Politics | 04/21/2009 10:40 am

Sen. Feinstein Tells Obama: Let Senate Weigh Torture Prosecution

By The Staff at wowOwow.com

Sen. Dianne Feinstein today sent a letter to President Obama urging him to scale back his promises to not prosecute officials who tortured detainees. The letter insists that the Senate Intelligence Committee, which Democratic Feinstein chairs, should be given time to review the cases and make a concurrent decision.

From the letter, via Think Progress:

I am writing to respectfully request that comments regarding holding individuals accountable for detention and interrogation-related activities be held in reserve until the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is able to complete its review of the conditions and interrogations of certain high-value detainees.

This study is now underway, and I estimate its completion within the next six to eight months. A study of the first two detainees has already been completed and will shortly be before the committee.

No word on whether President Obama will heed Feinstein’s call. Since he already promised to not prosecute, we have a feeling he’ll stick to his word.

280 Reader Comments (so far…) Sign In or Register to comment

Man. Can one say the left hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing?

Can’t they get their stories straight before decisions are made and taken to press?

Best of luck, Di, with getting this reversed…. my pop would say the horse is already out of the barn!

By nanchan u on 04/21/2009 10:51 am

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More projecting and mirror imaging. Liberals don’t think like conservatives. We don’t goosestep in lockstep after our leaders.

Pres. Obama is flat wrong on this and Sen. Feinstein is right. We must investigate every aspect of the Bush torture regime and everyone involved must be held accountable, including Bush and Cheney.

By Rudi G. on 04/21/2009 11:02 am

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Please do not equate conservatives with the Nazi party (goosestep remark). It is highly offensive. Thank you, Suzi.

By nanchan u on 04/21/2009 11:09 am

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Got it. Calling the president a fascist and a pal of terrorists is perfectly fine. Making an analogy between conservatives today and German conservatives 60 years is "offensive."

By Rudi G. on 04/21/2009 11:28 am

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What’s good for the gander is not good for the goose Rudi. Not in the right wing paly book.

By f p on 04/21/2009 11:31 am

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oops! forgot the link to the International UN Convention on Torture—-

http://www.hrweb.org/legal/cat.html

By Patty E on 04/23/2009 12:14 am

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http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:cBaSAAGfX-MJ:findarticles.com/p/art…

By Patty E on 04/23/2009 12:25 am

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Rudi,

From another thread this morning, what do you think of this website?

http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=591269

Is it what I think it is?

By M J on 04/21/2009 11:24 am

MJ yes it is; it’s a Nazi organization of far right extremists bent on the overthrow of the government. The idiot who killed those 3 policemen a week or so back wrote on that web site.

By f p on 04/21/2009 11:33 am

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The was no "Bush torture regime" how ridiculous. Pelosi along with memebers of Congress were present in 2002 when a demonstration of waterboarding was given. It was accepted and no dissent was recorded. FACT.

This call to accountablity is a diversion from Obama’s Chavez fiasco and his attempt to switch the government stock in the banks from preferred into common behind the back of Congress. This is the move that allows government control of credit, therefore, the economy. Socialism is here. That’s what this BS is about.

According to the treaty, waterboarding or the other 9 techniques are not torture. To be so, SEVERE pain, physical or mental would have to occur. It did not occur. 40,000 America servicemen were waterboarded and then followed for 10 years. No lasting metal damage occured.

Waterboarding was a hazing stunt at the Virginia Military Institute for years.

Only 3 of the most hardened terrorist are in question.

During those in question;

Waterboarding lasted for 20-40 seconds.

Medical personel were in attendance to insure that no physical harm was done

This was not torture then and is only considered so now, because Obama is pandering to the slobbering left. America did not torture, torture is pain…torture is maiming…torture is death….

Stop the lies. There will not be any "investigations" it is a diversion.

By Kelly In Texas on 04/23/2009 10:09 am

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Since there are already investigations underway, you’re wrong again.

By Rudi G. on 04/23/2009 10:38 am

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Adm. Dennis Blair, President Obama’s national intelligence director, circulated a letter within the intelligence community last week that could prove embarrassing to both Democrats and the Obama administration.

