MSNBC: Condi Rice may have admitted to conspiracy

TomAikins,

Check the "rules of conduct" here on NP. If you disagree with someone that is fine but keep your personal attacks or assumptions about the persons political viewpoints off the table. To discredit someones views this way leads only to further personal attacks and off topic.Roy has a very valid and honest perception of the reality here. You may not agree with his viewpoint but nevertheless he has one and must be respected. He did not attack anyone just stated his opinion. Besides, he has been a important contributor at NP. His views need to be heard. we need diversity.

Thanks,

tikun(Steve)

That is a flame, Mr Aikens,  and you will be reported.

I couldn't vote for Reagan or Mondale and I couldn't vote for McCain or Obama. You have no idea what I believe and why I believe it. 

I agree with Michael; interesting.

But, I envision, IF Ms. Rice eventually needs to get 'lawyered up', it will be argued, at the time she made those remarks, she was not under oath, opening the door for some type of revisionist statement.

Here is a list of Chinese torture methods, just to give you an idea of what torture looks like. And, my second point would be, if the prosecutors in Spain were really interested in helping the people of the world be free from torture, they would prosecute the cases in the order of importance, not the order of political correctness.

And, the same holds for the interest in the topic. If a person is really interested in stopping torture, the person goes after the most egregious cases first, and doesn't skip to face-slapping, sleep deprivation and water-boarding until the really awful cases had been dealt with.

To have a conspiracy, you have to have a crime. If there was no crime, or if there was no criminal intent, meaning that there was no way a reasonable person would think that the lawyers had it wrong on face-slapping, sleep deprivation and water-boarding as torture, given that all US pilots are subjected to this treatment as part of their own training, then there is no conspiracy.

Dean got caught and wants to catch everyone else. He should have given the right advice to Nixon and he would not be in this predicament of being an "ex-lawyer".

It is easier to prove that Obama is not a citizen than to prove that that Rice is part of a criminal conspiracy.

Roy count me in as one who thinks that if we are at war and the enemy has information that will save lives then you do what you need to do to get it. Doesn't sound pretty or certainly "politically correct" but I guess you won't find too many here that have ever experienced a terror attack. The need to get information/intelligence  from a combatant is part of the effort.

Anyone want to know what torture IS visit Iran, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and some of the new East European countries. Not the least Russia, China, North Korea.

Someone once said I can't tell you what torture is but  you know it when you see it. Has anyone seen it? Has anyone been in the middle of a terror attack. Now that is torture.

"Bush, Cheney, et al tortured prisoners to get them to say that Saddam was involved in 911"

Where do you find such gems? I have never heard any of this. No one has ever proven that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and that argument was never made by Bush nor has any information been released from Guantanamo that such a statement had been made, freely or under duress, by anyone interned there.

Now, of course, Obama has the problem of finding someplace to put the prisoners. I laugh. He asked for this.

Yes, but the question becomes: what is "severe"? I don't think you can prove that those methods, copied from the Chinese are "severe". They are, in fact, the least severe of all the methods I have heard about.

Hell, I am often sleep-deprived because my work doesn't have a fixed schedule and I have to go around on 4 or 5 hours sleep sometimes.

"Severe" should have been spelled out and it wasn't and now there is wiggle room for "enhanced interrogation techniques".

Do you really think that there is never justification for abuse to make someone talk? Really? And, are you against the war on terror? Do you think we have no need to protect ourselves?

Protect ourselves from other attacks of which 9/11 was just one of quite a few.

This is what I was afraid of. We don't have a common basis for a dialogue about this. You don't believe that danger exists. Only the danger of using torture exists. There is nothing to protect ourselves from. There was no lack in your mind in the Clinton administration when it came to following up on the various leads about future terror attacks, such as another attack on the WTC after the first one.

Bin Laden and his followers are at war with a dozen countries beside ours, including the Philippines, India, China, in Dafur, in Kosovo.

This whole thing, this whole 9/11 scenario was all made up by paranoid people. 

I thank you for your sincerity. Have a good evening.

You have to find 12 Americans who think that sleep deprivation, face-slapping and water-boarding, all things that US pilots experience as part of their training, are, in fact, torture.

You will never find 12 Americans who will think that.

Comparing the killing of communist sympathizers and outright communists under Pinochet with water-boarding and sleep deprivation seems to me to be a stretch.

The Serbian president was responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of men, the killing and raping hundreds of thousands of women, in concentration camps.

I don't see a comparison possible.

In any case, the Serbian president had a trial that went on for several years. Condi Rice compared to Milosevich? A real stretch.

Hell, if a parent slapped his kid in the face, it wouldn't even be a felony, but a misdemeanor.

Now, as soon as one of these Guantanamo jihadist-terrorsts gets loose and kills an American somewhere, the trials and investigations will go in the opposite direction.

