So now I'm picturing the CIA Prison Boat out in international waters, full of terrorists, and the terrorists break out and take over the ship, see?

Only somehow the CIA accidentally 'swept up' Steven Seagal, right, who used to work for them but really just wanted to retire to a simple village and raise goats, but the bastards keep dragging him back into it, and he hates these CIA bastards, only he hates terrorists pricks more, and it's all Under Seige X from then on.

Good times, good times.

"Good leaks" vs. "Bad leaks"? Amen, Ace. Amen.

BTW, you know you're a real bastard, don't you? Now we have to change the names for all our HappyFunSexChocolate Sites. Thanks for revealing the name, you careless blogger you.

Oh well. This way, we get to use my first choice: PainfulRectalItchCream Sites.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

Ace -

While mocking Ms. Plame and her CIA service as both a NOC covert agent and as a member of the counter-proliferation division, let's keep in mind that Ms. Plame is, in fact, a former NOC agent and was, at the time, a member of the counter-proliferation division at the CIA.

By all means mock and deride Joe Wilson's "I married a real life Jennifer Garner" public fantasies.

But Plame herself isn't the one out there crowing about her accomplishments.

Hail Rove!
~ chest thump ~

Related? Perhaps.

BumperStickerist,

She was, and then she became a soccer mom. She, along with her husband, continue to spin the fantasy that she continued to serve as a NOC while ferrying her daughters to soccer practice, leaving one-way dead-drops for her agents beside the cooler full of orange-halves.

Her "cover" was blown when her primary affiliation with the PTA, not the CIA.

So she's complicit.

Plus, she cooked up this idea of sending her CRONY husband to Niger not to investigate the claim, but with the express intent of knocking down this "crazy little theory."

It's hard for me to extend what respect I can muster for the CIA to it's counter-proliferation department. I'd have to know of a single instance they got something right.

When your wife sends you to check out a "crazy little theory" for the CIA, you know what answer you're bringing back.

Bumper sticky

The Wilsons are a well-known gad-about couple especially in Democrat and media social circles. Everyone knew that Plame was Wilson’s wife and almost everyone knew she worked at the CIA. The only people in Washington that didn’t know about both of them are Republicans. They never get invited to Democrat parties. The only network Plame controlled was traveling Tupperware parties.

If you want to put someone jail for outing them, then put the society editors of Washington in jail. They have been covering them in the society pages since 1998. The only crime this couple complained about was when the editors would occasionally put a bad picture of them in the society pages.

it appears as though an actual crime was committed.

bonus.

Oh, shit, Fitzgerld. You aren't the same boring cosplay troll from that other thread, are you? I was hoping you'd get stuck in that one, roach motel style.

It's one thing to be a moonbat. It's quite unforgivably another to be not funny.

Thanks for point out this recent outing of covert CIA ops. I would like to use a baseball analogy, if I could.

Outing of the CIA secret jails and airplanes is like when the catcher tries to catch a pitch thrown by the pitcher, except that the umpire was trying to tie his shoes and was distracted during the pitch. The umpire also lost his contact lens and can no longer clearly see the bound of the imaginary strike zone, leaving only the penumbra of the swing of the batter's bat, only there was no batter because he had previously called time out. As I was saying, the umpire was also crying because he had an onion tied to his belt, which was the fashion at that time. So, the umpire convenes a grand jury and calls the pitcher to testify on the signal that the catcher called. The umpire then sends the pitcher to pound me in the ass prison for getting it wrong, the signal the catcher gave.

There, I hope that cleared things up

S. Weasel,

I think this Patrick Fitzgerald is on our side, dude. He says that an "actual crime was committed [here] -- bonus."

Joe,

Good one!

If you say so, ace, but I still don't get it. And it's still not funny.

Ace,

Now this is logical and to the point. I love it when some liberal idiot prints the very argument requiring them to investigate themselves.

Can we please get someone to prosecute these leaks now?

Subsunk

Ace, you screwed up. You wrote, "As Benicio Del Torro said in The Way of the Gun..."

What you really meant to write was "As ACADEMY AWARD WINNER - Benicio Del Torro said in The Way of the Gun..."

I was takin a shot at Fitz and the Libby indictments, S Weasel.

hey, they can't all be gems.

