Man Who Waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Tells Story

[Rifleman62]

This is part of a larger story. The US Senate Democrats released their report last Friday on CIA methods of interrogation after 9/11.

Very controversial in the US, as it was a partisan report , and nobody in the CIA was interviewed. A review of documents report, which stated nothing was learned from the enhanced interrogation methods.  A six year, $40 million dollar report, released just as the Dems loose control of the Senate.

Part of the report stated that this Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the guy who masterminded 9/11, was waterboarded 83 times. In the interview, Dr. James Mitchell states water was dropped on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 83 times, not 83 separate incidents of waterboarding. Like the others, Dr. James Mitchell was never interviewed, yet he is the guy who devised the methods and was in situ.

Part 2 on FOX News tonight. Video link to part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTzwa9S444c

Megyn Kelly interviewed Dr. James Mitchell, a former U.S. Navy psychologist reportedly involved in the interrogation of suspected 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, claimed the CIA “saved lives” using techniques that some have claimed were entirely ineffective.

12-15-14 - ( Fox News - Kelly File ) - Dr. James Mitchell, who was involved in the Enhanced Interrogation program, is angry with Democrats over the release of their biased report on Enhanced Interrogations that they call ‘torture’. He is the subject of the report as he was one of the interrogators and he says they have never once asked him anything about his participation in this program. In fact he says what makes him angry is that KSM now has the chance to address the charges against him he doesn’t.

 

[Jarnhamar]

I'm okay with nothing being learned from the enhanced interrogation techniques as long as they really hurt.

 

[Shrek1985]

Just hypothetically;

Say that what was actually found was that "enhanced interrogation" works very, very well.

Would that report *ever* see the light of day? I think not.

I think what happened here was a lot of bad science; they started with a goal and made the results fit

 

[Edward Campbell]

There were some pretty good, I think, reports that "saw the light of day" in France, after the Algerian debacle ... The French did a lot of soul searching and some pretty rigorous analysis, some of which was released. The results, as I recall, included:

    Yes, torture (enhanced interrogation  :  ) works ... sometimes, the problem is to understand if that juicy bit of information
    you have just gleaned is the product of one of those times; because

    Mostly, people being tortured will tell you anything and everything they imagine you might want to hear;

    Torture is, in some respects, harder on the perpetrator than on the victim ... if it's not your torturer is a sociopath; and
   
    Torture is a HUGE political problem when it is made public, as it, inevitably will be.

Cannot remember most of what I read/heard decades ago ... it's likely on the Internet somewhere, although the incidents and reports were all pre-computer era.

 

[Shrek1985]

The way I look at it torture is a form of training; you train them not to lie.

Start with two guys and one fact you know, but they don't know you know. Keep the two in isolation from eachother.

Ask X the question. Ask Y. Doesn't matter what they say; they need to be the same. When Y doesn't match X, which matches that fact you know for certain, you go back to X, tell him Y said different. It doesn't frankly matter if he did or not, if they didn't agree with your one certain fact. Just tell him; "you didn't match, now you get hurt." Lather, rinse, repeat.

Keep asking. After a little while they realize that the only way to make sure that their answers match is to tell the truth. Once their telling the truth, in agreement with eachother and with your one certain fact, you get down to business. If anything they say fails to match up later, you return to the beginning of the process.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Phone books in a bucket of water or tie them in a chair and rubber hose them :subbies:

 

[The Bread Guy]

(....)

    Yes, torture (enhanced interrogation  :  ) works ... sometimes, the problem is to understand if that juicy bit of information you have just gleaned is the product of one of those times; because

    Mostly, people being tortured will tell you anything and everything they imagine you might want to hear;

    Torture is, in some respects, harder on the perpetrator than on the victim ... if it's not your torturer is a sociopath; and
   
    Torture is a HUGE political problem when it is made public, as it, inevitably will be.

Hardly exhaustive, but in the words of one 2006 U.S. paper assessing the Algerian campaign:

.... The French experience revealed that torture is only marginally effective (tactically) and has tremendous negative strategic consequences ....

As for the bit in green from ERC's quote above, I've heard (second-hand only) of very senior military folks from countries where the military has been the government (for a while, anyway) saying that young troops should not be tasked with torture because they don't have the stomach for it and it would be too hard on them, physically and emotionally.

 

[Shrek1985]

Hardly exhaustive, but in the words of one 2006 U.S. paper assessing the Algerian campaign:
As for the bit in green from ERC's quote above, I've heard (second-hand only) of very senior military folks from countries where the military has been the government (for a while, anyway) saying that young troops should not be tasked with torture because they don't have the stomach for it and it would be too hard on them, physically and emotionally.

Well, even the big, bad SS insisted on some form of industrial execution of the jews and the rest of the supposed enemies of germany because forcing their men to do it in the field was destroying them as soldiers and human beings.

 

[Brad Sallows]

>Mostly, people being tortured will tell you anything and everything they imagine you might want to hear;

If that is happening during a stressful interrogation, the interrogator is doing it wrong.  The basic idea is to punish lie-telling and ensure the subject understands very well that "everything they imagine" will simply prompt more punishment.

 

[dapaterson]

Japanese who waterboarded Americans in WWII were executed as war criminals.

"That was them, this is us" is not, to my knowledge, a recognized defence in any court of law.

 

[Kat Stevens]

It's not "water boarding", it's a "freedom baptism".  8)

 

[dapaterson]

Which is a horrific misunderstanding of Christianity.

 

[Retired AF Guy]

Japanese who waterboarded Americans in WWII were executed as war criminals.

Yes, but they were likely guilty of worse crimes then just waterboarding.

 

[Kilo_302]

No one has mentioned the fact that in all liklihood hundreds of innocent detainees were tortured right alongside those who were guilty. We don't have much to stand on in the morality department if this is the case. Arresting people and sending them off to be tortured based on the word of some local rival isn't exactly an open and shut case. And we wonder why extremist movements are so appealing.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Without defending torture (which I believe is morally indefensible and unreliable to boot), the success of extremist movements has more to do with the simplicity of its message than anything the West does or does not do.

 

[dapaterson]

Yes, but they were likely guilty of worse crimes then just waterboarding.

Like beating prisoners to death? Leaving them to die of hypothermia?

 

[The Bread Guy]

Like beating prisoners to death? Leaving them to die of hypothermia?

Electrocuting them?

 

[Kat Stevens]

Like beating prisoners to death? Leaving them to die of hypothermia?

Electrocuting them?

When did this become about the LAPD again?  Save the flames, just a joke.

 

[OldSolduer]

Without defending torture (which I believe is morally indefensible and unreliable to boot), the success of extremist movements has more to do with the simplicity of its message than anything the West does or does not do.

How true, and its a simple message which it seems the limosine liberals - and others -  cannot or will not understand.

I

 

[Kilo_302]

How true, and its a simple message which it seems the limosine liberals - and others -  cannot or will not understand.

I

I disagree. While the simplicity of the message will always appeal to some people who are more prone to extremist views, losing a family member to an errant bomb, or being picked up and imprisoned for years without charge while being innocent easily radicalizes the person who had never considered violence before. If I lost my entire family in an airstrike, or was tortured for years without charge, I know I wouldn't be the most rational person in the world.