NBC's Mitchell falsely suggests Blair letter expressed approval for interrogation methods
SUMMARY: Andrea Mitchell claimed that director of national intelligence Dennis Blair's statements appear to differ from President Obama's rejection of enhanced interrogation policies, when, in fact, Blair made clear in an April 16 letter that he opposed them.
On the April 22 broadcast of NBC's Nightly News, while reporting on harsh interrogation methods used by the CIA during the Bush administration, chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell stated that "the Obama administration's own director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, wrote his employees last week that the interrogations produced high-value information." Mitchell went on to say, "Tonight, a senior official told NBC News Blair does not back away from his private comments, even though they appear to differ from the president's rejection of the Bush policies." But contrary to Mitchell's suggestion that Blair supports the use of "the Bush policies" while Obama has "reject[ed]" them, according to the blog of the U.S. Naval Institute, in the April 16 letter that was sent "to the Intelligence Community workforce," Blair made clear he opposes the use of such techniques, which he called "graphic and disturbing." Moreover, Blair issued an April 21 statement that said he "strongly supported the president when he declared that we would no longer use enhanced interrogation techniques" and said of the methods: "The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."
As Media Matters for America has documented, in his April 16 letter, Blair wrote: "Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing. As the President has made clear, and as both CIA Director [Leon] Panetta and I have stated, we will not use those techniques in the future. I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past, but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given."
From the April 22 broadcast of NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams:
MITCHELL: And the Obama administration's own director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, wrote his employees last week that the interrogations produced high-value information. And he said he did not fault those who made the decisions at the time.
But Blair left those controversial comments out of public statements he issued at the same time. Tonight, a senior official told NBC News Blair does not back away from his private comments, even though they appear to differ from the president's rejection of the Bush policies. Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington.
You know, all you have to do is read his comments to come the conclusion that he said EXPLICITLY that Blair does not SUPPORT those methods.
So is Andrea Mitchell daft or trying to create conflict that does that not exist?
Neither is really very good.
email to Mitchell
4/22/09
Dear Ms. Mitchell,
Dennis Blair does not support "enhanced interrogation practices." He made this clear in an April 16 letter.
Isn't it a little bit embarrassing that your journalism has sunk to this level?
Go to Media Matters, read the facts, then retire to your multi-million dollar mansion and do what the elite do.
LOL...what a joke.
The man said they worked. All she said was that this appears to depart from what Obama has said in the past.
The fact is Obama has a problem. It is one thing to be against anything and everything when you are running for president. When you are President, and lives are in your hands, it is a different matter.
These tatics worked and they saved lives. The Constitution does not protect terrorists, it protects Americans. That is why Obama will not go after all the people in the Bush admin you lefties want him to, and that is why these tatics WILL be used again.
pointofview makes assumptions that he can not backup. If torture worked, it has not been proven by any independent investigation. Comments by Bush Admin people are worthless. We trust them as much as we trusted what they said about WMD, mushroom clouds, Saddam connection to 9/11, NSA wiretaping, etc.
pointofview needs to read Constituition - it protects everyone. Legal scholars agree on that point.
Obama will not go after anyone. The DOJ and the Senate will investigate and then prosecute who they think broke the laws of the land.
POV,
What do you make of this statement by Blair:
""The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."
Fried
He may very well be right about the first part also. I don’t doubt that it hurt our image. I am not so sure about the second part. Meaning, we live in an age when terrorists can get a hold of a whole range of weapons, chemical, biological etc. they can kill thousands at a time if not more.
Given that, I just don’t think we can so easily say that that at times it may not be essential to national security to use these techniques . All I am saying is this. I am simply not one of those people prepared to say that we should never ever use these methods.
This is the 21st century version of "communists sneaking into our bedrooms". It's nothing more than fear-mongering. In any case, the following comment does not logically follow:
Torture works at extracting false confessions. There is no guarantee as to the truth of any "information" gained under torture.
I would think that the abuse of torture by the Bush administration would turn off anybody to the value of the technique. Bush, Cheney, et al. were convinced, without any evidence whatsoever, that there was a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. So they tortured KSM hundreds of time with the express purpose of getting a confession to that extent.
