Charlie Rose

SharkswithfrikingLazers  04/27/2013 05:27 PM Report

Advance this Charlie Rose interview http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10658#comment_96018

to 33:05 and listen to what Michael Sandel says about the torture argument (real test would you torture the completely innocent 12 year old daughter of the terrorist to save the many—it is NOT just about numbers but being morally justified).

Then listen to what he says about virtue (who deserves what) is giving just desserts to a person (per Aristotle) which means the recognition and honor given from a society (usually wealth, but it really is honor and recognition like allowing same sex marriage).

SharkswithfrikingLazers  04/18/2013 10:10 PM Report

So here we on April 16th and it is confirmed from a two year study by the Constitution Project that the Bush Administration are torturers.

"An independent review of the U.S. government's anti-terrorism response after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks reported Tuesday that it is "indisputable" the United States engaged in torture and the George W. Bush administration bears responsibility.

The report by the Constitution Project, a non-partisan Washington-based think-tank, is an ambitious review of the Bush administration's approach to the problems of holding and interrogating detainees after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon."

(John Bolton says the report is divorced from reality and there were three levels of lawyering (HA!).)

Watch it on The Daily Show:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-april-17-2013/zero-dark-hurty

Read it on the Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20130416/us-us-torture/?utm_hp_ref=politics&ir=politics

When will the trials begin or will Gerald Ford come back from the grave to issue hundreds of pardons?

SharkswithfrikingLazers  02/08/2013 08:01 PM Report

MR. PANETTA: I think we could have gotten bin Laden without that.

The first act of "Zero Dark Thirty" is 25 minutes of torture and this thing was first written as if we did NOT even get UBL.

The Director coasted on crap. She should have spent 25 minutes explaining why the CIA lost a critical file for almost a decade.

TODD: Zero Dark Thirty. You-- you’ve-- we’ll-- we will show a little bit here. We’ve got James Gandolfini of course most of us just call him Tony Soprano playing you as CIA director. There you are out there. I won’t ask you to comment on the acting, but there’s been a serious debate about-- the movie seems to say-- seems to indicate that enhanced interrogation techniques or torture was used to get information to get bin Laden. Is that true?

MR. PANETTA: Well, you know, first of all, it’s a movie. Let’s first remember that.

TODD: Okay.

MR. PANETTA: I-- I lived the real story with the bin Laden operation.

TODD: Well, then tell us what-- what…

MR. PANETTA: And the real story is that in order to put the puzzle of intelligence together that led us to bin Laden, there was a lot of intelligence. There were a lot of pieces out there that were part of that puzzle. Yes, some of it came from some of the tactics that were used at that time, interrogation tactics that were used. But the fact is, we-- we put together most of that intelligence without having to resort to that.

TODD: And you think you could have gotten it without any…

MR. PANETTA: I think we could have gotten bin Laden without that.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/50666148/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts/t/february-leon-panetta-martin-demps ey-robert-gibbs-ralph-redd-ana-navarro-david-brooks/#.URWYH_LVqS

SharkswithfrikingLazers  01/27/2013 04:15 PM Report

Charlie, these cases?

"Gibney put out a compelling argument in a Huffington Post piece that the ZD30 storyline is not accurate in the sense that it excluded crucial information. He points to several facts that Bigelow and Boal chose to ignore (and remember, this was supposed to be a "journalistic account," according to Bigelow), like for instance:

1) Mohammed Al-Qatani, the so-called "20th hijacker," who may have been some part of the inspiration for the "Ammar" character who was tortured in the opening scene, might have been the first detainee to mention the name of bin Laden's courier. But as Gibney points out, al-Qatani gave that information up to the FBI, in legit, torture-free interrogations, before he was whisked away to Gitmo for 49 days of torture that included such insanities as forcing him to urinate on himself (by force-feeding him liquids while in restraints), making him watch a puppet show of him and bin Laden having sex, making him take dance lessons, making him wear panties on his head, and making him wear a "smiley-face" mask, along with the usual sleep and sensory deprivation, arm-hanging, etc. In other words, the key info may have come before they chucked our supposed standards for human decency.