Just to back up what has already been stated here, please refrain from comments of an inflammatory nature towards other members, such as the use of the word 'moron'. Thanks.

What you intend to do has to be against the law. If water-boarding is not against the law, then there is no conspiracy.

Any scarecrow who has been to the Wizard knows that.

Am I missing something here?

Rhonda, You mean to say that under no circumstance, if someone was trying to kill you would you not do whatever was needed to ascertain information? If someone ( a terrorist), god forbid, had the knowledge to stop a major attack you would not be in favor of doing whatever it took to get this information?

http://www.caglepost.com   9 Questions The Left Needs To Answer About Torture   Dennis Prager

Any human being with a functioning conscience or a decent heart loathes torture. Its exercise has been a blight on humanity. With this in mind, those who oppose what the Bush administration did to some terror suspects may be justified. But in order to ascertain whether they are, they need to respond to some questions:

1. Given how much you rightly hate torture, why did you oppose the removal of Saddam Hussein, whose prisons engaged in far more hideous tortures, on thousands of times more people, than America did — all of whom, moreover, were individuals and families who either did nothing or simply opposed tyranny? One assumes, furthermore, that all those Iraqi innocents Saddam had put into shredding machines or whose tongues were cut out and other hideous tortures would have begged to be waterboarded.

2. Are all forms of painful pressure equally morally objectionable? In other words, are you willing to acknowledge that there are gradations of torture as, for example, there are gradations of burns, with a third-degree burn considerably more injurious and painful than a first-degree burn? Or is all painful treatment to be considered torture? Just as you, correctly, ask proponents of waterboarding where they draw their line, you, too, must explain where you draw your line.

3. Is any maltreatment of anyone at any time — even a high-level terrorist with knowledge that would likely save innocents' lives — wrong? If there is no question about the identity of a terror suspect , and he can provide information on al-Qaida — for the sake of clarity, let us imagine that Osama Bin Laden himself were captured — could America do any form of enhanced interrogation involving pain and/or deprivation to him that you would consider moral and therefore support?

4. If lawyers will be prosecuted for giving legal advice to an administration that you consider immoral and illegal, do you concede that this might inhibit lawyers in the future from giving unpopular but sincerely argued advice to the government in any sensitive area? They will, after all, know that if the next administration disapproves of their work, they will be vilified by the media and prosecuted by the government.

5. Presumably you would acknowledge that the release of the classified reports on the handling of high-level, post-Sept.

11 terror suspects would inflame passions in many parts of the Muslim world. If innocents were murdered because nonviolent cartoons of Muhammad were published in a Danish newspaper, presumably far more innocents will be tortured and murdered with the release of these reports and photos. Do you accept any moral responsibility for any ensuing violence against American and other civilians?

6. Many members of the intelligence community now feel betrayed and believe that the intelligence community will be weakened in their ability to fight the most vicious organized groups in the world. As reported in the Washington Post, former intelligence officer “(Mark) Lowenthal said that fear has paralyzed agents on the ground. Apparently, many of those in the know are certain that life-saving information was gleaned from high level terror suspects who were waterboarded. As Mike Scheuer, former head of the CIA unit in charge of tracking Osama bin Laden, said, ”We were very certain that the interrogation procedures procured information that was worth having.” If, then, the intelligence community has been adversely affected, do you believe it can still do the work necessary to protect tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people from death and maiming?

7. Will you seek to prosecute members of Congress such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who were made aware of the waterboarding of high-level suspects and voiced no objections?

8. Would you agree to releasing the photos of the treatment of Islamic terrorists only if accompanied by photos of what their terror has done to thousands of innocent people around the world? Would you agree to photos — or at least photo re-enactments — of, let us say, Iraqi children whose faces were torn off with piano wire by Islamists in Iraq? If not, why not? Isn't context of some significance here?

9. You say that America's treatment of terror suspects will cause terrorists to treat their captives, especially Americans, more cruelly. On what grounds do you assert this? Did America's far more moral treatment of Japanese prisoners than Japan's treatment of American prisoners in World War II have any impact on how the Japanese treated American and other prisoners of war? Do you think that evil people care how morally pure America is?

If you do address these questions, it would appear that you care less about morality and torture than about vengeance against the Bush administration.

If I may play "buttinski", which is admittedly often unwelcome by some, this statement:

The 'war on terror' exists in the minds of those that created it and continues in the minds of those who believe it. Protect ourselves from what?

May have been intended by you to mean something else, but it reads to most people that you either don't know 9/11 happened, or think that the "War on Terror", which was launched by legislation passed into law by Congress, has no legitimacy.