How did that help us?
The pro-torture argument always consists of two things: 1) an overblown fear of the modern world (at breathtaking odds with the military reality of the 21st century), and 2) an unfounded claim that torture has some value that is necessary in these troubled times.
Ron Susskind said last night that torture was okayed just to save Bush's a**. No WMD's were found, Iraq was a quagmire, and he was so desperate that even torture was okay in an attempt to save his hide POLITICALLY.
Remember, you must view everything Bush/Cheney/Rove ever did through the prism of politics.
I hardly think 911 was a present day version of the fear of communism. As long as we have people who will stop at nothing to harm and kill americans, we must be ready to respond.
You simply can not establish that intel collected through these means does not ever work. Even Blair said it produced valuable intel. It may not be the best way to get info, but that does not mean it is without merit.
Torture is against the law. The Bush Administration lied to the American people (shock!) and said that the U.S. does not torture (when, in fact, the U.S. was torturing people).
You cannot establish that intelligence collected through torture DO work.
Again, torture is illegal. Those who took part should be prosecuted. I'm sorry if that offends your pea-sized brain, but you cannot break the law, especially with such a heinous act, and pretend it's all OK.
Explain away torture techniques all you want. When the U.S. uses torture, it makes the U.S. the bad guys and makes a victim out of the prisoner. We are better than that. The rule of law must stand, POV.
POV,
If the techniques thwarted attacks as you have been claiming, he is putting the image of the United States ahead of the lives of Americans. His letter sounds to me like a clear repudiation of the techniques used. He also seems to be saying there was no benefit from these techniques. Mitchell owes him an apology.
Correct. These tactics will be used again. By our enemies. We're inviting the rest of the world to treat our captured soldiers the same way we treat our captives.
Worrier, I have to say you're mistaken... others aren't going to use the pansy "torture" methods we employ, they've got their own methods which too many of our service men and women have seen already. We're not fighting enemies that put us in small cells with insects, they prefer to put us in front of a video camera with a machete behind our necks.
So you want us to be more like the terrorists? Quite un-patriotic. And stupid.
"These tatics worked and they saved lives"
Uh, yeah, that seems to be the Troglodyte Talking Point du jour, but can they prove it? I doubt it, or they'd have released the documentation years ago.
Exactly.
Given that Cheney and Bush could have declassified such information years ago, and given that they showed a willingness to declassify anything that put their position in a better light, I think we should view with great suspicion Cheney's claim that there is secret information that validates his position, esp. given his track record of telling out-and-out lies about classified information in the past.
Or have we forgotten about how he knew where there were WMDs in Iraq?
A really good point, Whispers, but there's more. Former Army General Janis Karpinski has observed that some of the military personnel who were accused of being "bad apples" at Abu Ghraib (for following orders, it now appears) are STILL doing time. If Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld had felt this strongly about the righteousness of their position, why did they hang these people out to dry? In my book, "Deferment Dick" Cheney is not only a liar, he's a d*mned coward.
members of the Obama admin. have already said that it worked. Period.
Where?
Fried
Read what Blair said. While he may oppose the use of these techniques, even he said they got results
He said that the negatives outweighed the positives. If terrorist plots were thwarted because of these techniques, he surely believes that the results could have been obtained without torture, correct?
Not if he opposes the techniques on moral grounds which it appears he does, as do many here. I do not.
Then where are your f'ing morals you armchair sadist?
He seems to think torture was a mistake.
Since this site has been established there have been some jaw-dropping excuses used for the perdifery of the bush administration and various rightwingers have twisted themselves like contortionists to prove up is down and right is wrong but l have to say that THIS PARTICULAR ARGUEMENT HAS FINALLY GOT TO BE THE LAST STRAW.
What is wrong with you people?
YOU ARE CONDONING TORTURE.