2) The CIA waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times, and throughout this "enhanced interrogation," the former al-Qaeda mastermind continually played down the importance of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, the man who led the CIA to bin Laden. But the CIA was so sure KSM was telling the truth under torture – so sure waterboarding was a "magic bullet," as Gibney put it to me – that they discounted the lead. So torture may have actually delayed bin Laden's capture.

3) The CIA took another detainee, Ibn al-Sheik al Libi, and duct-taped his head, put him in a wooden box, shipped him off to Cairo to be waterboarded, and got him to admit under torture that there were links between Saddam Hussein and bin Laden. This "intel" became part of Colin Powell's presentation to the U.N. on the need to invade Iraq. So while torture might have found us bin Laden, maybe, it also very well might have sent us on one of history's all-time pointlessly bloody wild goose chases, invading Iraq in search of WMDs.

A more accurate movie about the torture program would have been a grotesque comedy that showed grown men resorting to puppet shows and dance routines and fourth-rate sexual indignities dreamed up after spending too much time reading spank mags and BDSM sites – and doing this thousands of times to thousands of people, all over the world, "accidentally" murdering hundreds of people in the process, going to war by mistake at least once as a result of it, and having no clue half the time who they're interrogating (less than 10 percent of "terror suspects" at places like Bagram were arrested by American forces; most of the rest were brought in by Afghanis or other foreigners in exchange for bounties).

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/zero-dark-thirty-is-osama-bin-ladens-last-victory -over-america-20130116

SharkswithfrikingLazers  01/22/2013 02:49 AM Report

The movie "Zero Dark Thirty" is C-R-A-P for the torture alone.

It is not just a scene of torture but almost an entire act.

It is not torture with the audience using their imaginations.

The torture involves sexual humiliation with the tortured man showing his genitals to Maya, waterboarding, hanging the guy by his arms, starving the guy, making the guy poop his pants--and showing the audience, locking the guy in a small box, denying the guy anything to drink, smacking the guy and on and on. SICK!

Then at 18:29 we hear, “They (CIA) have the name of the courier in their files since shortly after 9/11. That is something that came out of the reporting I did.”

Hello?! Almost an entire act on torture when the idiots at CIA can't even find their own damn files for almost a decade.

Trash of a movie. CIA propaganda on the benefit of torture as a new level of product placement. Disgusting.

We wonder who might be able to show the first act and use this movie as a recruiting tool against us?

finalfantasytown  01/17/2013 07:15 AM Report

what you did to Afghanistan is wrong.

charliesheep  01/12/2013 01:00 PM Report

EVERY CRISIS; HAS AN ANSWER-AMERICA, BACKS THE ONES THAT DANCE TO THE TUNE-SHOOTS-CASTRATES THE REST! AND DENIES TRUTH FOREVER-AMEN

AQQ  01/12/2013 06:37 AM Report

No one here defends the position that torture is useful. Thus it's far from a fair, balanced, or nuanced discussion. For shame, Charlie Rose program. Raise your journalistic standards, please.

Gelles  01/11/2013 06:26 AM Report

What about the torture chambers used in the middle ages? Torture is an age old practice and problem. It is an information problem. It is a moral problem. It is a practical political problem. General McCristal's advice to be ourselves and not become as supportive of torture as our enemies, is sound advice. IMO the General's words are as good a set of "last words" (on the subject) as we are likely to come up with.

tabs  01/11/2013 05:46 AM Report

NCP2:

God so loved his creation that he gave man free will. Free will gives man the power to make decisions, some good,some bad. All with which to learn to grow stronger and wiser.

tabs  01/11/2013 05:32 AM Report

On 9/11/01 one was visiting a friend and upon leaving him one asked the question, "Would you torture someone, even with your sons life being in the balance?" He stopped a moment,thought about it and with certainty finally said, "No I wouldn't." One thought that wasn't a realistic answer, the realistic answer would have been as McCrystal answered, "I don't know what I would do" One really doesn't know what one would do until one has to cross that bridge. As for one self one would say that like a wolf that will chew through its own paw to escape a trap one would torture another to save oneself and ones family.

