Good Iraq News
 

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNe...rpc=22&sp=true

[Reuters reporting violence down 70% since June]

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I am here to report to y'all today an important development in the War on Terror.

We now have got squadrons of highly trained birds -- like lil' Hootie here -- ready to go to Iraq and find those weapons of mass destruction.

S_A_M

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• In 1942 behavioral scientist BF Skinner came up with the idea of using rained pigeons to guide weapons. The system worked by training pigeons to earn a food reward by pecking at the image of a ship. Three of them were then placed in the nose of a missle. Once launched, the pigeons would see the ship in their window and peck at it, triggering a corrective mechanism linked to the missle's guidance system.
  
  The closer the ship got, the bigger it appeared in the screen, and the more the pigeons pecked, so that just before they hit the target and were obliterated, [the pigeons] were being showered with grain.
  
  The systems worked well in simulations but the navy eventually balked at putting it into practice.

-- John Lloyd and John Mitchinson, The Book of General Ignorance: Everything You Think You Know is Wrong, p. 69

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Not from the pigeon's perspective, so to speak.

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Oh, I dunno. Being showered with grain might trigger feelings of joy in pigeons akin to Hank's finding a non-chain restaurant.

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John Paul II reveals his membership in the Fantastic IV.

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President Bush introduces his proposal for a "third way" between hawks and doves.

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Ascension of the Golden Flame?

Happy Islamofascism Awareness Week, everyone!

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.c...amofascism.jpg

At the risk of diverting attention from Islamofascism, this is pretty remarkable.

Reading the redacted section, I'm not quite sure why that's classified. Embarrassing, yes. Not quite showing us at our best, definitely. Something to be classified? Why?

Is it the admission that we don't actually know anyone in Egypt to round up and beat the shit out of the families of people we want to tell us false information?

Via Yglasias, here's the new Terrorist Buster Logo found on the CIA Website:

https://www.cia.gov/news-information...in_preview.jpg

I wonder if the remake will be a Harold Ramis vehicle.

Gattigap

Agreed. To put it another way, why did the district court agree to seal that stuff?

a way to get someone to talk can't be classified? I thought you wanted us to be able to use psychological influence instead of tortue, but we need to let the world know?

this was a guy found near ground zero with specialized aviation equipment, it turns out just a horrible coincidence for him, but still, even you would have been suspious, right?

Of course I would be suspicious, and I don't think that they did anything wrong in hauling him in and checking out his story. I even give a lot of leniency for the "holy shit the world just went to hell" feeling that permeated the country for the next six months or so.

If I were on the jury when this case goes back down for trial (based on the opinion, including the redacted bits), I'd probably not find anything wrong with the hotel for turning him in, but I would have problems with the way that the FBI gathers information. Mostly because it's a perfect example of why the method doesn't really work for getting any useful information AND it put a totally innocent man through utter hell.

And I still fail to see why it's classified.

it's classified because perhaps the threat is bullshit. we will tell Egyptian security about you is a bit different from ringing them up. what is an FBI technique was to say "talk or we'll get them involved" BUT they never actually told the Egyptian security or whoever? it will no longer be any sort of effective technique now that it is public, but it might have been effective at one time.

That would actualy be almost what Ty had earlier lobbied for- we don't torture AND we don't hand over to foreign governement for torture.

What utter hell? given the situation he was found in, there was no way he wasn't spending some time in custody, I mean until the pilot showed up, the guy wasn't going to walk anyway.

Effective at what? Getting people to confess to anything and everything so that their family might be spared? If anything, this case shows that this interrogation method is not effective. It's no wonder our intelligence sucks if this is the way we gather information.

And you don't think it'd be utter hell to live in a situation where you think your family is headed to the electrical probes and rape rooms if you don't do or say exactly what your captors want?

I've got no beef with his being in custody under those circumstances. And I have no problem with them checking him out. I wouldn't have even had a problem with them calling Egypt and checking his background out. He was a suspect with some pretty damning evidence against him that needed explanation. But coercion isn't admissable because it's unreliable, not because it's inhumane. And this is a pretty good example of why.

So what do you think should happen here? He's SOL, and the court should make sure no one knows about the situation?

eta: Also, you seem to have missed that by using this technique, they got bad information from him. Because he was willing to say what they wanted to hear.

he is sol, or should be. do you think he should be able to collect from the government?

I know we aren't supposed to say you guys live in lala land when it comes to security, but help me here: a guy was found near ground zero with some pretty suspicious stuff. you say we can't torture, I believe you think we shouldn't hand him over to say Egypt, so what do we do? take his word that he did nothing wrong and move on, let him go?

ummmm, he was mistaken identity- he had no good information.

