I hate the people who did this.

The fact that photographs are taken, like the torture techniques themselves, are not the product of "a few bad apples." This aspect of CIA torture will be touched upon in part III of the History of CIA Torture.

Ed's Amateur Psychiatry ~
Hmmm... Unable to distinguish between humor and horror . . .
Hmmm... Sounds like Sociopathy

I'd be willing to bet this is the kinda stuff that drudge and the limboob use to their rocks off.
~

I've seen all these pictures a thousand times, and I hate the people who did this, too, but are we talking about images that have been released across the web since it first became known? Or are we talking about the stacks of other ones I thought were held back from everyone? The stuff that Seymour Hersh was talking about. The stuff they initially found much too rough to show? Rough as these are, they're not as rough as it got. And everyone responsible, from the top all the way down should be prosecuted. The whole world knows we did it, all of it, and we will never be forgiven, or forgive ourselves, until we expose it all and prosecute for it all. We NEVER get back on a moral ground until that happens. Certainly not by slinking away with excuses and just promising to do better in the future. That is COMPLETELY unacceptable.

99 -

are we talking about images that have been released across the web since it first became known? Or are we talking about the stacks of other ones I thought were held back from everyone? The stuff that Seymour Hersh was talking about. The stuff they initially found much too rough to show?

A certain set of Abu Ghraib photos were released as the initial batch way back in 2005(? was it?).

A few more leaked out thereafter, thought to be a part of the "new" batch which Obama just announced he was opposing the release of. Those leaked photos, which were published a few years back by Sydney Herald, are where the above come from.

Hope that clarifies.

Barack ~ Turn down the Desmond Tutu and turn up the John Shaft ... Chief . . .
~

RIP S.Z. 1911~2009

Yes, it does clarify, we're on the same page then. I thought we were forgetting about the ones nobody has seen and so having seen these already I was starting to worry. Bottom line seems to be that there are some that were released to the media and a bunch that weren't, and some more that were leaked, but not all, and Obama has backed down on releasing all of them. I feel that was an extremely unwise decision, and don't understand how he could believe his own excuses. I think it's part and parcel of his determination to keep the guilty from being prosecuted, but shall hope he's just lulling them into complacency while Holder is busy getting all their asses nailed to the wall.

History ~ repeats . . .
~

So, this is the face of the United States, on behalf of George W. Bush and gang. Oh, but according to the right wingers, as we are speaking of our disgust, "we are just so full of hate, speaking ill of GWB so often" I'm "just full of hate." ??? Yeah, just a little. *%##@$%#*

I'd rather see photos like this than see another terrorist attack on the US.

That's just my opinion though and others are entitled to prefer rights for terrorist than a safe country for Americans.

PS ~ I hate Limbaugh and vote Democrat 90% of the time.

Tracy created (or bought into) a false dichotomy:

I'd rather see photos like this than see another terrorist attack on the US.

One has nothing to do with the other. Beyond the fact that treatment of, largely innocent, folks in this way serves to inflame our enemies to encourage them to launch another terrorist attack.

That's just my opinion though and others are entitled to prefer rights for terrorist than a safe country for Americans.

And, again, you buy into (or create) a false dichotomy. It's not an either/or, as you seem foolishly to have deluded yourself. And I couldn't give a damn who you vote for. I care only that you seem so woefully mis-informed.

It has nothing to do with "rights for terrorists". It has to do with the rule of law, treatment of our *own* troops, retaining (or, in this case, regaining) a moral authority as an example to the world, and honoring our decades long commitment to international treaties to which we are a party and to which we have long held many others.

Sorry that you don't seem to get that, Tracy. Perhaps my words above will help you to rethink your misinformed, self-defeating and, ultimately, very dangerous position.

Wilburrr... ~ Unless We Do Something Significant to 'rectify' (btw ~ have never used this term this way...) this situation THIS IS AMERICAN !

...remember we were told BUTno wears loud (M$M) enough that . . . . . "He screwed-up every thing he touched" . . .

Unless We Do Something to Significantly *rectify* this situation, That being torture in MY name . . .

THIS IS as AMERICAN as apple pie!

... and it ain't never gonna go away by itself.
~

Tracy, have you read the recent articles (here and here, for example) that demonstrate the purpose of Cheney's torture program? Torture is known to result in false confessions. Cheney demanded that Iraqi prisoners (you know, those people that had nothing to do with 9/11) be tortured until they gave false confessions that Saddam and al-Qaeda were somehow linked.

Tracy, did you read the Senate testimony from Ali Soufan, the FBI agent that originally interrogated Khalid Sheik Mohamed? Soufan said that he got excellent information in 45 min with traditional non-violent interview methods, and that subsequent torture shut down the flow of information. Torture was successful in one aspect. After 83 sessions of waterboarding we got a false confession.

Tracy, torture has nothing to do with national safety. It only has something to do with the personal perversion of people like Cheney, Bush, Addington, Bybee, Yoo, Gonzales, Feith, Haynes, and others.

See, I heard Hersh saying this, and I've been wondering all this time when it would come out, who would be charged and what would be the sentence. So I can't keep back the notion that this explains the reversal about releasing the rest of it.

But I'd like to know and make it known that I want it prosecuted to the fullest extent. I don't think anything short of that will do.

... Agent 99 said on 5/16/2009 @ 9:10 pm PT...
"See, I heard Hersh saying this, ..."
I guess we know now what was on the tapes (potential evidence) the CIA destroyed. Could anyone not anticipate that torture always devolves to such a point? It's disgusting and everybody invilved should be in jail.

