn't want to challenge the CIA (and, possibly, seem "weak" on national security issues), and Holder's taking the narrowest and simplest route to dealing with a myriad of legal issues bequeathed to him by the Bush Administration.

And the cold irony at the end of the day is that if there is another terrorist attack under Obama's watch, it's not going to matter that he tried to thread a needle here. He's still going to be painted and viewed as a weak Democrat who tried to dismantle security even if he walked a fine line, trying to preserve both it and get back some of our moral high ground. The mouth breathers will rule that day and they don't exactly care about nuance.

SI

This is exactly right. A democrat showing weakness on defense is like a republican showing weakness on corporate corruption. I think Obama is (and very deftly so) aware that anything that his opponents can use to show he's not serious on terror is very damaging to him. Another way to look at it - here are the two scenarios that could come from a heavy investigation:

1. They find a bunch of clear violations and arrests occur. The people that support Obama said "I knew it" and continue to support him. The people that don't blame him for not moving on and tire of it all. Then, god forbid we have another attack, the right comes out bashing Obama saying if he spent more time looking for terrorists and less time looking into prior administrations, we might not have been attacked.

2. They don't find much they can get to stick and the republicans blast him for wasting money/resources in a recession - with democrats blaming his justice dept for being incompetent. Then, if we have an attack, it's even worse than in scenario 1.

If I am president, I want to know a likely desirable outcome before I undertake a massive investigation/witch hunt. And, in this case, I just don't see one.

It's not so much knowing better, but knowing more.

National defense is the toughest area for a government to be transparent, to have accountability, and to be expected to tell the truth, and to be able to be understood by the people.

It seems like Obama is learning that. I don't understand how I, or you, people on the outside, without security clearances, without a government intelligence background, and without relationships with foreign governments, can have such firm opinions and be so sure that someone with all of those things is wrong. I get sucked into that trap too, and have opinions on it, but it really is ridiuclous on that level.

There has to be an element of trust there. Some people say they just trust Obama more than Bush, and that's fine. That's a reasonable part of a voting criteria. But when two men like Bush and Obama can do certain things in the national defense arena the SAME, I'm convinced that those things have to be the right things.

molson, so since national defense has difficulty being transparent, there are no limits to what one can do in the name of national defense? Or just that "we the people" are incapable of defining those limits?

i suppose this is a good point

Could you make the same point with Johnson and Nixon, though?

This is pretty much where I was driving at as well.

Yep. It's a dangerous path you go down when you start there.

When the president does it...it's not illegal!!

Let's be clear here, unless I'm missing something, the only policy in the national security arena that Obama is going to duplicate from Bush is the practice of rendition. As I've stated before, I've yet to hear a reasonable (even hypothetical) argument from Bush or Obama as to why rendition needs to be kept. I understand the President can't talk specifics. But he should be able to justify such a policy even in the hypothetical.

But let's be honest, we know why he's keeping rendition. There are two possible reasons. The first is that it allows the CIA to keep suspected terrorists in custody without risking exposure to U.S. law. The second is that it allows the CIA to get other countries to torture suspected terrorists so they can extract (likely dubious) intel from them. I find neither justification compelling.

Intel via torture has already been discussed. Some people still think it's useful, despite the evidence, but we've argued that one to death.

To me, the ability to hold people indefinitely via rendition, outside of U.S. law, more than anything simply shows the continuing ineffectiveness of the CIA. Instead of developing human intel on the ground in these countries, the CIA continues to go for the fast, cheap and easy solution of just rounding up anyone who seems suspicious and letting them rot overseas in case they might be a terrorist. Seriously, just look at the record - it's pathetic.


Some people say this is a new war with a new enemy, and the old rules can't apply. Fine. If that's the case, let's make new rules. Let's make new rules that allow us to keep truly suspicious terrorists in custody indefinitely (possibly subject to reviews, also possibly allowed release only on the President's authority). Let's make new rules that keep things secret but allow for briefings at the top Congressional levels (with compulsion for the CIA to tell the truth, and severe penalties for leaks from Congress). But let's stop pussy-footing around the subject and employing extra-legal remedies suitable only for 3rd world tinpot dictators.

Give me a break. Obama should be better than this. If I wanted Bush mk. II (speaking of tinpot dictators) I would have voted for McCain.

I just think rendition is a pussy way to skirt the law. If you want torture, then pass a law in the country allowing it.

While that would certainly be refreshing, then you'd have to deal with all that crap - debates, criticism on torture.