Here we have it, to what extent would one go to, to save oneself and ones own kind? The brutal truth of the matter is quite far. American Liberals tend to decry such a savage truth, prefering to fall back on some idealized notions of the world and themselves. One can see this no where more clearly than in the now raging Gun Control debate. Here Liberals fail to look themselves in the mirror for they do not want to see the face that stares back at them. They would rather pretend that they can can control their own and others dark nature through regulatory action of denying themselves and others of that object.

Now we come to the poster boy for American Liberalism Mr Michael Moorer, who is loudly proclaiming that "Americans like to kill other people." Ones quick retort would be, "Who do you want to kill today Mr Moorer?" The heart of ones message is that all the Gun Control in the world ain't gona make a bit of difference until one looks at the root cause of the problem. Which is mans in general and American specifically propensity for violence as a means of resolving ones problems. In other words until one takes a look at themselves in the mirror and admits that they have that dark propensity within themselves they will continue to perpetuate that violent nature. The only way to transcend that nature is by looking at themselves in the mirror and admiting to oneself that, that dark nature exists within oneself. By so doing this we then give ourselves a choice of what action to take instead of being compelled to a course of action.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  01/11/2013 03:35 AM Report

Torture is hard, stressful work.

Studies of torturers show that they would rather work as killers on death squads, where the work is easier.

Many torturers develop emotional problems, become alcoholics, beat their families and harbor a deep sense of betrayal toward the military brass that hangs them out to twist in the wind.

Our torturers have dreams, dreams that democracy promised to fulfill, dreams that now may never be fulfilled thanks to the arrogance of their superiors.

Why must America torture our torturers?

SharkswithfrikingLazers  01/11/2013 03:20 AM Report

Charlie, remember when Henry Crumpton told you he almost had bin Laden?

Hank Crumpton, Former Deputy Director of the CIA'S Counter-Terrorism Center: From '98, '99 all the way up to 2001, the warnings were there, the in--

Lara Logan: So through the Clinton administration, to the Bush administration?

Hank Crumpton: Yes, yes. We had extensive human networks in Afghanistan, Afghan sources that had been reporting on al Qaeda, on the presence of bin Laden.

But Crumpton says the Clinton White House didn't trust the CIA's Afghan sources alone and they wanted U.S. eyes on the target.

Hank Crumpton: So we were driven to look at various technical options. And we looked at a range of things. Long-range optics, they were too heavy, too cumbersome to get over the mountains. We looked at balloons. The prevailing winds would take those balloons to China. That would be a bad thing. We scrapped that. And then we stumbled across the UAVs, particularly the Predator. And sure enough, wasn't long before we had the Predator in theater over Afghanistan, the Predator unarmed at the time. And our human sources took us to a village-- far-- not far from Kandahar.

Lara Logan: And what did you see there?

Hank Crumpton: We saw a security detail, a convoy and we saw bin Laden exit the vehicle.

Lara Logan: Clearly?

Hank Crumpton: Clearly. And we had-- the optics were spot on. It was beaming back to us, CIA headquarters. We immediately alerted the White House. And the Clinton administration's response was, "Well, it will take several hours for the TLAMs, the cruise missiles launched from submarines, to reach that objective. So you need to tell us where bin Laden will be five or six hours from now." The frustration was enormous.

Lara Logan: So at that moment you wanted to kill him?

Hank Crumpton: Yes.

Lara Logan: But you couldn't get permission?

