The initial group of higher-level Al Qaeda captured revealed much info about the next wave of attacks, names and locations of other terrorists. This happened very quickly after 9/11.This info probably saved thousands of lives. I believe waterboarding and other drastic measures were used. Nothing short of those methods has been nearly as successful.

 

Ya just do what ya gotta do sometimes, scrapmonkey, and it don't matter at all on which side of the aisle you cherish.

 

War is not pretty, and often there are no good alternatives other than those that produce the desired results.

 

ScrapMonkey you invite the terrorist over for a cup of tea and make sure it is not to hot and burns their tongues god forbid it might be considered torture.

 

I'll go for the Waterboarding if it means protecting American lives and this country.

http://richardlangworth.com/ - Richard M. Langworth

Churchill historian, automotive and travel writer

 

Obama, Churchill and Torture

30 April 2009

in http://richardlangworth.com/category/winston-s-churchill/news/ - In the News , http://richardlangworth.com/category/winston-s-churchill/quotes/ - Quotations , http://richardlangworth.com/category/winston-s-churchill/red-herrings/ - Red Herrings

In his http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090430/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_text_obama - press conference of 29 April , in response to a question on the disclosure of top secret memos on the use of “enhanced interrogation methods,” Mr. Obama said:

I was struck by an article that I was reading the other day talking about the fact that the British during World War II, when London was being bombed to smithereens, had 200 or so detainees. And Churchill said, ‘We don’t torture,’ when the entire British—all of the British people—were being subjected to unimaginable risk and threat….the reason was that Churchill understood — you start taking shortcuts, over time, that corrodes what’s best in a people. It corrodes the character of a country.

While it’s nice to hear the President invoke Sir Winston, the quotation is unattributed and almost certainly incorrect. While Churchill did express such sentiments with regard to prison inmates, he said no such thing about prisoners of war, enemy combatants or terrorists, who were in fact tortured by British interrogators during World War II.

The word “torture” appears 156 times in my digital transcript of Churchill’s 15 million published words (books, articles, speeches, papers) and 35 million words about him—but not once in the subject context. Similarly, key phrases like “character of a country” or “erodes the character” do not track.

Obama seems to have been misled by Andrew Sullivan’s recent article in The Atlantic, http://xrl.us/beqyfx - “Churchill vs. Cheney,” which calmly urges that Vice President Cheney be prosecuted. The British, Sullivan wrote,

captured over 500 enemy spies operating in Britain and elsewhere. Most went through Camp 020, a Victorian pile crammed with interrogators. As Britain’s very survival hung in the balance, as women and children were being killed on a daily basis and London turned into rubble, Churchill nonetheless knew that embracing torture was the equivalent of surrender to the barbarism he was fighting….

“Churchill nonetheless knew” appears suddenly and with no evidence to back it up. Sullivan makes no other reference to Churchill, or to how he divined Churchill’s views on torture.

Sullivan likely picked this up in a three-year-old article about Camp 020’s chief interrogator, Col. Robin “Tin Eye” Stephens. In http://xrl.us/beqyfc - “The Truth that Tin Eye Saw,” by Ben Macintyre (London Times Online, 10 February 2006), Stephens is identified as an MI5 officer who extracted confessions out of Nazis: “a bristling, xenophobic martinet; in appearance, with his glinting monocle and cigarette holder, he looked exactly like the caricature Gestapo interrogator.” Stephens was terrifying, Macintyre wrote:

Suspects often left the interrogation cells legless with fear after an all-night grilling….he deployed threats, drugs, drink and deceit. But he never once resorted to violence….This was no squishy liberal: the eye was made of tin, and the rest of him out of tungsten. (Indeed, he was disappointed that only sixteen spies were executed during the war.) His motives were strictly practical. “Never strike a man. It is unintelligent, for the spy will give an answer to please, an answer to escape punishment. And having given a false answer, all else depends upon the false premise.”

The CIA argues that “enhanced interrogation” works, Obama and John McCain say it does not. Whomever is right, the “Tin Eye” Stephens story is just another red herring—because according to recent research the British did use such methods: in the “London Cage,” a POW camp in the heart of London, where SS and Gestapo captives were subject to beatings, sleep deprivation and starvation.” *

Churchill spoke frequently about torture, mostly enemy murders of civilians. His daughter once told me, “He would have done anything to win the war, and I daresay he had to do some pretty rough things—but they didn’t unman him.” But if Churchill is on record about “enhanced interrogation,” his words have yet to surface.

The nearest I could come to his sentiments refers not to terrorists but to prison inmates. In 1938, responding to a constituent who urged him to help end the use of the “cat o’nine tails” in prisons, Churchill wrote: “the use of instruments of torture can never be regarded by any decent person as synonymous with justice.”**

If that line appeals to Mr. Obama, he can certainly use it with confidence.

---

Endnotes

* Ian Corbain, “ http://xrl.us/beqyue - The Secrets of the London Cage,” The Guardian, 12 November 2005. The Cage was kept secret, Corbain, wrote, though a censored account appeared in the memoirs of its commandant, Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Scotland. Corbain does not mention Churchill, but to believe Churchill wasn’t aware of this activity would be asking a lot.