I'm still waiting for Porter Goss to do some housecleaning at Langley. That agency has become a pit of inert, lazy self-interest and poisonous partisanship. It's arguably the most important government agency we have and it's populated by the worst type of civil servant; liberal bureacrats with press connections. When they're not actively trying to undermine the elected leadership of the country, they're screwing up and shifting the blame for said screw-ups. That's bad enough in any federal agency; it's damn dangerous in an intelligence service.
On a side note, Ace, CIA does have talented shooters, but they're almost exclusively ex-military.

The Wilsons are a well-known gad-about couple especially in Democrat and media social circles. Everyone knew that Plame was Wilson’s wife and almost everyone knew she worked at the CIA.

True. The issue (for me) isn't that people knew Valerie worked at the CIA - someone could follow her to work each day and learn that - the issue is that Libby told reporters what she did in the CIA.

That's - technically - classified information.

And Scooter leaked it.

There's no threat to national security from that or any damage, but there was a technical violation and it can be prosecuted.

The apparent lying to the Grand Jury is a bigger screw-up for Libby.

My only point, as such, is that Wilson is a prick and deserving of scorn. Plame did volunteer to becomea NOC and was, presumably, working on counter-proliferation issues when not trying to subvert the executive branch.

Frankly, given Plame's background and work, her recommending her husband for the Niger trip makes sense on its own merits. He did have contacts, he did know the players, and his going on the trip made sense from an intel standpoint.

For starters, one aspect that nobody is considering is that the CIA and/or NSA might not really care what Wilson himself had to say abou this trip.

The only thing Wilson could report on specifically would be if he found large shipping crates of yellowcake powder marked with a 'Ship to Baghdad' stickers on them.

Otherwise, Wilson could go to Niger simply to light-up communications networks around his trip. For example, there may be a tape at NSA with a recording from a Niger official to an Iraq purchasing agent that says "Yeah, we told Joe Wilson you guys weren't involved - he bought it. When do you want the shipment?"

The value of the Wilson trip could lie in what happened around it.

And, no, I would not expect the US to reveal that particular piece of information to appease Harry Reid & Co.

-

What doesn't make sense is Wilson blasting his "conclusions" all over the Times. How did he expect his wife to remain covert when he turns the spotlight on himself? Did he really think no one would say, "Hey, just a goddamn minute here. Whose idea was it to send this guy anyway?"

I mean, he started the fight and then gets his ass in the air because his pants got scuffed.

Yeah, Dave, sorry...I just couldn't wrap my head around the meaning of the remark, somehow. And that...make HULK...MAD. WANT TO...SMASH.

I was skimming Rush Limbaugh's site and found the following interesting links:

MSM submitted a brief to a court that Plame was outed by the Russians back in the mid-90s. Hmmm, when was it that Valerie came back from overseas and married Joe?

Here's the brief in PDF format.

Iraq had 500 tons of yellowcake uranium since 1991, as documented in May 2004 by the New York Times. 1.8 tons of it was low-enriched, and if processed further could have yielded enough fissionable material for one nuclear bomb.

Where did most of the yellowcake come from? According to Blair back in 2003, Iraq bought approximately 270 tons of it from Niger in the 80s.

I don't know. I agree with Ace about the bizarre double-standard over leaks. I also agree that the left regularly complains about what we are doing without offering any specific or meaningful suggestions as to what we should be doing instead.

All the same, I do not like the idea of any sort of secret prison system. (Especially one run by the CIA. I mean, that's almost as bad as entrusting it to the friggin' State Department.) Why do we need it? We've had years to work on this problem, now. Create a new legal category for them if needed and then build a special high-security terrorist prison right here in America somewhere.

Sue - that story really gets me worked up. How is that not mentioned EVERY DAY in the media in the debate over this stuff? It's like it's gone down the memory hole. IIRC (it wasn't mentioned in the article you linked to), we FOUND 200 tons of yellowcake after this invasion, including the 1.8 enriched tons. Kind of makes you wonder about the French aluminum tubes, too. (Btw, what is the deal with them? The CW is that they were for rocket artillery, and it was more "Bush Administratio BS," but I seem to remember reading that they were milled to very fine tolerances - like the tolerances you would use if you were going to, I don't know, maybe make a uranium-gas centrifuge with them.)

no worries S. Weasel

and, in point of fact, Plame (or the CIA) could have denied that she was a covert agent, but was actually a simple Energy Analyst for Brewster Jennings. Then see if the cover holds.

Covert agents can be double-extra sneaky like that sometimes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"These people find even arm-twisting and wrist-bending to be "torture," and of course "degrading" and "humiliating." Well, no doubt, these things hurt."