Hank Crumpton: Correct.

He couldn't get permission to do anything, including allowing the CIA's Afghan agents on the ground to attack bin Laden's compound. That missed opportunity in the late summer of 1999, led Crumpton and his CIA team to figure out how to arm the Predator drone with hellfire missiles.

Lara Logan: So the Predator drone strikes that take place in the tribal areas of Pakistan today are a direct result of what happened when you had Osama bin Laden in your sights in Afghanistan and no way to kill him yourselves?

Hank Crumpton: It was a response to the lack of response on the part of the administration or DOD. So the handful of CIA officers that we had, in great frustration, we began the discussion of, "Okay. We find him again we will have to engage ourselves. And we'll have to do it right then, right there."

(Now cut to a clip of torture in the movie--tell me how you really feel about the need for torture and the CIA.)

SharkswithfrikingLazers  01/11/2013 02:39 AM Report

Score keepers:

http://tortureaccountability.org/home

reefera4m  01/11/2013 01:33 AM Report

I'm disappointed that the panel was so unbalanced and completely bias on the issue of torture. As a young Marine Officer I recall lectures from ex-POWs during our SERE training. Without exception each of them said that torture was effective - that no one could resist indefinitely without commiting suicide. Torture, combined with skilled interogators, can be incredibly effective - those that deny this do so either from ignorance or political correctness.

I was particularly disappointed when you (Charlie Rose) passed right over the comment about the Police Chief in Germany who threatened torture to save a child. To me that is the essence of the moral question of whether torture is appropriate. The question you should have asked is 'would you resort to torture if the United States was a risk from a weapon of mass destruction'. I would be willing to bet that at some point - 3,000 10,000, 1,000,000 or 10,000,000 U.S. civilian deaths, virtually every citizen in the U.S. would approve of torture to prevent such devastation. The question then becomes on of degree - at what POINT does one resort to torture - not if.

Those that believe the U.S. should be 'THE EXAMPLE' for the rest of the world should consider what would happen if were we incapacitated to any significant degree - what would become of our role then. How would the rest or the world view the U.S. if we did not take any and ALL steps to protect our civilization and the rest of the Western world? Who would, or even could, step into that role? It might only take a small nuclear, biological or chemical attack of Washington, D.C. to creat such havoc.

IMHO anyone who is in a position of authority that would not use any and all means to protect our people and our way of life from this real potential threat is not morally justified - just a coward hiding behind moral paltitudes.

replycr  01/10/2013 10:31 PM Report

Lets not forget how the country got fooled into using torture - At the time the administration sought approval, Dershowitz published a paper "a case for torture". It exploited the term "ticking time bomb" to conjure up the 007 movie image of "one nuke missing, timer set, encase in concrete, known villian has posession and wants ransom - it is fully deterministic and will go off". Whereas, the real truth about "pending attack" was completely undertiminstic, subject to multitudes of conditions and could never be discerned by torture as inevitable and therefore was just a fishing expidition of sadism to get questionable data. Yes, it's the same hired gun Dershowitz that got paid to get Ron Goldman's killer free. The U.S. ended up importing Israeli torture methods (stress positions, "palestinian hanging" of

Manadel al-Jamadi (bound and hooded, first burned on the hood of the humvee then dumped in the back like a sack of potatoes, breaking his ribs - hanged (crucified) for 3 days while he said he was dying, then cut down, cleaned up, put on ice and the infamous picture taken (and Gen Boykin/bush only thought Jesus died horribly). We got fooled into following the same history of perpetual attack told to us by the Israeli self interest faction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strappado

It looks like the emmys did the right thing in ignoring both that film and argo. Argo is just another rah rah soft propaganda film villifying iran for the overthrow of mossedeh who only wanted more royalty for the black gold brittian took from their soil. sure embassy personel were held for about a year but in comparison to 600+ held for 3-7 years in guantanamo/baghram and other black sites, there's no comparison to equivalent injustice done.

eg: aljazeer cameraman tortured and held for 6 years even when known he was the wrong person.