You are condoning acts that you either jailed or executed people for in World War Two. You are condoning acts for which you singed treaties on SPECIFICALLY BANNING THEM AND STATING THAT YOU WOULD BE PERSUING THE PERPETRATORS OF THOSE ACTS FOR DOING THEM.
What on earth makes you think that doing such things will let you stand as a moral compass in the world if those guilty of authorising these criminal acts are not prosecuted? What authority will the US have in the world to call for others to be punished if those guilty of these war crimes are not brought before the law?
Okay i'm a guest here but l usually end up arguing in favour of the US in situations, but like l lot for foreigners l am upset because this action diminishes a point we can state with pride about the country which leads the western world, that whatever the provocation, whatever the heinous crime acted apon it, whatever the desperation of the situation THE UNITED STATES WOULD NOT ACT LIKE THE BASEST OF TIN POT DICTATORSHIPS AND TREAT THOSE AGAINST THEM LIKE ANIMALS.
And to you, the defenders of these acts, l call you what you are: COWARDS.
You are the lambs who lead your lions in the military. Too gutless to join yourselves you sit behind your keyboards, or your radio mikes or behind the desks of your tv studios and talk tough, having NEVER warn a uniform. You talk and talk and ramp up the fear for the simple act of protecting officals POLITICALLY. You sell your morals down a river of excrement holding your nose and breathing through your gaping maws desperatly thinking of reasons why what you know in your hearts is wrong can be excused, heaven forbid that you allow an opponent in politics to be right on ANY subject. What you have cheered on for years, the policies, the politicians and the fake populism now disgusts the majority of the people in your country (and before you splutter your indignation and remark on a "center right nation" l have one word for ya, IOWA) but what are you doing to get it back? Are you lookinga at your failed policies and the damage they caused and fining ways to change them? Are you looking at the hate you fostered and the way it drove people away like a six month old colt runs away from a rattlesnake? Are you trying to find out what made you so unpopular and doing the best you can to change that? Are you joining with those who look on in horror at what was done in your name? No. You bloviate, you think of excuses, you make sh** up to defend you position. You use strawman arguements and false eqivalencies like the "two schools of thought" bullsh** to try to make your case and bluff like a man in a poker game holding a pair of threes against a Royal Flush. YOU are the reason that they get away with this sh**. They know that they can prey on your insecurities. They know they can prey on your lack of knowledge. They know that YOU trust THEM to keep them informed and to tell them the truth and they know by playing up to your baser instincts they can feed you the sh** taco Jon Stewart was on about. People here do not in the main like faux news, but one man on that channel summed up the arguement in under 60 seconds:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG2VF4a0LWs
Shepard Smith, l salute you because you get it. Hopefully some of the f**kwits who watch your channel end up getting it too.
While I appreciate the passion in which you respond and state your case. you make several assumptions that I am not willing to make.
1. You assume that this kind of behavior has not gone on in the past, long before the second Bush admin. I do not. For years, we have either done the dirty work, or simply sent the prisoner to another country that would.
2. If you are in fact correct, and the rest of thw world is so focused on the behavior of the US, then why has that not been enough to protect our tropps from being totured in past wars and conflicts?
3. To compare what the US has done to known terrorists to what was done by the Nazis or the Japanese is a grose distortion of both history and reality.
4. to claim that all the techniques....sleep deprivation, fear, pressure points, waterboarding etc are all toture is not reality.
While I understand why you object, I think your notion that the US is engaging in practices that we have never done before is simply naive.
And l think it's time people like you realised that the real world is not an episode of 24 and 1984 was not a bloody training manual.
Every major expert in interregation has stated how torture does not get you the results you want. The memos published show that no real concrete evidence ws gained from the torture, in fact the CIA ended up running around the globe following false leads. But thats not something you armchair sadists care about is it? As long as the rightwing echo chamber keeps spouting about how "safe" you are by using things on those brown people they have you scared about, things you would be decrying (and did decry) were it done to americans thats okay.
Why don't you do some research on Alexander Solzenicyn and see what he had to say about sleep deprivation, pressure points, etc. And thank you for proving my point.
"To compare what the US has done to known terrorists to what was done by the Nazis or the Japanese is a grose distortion of both history and reality."