No. None of us have said anything of the sort. I've gone out of my way to say that yeah, picking him up under those circumstances wasn't a bad idea. But there are other, more time consuming yet more reliable methods of confirming his story. Talk to the guy. Talk to the people who knew the guy or had been around him in the days/weeks/months prior. Find out where he'd been, who he'd hung out with, how he was financed. Get more information on the equipment, what it was, where it came from, who gave it to him.

I know that you guys don't believe in police work, but damnit this thing could have easily been cleared up in a week had they bothered to do actual work. And they could have done it without terrorizing anyone else.

We capture a key conspiritor days after 9/11 and didn't bother to follow up his story for 34 days after he "confessed"?

This is hard to believe, but a lot of people, even people whose first names are Abdullah, have no good information. And from time to time, we pick them up. "Ooops" often isn't good enough if we fuck them over too much.

Yes, if a jury finds that his rights were violated per Bivens.

No, he wasn't. He was staying at a hotel near WTC on 9/11. He and the other guests evacuated. The hotel was closed. A few weeks later, the hotel decided to give their guests back their stuff. One of the hotel workers found a two way radio, and said that it was found with this guy's passport and a Koran in the in-room safe. When the hotel told this to the FBI, they arranged to question the guy when he arrived (on the day of his exams) to pick up his stuff. They arrested him as a material witness. Then they did the redacted stuff.

A short time later, a pilot came by the hotel looking for his radio. The hotel told the FBI. It turns out, via serial numbers IIRC, the radio that the FBI seized actually belonged to the pilot. Then the hotel worker was no longer sure that it was found in the Egyptian dude's in-room safe, and, oh, by the way, there were lots of people doing repair work in the hotel before the guest property was collected.

That is not quite the same as "found near ground zero with some pretty suspicious stuff." Given the circumstances, like RT. I have no problem with the FBI questioning the guy, or holding him as a material witness. I do have a bit of a problem with the threats of family torture, and I have a real problem with the government claiming that revealing that the FBI agent made such threats endangers national security.

No. Arrest him -- if it turns out that the hotel was mistaken about where the radio was found, that's not the FBI's fault.

And it wasn't mistaken identity. They knew who he was. It was a false confession -- they got him to admit that the radio was his, and that he used it to listen to in-flight conversations (though I don't think that he confessed to being involved in the 9/11 attacks). That still would have been enough for a jury to convict him of participation in them, I'm sure.

Yes, I think he should be able to collect from the government. If torturing innocent people is that important to public safety, then let the public bear the costs.

Hold him but don't torture him. Question him in the way that law enforcement otherwise does.

He told them the thing was his when it wasn't. He lied, because he wanted them to think he was cooperating. So they mistreated him and got lousy information out of it. A lose-lose, except for those who groove on the idea of torturing people.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Hold him but don't torture him. Question him in the way that law enforcement otherwise does.[/QUOTE} they told other people would torture other people. no one tortured him.


you guys had been in charge for 8 years. the world had gotten fucked. after 9/11 there was an unworkable number of suspects and we had to get through them quickly.

you have no tie to reality, but that isn't surprising. what gets me is on FB the one person who argues with you has arrived at the exact same conclusion- you copy arguments form somewhere and dig your heels in, and the guys you don't like are always wrong and the guys you do like are always right-

this is bizarre. A guy was found with that equipment where he was found (Notbob, I never post w/o having read the underlying stuff he was tied to the equipment, I realize incorrectly). We had too many people to examine to "do good police work". Clinton's negligence is too blame, if you want to blame anyone for people who were "mistreated." But I know you can't admit that- "Clinton had doneeverything he could!"

1) this started with the threat being not classified to you guys, now it was the horrible mistreatment, which I assume can be classsfied. did I win the first argument?

2) i live in the area with the greatest concentration of middle eastern people in this country, i believe anywhere in the world outside the mid-east. I find the implication that I am prejudice against everyone named with an middle-eastern name offensive. I have gone out of my way not to call names at people here. I'm not asking people not to do it to me, just pointing out when it happens.

Apparently you are confusing your own "24"-related fantasies with what actually happened. Here's the key:

• According to Higazi, the investigators coerced him into confessing to a role in 9/11. Higazi first adamantly denied any involvement with 9/11 and could not believe what was happening to him. Then, he says, the investigator said his family would go through hell in Egypt, where they torture people like Saddam Hussein. Higazy then realized he had a choice: he could continue denying the radio was his and his family suffers ungodly torture in Egypt or he confesses and his family is spared. ...
  
  So Higazy "confesses" and he's processed by the criminal justice system. His future is quite bleak. Meanwhile, an airline pilot later shows up at the hotel and asks for his radio back. This is like something out of the movies. The radio belonged to the pilot, not Higazy, and Higazy was free to go, the victim of horrible timing. Higazi was innocent!