Pretty much every president has decided that national security efforts work best when there's a kind of vague veil over everything. And those presidents actually know about the threats the U.S. faced or continue face.

That's a lot of trust to give the government - why don't you give them the same trust with your wallet?

We don't really have a choice with national security - it's the only area where things really have to be a secret. It's not a trust I would choose to have, if it were up to me. So maybe trust isn't really the right word - maybe surrender?

I'm going to risk an entire torture debate that hopefully won't happen, BUT - one of the little nuggets in the "torture" stories of the last few days that has gotten a lot of play is that a CIA interrogator threatened to kill KSM's kids if there was another attack.

Does anyone have a problem with that (provided the kids aren't actually killed - I think this happened on "24" once)? Would this now be considered torture?

Of course, a "threat" like that only has credibility if KSM thinks we'll do it. So maybe the government actually wants, on some level, for terrorists to think we'll torture. Or maybe we want to be just secretive enough for them to not know what exactly we're capable of.

In regards to KSM's kids...that is precisely where I was going. The perceived possibility is worthwhile to keep the vague laws in tact, IMHO.

I do think that investigating after the fact (or even as a non-legal pursued effort) can be worthwhile if the intention is kept to informing the American people what their government has done in the past so that we can make informed decisions in the future with regards to candidates and platforms.

These torture investigations are the worst possible outcome. Now Obama has legitimized the argument that if a President's lawyers say it's legal it is and he's made clear that justice is just for little people. Terribly disappointing.

This kind of illustrates the pointless Jack Bauer-type posturing bullshit upon which the Bush (read: Cheney) torture regime was based. KSM was already in custody, with no access to his network. How is he going to stop additional attacks? If he truly loves his kids, he'll start saying anything, regardless of truth, until he thinks the investigators have started believing him and his kids are safe.

The end result is just more faulty intel and a further slide away from actual effective interrogation techniques.

If we want to send a message to terrorists that we're serious, our focus should not be on what will happen to them when they're captured. Our focus should be on giving them the impression that we're efficient and relentless in our search from them and that they will not escape us.

I'll bet Al-Qaeda operatives fear waterboarding a whole lot less than the fate that befell Abu Ayyub al-Masri and Baitullah Mehsud. It should be noted that the former's death was the result of information gleaned from non-torture interrogation methods and the latter's death was the result of Pakistani human intel gathered on the ground.

Successful attacks/captures like this encourage less-fanatical AQ operatives to seriously consider either a) giving it up or b) giving their intel over to the U.S. or allies to get out of the target zone. The latter option is only enhanced by not practicing torture on our part. This, amongst other reasons, was part of the point no less than General David Petraeus made when saying that torture should have no part in operations in Iraq (before he became CENTCOMM commander).

I don't really have a problem with the morality of torture. In theory, the guys we've been torturing are really horrible people. They can fuck off and die as far as I'm concerned.

The problems I have with torture are twofold: 1) we've demonstrably tortured many innocent people who had no knowledge of anything but provided us with false intel under torture just to get the torturers to stop and 2) (related to 1) it's simply not as effective as other techniques and may in fact be detrimental to our initiatives through the provision of faulty intel and by closing other avenues we may have in the "War on Terror".

It's like my opposition to the death penalty. I don't have a problem putting murderers to death. I have a problem with our flawed justice system slating many innocent people for death. And that's not talking about the efficacy issue with the death penalty (if there is one - I don't have an opinion on it).

KSM could potentially provide intel that would allow the government to stop a future terrorist attack.

Sure, he'll be motivated to "say anything", but there's also a specific outcome here - if he knows something that will help repel a terrorist attack, he'll say it. There's really no point for him to make up false information "regardless of truth" if this threat is believed and put in absolute terms - if there's an attack, your kids are dead. That's it. False information won't save them, maybe the network is moving on without you and there's nothing you can do to save them. But if you want them to have ANY chance, you have to work with us.

Members of the Bush administration were many things, but they weren't stupid. There is a logic to what they did, even if it was kept from us, even if reasonable minds could differ on the benefits. There's this assumption that we know everything about the logic, in every situation, and we just don't. It wasn't as simple as, "tell us something generic about terrorisim or we'll torture you". Just because we don't know the story behind every situation doesn't mean we can assume it was the simplest possible explanation, whatever that is.

Alternatively, let's use an actual, real world example: Abu Zubaydah. This guy provided actionable intelligence to FBI interrogators using non-harsh interrogation techniques until the CIA got involved and started torturing him.