No. To use the same tecniques at the Nazis and the Japanese is a gross distortion of what your country is supposed to stand for. You don't do it to anyone. Period. That is what makes you BETTER THAN THEM. But as l posted before, just like the dead in Iraq it's just a group of brown people right? Not the WASP citizens of the US of A.
Thanks you said it better!
This subject has annoyed me more than Iraq did. There was no justification for the invasion but the simple fact to hang onto was that we were better than Saddam. This action by the US and The UK dimishes us all. The fact that these cowardly armchair sadists don't get that has gone from depressing to annoying to incredulous.
I share your view!!!
I read your post and they scare me! Your 1st point is what, a justification for torture? Have you ever thought that us doing it as you described is why their doing it to us? It kind of defeats the argument don't you think "that we have done nothing wrong, and they hate us for our "freedoms."
I'am puzzeled what your second point is? Are you denying that we are the leader of the so-called western world and stand for certain principals? Infact the answer to your question as to why it has not protected our troops in the past can be found in your first point or non-point! You said"...For years, we have either done the dirty work, or simply sent the prisoner to another country that would. "
Point 3 that we cannot compare the tortures does not pass the smell test and is even refuted by you in point 1. What your saying is that we torture humanely. That we are pure and therefore everything we do is pure? That makes no historical sense and makes no logical sense.
Point 4 is just your opinion and not based in international or US Law: http://www.hrweb.org/legal/cat.html and http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00002340----000-.html, and the report by the International Committee of the Red Cross: http://www.nybooks.com/icrc-report.pdf
While you are entitled to your opinions don't expect to be taken seriously if their not based in reality.
Lets start bottom to top then. My fourth point is in fact reality. The police use fear and sleep deprivation all the time to gain confession in this country.
As far as the other points go, I am simply pointing out that we have engaged in this kind of behavior for decades. It matters not to me if we have done it our selves, or sent the prisoner somewhere else to have it done. I am simply fustrated with the naive view that this is something we just started doing under the bush admin. It is not.
If the choice comes down to being able to say that we have never done these things or saving american lives, I will pick saving lives every time.
Your saying that the police torture because thats what I'am talking about ,and if the police tortured they broke the law! Please enlighten me on when and where so that those cases can be reviewed! as far as saving lives do you have any examples, you don't because there aren't any!
I provided you with links to international and national law that were violated , try reading them. There was also a link to the report from the international Committee of the Red Cross on 14 captives that WERE TORTURED, read what happened to them! Show me where our torturing has saved instead of costing lives! That's just your sick fantasy!
The first issues is: Does torture work? - Answer: 'No other than to extract confessions, which may be false'. Some will chose never accept this. We can only speculate as to their reasons.
For those that believe it does work and that it is justified because it can hypothetically 'save American lives' the next question is. What else do you do to save American lives? You are clearly prepared to shred the constitution. Removing the 2nd Amendment will reduce deaths from firearms. We should prohibit rock climbing, sky diving, teen-age driving, motorcycles, swimming, junk food and cigarettes. That'll save way more lives than torturing random foreigners. Somehow we cannot touch these things but torture is just fine. What an intellectually vacuous and morally bankrupt attempt to justify pointless sadism!
I fear that the Democrats have bottled themselves up on this issue. The way it's playing out, they will burn up what political capital they have left chasing these phantoms.
Meanwhile, Bush/Cheney's biggest crime, the invasion of Iraq and subsequent looting of the treasury by their crony contractors, will go uninvestigated and unpunished.
Dream on. That's Andrea Mitchell's hope, no doubt, but there is no evidence that the people are supporting Obama any less.
I hope you're right. However, I don't underestimate the power of the Troglodyte Propaganda machine. I watched them systematically cripple the Clinton administration. Yes, he handed his own head to them with the Lewinsky affair, but even without that, I think the results would have been similar.
They are trying the same tactics on Obama... i just hope the American electorate is smarter this time.
oops.... that should read if you say we tortured someone to find out where he was hding, then you would be wrong.