Hey Ace:
It also hurts to be chained to the floor and forced to freeze to death. That is torture. And its in the very article we both just read. Why leave that part out?

"The largest CIA prison in Afghanistan was code-named the Salt Pit. It was also the CIA's substation and was first housed in an old brick factory outside Kabul. In November 2002, an inexperienced CIA case officer allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an uncooperative young detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets. He froze to death, according to four U.S. government officials. The CIA officer has not been charged in the death."

It also hurts to be chained to the floor and forced to freeze to death. That is torture. And its in the very article we both just read. Why leave that part out?

Because I'm okay with the first part, and I think the second part was a mistake. You don't kill people you're trying to get information out of. Dead men tell no tales, savvy?

He intended to subject him to discomfort. He got careless and killed him.

Shit happens.

Why don't you answer the question I've been trying to get a liberal or lefty to answer for months--

-- precisely what coercive interrogation techniques DO you approve of?

If it's none, then say so. But please don't play the game so many of you do. You insist you're in favor of "tough measures" in the abstract -- to show you're not just some bleeding-heart -- but you refuse to specifically endorse anything more severe than yelling at these guys.

We yell at each other online all the time. You have perhaps noticed how ineffective it is.

A jailer who kills a convict due to carelessness is subject to punishment. According to the article, the warden there hasn't been charged. That's why they need to be publicly accountable.

Well, I wouldn't have anything against the type of abuse I inflicted on my younger brother. I don't have a problem with that in prisons. I do think that when a guard actually kills an inmante, it's a problem. I think that some of the abuses alleged at Abu Ghraib are beyond the pale -- accusations of anally raping a 15 year old with a flourescent tube are horrifying, and I tend to believe them -- especially when one considers the White House's response.
In short, I fully approve of physical violence in a prison by guards, both at home and abroad. I think we've lost our way, however. We allow anything.

That's why they need to be publicly accountable.

It's war. Like the man said, it was obviously accidental and shit like that happens. People die in boxing rings and they can die from uncomfortable treatment. Losing the info wasn't exactly a plus for us either.

So, are you going to answer Ace's question? What are you willing to do with these guys?

I fully approve of physical violence in a prison by guards, both at home and abroad.

How much? Toward whom? What are the outer limits?

At least have the decency to link the original source of the story, Tom.

The Washington Post, where the story came from, balances it out a little bit by letting sources in the CIA explain how this sort of thing came about.

That is to be determined by a court trial, if necessary. If a death or permanent injury occurs (not talking psychological, but amputation or disfigurement), there should be a trial for the guard. If it was allowable, such as self defense, then fine -- he should go to work the next day. If he killed a man just to watch him die, then he needs to be sent to jail. The problem with these prisons is the guards can do this. That's against everything this nation stands for.

Sue -- the story was the original topic of the post. If you're commenting on it, you should have already read it.

Well, I wouldn't have anything against the type of abuse I inflicted on my younger brother.

But did he talk?

By all means, lets stop the war to make sure that these gentle souls, victims of Bush's illegal and immoral war on terror can all be afforded every chance to escape and kill again.

Sue, thanks for all the cool links, you read my mind while I was wading through the ARBCos crap in the other thread.

Seriously though, a real-honest to God covert op gets exposed, for what? Because moral questions are being raised? Most of these guys (the bad guys, not the CIA) should be hung once captured. They fight out of uniform, among civilians. They practice random acts of violence and torture. Noone seriously has any objections to some smacky face (from Mark Bowden's book that deals with this subject) when its necessary (usually kidnapping and ticking time bomb situations).

But here is the real reason for this article:

"But after published reports revealed the existence of the site in June 2003, Thai officials insisted the CIA shut it down"

lets shut these things down everywhere, please!

Ah, I see they're taking four pages today to write the same thing they did in March in two pages. Got to fill up those column inches somehow, I guess.

I had assumed, wrongly, that your quote was a talking point pulled from some moonbat site (we get a lot of lefttards around here who do that) when I googled it and got no hits with "old brick factory" but did see "abandoned brick factory" in a subsequently modified search.

Anyway, haven't read much of the newer story, probably just a rehash of the March article that has anything remotely pro-Bush trimmed out and anti-Bush junk added to pad it out for that precious dead-tree real estate.

If it was allowable, such as self defense, then fine -- he should go to work the next day. If he killed a man just to watch him die, then he needs to be sent to jail.

Silly. It was neither. It certainly wasn't self defense -- when you can chain someone to the ground, how can you be defending yourself? -- and neither was it deliberate. You don't kill a man you're trying to get information out of. Not intentionally.

