Intelligence Questionable, or How ABC insults our intelligence and plays footsy with anti-American leftists

What a namby-pamby sissy civilization we have built in America.

If what is described by "former CIA officers" is considered torture, then it is no damn wonder we are getting "questionable intelligence" from using it.

Harsh interrogation techniques authorized by top officials of the CIA have led to questionable confessions and the death of a detainee since the techniques were first authorized in mid-March 2002, ABC News has been told by former and current intelligence officers and supervisors. They say they are revealing specific details of the techniques, and their impact on confessions, because the public needs to know the direction their agency has chosen. All gave their accounts on the condition that their names and identities not be revealed.
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"They would not let you rest, day or night. Stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down. Don't sleep. Don't lie on the floor," one prisoner said through a translator. The detainees were also forced to listen to rap artist Eminem's "Slim Shady" album. The music was so foreign to them it made them frantic, sources said.

Horrors upon horrors. No sleep and Eminem combined! It's a wonder we didn't kill all of them with that kind of harsh treatment!

Forget for the moment that there are thousands of young Americans who, for God only knows what reason, can stay up all night and listen to Eminem, and who seem to thrive on it.

What other tortures, dear ABC, have we inflicted upon our Islamic guests?

The CIA sources described a list of six "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" instituted in mid-March 2002 and used, they said, on a dozen top al Qaeda targets incarcerated in isolation at secret locations on military bases in regions from Asia to Eastern Europe. According to the sources, only a handful of CIA interrogators are trained and authorized to use the techniques:

1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.

A lot of football coaches use the same technique -- because it works. Never killed or maimed anyone because of it, to our knowledge.

2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.

As Captain Jack Sparrow would say, "I don't know if I deserved that!" In fact it does get your attention. It doesn't kill you. Your ability to reproduce is not threatened.

3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.

What doctors? Name 'em or shut the hell up, ABC. Medical docs or shrinks?

4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.

Again, it doesn't kill you, it doesn't leave you maimed for life. You can still have kids. We'd call it a good technique for setting the table, but hardly torture.

5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.

Humiliating, yes. Not healthy, yes. But properly supervised you won't die, and you will survive without maiming (and still able to have kids). This just barely crosses the line into torture.

6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

Now we're finally getting somewhere. Still, it doesn't kill you. It doesn't leave you maimed. Your manhood is intact. Downside, after a few hours it would lose its novelty. It's survivable. Doubt we'd get much useful intelligence out of it.

In fact, the ABC report is shocking only in that if this is considered torture by CIA standards, then the CIA has been degraded beyond restoration. Consider the next clue:

According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.

Fourteen seconds?

Two and a half minutes?

No wonder the intelligence was questionable.

Also questionable is the intelligence of the ABC News producers who authorized this report. Certainly beyond question is that no one there apparently knows anything about the history of torture. Real torture. Like bamboo shoots. Hot boiling oil. Eyes gouged out. Ears cut off. Private parts placed perilously close to sharp objects.

In other words, stuff that would make brave Sir Robin spill his guts, no pun intended, in one helluva hurry.

But we don't do that stuff. Because we are the United States and try to stay on the civilized side of the line, even in war. And this is war.

You can read the rest of the report if you wish. It'll just make you mad and then sad that we have so many clueless people at the top of what constitutes the political and information food chain in America. They are advocating, and we kid you not, psychological techniques and building "a real relationship of trust" with the prisoner.

Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and a deputy director of the State Department's office of counterterrorism, recently wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "What real CIA field officers know firsthand is that it is better to build a relationship of trust … than to extract quick confessions through tactics such as those used by the Nazis and the Soviets."

Thank God that Larry Johnson is now a "former" CIA officer and State Department weenie. The Nazis and the Soviets would have a good laugh at what he thinks is beyond the pale.

When we initially saw the headlines, we thought, "Oh, no! Terrible atrocities must have been committed against our enemies." But then we read the details and realized that it's just the opposite. We barely know how to do good interrogations. What happened to the bright lamp in your eyes and a dozen detectives slapping you around and yelling, "Tell, tell!" That's worse than most of the items on the List of Six Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.

Might as well put a pair of women's panties on their head for all the good that it'll do.

When will the liberals and the moonbat left realize that we are fighting a war for the survival of western civilization, the same civilization they prize so much for its licentiousness and boorishness. If we lose the war, no one loses more than they, but everyone will lose something even more precious: the freedom from terrorism. The freedom to believe what you want to believe, and to act like you want to act.

This is precious. It is worth defending. It is even worth pushing the limits of interrogation techniques. Not one of the six items in the report even gets close, notwithstanding the opinions of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Embarrassing and pathetic.