15 responses to Ex-CIA director: If Trump wants waterboarding, CIA would defy orders
maggie February 22nd, 2016 at 17:17
cia just confirming they don’t take orders from the commander in chief…nothing new..they just do what ever they want because no one knows they exist…right?
Just like the military, they do, in fact, take orders from the president. Just like the military, they are under no obligation to obey unlawful orders.
The Bush administration – mainly Cheney and Addington – pulled a fast one by getting bogus legal opinions to underpin the whole thing. The clown that did it is now a professor at Berkeley.
That kind of thing is far less likely now, after what has come out and the whole scam was exposed.
“According to the report, many in the intelligence community think it would be useful to return to a policy of capturing and interrogating terrorists. As a result of the controversy surrounding the issue, however, few, if any, are willing to take on the risks associated with such an approach.”
Is that cognitive dissonance or just CYA?
tRump insists that torture works, in spite of multiple studies showing it doesn’t. Typical GOP tactic, just keep shouting the same strategy, and ignore the facts.
I’m going to call Bullshit here. You were given the chance to refuse to torture people and instead you said ‘fine by me.’ Why should we believe what you say now?
It’s not that they now find torture morally repugnant. The powers that be threw them under the bus and they’re not likely to stick their necks out again for rear of being the fall guys yet again.
It’s not a question of being a ‘fall guy’ for anything. They ACTUALLY COMMITTED TORTURE. Now they want to act like they have morals when they clearly don’t.
It’s like a bank robber trying to claim he’s a law-abiding citizen and it’s all the fault of his get-away driver.
Yeah they did.
I have extensively studied the subject, not just the torture and abuse program of the Bush administration, but the field of interrogation.
They did so because the Bush administration got bogus legal opinions to underpin it after they came across a couple of hucksters, Mitchell and Jessen, who promoted the whole idea and participated (neither has attended, much less graduated from an interrogation school).
Since it was exposed and those legal opinions were so strongly criticized, it is less likely to happen again, at least in the near future.
It is a mistake to brand thousands of people in one agency with stereotypes, as if “they” all think the same, a notion we see proved false in our daily lives. For me, I learned the futility of employing such stereotypes back in the 60s and early 70s when the same thing was done to racial minorities, gays and women. It is just as foolish to believe that a group of, say, 10,000 CIA officers think the same as it is to imagine that a similarly sized group of African Americans, Muslims or gays all think identically.
There was opposition within the CIA to it and this story is good news.
Statements such as those from Hayden should be welcomed, encouraged and applauded.
“It is a mistake to brand thousands of people in one agency with stereotypes … There was opposition within the CIA…”
It’s NOT a mistake when every single member of the CIA continues to this day to hide the people who committed torture. And whether there was opposition or not is totally meaningless in the face of this institutional refusal to obey the law at EVERY stage of this debacle.
I don’t care if they were just being good Germans. Every last one of them deserves to be hung by their heels and pissed on by every decent, law-abiding citizen of any civilized nation in the world.
It IS a mistake when not everyone fits the stereotype. Stereotypes are the goods of weak thinking. The stereotype is easier to adopt and believe because it eliminates the need for real investigation or nuance, and reduces complex human beings to one-dimensional cartoons unrelated to the real world.
Stereotypes are also a mistake in debate, for all it takes to defeat a universal statement is one example.
Further, this kind of thinking leads one to damn a statement we agree with, which is as foolish as it sounds.
When we look at the convoluted way this program was implemented and who carried it out, we see there was indeed opposition. That’s where some of the leaks came from – people in the agency who were appalled by the torture and abuse program.
The fact is, we have some very good people working at the CIA doing critically important work defending this country.
We need to encourage statements such as this one.
For an example of a CIA officer I happen to agree with on the topic, meet Glenn Carle:
maggie February 22nd, 2016 at 17:17
cia just confirming they don’t take orders from the commander in chief…nothing new..they just do what ever they want because no one knows they exist…right?
burqa March 6th, 2016 at 01:17
Just like the military, they do, in fact, take orders from the president. Just like the military, they are under no obligation to obey unlawful orders.
The Bush administration – mainly Cheney and Addington – pulled a fast one by getting bogus legal opinions to underpin the whole thing. The clown that did it is now a professor at Berkeley.