Yes, members of Congress approved the interrogation methods many of them now decry as torture. Blair’s letter reportedly states that members of Congress repeatedly signed off on enhanced interrogation methods such as waterboarding.

Blair’s letter also stated that coercive interrogation provided “high-value information” and contributed to a better understanding of al-Qaida. An abridged version of Blair’s statement was released to the public, but it did not refer to the program’s success or the authorization from Congress.

By Kelly In Texas on 04/23/2009 11:38 am

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Let me try typing really slowly. I don’t care if the investigations bring down Dems. This is beyond politics. Bush turned this great country into a terror state.

It’s clear that the ultra-right wing that wants America to fail likes torture, but regular decent, non-degenerate Americans won’t stand for it.

By Rudi G. on 04/23/2009 1:13 pm

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OK Rudi….please…type slowly, it may give you a bit longer to think out your answer…because, ah Rudi…typing slowly is not reflected in the post..(try extra spacing to make that point)

There will be no investigations. Obama will veto. It is not about Bush….or torture. There wasn’t any torture… none. Waterboarding as applied to the 3 terrorist leaders did not inflice severe harm of any kind. Nada. None. Zero.

Sure didn’t. 20-40 seconds with medical personel in attendance. The same waterboarding that was used as a HAZING stunt at the Virgina Military Institute. The same waterboarding that 40,000 Amerian serviemen went through and were then followed up for 10 years to detect any signs of lasting harm. None were found. None, nada, zero.

Nope, not torture… but how about ol Obama? Huh? Veto….hmmmm….I guess that he really didn’t realize how well that bell of Pavlov works!!! Now he has to investigate how to get just a minimal amount of slobbering….maybe a smaller bell?

By Kelly In Texas on 04/23/2009 1:34 pm

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Rudi, I think the information copied from the internet below is relevant to what you’re saying. It’s lengthy, but worth the read should people be interested in what torture, like waterboarding is about and also whether it’s relevant to teaching our servicement to use or whether it’s relevant at all:

Founded in the aftermath of the Korean War to train U.S. servicemen to withstand enemy interrogation, the school was central to the development of the notorious “enhanced interrogation techniques” at Guantanamo. It was the SERE program that sent instructors and staff psychologists to Guantanamo shortly after 9/11 and provided the technical expertise on tactics like water-boarding. As Jane Mayer put it in her study of U.S. torture policy, The Dark Side, “SERE is a repository of the world’s knowledge about torture, the military equivalent, in a sense, of the lethal specimens of obsolete plagues kept in the deep-freeze laboratories of the Centers for Disease Control.”

I served in the Marine Corps in the 1990s, and I attended SERE as a young lieutenant in November 1995. I have since been to Iraq three times (as a reporter), and I can attest that the school isn’t relevant to the threats American soldiers face abroad. It resembles more of an elaborate hazing ritual than actual training.

Read the rest from Slate in January 2009:
http://www.slate.com/id/2210059/

Several people have told us, and Oliver North has said on air, that it is true that waterboarding has been used in the SERE survival training. Other have also told us that the practice was used for decades as a “hazing” technique at schools such as the Virginia Military Institute (VMI)…..

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McClacthy reporter Jonathan S. Landay wrote:

The JPRA is the Pentagon agency that oversees the now famous Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE) training, which teaches U.S. military personnel to withstand “physical and psychological pressures” using methods that, according to one JPRA instructor, is “based on illegal exploitation (under the rules listed in the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War) of prisoners over the past 50 years.”

The techniques used in SERE school, based, in part, on Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean war to elicit false confessions, including stripping students of their clothing, placing them in stress positions, putting hoods over their heads, disrupting their sleep, treating them like animals, subjecting them to loud music and flashing lights, and exposing them to extreme temperatures. It can also include face and body slaps and until recently, for some who attended the Navy’s SERE school, it included waterboarding.

http://johnltdo5455.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/waterboarding-torture-used-…

The Slate Article:

http://www.slate.com/id/2210059/

Cancel Water-Boarding 101 The military should close its torture school. I know because I graduated from it.
By David J. MorrisPosted Thursday, Jan. 29, 2009, at 12:53 PM ET *

* you can choose to read the rest of this article or not. Follow the www.slate.com site

By M J on 04/26/2009 11:00 am