Whatever the case, such a view would actually be such a fringe minority to call it extremist would put it mildly. Public law 107-40, the Authorization to use military force against those who committed the attacks of 9/11, passed through Congress with the following roll calls:

Senate:  98 Ayes, 0 Nays, 2 not present/not voting.

House: 420 Ayes, 1 Nay, 10 not present/not voting.

So even though I feel at this point 8 years later the government has used 9/11 to forward an agenda of domestic civil rights loss and foreign expansion of corporate interests, it is beyond foolish to imply a lack of legitimacy of the war on terrorism or that the detainees at Gitmo are not almost certainly our sworn enemies- most were taken on the battlefields of Afghanistan in the initial months of combat. (we've released hundreds already who were not deemed to be a threat)

Please refrain from making assumptions about other members, this is against the spirit of the Code of Conduct.

Comments like this are also in violation:

"When are morons like Roy C going to wake up and stop helping scumbags like Bush and his ilk destroy what's left of the US and the Constitution?"

I understand that opinions here differ but we ask that all members treat one another with respect when debating an issue.

An excerpt from an article regarding the testimony of a former psychiatrist in the U.S. Army, Major Charles Burney to the Senate Armed Services Committee, which appears in the recently released and declassified committee report on the treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody, where the major describes his testimony to Army investigators in 2006: 

A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.

"While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq," Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."

Well said Roy.

This witch hunt for blood from of the last admin, god help us from the incompetence,  is truly a waste of time and energy. While "Rome burns we fiddle our fiddle with conspiracy theories, hatred for Bush, hatred for conservatives, republicans, etc." Revenge is sweet but the consequences sometimes are unintentional and dangerous to us all.

Roy, count me as one American who thinks "...that sleep deprivation, face-slapping and water-boarding, ...are, in fact, torture."

They wouldn't even be felonies if a parent did them to his adolescent kid, with the possible exception of water-boarding.

Tom, right on the money. Just take out 'moron' and 'pricks' so you will be within the rules.

nyctuber,

Right on as usual.

if you took out all the "morons and pricks" very few comments would be made here. sorry.

Thanks Roy,

Maybe we can now sober this hate fest with your latest post.

He has a different opinion than the people who think that it is useful. He doesn't say to prosecute Condi Rice for passing on memos about legality, which is a very inquisitional reaction to something you disagree with.

The topic is the justification of lack thereof for prosecuting Condi Rice. Someone should send this reasonable man an email and ask if he thinks she should be prosecuted.

Do you think that because one person says we don't need to torture that that is the be-all and end-all opinion?

Thanks for directing me to it, as it was worth reading, and I mean that.  But these are all judgments, not mathematical propositions with precise gradients on error and the rest.

I spent two years taking the same courses that med students take, and I will tell you that I have seen as much disagreement on whether the best treatment for a cancer is one operation or another and I have seen the most intelligent people say the stupidest things about Vit C.

One man's informed opinion about torture is something to note, but I have seen the other opinions as well. And just as the doctors and the scientists disagree, I think that the question is open, as to efficacy, morality and the rest.

So what if no one gave up Osama binLaden. Is it really true? Or did someone give up bin Laden and then someone informed on that as the attempt to find him was being undertaken, say, someone inside the Pakistani intelligence apparatus?

He is ONE experienced judge, not the whole group. That was my point about the medical doctors and scientists. They have enormous disagreements, even feuds, that go on for years with a lot of strife.

And that is over something you can eventually work out in a laboratory. What works in the torture department and what doesn't work needs a thorough looking into.

I mean you are saying that ipso facto that proves your point, the "experienced judge".

The only way you could judge this judge's expertise would for you to be an "experienced judge:" yourself.  And neither of us are such judges.

Since you are as student of philosophy, I will say, "What is objective morality? Does it exist? How do we know that this morality is objective? And how do we apply such a morality?"

Formatory logic says that such-and-such is torture, and torture is banned, and we are therefore doing banned acts which are criminal. Formatory logic is not reason, not at all.

"Do you really think that there is never justification for abuse to make someone talk? Really? And, are you against the war on terror? Do you think we have no need to protect ourselves?"

Yes, really. The world does not become a better place by following the abusers. The 'war on terror' exists in the minds of those that created it and continues in the minds of those who believe it. Protect ourselves from what?

and one opinion also. There are many folks in the business that would add, if necessary,do what you can to ensure getting what ever information that person knows that will help your cause.

Direct knowledge of the good is an excuse to avoid questioning one's own views, in my opinion.

It sounds like that definition of porno where the judge didn't know how to define it but "knew it when he saw it", even if it was great literature.

If there is no objective morality, then you are stuck with the fact that you cannot prove your opinion of this question as anything more than your opinion. You simply cannot be right because there is no basis for being right. All we have are our preferences, subjectively determined.

We are then reduced to a Tower of Babel where everyone gets to be king for the day.