He put him out in the cold to make him uncomfortable. He did not appreciate how quickly someone could die when exposed to the elements. He let the man died, at most, negligently or willfully.

That might be manslaughter in a normal situation, but not this one. I'm not going to lock this guy up because he fucked up.

A lot of people die in war.

The problem with these prisons is the guards can do this. That's against everything this nation stands for.

You have a different idea of what this nation stands for than I do. I think this nation stands against fascism, terror, and mass-murder, and will be quite ruthless about it when necessary.

Let's cut to the chase. You don't want to fight this war so OF COURSE you find every incident like this objectionable. As there is no positive good to come out of fighting, there is nothing on the other side of the balance to weigh negative consequences against.

On the other hand, I think this war is critical, and yes, I do think there is a utilitarian and moral value to a tough interrogation, including intentionally inflicting pain or fear of death. If one life can be saved by subjecting twenty mass murderers to pain, misery, and abject fear, then it's worth it to me.

They chose this route. They assumed the risk. Their innocent would-be victim did not.

Those who are so vehemently anti-torture seldom ponder the lives they might be sacrificing to terrorist attacks that could otherwise have been thwarted, all to avoid the *direct* "evil" of beating the shit out of terrorists.

You don't stop long to consider the *indirect* evil that NOT beating the shit out of these guys may lead to.

Any serious calculus of any course of action must take notice of both direct and indirect evils, obvious and hidden costs.

You chose to focus on the direct, obvious costs of this policy. I see that too, but I weight it against the indirect hidden costs of not making sure these sonofabitches tell every goddamn thing they know, or even heard rumors about.

I think that this "nation stands for" something different besides pussily sitting back while crazy people try to kill us. Thats what Europe is for.

We stand for, as a country, and through our history, as the people who will fucking kill you if you fuck with us. That's why in every movie when some dipshit third worlder screws with an American tourist, the tourists says "you can't do this to me, I am an American." And then Chuck Norris kills everyone who f'd with her.

I don't think most American would object to certain coercive means, if it kept bombs out of schools.

I am making no judgement as to the CIA agent who locked the kid up is guilty of murder -- I'm simply saying there should be an accountability system in place. I have a problem with a super secret police force that is accountable to no one -- not the Congress, not the president (except in the sense that he appointed the CIA director), not the courts. I think the names of the inmates and the notes on what went on should be kept. Obviously there is classified information that should be kept secret, but there should at least be a closed door inquiry by the Congress or the White House as to what happened. This does not occur with these jails. That is why they need to be shut down, IMHO.

Last post was me. I've gotta go to work, so Im not just some drive by troll.

First of all, our covert guys overseas ARE accountable to someone, be it their commanding officer, Rumsfield, or the Prez himself. With few exceptions, these guys aren't cowboys out doing nasty work without a reason.
They are not, however, and absolutely should not be accountable to the media of this or any other country. And that's where the rub of the story is; the media can't abide the idea of a government entity doing something without letting them in on it. The media sees itself as the highest possible authority, and that's absolute bullshit. The Army or the CIA or the President doesn't owe the media a goddam thing.

You don't stop long to consider the *indirect* evil that NOT beating the shit out of these guys may lead to.

spot on

You don't stop long to consider the *indirect* evil that NOT beating the shit out of these guys may lead to.

Am I the only one here who sees this argument as a hole with no bottom? Think of all the indirect evil we're not doing by turning Iran and North Korea into glass craters, for example.

I first read about "waterboarding" as a Gestapo tactic used in WWII France. I do not like this. I do not like the idea of leaving people exposed outside overnight to the point they freeze. I do not like the idea of "secret prisons" that nobody outside of the CIA is keeping tabs on.

I think that torture should be prohibited. Period. If the people we pick up are not covered by the Geneva accords, executing them after a court-martial is just fine. Offering to spare them, spare their friends, or release them in exchange for information is fine. Holding them for the duration of hostilities is fine.

I worry about any government with a secret prison network, torturers on staff, etc. I would like the USA to continue to be outside of this category.

If the people we pick up are not covered by the Geneva accords, executing them after a court-martial is just fine. Offering to spare them, spare their friends, or release them in exchange for information is fine.

So it's either kill them until they talk or feed them until they talk? Or offer to spare them? From what?! I don't think you get the whole martyrdom thing. Or that this is about life saving (and hopefully life ending) information. Or that even torture is ultimately about breaking minds more than bodies.

