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The Bush-era interrogation techniques that many view as torture may have yielded important information about terrorists, President Obama's national intelligence director said in an internal memo.

"High-value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country," Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said in a memo to personnel.

The memo, obtained by CNN late Tuesday, was sent around the time the administration released several memos from the previous administration detailing the use of terror interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, which simulates drowning.

Obama left open the possibility of criminal prosecution Tuesday for former Bush administration officials who drew up the legal basis for aggressive interrogation techniques many view as torture.

Obama said it will be up to Attorney General Eric Holder to decide whether or not to prosecute the former officials.

"With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that is going to be more a decision for the attorney general within the parameter of various laws, and I don't want to prejudge that," Obama said during a meeting with Jordan's King Abdullah II at the White House.

"There's a host of very complicated issues involved there. As a general deal, I think we should be looking forward and not backward.

"I do worry about this getting so politicized that we cannot function effectively, and it hampers our ability to carry out critical national security operations."

The president added that any congressional "accounting of what took place" should be done "in a bipartisan fashion outside of the typical hearing process that can sometimes break down ... entirely along party lines."

It is important, he said, for the "American people to feel as if this is not being dealt with to provide one side or another political advantage."

Polls conducted shortly after Obama's inauguration seem to reflect a split among Americans on the issue.

A Gallup poll in early February showed that 38 percent of respondents favored a Justice Department criminal investigation of torture claims, 24 percent favored a noncriminal investigation by an independent panel, and 34 percent opposed either. A Washington Post poll about a week earlier showed a narrow percentage of Americans in favor of investigations.

Obama's remarks on Tuesday came five days after the administration released four Bush-era memos detailing the use of terror interrogations such as waterboarding, a technique used to simulate drowning.

One memo showed that CIA interrogators used waterboarding -- which Obama has called torture -- at least 266 times on two top al Qaeda suspects.

The author of one of the memos that authorized those techniques, then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, is now a federal appeals court judge in California.

U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-New York, a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, has called for Bybee's impeachment, while Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, chair of the Senate Judiciary committee, called for his resignation.

"If the White House and Mr. Bybee told the truth at the time of his nomination, he never would have been confirmed," Leahy said. "So actually, the honorable and decent thing for him to do now would be to resign. If he's an honorable and decent man, he will."

For now, Bybee's fate remains unclear.

Obama reiterated his belief that he did not think it is appropriate to prosecute those CIA officials and others who carried out the interrogations in question.

"This has been a difficult chapter in our history and one of [my] tougher decisions," he added. The techniques listed in memos "reflected ... us losing our moral bearings."

The president's apparent willingness to leave the door open to a prosecution of Bush officials seemed to contradict White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who indicated Sunday that the administration was opposed to such an action.

Obama believes "that's not the place that we [should] go," Emanuel said on ABC's "This Week."

"It's not a time to use our energy ... looking back [with] any sense of anger and retribution."

On Monday, Obama asserted during a visit to CIA headquarters that he had released the documents primarily because of the "exceptional circumstances that surrounded these memos, particularly the fact that so much of the information was [already] public. ... The covert nature of the information had been compromised."

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The Central Intelligence Agency told CNSNews.com today that it stands by the assertion made in a May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that the use of “enhanced techniques” of interrogation on al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) -- including the use of waterboarding -- caused KSM to reveal information that allowed the U.S. government to thwart a planned attack on Los Angeles.

Before he was waterboarded, when KSM was asked about planned attacks on the United States, he ominously told his CIA interrogators, “Soon, you will know.”

According to the previously classified May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that was released by President Barack Obama last week, the thwarted attack -- which KSM called the “Second Wave”-- planned “ ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles.”

KSM was the mastermind of the first “hijacked-airliner” attacks on the United States, which struck the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Northern Virginia on Sept. 11, 2001.

After KSM was captured by the United States, he was not initially cooperative with CIA interrogators. Nor was another top al Qaeda leader named Zubaydah. KSM, Zubaydah, and a third terrorist named Nashiri were the only three persons ever subjected to waterboarding by the CIA. (Additional terrorist detainees were subjected to other “enhanced techniques” that included slapping, sleep deprivation, dietary limitations, and temporary confinement to small spaces -- but not to water-boarding.)

