President Bush is poised to veto legislation that would bar the CIA from using waterboarding -- a technique that simulates drowning -- and other harsh interrogation methods on terror suspects. The president planned to talk about the veto in his Saturday radio address. Bush has said the bill would harm the government's ability to prevent future attacks. Supporters of the legislation argue that it preserves the United States' right to collect critical intelligence while boosting the country's moral standing abroad. "The bill would take away one of the most valuable tools on the war on terror, the CIA program to detain and question Other Top Headlines Photos Bush to Veto Waterboarding Bill 166 key terrorist leaders and operatives," deputy White House press secretary Tony Fratto said Friday. The bill would restrict the CIA to using only the 19 interrogation techniques listed in the Army field manual. The legislation would bar the CIA from using waterboarding, sensory deprivation or other coercive methods to break a prisoner who refuses to answer questions. Those practices were banned by the military in 2006, but the president wants the harsh interrogation methods to be a part of the CIA's toolbox. Backers of the legislation, which cleared the House in December and won Senate approval last month, say the interrogation methods used by the military are sufficient. "President Bush's veto will be one of the most shameful acts of his presidency," Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said in a statement Friday. "Unless Congress overrides the veto, it will go down in history as a flagrant insult to the rule of law and a serious stain on the good name of America in the eyes of the world." He noted that the Army field manual contends that harsh interrogation is a "poor technique that yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say what he thinks the (interrogator) wants to hear." Continue... Good Job W !!!
For the love of god, January 2009 cannot come soon enough. I think its fair to say that "Dubya" is the worst president not only America has ever had but one of the worst in the history of the world, ever and the aint an exaggeration.
I remember seeing that somewhere else also.. if you put someone under an intense amount of pain, they will tell you anything, just to get you to stop and give them a breather.. on the flip side.. the people that want to use harsher interrogation methods, are just out to save the lives of troops in the field and fellow countrymen.. if a good piece of intel, can prevent a blackhawk full of special ops guys from going into an ambush, or getting intercepted by an enemy stinger squad on route to the drop, why not do whatever you could to get it? but, alas, revert back to the army field manual, and you'll come back to the prevention of such techniques the CIA is an element of it's own tho.. they work with the military when they have intel to share, but I am not sure if they would want to refer to "some conventional army field manual," when they have bright, intelligent people of their own, who just sit around thinking about new ways to get people to speak :?
On this waterboarding deal, i kinda have mixed feelings. Admittedly, i would like the law enforcement and intelligence agencies to strike the balance between protecting American lives and interests whilst maintaing and preserving civil liberties. Moreso, as a practicing (literally and figuratively) officer of the law, i understand that any participation in activities beyond the scope of lagal jurisprudence seeks to obliterative the paramount objective for having laws in the first place. However, we have to understand that we live in dangerous times and the threats we face only need to succeed once whilst we have got to be on our safeguard and succeed all the time. Simply put, we need to be a little bit tough in the fight against terrorism. Now i'm not about to go on the Bush-and-Cheney neoconservative ideas of what terrorism composes but you do know that a teatime discussion by the fireplace with cookies will not cut it against hardcore murderers. We need to get a little bit tough. I am not suggesting that we forgo the Geneva Conventions and the laws clearly expressed in the Military Commissions Act of 2006 but sometimes, you have to act outside the law to pursue justice. It's a matter of how far you stray beyond the law.
I agree with what you guys are saying but on the flip side if the Geneva convention was thrown out a U.S soldier get tortured also and being a Vet I would not want to see that happen. GWB is a monster who has caused the eventual downfall of the United States as we know it.
believe me.. our enemies never really gave a d@mn about the "geneva convention" look up the Batan Death March, where US soldiers were forced to march for days to prison camps, with many of them passing out and killed along the way.. look at these a$$holes who blow themselves up in the middle of crowds, just to kill a couple of soldiers and a dozen iraqi citizens.. our enemies never really played by the rules, as we attempt to. seriously look up how POWs were treated in vietnam...some people would rather be killed than captured, for fear of some of the most inhumane treatment known to man.. and like I mentioned before.. our enemy chops off heads infront of cameras, and sends them to news networks to get publicity.. our government and our military intel guys try to play by the rules..but when you go up against enemies that are suicidal and don't really give a shiet about democracy... .....I don't know what else to say
Trust me when I say I have heard of this, What I should say if we going to torture just say fuck it and torture and stop trying to play the civilized high road when they are not.
Do you realize that most of the nations the US has had conflict with from the mid to later part of 20th century didn't adhere to the Geneva Convention in regards to the treatment of American p.o.w's? The last nation to give American p.o.w's some Geneva Convention protection was Germany during WWII. For the most part in modern conflict, the Geneva Convention and the Hague Convention are routinely disregarded.
I personally believe that Americans have a naive view of how torture is to be used during an interrogation. These misconceptions come from ignorance and Hollywood movies.