I'm sorry, but you keep coming back to the oft-discredited Jack Bauer "ticking time bomb" scenario. In the Gitmo thread I posted a long list of former intelligence officers who stated time and again that non-harsh interrogation techniques produced results and torture did not. I mean, even the Israelis don't believe in torture for interrogation....

But somehow we all still want to believe the Cheney/Woo/Bybee/Addington fantasy world that Real Life is just like "24". It isn't. There's clear evidence that it isn't. Why are people still disputing this?


Oh please. Harriet Miers? Scott McClellan? Karen Hughes? Maybe "stupid" is too strong a word, but no administration is staffed with bright lights only. Heck, even Alberto Gonzalez wasn't the sharpest tool in the box.

But no, I wouldn't call Cheney, Woo, Bybee and Addington stupid. I'd call them criminally misguided, stupefyingly arrogant, and dangerously wrong.

you're awesome. especially point #2

Even if you could prove that waterboarding KSM was beneficial, that doesn't excuse beating a man to death with a flashlight or the literally dozens of other deaths of detainees. The use of torture corrupted our sense of right and wrong and now Holder has essentially said that's okay.

For those who have asked what GOP elected officials can do to tamp down the crazy, John McCain does a pretty good job here:

Very big kudos to McCain there.

You misunderstood my post. I wasn't defending torture, I wasn't saying it was beneficial, I was responding to your implication that there is no possible benefit that could be derived from the particular technique that was alleged to be used on KSM.

My greater point being - you don't know. You don't know what happened, and you definitely don't know why anything happened. You're prior complaint, a few posts up, was that you haven't heard any justification for what goes on in interrogation rooms. I'm just saying you won't, ever, even if there's a perfectly reasonable one. That's something that the administration (any administration) is just not going to share with the public in any meaningful way.

1. No way. It'd still be a hugely controversial topic and many if not most people would still oppose torture on moral grounds. And those who would support it wouldn't want to hear about it, or hear people publicly bragging about its effects in any major way. Torture will never be paraded as a platform, its just a stretch to contend otherwise. And you're implying that the prior administration KNEW that their techniques didn't work. So why did they use them? I don't buy that Dick Cheney needed snuff films to whack off to.

2. Government doesn't think like this. It's not set up to make symbolically idealistic decisions. I don't think most Americans think this way either. If I personally torture the shit out of KSM or OBL, I'm still better than either of them, because they murdered 3,000+ people, and all I did was torture one or two people that murdered 3,000+ in an effort to save other people. Yup, they're still worse.

3. Is locking someone up against their will torture? I'd rather be scrubbed with an abrasive brush than be locked up the rest of my life. The definition of torture is always going to be a debate, but the meaningful debate won't be public. If someone, under any administration, thinks he can get an edge in a particular task by bending the rules, he'll do it, just like Congresspeople, presidents, anyone else. When the nature of the task is secretive anyway, that just increases that dynamic.

4. I haven't seen that but I've just about gotten high from all of the black markers needed to personally redact stuff at the state level, including shit nobody would remotely care about. There's all kinds of reasons things need to be redacted, it's not necessarily indicative of illegality.

I basically trust the Obama administration to use "harsh" interrogation techniques in a limited manner, where they feel its necessary in a particular case. They know the score, they know what's at stake, better than I do. All we can really do is vote and make our opinion known, but we can't otherwise control how our country wages war, anymore than we can decide which particular Taliban stronghold to attack today.

I'm not a big fan of some of the alleged torture claims I've seen towards the Bush administration, but I haven't seen anything that makes me think it's any kind of a pandemic issue with our intelligence system. If someone broke the law during interrogation and there's proof, I think charges should be filed. But, I think the instances of this would be few and far between.

As to the current administration, I completely trust that Obama isn't going to go over the line in interrogation. And, until I see evidence otherwise, I'm not going to bang on him for not pushing to file charges when there just isn't much evidence pointing to gross negligence when it comes to interrogation (past or present). In this case, I think people need to give Obama a break. I really don't know what practical actions he can take to appease the "hate Bush" crowd on this stuff.

What if that same culture ends up killing dozens of detainees and torturing hundreds more of questionable guilt? Legitimizing torture, not in a rare case, but as a system to be used worldwide, strips us of our morality. You can't limit the discussion to KSM, because this is really about approving torture for hundreds if not thousands of detainees.

I don't know if I'm part of the hate Bush crowd (voted for him, but think he was a terrible president) but Obama deciding to discontinue the practice of torture would be sufficient for me.