This was because the CIA imposed very tight restrictions on the use of waterboarding. “The ‘waterboard,’ which is the most intense of the CIA interrogation techniques, is subject to additional limits,” explained the May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo. “It may be used on a High Value Detainee only if the CIA has ‘credible intelligence that a terrorist attack is imminent’; ‘substantial and credible indicators that the subject has actionable intelligence that can prevent, disrupt or deny this attack’; and ‘[o]ther interrogation methods have failed to elicit this information within the perceived time limit for preventing the attack.’”

The quotations in this part of the Justice memo were taken from an Aug. 2, 2004 letter that CIA Acting General Counsel John A. Rizzo sent to the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

Before they were subjected to “enhanced techniques” of interrogation that included waterboarding, KSM and Zubaydah were not only uncooperative but also appeared contemptuous of the will of the American people to defend themselves.

“In particular, the CIA believes that it would have been unable to obtain critical information from numerous detainees, including KSM and Abu Zubaydah, without these enhanced techniques,” says the Justice Department memo. “Both KSM and Zubaydah had ‘expressed their belief that the general US population was ‘weak,’ lacked resilience, and would be unable to ‘do what was necessary’ to prevent the terrorists from succeeding in their goals.’ Indeed, before the CIA used enhanced techniques in its interrogation of KSM, KSM resisted giving any answers to questions about future attacks, simply noting, ‘Soon you will know.’”

After he was subjected to the “waterboard” technique, KSM became cooperative, providing intelligence that led to the capture of key al Qaeda allies and, eventually, the closing down of an East Asian terrorist cell that had been tasked with carrying out the 9/11-style attack on Los Angeles.

The May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that details what happened in this regard was written by then-Principal Deputy Attorney General Steven G. Bradbury to John A. Rizzo, the senior deputy general counsel for the CIA.

“You have informed us that the interrogation of KSM—once enhanced techniques were employed—led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the ‘Second Wave,’ ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles,” says the memo.

“You have informed us that information obtained from KSM also led to the capture of Riduan bin Isomuddin, better known as Hambali, and the discover of the Guraba Cell, a 17-member Jemaah Islamiyah cell tasked with executing the ‘Second Wave,’” reads the memo. “More specifically, we understand that KSM admitted that he had [redaction] large sum of money to an al Qaeda associate [redaction] … Khan subsequently identified the associate (Zubair), who was then captured. Zubair, in turn, provided information that led to the arrest of Hambali. The information acquired from these captures allowed CIA interrogators to pose more specific questions to KSM, which led the CIA to Hambali’s brother, al Hadi. Using information obtained from multiple sources, al-Hadi was captured, and he subsequently identified the Garuba cell. With the aid of this additional information, interrogations of Hambali confirmed much of what was learned from KSM.”

A CIA spokesman confirmed to CNSNews.com today that the CIA stands by the factual assertions made here.

In the memo itself, the Justice Department’s Bradbury told the CIA’s Rossi: “Your office has informed us that the CIA believes that ‘the intelligence acquired from these interrogations has been a key reason why al Qa’ida has failed to launch a spectacular attack in the West since 11 September 2001.”

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Goode's tenure as mayor was marred in the summer of 1985 by the MOVE confrontation, in which police attempted to clear a building in West Philadelphia inhabited by a radical back-to-nature group whose members, under the leadership of founder John Africa, had long been a nuisance to the city by shouting out slogans and statements from a megaphone at all hours of the day and night, ignoring city sanitation codes and barricading themselves in houses when law enforcement came to enforce them. During the final assault on the building, the police dropped an improvised bomb made of C-4 plastic explosive and Tovex, an explosive gel used in underwater mining. This however caused the house to catch fire, and ignited a massive blaze which eventually consumed almost an entire city block, killed 11 people (including 5 children), and left 240 people homeless.

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I know if I was captured and was facing torture that I would definitely sign up for the water boarding over the removal of fingernails or testicular electrocution. Just please, PLEASE, whatever you do don't lock me in a box with caterpillars!

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if you are supporting torture (which waterboarding has been classified) than you are un American...

as simple as that.

