I'm not saying that Cheney is right or wrong, or whether he told the truth or lied. I'm simply saying that he made an excellent, powerful presentation of his position.
The next step is to check into the accuracy of what he said, see whether his statements have any validity, and find out if he did lie and, if so, specifically where.
The main bone of contention is whether water-boarding actually did produce useful information and stopped any terrorist plots. Cheney and other right-wingers keep making these claims but, so far, I haven't seen any proof or verification to back up their claims.
Of course, Obama is raising a number of other valid reasons to oppose water-boarding.
But this is the main claim that Conservatives have and, so far, I haven't seen any proof that they are correct even on this point -- that water-boarding actually did thwart some terrorist plots.
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I just want to know why Obama was so quick to eliminate waterboarding as an option to the CIA and other government agencies. If you dont like waterboarding than dont use it, except when used as a last resort. Obama has now talked his way into a corner that will not allow him to ever use waterboarding, or that the public can ever find out about.
If Cheney was lying, then what did he lie about? I missed his speech, but I did watch some of Obamas speech before going to work.
One of Cheney's lies was that waterboarding produce valuable information to to stop terrorists, which is a lie because if it did he would have told us what that information was. Another Cheney's lies was that there were terrorists in Iraq before the war which is not true. There were other miss-truths also. Brandon, the reason Obama eliminated waterboarding is because it didn't produce any valuable information against terrorists and in fact gave the terrorists another good reason to recruit more terrorists and we were losing the support of most of are allies because of it.
If Cheney was lying, he was lying about whether or not any important or useful information was obtained thru the use of water-boarding. No such information has been released to the public, so we don't know the answer to that question.
We did not use water-boarding in World War II, or in any of our other wars, yet we always managed to obtain the information we needed from enemy POW's, using other ways.
Several key CIA agents have testified recently that there are much better ways than coercion to obtain vital information from enemy combatants. Creating a rapport between the CIA interrogator and the prisoner works much better than the use of coercion in obtaining reliable information.
So, Obama contends that, even if Cheney can ultimately show that water-boarding did in fact produce some useful information, the same information, even more complete and reliable, could have been obtained by using less coercive methods.
Using water-boarding and other coercive methods hurts us by giving the enemy a propaganda and recruiting tool, which Al Quaida has been using effectively. If we don't need to use these methods to obtain reliable information, then why hand the enemy the gift of an anti-American propaganda tool to use against us?
Cheney also lied about Saddam having WMD's before we invaded Iraq, and about Saddam attempting to buy yellow cake uranium from the country of Niger so that Iraq could produce a nuclear weapon.
However, those lies dealt with other matters. The question here is whether or not Cheney is now also lying about the benefits of water-boarding.
Bob: This debate is all about whether or not waterboarding creates valuable information. So dont jump the gun and say it didnt.
Lets say for example, you have a terrorist in your custody and you know from information you found during his arrest that an attack is going to occur in the next day or two but you dont know where. You have asked mr. terrorist very nicely, but he refuses to tell you. Now what? Do you try waterboarding or sit back and wait for thousands of Americans to die?
Brandon: No, you try traditional methods of interrogation which work just as well. As for jumping the gun, Remember Obama has seen the intelligence that came from the waterboarding already, so he knows whether that information was useful or not or if traditional interrogation could have gotten the same result. Your the one jumping the gun by believing Dick Cheney, a proven liar. Don't be stupid.
Right On, Lisa. You said it, and you said it so well.
Lisa: I have an ATA in criminal justice which includes interrogation methods used in todays law enforcement agencies. These methods do work! They work increadably well on really stupid people. Anyone with half a brain can be impossible to crack in an interrogation.
When it comes to getting information out of a trained terrorists who would rather die than help you, it takes alittle more.
So after you have tried traditional methods, then what?
Brandon:
Trained, experienced CIA interrogators have testified in Congressional hearings that other, less coercive methods work better than coercion to obtain reliable information from detainees. I would have to believe they know what they are talking about.
So after you have tried traditional methods, and they didnt work, then what?
Just finished a video called "Mind Of Cheney" that I thought you would find interesting. You can find at it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6QSh0_DePM
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