That kind of thing is far less likely now, after what has come out and the whole scam was exposed.
This story is good news.
mistlesuede February 22nd, 2016 at 18:08
“According to the report, many in the intelligence community think it would be useful to return to a policy of capturing and interrogating terrorists. As a result of the controversy surrounding the issue, however, few, if any, are willing to take on the risks associated with such an approach.”
Is that cognitive dissonance or just CYA?
The Original Just Me February 23rd, 2016 at 00:46
CYA with a G String. :+)
Mike February 22nd, 2016 at 18:10
Heck, If Trump wants waterboarding, I’d waterboard em….
Larry Schmitt February 22nd, 2016 at 19:10
tRump insists that torture works, in spite of multiple studies showing it doesn’t. Typical GOP tactic, just keep shouting the same strategy, and ignore the facts.
RandyBastard February 22nd, 2016 at 20:27
I’m going to call Bullshit here. You were given the chance to refuse to torture people and instead you said ‘fine by me.’ Why should we believe what you say now?
Comicus February 22nd, 2016 at 21:15
It’s not that they now find torture morally repugnant. The powers that be threw them under the bus and they’re not likely to stick their necks out again for rear of being the fall guys yet again.
RandyBastard February 23rd, 2016 at 10:28
It’s not a question of being a ‘fall guy’ for anything. They ACTUALLY COMMITTED TORTURE. Now they want to act like they have morals when they clearly don’t.
It’s like a bank robber trying to claim he’s a law-abiding citizen and it’s all the fault of his get-away driver.
tracey marie February 23rd, 2016 at 11:15
Perfect!
burqa March 6th, 2016 at 01:39
Yeah they did.
I have extensively studied the subject, not just the torture and abuse program of the Bush administration, but the field of interrogation.
They did so because the Bush administration got bogus legal opinions to underpin it after they came across a couple of hucksters, Mitchell and Jessen, who promoted the whole idea and participated (neither has attended, much less graduated from an interrogation school).
Since it was exposed and those legal opinions were so strongly criticized, it is less likely to happen again, at least in the near future.
It is a mistake to brand thousands of people in one agency with stereotypes, as if “they” all think the same, a notion we see proved false in our daily lives. For me, I learned the futility of employing such stereotypes back in the 60s and early 70s when the same thing was done to racial minorities, gays and women. It is just as foolish to believe that a group of, say, 10,000 CIA officers think the same as it is to imagine that a similarly sized group of African Americans, Muslims or gays all think identically.
There was opposition within the CIA to it and this story is good news.
Statements such as those from Hayden should be welcomed, encouraged and applauded.
RandyBastard March 7th, 2016 at 13:10
“It is a mistake to brand thousands of people in one agency with stereotypes … There was opposition within the CIA…”
It’s NOT a mistake when every single member of the CIA continues to this day to hide the people who committed torture. And whether there was opposition or not is totally meaningless in the face of this institutional refusal to obey the law at EVERY stage of this debacle.
I don’t care if they were just being good Germans. Every last one of them deserves to be hung by their heels and pissed on by every decent, law-abiding citizen of any civilized nation in the world.
burqa March 22nd, 2016 at 00:45
It IS a mistake when not everyone fits the stereotype. Stereotypes are the goods of weak thinking. The stereotype is easier to adopt and believe because it eliminates the need for real investigation or nuance, and reduces complex human beings to one-dimensional cartoons unrelated to the real world.
Stereotypes are also a mistake in debate, for all it takes to defeat a universal statement is one example.
Further, this kind of thinking leads one to damn a statement we agree with, which is as foolish as it sounds.
When we look at the convoluted way this program was implemented and who carried it out, we see there was indeed opposition. That’s where some of the leaks came from – people in the agency who were appalled by the torture and abuse program.
The fact is, we have some very good people working at the CIA doing critically important work defending this country.
We need to encourage statements such as this one.
For an example of a CIA officer I happen to agree with on the topic, meet Glenn Carle:
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/05/04/torture-bin-laden/
The Original Just Me February 23rd, 2016 at 00:41
Trump is all wet, period.
bpollen February 23rd, 2016 at 06:48
The guy in charge of an organization that has whole departments devoted to disinformation (Spook-speak for “lies”) is way short on credibility.