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I would choose the removal of finger- and/or toenails over anything else.

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No it's not torture. Liberals are exactly like conservatives, always trying to ram rod their moral belief system down everyone's throats.

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It can cause extreme pain, dry drowning, damage to lungs, brain damage from oxygen deprivation, other physical injuries including broken bones due to struggling against restraints, lasting psychological damage or, ultimately, death.

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I know if I was captured and was facing torture that I would definitely sign up for the water boarding over the removal of fingernails or testicular electrocution.

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Electroshock to the Testicles. (It's a "nice" link, I promise. Dare to click?)




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I would like to give Corke a nice 220V/16A cattle prod-up-the-ass treatment. But that's off topic.

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Carry on...

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Sorry I don't define my beliefs by what's written in a liberal dictionary.

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If you still don't think it is torture, then you must lack English comprehension as to what the word means.

dictionary definition

Not sure what Pat Robertson has to do with anything, but either you don't know the meanings of the words and topics being discussed, or you do, and are refusing to accept when you have been proven wrong.

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OK, so I had another cup of coffee and am I little less cranky. There has been a miscommunication here (my fault). It’s not the act itself I am referring to, it’s the context in which it has been applied.

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Here is an example: Police have a man in custody who they believe has kidnapped a child, past experience with this man has also led them to believe that the child is currently in grave danger. If the police beat the information out of him, in order to save a life, are they torturing him? I don’t believe they are. Even in the definition you posted, inflicting pain to save lives isn’t listed as torture.

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OK, so I had another cup of coffee and am I little less cranky. There has been a miscommunication here (my fault). It’s not the act itself I am referring to, it’s the context in which it has been applied.

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Here is an example: Police have a man in custody who they believe has kidnapped a child, past experience with this man has also led them to believe that the child is currently in grave danger. If the police beat the information out of him, in order to save a life, are they torturing him? I don’t believe they are. Even in the definition you posted, inflicting pain to save lives isn’t listed as torture.

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The primary definition in that dictionary example (under noun) specifically relates to inflicting pain as a means of obtaining information -- whether it saves lives, increases profits, or affects classroom behaviour, as examples, the reason is irrelevant.

That's one of the problems with torture. You either commit this type of act as a nation, or you stand against it. Torturing "rarely, unless there's a really, really good reason" puts a nation in the former camp, not the latter, no matter how much it may seem that way.

Apart from physical torture's long and proven history of providing inconsistent results in general, why would we want to advocate use of a method (waterboarding) in which brain damage of the suspect (through oxygen deprivation) over sustained use is a near certainty? This defies all logic to me. To use a technique which has a large probability of causing negative effects on the very organ responsible for retrieving the information you wish to access is illogical. It would be one thing if waterboarding was just about inflicting the fear of drowning alone, but these other aspects make it repugnant.

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FUCK OFF AND DIE

Ask the family of the 3K+ at the World Trade Center; ask those families who lost somebody at the Pentagon (I was stationed with one of them); ask the reporter who had his head chopped off by these fucking rag heads; ask the families of the 3 Blackwater contractors who were killed, burnt and hung on the bridge in Bagdad. They want us all dead, buried, in the ground. I think we need to do whatever it takes, to keep them from doing it to us. Where the fuck are you from? Canada? France?

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Ask the family of the 3K+ at the World Trade Center; ask those families who lost somebody at the Pentagon; ask the reporter who had his head chopped off by these fucking rag heads; ask the families of the 3 Blackwater contractors who were killed, burnt and hung on the bridge in Bagdad.

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... Dubya and Chaney were fucked up in a whole lotta ways, but they didn't take shit off these guys and chased them to the ends of the earth to keep them outta our backyard.

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Here is an example: Police have a man in custody who they believe has kidnapped a child, past experience with this man has also led them to believe that the child is currently in grave danger. If the police beat the information out of him, in order to save a life, are they torturing him? I don’t believe they are. Even in the definition you posted, inflicting pain to save lives isn’t listed as torture.

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It's amazing how gullible some of you fuckers are in this country. That we can just throw Hillary out there and make the world a happy garden. These fuckers are waiting to fuck you up.

