24 inspired Bush, Cheney+torture

[MKSheppard]

Well, I guess, if the CIA waterboarded people before invading Iraq then America would not have been fooled by that WMD trick, eh Shep?

Clearly. Thus we need to waterboard more people for better quality intelligence. MEIN FUHRER, I CANNOT BREATHE!

[irishmick79]

The irony is, in the 24-verse, Jack is willing to be tried and take his lumps for these things and certainly doesn't do this shit for fun. The GOP members who take fictional characters as role models need to take a dose of reality, stat. It's not even like these methods are even that effective when compared to that of Hans Scharff.

Nah, the real irony of the show is that Jack Bauer, one of the icons of American toughguyism, is being portrayed by an English-born Canadian.

[Shroom Man 777]

Well, I guess, if the CIA waterboarded people before invading Iraq then America would not have been fooled by that WMD trick, eh Shep?

Clearly. Thus we need to waterboard more people for better quality intelligence. MEIN FUHRER, I CANNOT BREATHE!

Mang, Shep. I wonder if you're pulling all our legs when you do this stuff and are just having the time with your life and much funs.

Because, clearly, waterboarding is a shit interrogation technique.

I'd like to know about the Iraqi disinformation campaign. While they clearly didn't have WMDs, when Hans Blix and co. sent weapons inspectors Saddam still acted like a dick and went about doing things suspiciously, so clearly he didn't want people to know whether he definitely had or didn't have WMDs?

[Rye]

The torture in 24 is there as a dramatic device to show how dire the situation is. While Joel Surnow is a cock and a torture apologist, the show's format relies upon the general infallibility of Bauer and the nature of rising Utilitarian stakes to force people into doing the unthinkable to prevent the even more unthinkable. Taking that and going to something far worse (i.e. thinking the situation is always as dire as the situations justifying it in the fictional program) makes you wonder just how these people got into power without a conspiracy of idiots and psychopaths.

[MKSheppard]

Mang, Shep. I wonder if you're pulling all our legs when you do this stuff and are just having the time with your life and much funs.

A mixture of both.

Just think of me as the guy who likes to bring up unpleasant factoids -- like saturation bombing of a city being an effective way of destroying insurgents -- and the fact that enhanced techniques do work -- you just have to know how to apply them properly -- if you apply them improperly, then their effect is worse than not being used at all.

Obviously, you don't immediately waterboard someone the moment they step into the Secret CIA deathrenditon chamber. I've read that the threat of enhanced techniques hanging over them was useful in many cases to get information out of people without having to actually do it to them.

And of course like I've said before, you try to cross verify what they say with other methods -- but even the best service can get misled -- intelligence is always perfect with 20/20 hindsight.

And of course, I'm more than willing to take the piss for SPARTAFREEDOMERICA, and try to at least talk in semi intelligent tones to at least not insult your intelligence (I could always talk like someone from Free Republic, if you wanted ). It's one of the reasons I'm still here and Axis Kast isn't.

I'd like to know about the Iraqi disinformation campaign. While they clearly didn't have WMDs, when Hans Blix and co. sent weapons inspectors Saddam still acted like a dick and went about doing things suspiciously, so clearly he didn't want people to know whether he definitely had or didn't have WMDs?

Basically yes. I don't have the time to dig up specific examples, but one example that was given to me a couple nights ago was in the immediate post-war environment following the Persian Gulf War in 1991; in one instance, the Iraqis literally had truckloads of Uranium (doesnt' say which grade of enrichment they were at), driven out of a compound literally moments ahead of the UN inspectors; and in another -- they literally tore up the entire floor of a building, right down to bare earth, so that weapons inspectors couldn't tell what had been there, in terms of electrical receptacles, mount points in the floor, etc etc.

This jacknapedry continued through the 1990s, culiminating in Saddam kicking out the inspectors in 1998. It was only in 2002 that he sort of let them back into Iraq; and started to not be such a dick towards them. But by then, it was far too late -- since nobody believed Saddam anymore in the intelligence community.

[open_sketchbook]

Remember that Saddam was very much overly confident in his military and his own skills as a strategist. He often compared himself to Stalin and made frequent references to Stalingrad when discussing stratagies, hoping to bog down the American war machine and grind them down over time. It wouldn't surprise me to find out that the reason for the Coalition's balls-out blitzkrieg was to subvert such a strategy. I think he honestly thought he could win, and wanted to bloody the nose of the Americans by inciting them into the war. Turns out taunting the superpower isn't a great idea.

[stormthebeaches]

I do recall that in an interview with Saddam when he was captured he stated that he pretended him had WMD's to scare Iran. Whilst Saddam didn't think that the West would do anything was afraid that Iran would try to annex the Shiite part of the country and he pretended to have WMD's to scare them away.

[Gaidin]

The irony is, in the 24-verse, Jack is willing to be tried and take his lumps for these things and certainly doesn't do this shit for fun. The GOP members who take fictional characters as role models need to take a dose of reality, stat. It's not even like these methods are even that effective when compared to that of Hans Scharff.

Nah, the real irony of the show is that Jack Bauer, one of the icons of American toughguyism, is being portrayed by an English-born Canadian.

Who doesn't care much for guns, no less.

[Elfdart]

Well, I guess, if the CIA waterboarded people before invading Iraq then America would not have been fooled by that WMD trick, eh Shep?

Actually, they did torture people before the war for the express purpose of getting them to "confess" that (a) Iraq was allied with Al Qaeda and (b) Iraq had nuclear, biological and chemical weapons that it could give their buddies to attack America: Fuck Yeah! So they knew it was bullshit -that's why they had to torture people to get them to swear to it.

and the fact that enhanced techniques do work

Only to get people to lie, or to maintain the torturer's erection.

[thejester]

Holy Shit, it's one throwaway line about a TV show that she clearly made to disparage the Bush Administration, not a serious accusation. I think the interesting part of that article is her claim she didn't know anything about the various measures the Americans were taking prior to 2007 - for just one example, in Mark Urban's new book Task Force Black its made clear that British special forces and intelligence units in Iraq were well aware of US mistreatment of prisoners, to the point where they refused to hand suspects they captured on raids into American custody and were subsequently demoted to operations against targets of lesser value. This was prior to the Abu Ghraib scandal - but she's saying she had no idea about prisoner mistreatment until after she retired. Right.

[Ryan Thunder]

The irony is, in the 24-verse, Jack is willing to be tried and take his lumps for these things and certainly doesn't do this shit for fun. The GOP members who take fictional characters as role models need to take a dose of reality, stat. It's not even like these methods are even that effective when compared to that of Hans Scharff.

Nah, the real irony of the show is that Jack Bauer, one of the icons of American toughguyism, is being portrayed by an English-born Canadian.

Whom I apparently tripped over at a Laser Quest party when I was twelve.