Maybe I'm a schmuck, but sometimes I actually believe we should strive for the "American Exceptionalism" that is often parroted by those who generally supported the torture policies. Having said that, I find those torture policies to be the antithesis of "American Exceptionalism".

Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.
William F. Buckley, Jr.

The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.
– George Orwell

I don't buy it. We have a great many former intelligence officers on the record as saying that torture doesn't work. We have on the record evidence from the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah that non-torture interrogation techniques were working and torture interrogations did not work. So we've got plenty of real world, documented reasons from intelligence professionals as to why torture doesn't work, and and very little, if any, verifiable evidence that torture does deliver actionable intel.

I also don't buy that the administration (any administration) isn't going to share success stories. Here's one. Here's another. And another. Note that all three successes resulted from intel gathered through surveillance programs and/or positioning security services to be open and friendly towards people willing to offer key intel on the plots.

Quote wars on a message board are worthless.
-Mizzou B-ball Fan

I like pie
-SterlingIce

So why then, do you think Obama's OK with rendition? He wants people to be tortured? It is conceivable that there's more to it than you understand, or are you 100% sure you know why the government does anything in the area of national security?

I admit it. I busted out laughing.
-Mizzou B-ball Fan

Shorter GOP: Providing health insurance to the uninsured is Maoism, but trusting the government to detain and torture the right people the right way is patriotism.

Apples and Oranges (and most people with concerns about Obama's particular plan in this thread have no problem with helping the uninsured - not that that particular strawman isn't getting tiring or anything).

Trust isn't the issue, as I've tried to explain.

So you admit that Obama gets off on torture and you can't trust him? Why else would Obama be OK with rendition (by your logic), despite all the evidence that torture doesn't work, unless he just personally loves the power associated with it, like we heard about the Bush administration for years?

How about the obvious answer: Cheney was wrong about torture. It wouldn't have been the first time. As Chief of Staff to Ford, he was unprepared for the fall of Saigon. He was wrong about Iraq and WMD. He was wrong about connections between Hussein and Al-Qaeda. He was wrong (repeatedly) about the length of the insurgency in Iraq. He was wrong about the troop levels needed in Iraq to provide security.

Is it so hard to believe that he and his acolytes were wrong about the efficacy of torture? Is it so hard to believe that their arrogance on this matter (and others, frankly) kept them from understanding what the truth of the situation was?

It's just interesting what people see as tyranny.

I don't think Obama gets off on torture nor do I think Cheney does, that's beside the point. The problem is that a legitimizing of torture, not just in extreme cases, but as a matter of routine leads inevitably to a weakening of our morals. You can make an argument that waterboarding KSM isn't that bad,(although to be clear I'm still opposed to that) but how do you excuse the rampant use of torture by the CIA and every branch of the military? What Bush/Cheney created has now been legitimized by Obama. Now that both parties have their hands in this, when will we stop torturing?

From the previous page....

I don't. It's clearly not the best way to go. I don't know why you keep thinking I'm a torture monger.

All I'm really doing is pointing out Obama's phoniness and campaign deceit (and in some, limited cases, the hillarity of the blind followers who could care less), and make the point that torture is a real grey area and not something where there can be any meaningful public debate, like there can be with health care. The nature of torture is that its "bad", "illegal". Obama can come out tomorrow with a blanket statement forbidding it in all forms, but its still going to happen.

Maybe the Bush administration was actually the most transparent administration we ever had on this issue, where there was actually accountability to the top. Do you think we never used "harsh interrogation techniques" in Vietnam, Korea, WWII, WWI, etc? That doesn't make it right to do it now, but I imagine in the old days, such details were kept from the top level people. That's where interogation lurked, in the background and in the shadows. The Bush administration actually tried to bring the whole thing to the forefront, create some kind of universal policy, even if it wasn't a good one. And now people act like they invented harsh interogation, just because they're the first ones to talk about it openly, and involve top people in decision-making.

Saying we should just trust the people who instituted a system of torture is de facto supporting the torture. You can't be against torture and for a system of torture.

And we most certainly did not see widespread, legalized torture during any other time in our nation's history. There have always been incidents on the battlefield, but there has never been a system legalizing torture for the CIA and all branches of the military. That's the critical difference. We went from having rare cases of torture that had the threat of prosecution attached to them to a system where torture was determined to be legal and was encouraged by our highest civilian and military leaders. There is no comparaison to any other time in our nation's history.