Threatened in this way, Higazy "confessed" to something he hadn't done.

What's bizarre is that you really aren't interested in whether the FBI got got information by mistreating him. It didn't. They did bad police work instead of good police work, and as a result they got bad information. Americans were less well protected as a result. This completely escapes you, though, because what you care about is whether the FBI was acting tough.

1 you're quoting blogs as facts again.
2 yes, it turns out it wasn't his communication equipment. you do realize that when the blogger you quote uses the term "radio" he's trying to bend your emotions to make you believe there was no reason for the FBI to worry, right? Oh, I forgot, you aren't capable of questioning an anti-US blog.

How was he mistreated? If he hadn't confessed do you see him being released BEFORE the pilot shows up? do you feel he should have been w/o a confession and before the pilot shows?

I'm having second thoughts. looks to me like you got is sussed out. Maybe you can train the FBI in questioning. Pay cut for you maybe, but duty calls!

Remember to support all the advice in your advice pamplet with appropriate blog citations.

Read the circuit court's decision, assclown. "For the purposes of the summary judgment motion, Templeton did not contest that Higazy's statements were coerced."

The better ploy would have to feign the kind of sophisticated ignorance that Spanky likes to deploy from time to time and pretend that we just can't know anything about what really happened without a full trial. Next time you can remember to do that.

I never said the FBI shouldn't worry. You seem awfully hung up on the FBI's state of mind, ex ante, as if that's all that matters.

You didn't read any of it, did you. Figures.

No, and I'm fine with that.

I'm sorry, this is from a circuit court decision: "

• So Higazy "confesses" and he's processed by the criminal justice system. His future is quite bleak. Meanwhile, an airline pilot later shows up at the hotel and asks for his radio back. This is like something out of the movies. The radio belonged to the pilot, not Higazy, and Higazy was free to go, the victim of horrible timing. Higazi was innocent!"

"

or are you completely full of shit? that's rhetorical.

poll: how many people that actually think for themselves believe this?


quick question: have you ever said to your kid "if you don't pick up your toys in the next 5 minutes then I will throw them away?"

Did you intend to throw them away really? once some other kid at school told your kid her parents didn't throw the toys away it didn't work so well, correct?

Can you see how the interrogation technique could be deemed classified?

again rhetorical.

Okay. i counting wins over ty rt and nb on this:

HC

398-21

No. Because if he doesn't, I either have to follow through or back down, either of which would make me look foolish.

You'd better count 'em any way you can.

really, i have to remind myself, there is no reason to post here. on FB ppnyc calls me a racist, and I can deal with it, but I'm called a racist here by people i respect, i believe merely because I question their statements. I started off a PB sock, but i'm afraid the pb has become a more normal outpost of DU.

1. Nobody said that the Gov was wrong for holding the guy until they determined he wasn't a threat. On the other hand, that doesn't excuse threatening to turn his family over to the jackals. Yeah, the guy should be able to collect. And the interrogator ought to be fired.

2. Your point about it being a case of mistaken identity doesn't really answer the fact that the threat of harm to his family produced false intelligence. The mistaken identity guarantees the intelligence was going to be false, but the latter would not necessarily prove true.

3. I suppose at this point it's rather futile to keep pointing this out, but, if you really believe in the values we are supposedly fighting to keep, then you can't really argue in good faith that the times require abandoning those freedoms. The argument is disingenuous. After all, who's going to play God and determine when we have to uphold freedom and when we can sacrifice it? You? You, Lt. Weinberg?!

I'm sorry. where is the point that we turned over the family to Egyptian intelligence instead of just saying we would mentioned?

Clinton? Have you been drinking Penske's boxed wine again?

no mas. you guys are right. turn off the lights when you're done here. bye.

If all we are differing over is whether or not false threats used as coercion is actionable or not, I call a draw. I personally think it should be, but I can see where reasonable minds could differ over whether the act is tortious or merely reprehensible.

And by the way, when I tell Monster that if he doesn't put a toy away/stop annoying me or his sister with it/stopp swinging it around the dining room, etc., I will throw it out, I mean it. And I've done it.

I don't believe RT was calling you a racist.

wonk, I love you. you know that. but I've answered this before. summary: if we can't use psychological or physical urging and we can't hand off to rougher countries what can we do? before Ty said there were lots of psychological things that made more sense, i guess I just thought this treat might have been one of them. Maybe Ty is keeping the really good psychological tricks secrets? I understand if that is the case, and I agreed it should be kept secret.

no. I'm just thin skinned. What if I had said the equivalent of this to you? "This is hard to believe, but a lot of people, even people whose first names are Abdullah, have no good information."