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Negroponte Won't Back Cheney on Torture
UPI
Monday 07 November 2005
Wasington - U.S. intelligence czar John Negroponte is declining to support Vice President Dick Cheney's effort to exempt the CIA from law banning mistreatment of detainees.
"It's above my pay grade," he told a secret briefing for Senators last month, Time Magazine reported Sunday, adding that Negroponte then "artfully dodged another question about whether the harsher interrogation tactics Cheney wants the agency to be free to use actually produce valuable intelligence."
GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona has attached an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill which would specifically incorporate the Geneva Conventions' ban on cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners into U.S. law. But the vice-president and - according to Time magazine - Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, have been lobbying against it on Capitol Hill, and the White House has threatened to veto the bill if the language is included.
The news is the latest salvo in the debate which continues to rage about the treatment of a few dozen suspected senior al-Qaida leaders, held by the CIA in secret locations scattered across the world.
Pressure was ratcheted up by reports last week that some of those detainees are being held in former Soviet-era facilities in two countries in Eastern Europe - believed by human rights activists to be Poland and Romania.
Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court it would hear a challenge to the legality of the military commissions that the administration plans to use to try another group of detainees - those held by the military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
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Go to Original
Is Torture an Effective Anti-Terror Tactic?
MSNBC News
Monday 07 November 2005
As subject becomes hot topic, analyst Jacobs discusses his experiences.
According to Monday's Washington Post, Vice President Dick Cheney is leading a furious effort to stop rules that ban torture and inhumane treatment.
In the article, reporters Dana Priest and Robin Wright write: "Over the past year, Vice President Cheney has waged an intense and largely unpublicized campaign to stop Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department from imposing more restrictive rules on the handling of terrorist suspects."
Monday in Panama, President Bush, on the last stop of his tour of South America, disputed the notion that the U.S. uses unlawful means to get information.
"There's an enemy that lurks and plots and plans and wants to hurt America again," Bush said. "So you bet we will aggressively pursue them but we will do so under the law."
Sen. John McCain, (R-Ariz.) said on NBC's 'Today' show Monday that torture should not be a part of any U.S. policy.
"Look at the other side of it, if the United States of America is torturing people, or treating them in a cruel or inhumane fashion, then it hurts our image dramatically throughout the world. ... It doesn't work and it harms our image very badly," he said.
Retired Army Col. Jack Jacobs, an MSNBC analyst, joined MSNBC's Chris Jansing on Monday to discuss torture, its effectiveness and what tactics he believes are most useful.
"At the end of the day, it's very easy to distinguish between the right thing and the wrong thing to do. If you do the wrong thing, you're not going to get any positive payoff from it and it's going to be of at some great cost," Jacobs said. "We get much more information if we treat people properly."
That means that there is a fine line of how aggressive an interrogator can be, said Jacobs, who recently visited the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay and served in Vietnam.
"You need to be aggressive to get the information you want, but if you treat people inhumanely, they're just going to tell you what they think you want to hear," he said. "They'll do anything just to get the mistreatment to stop, so you get nothing from mistreatment."
Speaking of his experiences, Jacobs said he has had the best success by being decent to people.
"Down in Guantanamo Bay, there are instances in which lots of al-Qaida people will tell you anything that you want to know and tell them as much truth as you want them to tell you if you give them the candy bar that they want or the magazine that they require," he said.
"When I was in Vietnam, we were given the most intelligence, the best intelligence and had the most success with captors if we gave them cigarettes, medical care, food (and) water. Almost always, you get the best success from treating people properly," Jacobs said.
Jacobs added that that being viewed as a country that opposes torture can have other benefits.
"I'm not a big fan of being concerned about what other people thing, but I have to say, that if we don't have a good name in the international community, getting our own objectives accomplished in the wider variety of different venues, is going to be very difficult," he said.
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UPI
Monday 07 November 2005
Wasington - U.S. intelligence czar John Negroponte is declining to support Vice President Dick Cheney's effort to exempt the CIA from law banning mistreatment of detainees.
"It's above my pay grade," he told a secret briefing for Senators last month, Time Magazine reported Sunday, adding that Negroponte then "artfully dodged another question about whether the harsher interrogation tactics Cheney wants the agency to be free to use actually produce valuable intelligence."
GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona has attached an amendment to the Defense Authorization bill which would specifically incorporate the Geneva Conventions' ban on cruel and degrading treatment of prisoners into U.S. law. But the vice-president and - according to Time magazine - Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, have been lobbying against it on Capitol Hill, and the White House has threatened to veto the bill if the language is included.
The news is the latest salvo in the debate which continues to rage about the treatment of a few dozen suspected senior al-Qaida leaders, held by the CIA in secret locations scattered across the world.
Pressure was ratcheted up by reports last week that some of those detainees are being held in former Soviet-era facilities in two countries in Eastern Europe - believed by human rights activists to be Poland and Romania.
Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court it would hear a challenge to the legality of the military commissions that the administration plans to use to try another group of detainees - those held by the military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Go to Original
Is Torture an Effective Anti-Terror Tactic?
MSNBC News
Monday 07 November 2005
As subject becomes hot topic, analyst Jacobs discusses his experiences.
According to Monday's Washington Post, Vice President Dick Cheney is leading a furious effort to stop rules that ban torture and inhumane treatment.
In the article, reporters Dana Priest and Robin Wright write: "Over the past year, Vice President Cheney has waged an intense and largely unpublicized campaign to stop Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department from imposing more restrictive rules on the handling of terrorist suspects."
Monday in Panama, President Bush, on the last stop of his tour of South America, disputed the notion that the U.S. uses unlawful means to get information.
"There's an enemy that lurks and plots and plans and wants to hurt America again," Bush said. "So you bet we will aggressively pursue them but we will do so under the law."
Sen. John McCain, (R-Ariz.) said on NBC's 'Today' show Monday that torture should not be a part of any U.S. policy.
"Look at the other side of it, if the United States of America is torturing people, or treating them in a cruel or inhumane fashion, then it hurts our image dramatically throughout the world. ... It doesn't work and it harms our image very badly," he said.
Retired Army Col. Jack Jacobs, an MSNBC analyst, joined MSNBC's Chris Jansing on Monday to discuss torture, its effectiveness and what tactics he believes are most useful.
"At the end of the day, it's very easy to distinguish between the right thing and the wrong thing to do. If you do the wrong thing, you're not going to get any positive payoff from it and it's going to be of at some great cost," Jacobs said. "We get much more information if we treat people properly."
That means that there is a fine line of how aggressive an interrogator can be, said Jacobs, who recently visited the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay and served in Vietnam.
"You need to be aggressive to get the information you want, but if you treat people inhumanely, they're just going to tell you what they think you want to hear," he said. "They'll do anything just to get the mistreatment to stop, so you get nothing from mistreatment."
Speaking of his experiences, Jacobs said he has had the best success by being decent to people.
"Down in Guantanamo Bay, there are instances in which lots of al-Qaida people will tell you anything that you want to know and tell them as much truth as you want them to tell you if you give them the candy bar that they want or the magazine that they require," he said.
"When I was in Vietnam, we were given the most intelligence, the best intelligence and had the most success with captors if we gave them cigarettes, medical care, food (and) water. Almost always, you get the best success from treating people properly," Jacobs said.
Jacobs added that that being viewed as a country that opposes torture can have other benefits.
"I'm not a big fan of being concerned about what other people thing, but I have to say, that if we don't have a good name in the international community, getting our own objectives accomplished in the wider variety of different venues, is going to be very difficult," he said.
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