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Ask the family of the 3K+ at the World Trade Center; ask those families who lost somebody at the Pentagon (I was stationed with one of them);

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ask the reporter who had his head chopped off by these fucking rag heads; ask the families of the 3 Blackwater contractors who were killed, burnt and hung on the bridge in Bagdad.

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They want us all dead, buried, in the ground. I think we need to do whatever it takes, to keep them from doing it to us.

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Where the fuck are you from? Canada? France?

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Lastly, with the occurance of another terrorist attack hanging in the balance, from this point on which is the most important tack to follow in the case of detainees in U.S. custody?

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Lastly, with the occurance of another terrorist attack hanging in the balance, from this point on which is the most important tack to follow in the case of detainees in U.S. custody?

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The primary definition in that dictionary example (under noun) specifically relates to inflicting pain as a means of obtaining information -- whether it saves lives, increases profits, or affects classroom behaviour, as examples, the reason is irrelevant.

That's one of the problems with torture. You either commit this type of act as a nation, or you stand against it. Torturing "rarely, unless there's a really, really good reason" puts a nation in the former camp, not the latter, no matter how much it may seem that way.

Apart from physical torture's long and proven history of providing inconsistent results in general, why would we want to advocate use of a method (waterboarding) in which brain damage of the suspect (through oxygen deprivation) over sustained use is a near certainty? This defies all logic to me. To use a technique which has a large probability of causing negative effects on the very organ responsible for retrieving the information you wish to access is illogical. It would be one thing if waterboarding was just about inflicting the fear of drowning alone, but these other aspects make it repugnant.

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(i suppose trying them in our military courts would be an option, if i believed for one second they would get a fair trial)

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No the goal isn't the information itself, it's the safety of the civilian population, ours. Therefore your definition doesn't fit. Call it a repugnant act, but it still doesn't make it torture by the definition you provided. /discussion

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Does it make you feel better to try to classify people into one of two camps, despite it being neither germane to the discussion, or in advance of your proffered argument? If you could defend your position against the arguments I am putting forward, I am confident you would not be presupposing any political affiliation, real or otherwise, held by me.

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Thank you for clarifying what is becoming more and more obvious from your posts -- you don't care what the words mean in the English language, but rather you will interpret them (or refuse to interpret them) however you see fit if it makes you more comfortable with a position you adopted in advance.

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"Saving American lives" is meaningless without context. Everything Bush (for example) did do and didn't do during his presidency could be framed as having been done with the goal of saving American lives, whether true or not.

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I'm unclear why you feel KSM wasn't tortured, with you stating that having a good reason doesn't make it torture any more. These words have meanings in the language. Caveats don't take away from that, despite what the lawyers who made this possible may have written in memos during Bush's terms.

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From the dictionary :

the act of inflicting excruciating pain, as punishment or revenge, as a means of getting a confession or information

From the known history of prisoners being waterboarded in US custody :

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WAS THERE :

"the act of inflicting excruciating pain"

ANSWER :

yes

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WAS IT DONE :

"as punishment or revenge"

ANSWER :

yes

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WAS IT DONE :

"as a means of getting a confession or information"

ANSWER :

yes

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"really good reasons to do it" change nothing about it being torture, they just attempt to provide justification for it.

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No it doesn’t make me feel any better, it just the way life is, either people are conservatives or they’re liberals. They usually fall into one or the other all by them selves, two party system you know. Although, both are quite willing to jam their beliefs down someone else’s throat.

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I don’t see my example, KSM being water boarded to save lives, in the definition you provided.

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Was he in Gitmo, water boarding KSM himself? If not he hardly pertains to this discussion. This is what liberals like to do though, throw out Bush’s name to invoke the Bush hate for the sole purpose of misdirection.

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Context matters. See my KSM example above.

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From the known history of prisoners being waterboarded in US custody :

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Seems rather unfair to lump every instance of possible abuse into one pile and call it all torture, all justified, or all anything.

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According to the second article I posted it was a very similar situation, oh, and it wasn’t torture. Nice how you tried to link the two, Abu Ghraib and KSM, but like usual you fail.

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nice how you disregarded and/or didn't understand the point i was actually trying to make. like usual, you win.