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/1/8/exclusive_as_gitmo_turns_11_al

mulp  01/10/2013 05:58 PM Report

tick tick ticking time bomb is the justification given for torture because waiting a day is too long.

Given the movie is under three hours, torture shortened the movie by how long??

In the real world, torture delivered swift justice for 911 in 9 years 8 months instead of 9 years 9 months?? Would 9 years 9 months not been swift enough for dead or alive Sheriff Bush?

Torture did not deliver results for President Bush who saw his two terms ticktock ticktock away without getting bin Laden, but he suffered the controversy over torture. Clearly torture was not worth it for President Bush.

wpaul  01/10/2013 05:28 PM Report

It would be really helpful for these people to provide an operational definition of torture. Failure to do so demonstrates the intellectual dishonesty of this discussion. The refusal to do so, relegates this "discussion" to relative meaninglessness.

SharkswithfrikingLazers  01/10/2013 04:45 PM Report

Torture, "Zero Dark Thirty" on "The Colbert Report" (look for the familiar face):

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/422718/january-08-2013/bin-laden-film-controve rsy

No charges, no actual report and did the CIA feed Bigelow false information to justify their torture program as effective when it was NOT?

SharkswithfrikingLazers  01/10/2013 04:30 PM Report

Torture?

Watch "Taxi to the Dark Side".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxi_to_the_Dark_Side

Here is one (of many?) innocent guys we tortured to death:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dillawar.jpg

Hebb's sensory deprivation research was funded by and coordinated with the CIA (McCoy, 2007).

Hebb claims he can put you (YES YOU) into psychosis in just 48 hours.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_O._Hebb#Controversial_research

Love your neighbor but keep the devil as your friend.

tedkavanau  01/10/2013 03:05 PM Report

Mark Bowden spoke about the instance of the German boy buried alive. As I recall what Bowden said, the boy's survival time was very limited. The apprehended kidnapper refused to disclose the burial location until the German police official threatened him with torture. The kidnapper gave up the location and the boy was saved. That official, Bowden said, later resigned since he violated German laws in making that threat. Bowden then said he would have done, under that circumstance (threatened torture) as the police official did. After that Bowden comment all of your guests, including Bowden, spoke of how torture is not only immoral but also ineffective (the tortured will give misinformation) to end the pain) and how expert interrogators get better information by developing a relationship with the detainee.

There was no follow-up question during the remainder of your program relevant to what Bowden said about torture and the time factor. A frequent hypothetical used in arguments about torture is what if a bomb (call it atomic) is threatened to go off in a major city, say in the next 12 hours. Creating a relationship can take an indeterminate amount of time. Would Bowden, who agreed with the German police official), or your other guests, refuse to use torture under the time line of this atomic bomb scenario?

(By, the way, as Iran gets closer to having atom bombs that hypothetical is very much closer to being potential.

Ted Kavanau

REMant  01/10/2013 12:17 PM Report

The morality of torture depends not on the utility of the information which may or not be gathered, but on the deserts of those tortured, and decency only arises from mutual agreement to act decently, which to some extent obtained a couple centuries ago among the officer corps. Torture has been mostly a matter of retribution, or, as Foucault observed, vanity, not really different from the streets of LA, Washington or Chicago. And there's really no difference in this than in the larger subject of the efficacy of punishment. The N Vietnamese tortured for the same reason as the medieval Church did, and we put people in penitentiaries or sit children in a corner: subjugation in the guise of reform. Yet guns absent and people cowed, no one thought Stalinism moral. But it does no good either to argue that ppl have a right not to be tortured. Rights talk, without the underpinning of virtue and regard for truth-seeking, just opens the door to authoritarianism. Actually the commandments to love God and they neighbor as thyself cover the territory pretty well.