Torture Exemption
[size=l]Cheney wants CIA to be Exempt from ban on Torture[/size]
I saw that headline on the Buffalo News yesterday, and I was simply astounded. I don't know how people can say that kind of stuff with a straight face and think it's OK. Seriously, what have we become.
I posted about this amendment before
[inlink]dcoffee,21[/inlink]Bush loves Torture
[inlink]dcoffee,22[/inlink]PS. on anti-torture amendment
for anyone on the fence about using torture, you don't get credible or useful information from someone by beating them up, you must befriend them and make them trust you. convince them that you are not an enemy and help them open up to you. torture either leads to people saying whatever you want to hear, or it validates the idea that America is the great Satan and if you die by our hands you are surely going to heaven as a martyr.
anyway here's the Full article
Cheney wants CIA to be exempt from ban on torture
By DAVID ESPO and LIZ SIDOTI
Associated Press
11/5/2005
WASHINGTON - Vice President Cheney made an unusual personal appeal to Republican senators this week to exempt the CIA from a proposed ban on torturing terror suspects in U.S. custody, according to participants in the closed-door session.
Cheney told his audience the United States doesn't engage in torture, these participants said, even though he said the administration needed an exemption from any legislation banning "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment in case the president decided such treatment was necessary to prevent a terrorist attack.
The vice president made his comments at a regular weekly private meeting of Senate Republicans, according to several lawmakers who attended. Cheney often attends the meetings, a chance for the rank-and-file to discuss legislative strategy, but he rarely speaks.
In this case, the room was cleared of aides before the vice president began his remarks, which one senator said included a reference to classified material.
The officials who disclosed the events spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the confidential nature of the discussion.
"The vice president's office doesn't have any comment on a private meeting with members of the Senate," said Steve Schmidt, a Cheney spokesman.
During the session, Cheney drew support from at least one lawmaker, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, while Sen. John McCain of Arizona dissented, officials said.
McCain, who was tortured while he was a prisoner during the Vietnam War, is the chief Senate sponsor of an anti-torture provision that has twice cleared the Senate and triggered veto threats from the White House.
Cheney's decision to speak at the meeting underscored both his role as White House point man on the contentious issue and the importance the administration attaches to it.
The vice president made his appeal as Congress is struggling with the torture issue in light of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq and allegations of mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States houses about 500 detainees at a naval base, many of them captured in Afghanistan.
In addition, human rights organizations contend the United States turns detainees over to other countries that it knows will use torture to extract intelligence information.
Cheney's appeal came on Tuesday, two days before a former senior State Department official claimed in an interview with National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" that he had traced memos back to Cheney's office that he believes led to U.S. troops abusing prisoners in Iraq.
Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff in the first Bush administration, said Thursday that Cheney's views were put in "carefully couched" terms in memos but that to a soldier in the field it meant sometimes using interrogation techniques that "were not in accordance with the spirit of the Geneva Conventions and the law of war" to extract better intelligence.
The Senate recently approved a provision banning the "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. The vote was 90-9, and an identical provision was added to a second measure on a voice vote Friday.
Comparable House legislation does not include the provision, and it is not clear whether anti-torture language will be included in either of two large defense measures Congress hopes to send to Bush's desk later this year.
The White House initially tried to kill the anti-torture provision while it was pending in the Senate, then switched course to lobby for an exemption in cases of "clandestine counterterrorism operations conducted abroad, with respect to terrorists who are not citizens of the United States."
I saw that headline on the Buffalo News yesterday, and I was simply astounded. I don't know how people can say that kind of stuff with a straight face and think it's OK. Seriously, what have we become.
I posted about this amendment before
[inlink]dcoffee,21[/inlink]Bush loves Torture
[inlink]dcoffee,22[/inlink]PS. on anti-torture amendment
for anyone on the fence about using torture, you don't get credible or useful information from someone by beating them up, you must befriend them and make them trust you. convince them that you are not an enemy and help them open up to you. torture either leads to people saying whatever you want to hear, or it validates the idea that America is the great Satan and if you die by our hands you are surely going to heaven as a martyr.
anyway here's the Full article
Cheney wants CIA to be exempt from ban on torture
By DAVID ESPO and LIZ SIDOTI
Associated Press
11/5/2005
WASHINGTON - Vice President Cheney made an unusual personal appeal to Republican senators this week to exempt the CIA from a proposed ban on torturing terror suspects in U.S. custody, according to participants in the closed-door session.
Cheney told his audience the United States doesn't engage in torture, these participants said, even though he said the administration needed an exemption from any legislation banning "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment in case the president decided such treatment was necessary to prevent a terrorist attack.
The vice president made his comments at a regular weekly private meeting of Senate Republicans, according to several lawmakers who attended. Cheney often attends the meetings, a chance for the rank-and-file to discuss legislative strategy, but he rarely speaks.
In this case, the room was cleared of aides before the vice president began his remarks, which one senator said included a reference to classified material.
The officials who disclosed the events spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the confidential nature of the discussion.
"The vice president's office doesn't have any comment on a private meeting with members of the Senate," said Steve Schmidt, a Cheney spokesman.
During the session, Cheney drew support from at least one lawmaker, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, while Sen. John McCain of Arizona dissented, officials said.
McCain, who was tortured while he was a prisoner during the Vietnam War, is the chief Senate sponsor of an anti-torture provision that has twice cleared the Senate and triggered veto threats from the White House.
Cheney's decision to speak at the meeting underscored both his role as White House point man on the contentious issue and the importance the administration attaches to it.
The vice president made his appeal as Congress is struggling with the torture issue in light of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq and allegations of mistreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States houses about 500 detainees at a naval base, many of them captured in Afghanistan.
In addition, human rights organizations contend the United States turns detainees over to other countries that it knows will use torture to extract intelligence information.
Cheney's appeal came on Tuesday, two days before a former senior State Department official claimed in an interview with National Public Radio's "Morning Edition" that he had traced memos back to Cheney's office that he believes led to U.S. troops abusing prisoners in Iraq.
Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff in the first Bush administration, said Thursday that Cheney's views were put in "carefully couched" terms in memos but that to a soldier in the field it meant sometimes using interrogation techniques that "were not in accordance with the spirit of the Geneva Conventions and the law of war" to extract better intelligence.
The Senate recently approved a provision banning the "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. The vote was 90-9, and an identical provision was added to a second measure on a voice vote Friday.
Comparable House legislation does not include the provision, and it is not clear whether anti-torture language will be included in either of two large defense measures Congress hopes to send to Bush's desk later this year.
The White House initially tried to kill the anti-torture provision while it was pending in the Senate, then switched course to lobby for an exemption in cases of "clandestine counterterrorism operations conducted abroad, with respect to terrorists who are not citizens of the United States."
Shocking (no pun intended), grievous waste of time. It is this kind of National Security stance that is slowly rendering the Democrats irrelevant, and is proving to be the downfall of Europe. Yes, get the Islamo-fascists to be our friends and trust us. Give them coffee and donuts and ask them "Pweeze Mr. Terrorist where is the bomb?" Do you not know that the Al Qaeda "manual" instructs jihadists to lie and deceive? Interrogation has been honed and perfected for many centuries - if the method you subscribe to were in any way effective, of course they would do it!
Now don't get me wrong. I'm not for torture. Then again anything and everything passes as "torture" nowadays. Yes, scare the daylights out of them, kick the shit out of them, threaten their life, have the german shepherds bark at them. Don't dismember them, electrocute them, or anything truly sadistic but force the information out of them.