"Former" CIA Officer/torturer John Kiriakou was a limited hangout.

[originalpckelly]

First of all, I think we are total morons to have even listened to a guy who's an admitted torturer. It's sort of like saying you shot the sheriff, but did not shoot the deputy. If you shot the sheriff, it really doesn't matter that you didn't shoot the deputy, your ass is grass. If you're capable of shooting a sheriff, we have no reason to listen to you and think you're credible.

Second, I'm going to go out on a limb and say a guy this young was not a former CIA Officer at the time of the interview:



That guy told us Abu Zubaydah was broken with a single session of waterboarding. If we are to believe the most recent memos, then Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times.

This is a limited hangout, in Watergate the same shit happened. There are even tapes of them discussing it, well, a "modified limited hangout" was on the tapes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout

They do it so that they can spin the more damaging elements of the truth to their advantage or conceal them. In this case, the fact that Zubaydah was waterboarded so many times was concealed, giving the technique an air of effectiveness and more importantly cleanliness. I'm willing to bet you do not suffocate someone with a wet rag cleanly, it has to be a nasty/disgusting inhuman act. If he really participated in this, and we have no fucking clue if he did, this man is a sick fuck.

Just try to hold your breath once. Hold it for as long as you can. The reason this is torture is the same reason you cannot voluntarily hold your breath above water for very long. Just imagine how awful it must be to have someone force you into doing this. We've all seen the Current TV demo of it, but that happened a few times, and most importantly the person being waterboarded in that demo knew he could stop what was happening. Holding your breath is not that traumatic of an experience, but I'm willing to bet someone making you hold your breath is.

These people tried to redefine pain and suffering to say this wasn't it, can you imagine how much pain and suffering these people endured? How could they not have serious mental issues after being tortured? It is such a lie.

If the US Constitution forbids "cruel and unusual punishment" for those who've been convicted of a crime, beyond a reasonable doubt, by a jury of their peers, then how could it ever be "legal" to punish someone cruelly and unusually before a trial has even been held?

I'd like to see the quality of information they got, something that Mr. Kiriakou pointed out in his "interview" with ABC.

Here's what this lying sack of shit said about the info quality:
"Like a lot of Americans, I'm involved in this internal, intellectual battle with myself weighing the idea that waterboarding may be torture versus the quality of information that we often get after using the waterboarding technique..."

Bullshit, if you suffocate someone 83 times, I have to wonder what kind of bullshit they spew out.

This, however, is the real gem:
"'What happens if we don't waterboard a person, and we don't get that nugget of information, and there's an attack,' Kiriakou said. 'I would have trouble forgiving myself.'"

Mr. Kiriakou was obviously trying to deceive us of one very important question/fact/idea. What happens if our government has the ability to torture people in secret? Huh?

History shows us that countries with no limits on the power of government can kill millions of people, far more than even a nuke exploding in a city would kill. How could we forgive ourselves for letting something like the Nazi Death camps happen? When you start doing this crap, that stuff is not far off.

Here's Mr. Kiriakou on our principles in response to a question asking whether torture saved American lives or compromised our principles, or both:
"I think both. It may have compromised our principles at least in the short term. And I think it's good that we're having a national debate about this. We should be debating this, and Congress should be talking about it because, I think, as a country, we have to decide if this is something that we want to do as a matter of policy. I'm not saying now that we should, but, at the very least, we should be talking about it. It shouldn't be secret. It should be out there as part of the national debate."

I've got news for you Mr. Kiriakou, you can't compromise principles in the short term. The precedents set by compromising our principles in the "short term" will unfortunately last until this nation is no longer. The only hope we have to correct that is by setting new precedents, to not let the history books finish this chapter without the precedent that no one is above the law being set.

Well, at least he got something right: It should never have been secret.

However, this stuff isn't up for debate. He's very wrong there.

Oh then there's this last bit:
"A CIA spokesperson declined to specifically address Kiriakou's comments.

In a statement, the CIA reiterated its long standing position that 'the United States does not conduct or condone torture. The CIA's terrorist interrogation effort has always been small, carefully run, lawful and highly productive.'"

Yeah, that's because the CIA spokesperson was probably Mr. Kiriakou, and all that other stuff is just bullshit for the morons who would listen to a government that admits it tortured people, then says it doesn't torture people.

Nice limited hangout Mr. Kiriakou, we shouldn't do it again sometime.

[JDPriestly]

1. Torture is intended to silence dissent within your own country.

The very sound of the word "torture" ends free speech.

Look at Obama -- even he seems scared of these criminals.

By the way, picture the guy in the photo without his suit. Yes, he could torture someone.