And if I may add to Tracy: Torturing doesn't make us safer. Word always gets out, it always becomes public knowledge. It recruits potential terrorists. It also makes people less willing to surrender in a battle. It's the 'I'd rather die fighting that let them get ahold of me' response. Would you surrender to people that would do things like that (and much, much worse) to you? Not me. Please re-think this.

Tracy, about the terrorist threat, you need to understand something that might take a while before you can fathom. Please study what these hundreds of professionals of the highest stature have come to understand, how things are not what they seemed, all through the Bush, specifically the events of 9-11-01. Please check this out. And keep reading, despite your first inclination to write it off. The plentitude of evidence is what these highly credible folks have studied.
http://Patriotsquestion911.com

I think I will grab some people off the street, torture the hell out of them until they admit they were going to rob my house, and then I'll feel at peace because "I'd rather see those robbers beat to a pulp than have my house robbed".

Yes, that way I'll be able to sleep at night because at least I was able to protect my house.

I don't get the Obama rationale. Torture is too politically hot to investigate and follow through on (even though there are laws and treaties surrounding it, because it will suck the air out of the political sails of any reform program the government has planned. On the other hand Obama is willing to directly confront Conservatives and Catholics on Abortion (at Notre Dame commencement speech), saying there's common ground if people are willing to find it.
We can't agree on torture but we can find common ground on abortion. This is when Obama stops making sense and all his defenders are being just as blindly supportive of him as Bush's defenders still are.

The part that keeps nagging at me about this sudden reversal in avidity for the prosecution of these crimes is that if they are not prosecuted, we have given the present president and all future ones, to use Ray McGovern's term, permission to have and use their own private Gestapo if they choose. This is UTTERLY unacceptable, and was decried as such when we wanted impeachment. That has not changed.

The ability to defy the law by persons who work for the administration, even if without the president's permission, is also preserved, if we do not prosecute.

There's plenty evidence extant right now that no investigative panels need even precede the appointment of a special prosecutor. Investigation does not stop because a prosecutor is named. Ask Ken Starr. It needn't take up too much of the time of the new administration, or even of congress. That excuse is so lame.

They saw off our peoples head in front of a camera and we hang them upside down on a bunk bed....whew...

You idiots need to get a grip

Emma

Poor Emma...you ever heard of psy-ops? That's what our government does to get folks to support the efforts of the war.

The cutting off the head incident of the journalist fellow, named Berg. Did you notice that he was wearing (the fellow who was beheaded) an orange jumpsuit, issued by US, and the beheader, was wearing a wedding ring. He had kind of a beer belly too, the beheader, that is. Also, mosre important, is the fact that Islamic, religious fundamentalists are strictly prohibited to wear ANY jewelry, yet the beheader was wearing a wedding ring.

We on the Left, have a grip on reality, and we are speaking out, if only you would use your own objectivity.

Actually Blubonnet, the perpetrators in the pearl vid were wearing white tennis shoes. For anyone who has spent time overseas .... pretty much the only people wearing white tennis shoes are american tourists.

It was either the most failed effort at actual psy-ops I've ever seen, or some sort of 'reverse' psy-ops and they really were terrorists trying to pass themselves off as a CIA psy-op scheme.

"Tracy" seems to think that this sort of sado-masochism is keeping us safe from another attack. So far we haven't seen real evidence that this deterred anything of the sort. Somebody could find one of Tracy's kids reading the wrong book someday and suggest torturing Tracy might be a good idea.

I'm not for torture. But if you are for torture then you have to ask yourself this. Why were we so focused on manufacturing an Iraqi link which didn't exist to Al Qaeda when we could have been torturing people to make them tell us WHERE IS OSAMA BIN LADEN? If it works so well, why haven't we gotten him yet?

The answer you don't want to hear is simple. They never cared whether he was dead, alive, or in Disneyland.

I didn't see a Daniel Pearl video. I saw the Berg video. He was a journalist, an independent I believe, against the war. He had plans of exposing things our government would rather we not see. He was perfect for our government to get rid of, and make it appear as though it was the "terrorists". Any one with a scintilla of wit, could realize it wasn't Islamic extremists doing it.

It wouldn't surprise me if it was a psy-op regarding Daniel Pearl as well.

Well, they obviously weren't torturing to get information. They were doing it because they wanted to torture people. No. Really. Nobody was torturing to trump up an excuse to start a war. A thousand easy lies work for that. Clearly, they didn't care if OBL was in Disneyland. Torture scares the pee out of US, so we won't mess with them, and infuriates the families and friends and countrymen of the victims into BECOMING the convenient enemies they want them to be. They don't want information. They don't want revenge. They want the wars they started to keep going, keep spreading. Period.

Wilburrr... ~ I found Harry Reids's Nads !
~

Until the entire chain of command is held responsible, horrible deeds will continue like this unchecked. Unfortunately, the US Government has a long history of this kind of abuse. I recall the Mai Lai massacre where 504 women and children were cut down by the US Army. 126 of the victims were children age 5 or younger. In my opinion, the men who did that should have been given life without the possibility of parole. They got a slap on the wrist, a pat on the back, and most collected unemployment after returning home. Look what happened to the latest liar... one of the top brass who knew about and tried to hide the Pat Tillman cover up - Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Obama just promoted him.

Thatr is so disappointing!