** Martin Gilbert, editor, Winston S. Churchill, Companion Volume V, Part 3: Documents: The Coming of War 1936-1939. London, Heinemann: 1982, 1292. n.2.

Grateful acknowledgement to Alex Spillius, “ http://xrl.us/beqyft - Obama Likes Winston Churchill After All,” Daily Telegraph, 30 April 2009, and to Telegraph readers responding to his article.

 

Since taking Office:

 

North Korea has waived the Middle Finger at the world and  started up their Nuclear Program once again.

 

Iran continues to waive the Middle finger at the world and continues to play the Obama Admin for time to complete its Nuclear aspirations.

 

Pakistan a Nuclear Power is on the verge of collapse, it seems the Taliban and Al Qaeda have moved on from Afghanistan, a less than Third World Country, to one that opens up a whole new world of opportunity to them to totally destabilize the region and the World.

 

Obama has basically been told by the EU you are on your own and he has now moved on to try and make friends with Chavez and Castro, two Non-World Powers that to me are Insignificant at this time.

 

We are closing Gitmo and Gates just asked Congress for $50 Million to build a Prison in America to house up to 100 Gitmo Prisoners....whoops I mean detainees, logic on this one escapes me.  It has also been suggested that the Obama Admin is going to have to pay other countries to take some of these detainees off our hands and that we will be paying welfare and support to some of the ones that will be allowed to move to America and settle down, yeah the good old American way, put them on welfare, don't you love it, isn't there a vacancy near the White House somewhere.  Next step is probably the USA will be sued by these detainees for Millions and the sad part is they will probably win.  From now on all detainees must be taken to McDonalds for a Happy Meal and be put up in a Motel 6, wait holy crap that might be torture.

 

Clinton asked Congress to appropriate another $100 Million for North Korea, so that we can once again be duped into paying them to come back to the Table for talks.

 

It seems the Obama strategy is to spend money we don't have in order to save the World.

 

We now also have Congress foaming at the mouth to go after some Bush Admin Officials to Pacify the Liberals for Obamas plan to keep and increase troops in Afghanistan and for not pulling out of Iraq as quick as the liberals would like.

 

Ah yes we can all feel safer, as Obama, Soros and MoveOn.org are on the job.

History clearly tells us that George Bush Jr. wasn't the first and he will not be the last to use ANY and ALL means possible to keep us safe...

 

Preventing the death of Americans is a good enough reason for me or an eminent attack on Americans. 

 

 

Your idea of what torture is and enhanced interrogation procedures are two different things.  You would let Amercians die to preserve your idealogy about torture, I and many other Amercians wouldn't. 

 

 

 

 

 

"Not one of the replies here has a good explanation for using it."

Scrapmonkey
My only son is now serving and has been sent to the Middle East four times.

 

http://www.fcnl.org/pdfs/civ_liberties/Field_Manual_Sept06.pdf - http://www.fcnl.org/pdfs/civ_liberties/Field_Manual_Sept06.pdf

 

Like I said take them McD's for a Big Mac and then to Motel 6.  Wouldn't want to make anyone uncomfortable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ScrapMonkey you seem to be confused.  We are not talking about being arrested for Shoplifting here or Mugging someone, we are talking about terrorist.  Terrorist who attack innocent people, Terrorist who are captured on the battlefield.  We are not talking about Uniformed Soldiers in a declared War.  We are talking about People who capture civilians and cut their heads off for the hell of it to make their convoluted and perverse point.  The last time I checked I didn't see any Americans flying planes into Mosques with the intention of killing thousands of people or blowing up embassy's with innocent civilians at work, or driving boats up to Naval Ships and blowing themselves up, or hijacking airliners, or shooting up an airport, or walking into a coffee shop and blowing themselves up.  These are Muslim extremists, i.e. Terrorist.  So your getting arrested and interrogated argument just doesn't hold water.  We are not just willy nilly pulling people off the street for the hell of it and interrogating them in this manner.  And before you go there Timothy McVeigh if he had been caught prior to the Bombing in Oklahoma I would be all for enhanced interrogation on him also.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now in the Muslim Mosques in the USA Muslims are actually encouraged to hate Americans, the infidels.  They are taught this by Church leaders and literature supplied by the Saudi Governement.  In the mean time we will sit by as usual and then it go on until there are more attacks and them we will react.

 

 

http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/special_report/45.pdf - http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/special_report/45.pdf

 

 

 

http://www.humanevents.com/downloads-pdfs/EIT%20Briefings.pdf - http://www.humanevents.com/downloads-pdfs/EIT%20Briefings.pdf

 

 

So much for Pelosi's "I knew nothing".

 

Be Careful what you wish for as it appears that some Liberals may end up with more dirt on their hands that originally thought.

 

Obama is an intelligent leader and he should have put a stop to this long ago, but he is being manipulated by the far left in his party and constituents, Moveon.org, Soros, etc. to let this play out.....SAD.