The freezing thing was obviously an accident, not a policy. Let's not soak the mattress over it. If we get what's inside these guys' heads, many lives can be saved. That's a good thing.

I've always assumed our government has had snarling dogs of war penned up in basements around the country and being fed on raw meat. If they haven't been unleashed on these SOB's, I'm going to be very, very upset.

So freezing somebody to death is okay because it's an accident? Sort of like "well, we're still training in the new batch of torturers so there will be some mistakes?"

And torture is about making minds break. Great! I guess everything is hunky-dory then, since there will be a couple fewer screams of pain and less blood to mop up.

My fear is that allowing the government to do this will eventually create an apparatus that could be used on US citizens, or on anyone who draws the ire of any future administration.

I'm sure you think you're all very clever comparing this story to the Plame leak, except you're way off base. I guess I missed the part of the story where the prisons got shut down because of the leak. But now that they've narroowed the location down to Eastern Europe, I'm sure anyone with half a brain can tell me exactly where they're located. OK who's first?

Oh, and perhaps you noticed the part where the Post contacted security officials and left out parts of the story that were considered sensitive. Too bad Libby couldn't have done the same.

And you guys are really covering yourselves in glory advocating torture. "People die in wars." Right, but these people are no longer in the war, they're prisoners. And prisoners are not routinely executed. Oh, but this is different, because you feel threatened, so it's OK to drop any pretense of civilization. Do you think Americans in World War Two felt any less threatened by the Japanese and Germans than you feel threatened by al Qaeda? But they knew better than to give in to the impulse to torture people, because once you start doing that you start to lose your soul as a nation. But you guys are fucking pussies. "If we don't torture them, they might come get us." All your tough talk about how to treat prisoners. Don't wet yourselves while you're sitting at your keyboard, you fucking tough guy poseurs..

Don't wet yourselves while you're sitting at your keyboard, you fucking tough guy poseurs..

Oh, shoot! And you were going pretty good there. Note to Chris: tough guys say "wannabes". Homos say "poseurs". Come to think of it, "wet yourselves" should be, say, "piss yourselves". Or "shit yourselves" maybe. Or "crap your britches like some kind of wet homo poseur wannabe, you stupid gaywad dickface".

Chris, if tor...sorry...rough interrogation techniques could have prevented the terrorist attacks of September 11, would you support it? Or is the discomfort of a jihadist more unpleasant to you than the deaths of thousands?

First of all Weasel, thanks for making my point. You actually think there's a tougher way to type! Fucking great.

And Slublog, your question is off the point, because that's not what we're talking about. Torturing bunches of people because we might find out something, I wouldn't support. The question is, where do you draw the line? If an Army patrol captures a soldier who may be able to tell them if there's an ambush ahead, can they torture him? I mean, lives are at stake, right? Becaue if you think they should, then you support torture under any circumstances, and have to accept the fact that our soldiers will be tortured, as well.

If you found out that the complete abandonment of Israel and Iraq would ensure that there wouldn't be another 9/11, would you support it?

If you found out that the complete abandonment of Israel and Iraq would ensure that there wouldn't be another 9/11, would you support it?

Ah. Allow me to quote the noted philospher Lauper:

And I'll see your true colors
Shining through
I see your true colors
And that's why I love you
So don't be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow

Don't take the love part too seriously. It is just a song after all.

And as to your question, if an Army patrol captures an actual soldier, then they should treat him under the rules of the Geneva Convention. Unfortunately, the people killing American troops aren't soldiers, and do not fall under the protection of the document that every other country but us ignores.

Sparky:

So freezing somebody to death is okay because it's an accident?

Exactly how many programs do you advocate shutting down or starting up when there is a road fatality? Those are happening in the name of getting to and from the grocery store; this is about getting hardened enemies to divulge information in a time of war.

I can live with it.

My fear is that allowing the government to do this will eventually create an apparatus that could be used on US citizens, or on anyone who draws the ire of any future administration.

By that logic we should not have a military or armed police forces. Grow up.

Chris: Do you think Americans in World War Two felt any less threatened by the Japanese and Germans than you feel threatened by al Qaeda? But they knew better than to give in to the impulse to torture people

Guess again. We engaged in all sorts of mayhem and slaughter. Because we weren't fighting and dying to keep our souls pure. We fought to win.

If a particularly bad terrorist froze while getting softened up, I regret the loss of his life. I regret the loss of what he knew even more. But shit happens and I'm not going to lose too much sleep over it.