Linkmeister

I don't know of a place he's said so, other than O'Reilly's miserable show, which I won't bother linking, but Brian Ross of ABC News has reported that good, actionable information was obtained through coercive techniques (including waterboarding), from high profile detainees in the secret prisons the Washington Post outed. Specifically, information necessary to thwarting the planned L.A. Library building attack.

I don't know much about Ross; I've seen him a million times but never formed an opinion of him. He seemed quite sure of his sources. Based on that, I think it cannot be said, any longer, that these methods never produce any useful information. It can be argued, it's possible that it's true, and that Ross is completely wrong, but it does not seem defensible to make a categorical statement that these methods are of no use.

There's further argument about whether the methods are torture, which we've sort of already had.

Duh. . . Library Tower, not building. Should have proof read.

It's also possible that Ross was being spun. We've seen that happen too. Look at Woodward in his two books about the current Bush.

I dunno. I just think that coercive interrogations get you suspect information.

First, regardless of how usefull the information might be it is absolutely unconscionable to use torture to get it.

Second, while information obtained by torture may occasionaly turn out to be true, by and large most people will say anything to simply make it stop. This does not lend itself to being an effective method of information gathering.

Apparently you have gone the rounds already on what constitutes torture so I will avoid pushing it furhter than this. If any argument was made regarding it not being torture because some soldiers have had some of these techniques used on them, that is BS. I have done many similar things to myself - including jumping into water through a hole in the ice, to bathe. Using that eample, if someone was forced into that same water, I would call it torture hands down. The fact that I did that on several occasions doesn't hange the fact that it is still torture, may bring into question my sanity, but that is all it implys.

torture and extraordinary rendition should be applied to Bush and Rumsfeld and Cheney....how else are we ever to get the truth out of them on the pretexts they peddled on the Iraqi War. Is there a special clause in the Constitution that says physically torturing the President is illegal? If there is, that 's not a problem. We could always retroactively change the Constitution then after.

>

The inflammatory rhetoric used in the political arena is not only pathetic, but also reflective of the echo chambers in which partisans reside. They fail to hear the desires of many for bipartisan dicussion of problems and opportunities.

Sigh

Well, pix, consider that Bush has "governed" solely from the right, and that Hastert/DeLay did the same (Hastert's "Majority of the majority" policy meant that bills couldn't even get to the floor unless he knew he had enough Republican votes to get them passed). I'm not quite sure why you think bipartisanship is something the Republicans are interested in. They seem to be following Grover Norquist's dictum: "Bipartisanship is like date rape."

Link

thanks for the response.

My observation that the lack bipartisanship efforts at tackling this country's issues is aimed at both parties.

It is the imflammatory rhetoric by extreme partisans that fuels the fire, either that used by the far right wing, or from the left as evidenced by RONW above.

Surely you agree?

My point was that it takes two to tango, and if one side shows no interest in working with the other, then it's hard for me to find fault with the side that's out of power.