I never said it doesn't make ANY difference. I am saying that the FIRST AND FOREMOST thing is what you have to trade. In the workplace, it is competence. Why? Because your imcompetence means more work for me or less results or both. In that case, you have something to trade. Your competence. In the world scale, it is run as a business. You have something I want and if I have something you want, we do business. Whether we like each other or not comes second. IOW, even if I like you and you are wildly popular but if you have nothing I want, you aren't going to get very far.

It Was Part of A Cultural Exchange

The only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title: “Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.”

And they say nothing good comes out of China.

To steal a quote from Walt Disney's animated feature "Oliver" . . .

If this is torture, chain me to the wall!

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, July 15 --Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the alleged al-Qaeda driver who faces an historic military trial next week, testified Tuesday that a female interrogator elicited information from him using sexually suggestive behavior that was offensive to him.

Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden, told a military court conducting a pretrial hearing that during questioning in 2002 a woman interrogator "came close to me, she came very close, with her whole body towards me. I couldn't do anything. I was afraid of the soldiers.''

"Did she touch your thigh?," asked Hamdan's lawyer, Charles Swift.

"Yes...I said to her 'what do you want?'' Hamdan said. "She said 'I want you to answer all of my questions.'''

"Did you answer all of her questions after that?'' Swift asked. Hamdan said he did.

ahh the inhumanity.........

If a woman did that to me I would want to blow-up a whole building.

.

News montage.

Missing / destroyed tapes of torture ?

http://www.flurl.com/video/17620533_lets_not_go_to_the_videotape.htm

Why do you think they were destroyed ?

:joker:
RichC

.

utter insanity;)

Juror Says Panel's Decision
Over Osama bin Laden's Driver
Was Based on Evidence
By JESS BRAVIN
August 9, 2008 9:31 p.m.

The Guantanamo Bay military jury that sentenced Osama bin Laden's driver to just five additional months -- instead of the 30-year minimum sought by the government -- intended no message to the Bush administration or comment on its military commission system, according to one officer who served on the panel.

Instead, the military juror said, the panel looked at the evidence against Salim Hamdan and found it simply didn't support prosecutors' depiction of a hard-core al Qaeda terrorist who hates America and its way of life.

"Salim Hamdan was working for a bad organization and he knew that," the juror said. Jurors came to view him like other young people who get mixed up in criminal organizations because they are ignorant or lack other opportunities, rather than through a deep-seated ideology.

Jurors' identities were withheld from the press during the trial. The military judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred, told the jury after sentencing its members could discuss the trial with reporters. This juror spoke to The Wall Street Journal on condition that the juror's identity not be published.

The jury acquitted Mr. Hamdan of both counts of conspiring in al Qaeda attacks. It convicted him of five counts of providing material support for terrorism. The judge combined them into a single count for sentencing. The jury sentenced Mr. Hamdan to 66 months imprisonment, which leaves just five months after credit for 61 months of pretrial incarceration.

Mr. Hamdan's job with the al Qaeda leader principally involved driving Mr. bin Laden and other al Qaeda figures around Afghanistan. At times he also carried weapons and radios.

Captured in November 2001 by Afghan militiamen under U.S. command, Mr. Hamdan initially offered evasive and deceptive answers. He soon became cooperative and provided information to U.S. interrogators about the al Qaeda organization.

The military prosecution team put on a slew of witnesses including some of its top counterterrorism agents, mockups of surface-to-air missiles it said were found in Mr. Hamdan's car and video of his initial interrogations in 2001.

Jurors were barely, if at all, aware of the case's historic background, the juror said. The five men and one woman were selected from a 13 member juror pool on July 21 after questioning by prosecution and defense attorneys. A Navy captain, the one African American on the panel, was foreman; other members included two colonels and three lieutenant colonels from the Air Force, Army and Marine Corps.

The juror said that after years of contentious debate over detainee treatment it was good to finally see prisoners handled through "an organized process" rather than "an indiscriminate way." Still, the juror said, it was necessary to keep feelings about 9/11 and other al Qaeda attacks from interfering with their judgment. "I think we all had to reconcile that before we got on the plane" to Guantanamo," the juror said.

From opening statement to sentencing argument, both the prosecution and defense were "very aggressive," the juror said. Each side played the part jurors expected. "The defense would say the accused made the mistake of being in the wrong place at the wrong time," while "the prosecutors would give the image of him being a hardened terrorist."

In accepting the defense's depiction, "it came down to the evidence that we were allowed to see," the juror said. No evidence suggested Mr. Hamdan had any role in planning or organizing any terror attacks. Aside from the evidence, the juror said, Mr. Hamdan's demeanor in court made an impression.

"He looked very mild mannered," the juror said of the defendant, who wore traditional Yemeni dress under a blazer.

Before the jury began considering the sentence, Mr. Hamdan made an unsworn statement where he apologized to any who were harmed by his acts. Perhaps that was an effort to manipulate the jury, the juror said, but even more significant was what Mr. Hamdan did after the sentence was announced: He stood and apologized again, and thanked the jury and judge.

"I thought it was unusual considering the crimes he was accused of. I know there are people who hate people or entities," and Mr. Hamdan didn't act like one, the juror said. "The reality is: he didn't have to get up at all. He could have just sat there."

Prosecutor John Murphy, an assistant U.S. attorney from Louisiana, sought to equate Mr. Hamdan with Mr. bin Laden's most horrible deeds. "The penalty should be so significant that it forecloses any possibility that he renews his ties with terrorism," Mr. Murphy said.

The jury didn't accept the premise. Mr. Hamdan may have been guilty, but "where was his act along the spectrum" of things one could do in support of terrorism? The evidence suggested it was toward the less significant end, the juror said. The prosecution's argument was unacceptable "unless you can say, 'We should have hanged him.' Are you going to make that same statement of every individual" the U.S. captures? the juror said. American principles call for treating even enemies justly, the juror said, "just as we adhere to the Geneva Convention and we try to set the standards with the sanctity of human rights."

The Bush administration maintains it can hold prisoners classified as unlawful enemy combatants, such as Mr. Hamdan, indefinitely. Under this policy, Mr. Hamdan will not necessarily be released when his sentence is up in five months; rather, the government will have the option of continuing to imprison him on grounds that he remains a threat.

The juror seemed surprised to hear this, but said that continuing to hold Mr. Hamdan past his sentence was acceptable if officials so concluded. "You have to trust the government to a certain degree," the juror said. "I would take their word for it, because, yes, I do believe in the government."

Mr. Hamdan's sentence will be up in January, the same month that Mr. Bush leaves office, and some trial observers wondered if the jury intended any message by selecting that date. The juror seemed amused, saying of the panel's work, "People probably are trying to read too much into it."

Amazing. Now we'll see if he just does life at Gitmo anyway.

Bump

Fellow conspirator agitates.

Do you think the producers of the video should be hunted down by Interpol for torture...or is it ok because they had good intentions?

The double thread trick is another trick in the bag of asymmetric forum warfare.

Why of course, intentions are much more important than consequences.

and feelings are more important than intentions......

Whatever Bush administration policies he overturns, the president-elect wants to protect intelligence officials at the Central Intelligence Agency in order to do their jobs.

“At the CIA, you’ve got extraordinarily talented people who are working hard to keep Americans safe,” Obama said on ABC. “I don’t want them to suddenly feel like they’ve got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders.”

The outgoing president is “confident” that his successor “understands the nature of the world and understands the need to protect America.” But Bush hopes Obama and his intelligence team “take a hard look at the realities of the world and the tools now in place to protect the United States from further attack.”

from: http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/20090111/pl_politico/17320