Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for January 11, 2015

The money taxpayers would’ve saved if torture had been outsourced to Berzerkistan.

And sadly, this isn’t a joke…

I have no way of knowing what the CIA did or didn’t do in the way of torture, but I do know I’ve read about how much they paid to have some alleged shrinks design and run a torture program…

It’s all here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Elmer_Mitchell

re: “I could’ve done the job for half that!”And gladly would have.

Sadly, earlier commenters on the CIA’a lack, or wealth, of experience are correct. However, CURRENT CIA employees had no actual experience physically torturing people themselves, as opposed to outsourcing the way LWP suggested. So, per an unknown somebody’s suggestion in a meeting, they called these two guys who had worked to develop a program to train US combat personnel to resist torture. The two formed an outside company staffed by ex-military, at the government’s request to preserve plausible deniability, to perform the dirty work, and billed us all up the wazoo for it. They were also retained to assess the merits and success of their own program. Nice work if you can get it.

In modern thinking torture is the preferred method of the lazy, the stupid and the pseudo tough. The FBI were the professionals who knew how to extract information but were withdrawn by their director due to his fear of CIA war crimes. So the agent who knew KSM the best never saw him as the CIA torturers water boarded him 183 times in the month of his capture. Google “Ali Soulfan NYT” for the truth.

Regardless of who got paid how much for what aspects of the program of “enhanced interrogation” techniques. It is one more shame that will live forever in the American psyche. Watching the sick, slickly produced commercial drama, that has been Iraq, unfold, should have made any non-psychopathic Americans recoil in horror and disgust. Luckily, we have a man with light brown skin, at whom we can direct our collective self loathing!

Does this mean that we need to start beheading journalists and shooting up cartoonists because the other guys are doing it? Torture makes people say what their torturers want to hear. Misinformation can be extracted without torture, true: but in both cases it’s misinformation. Professional interrogators who have actual talents, and pride, disdain torture to a man, for obvious reasons. As for the $81 million, it would be nice to know who bribed whom for that. I’m still wondering who bribed whom for Blackwater!

Turns out half the “intelligence” we got in WWII was our own disinformation regurgitated by the Nazis.

the benefits of expertsused properly

“…get used to it.”No. Not ever. I will not act evilly, condone evil, nor become evil for any reason, and especially because I am afraid. I am sorry you will. Of all the horrors and non-sense I have seen you write over the years, what you have written here is, without a doubt, the worst and most execrable. I am ashamed for you, for myself as an American, and fearful of what this country, and the world, will become if it follows the path you endorse. Of all things, recognize that the actions you endorse are exactly the same as those of the people who you consider to be you enemies. The world you would call into being with your ideas would be nothing but terrorists battling terrorists, something it nearly is now.

In other words, you want to survive at the cost of your ideals, your honor, and your very soul. I will not do that.

Torturers may want to hear the truth, but only the truth they dictate and the truth that suits theri goals. It hardly ever will be THE truth.Torture was part of the judicial system in my native country partly into the 19th century, but by a twisted sense of justice only to be applied AFTER the accused had acknowledged guilt. The purpose of the torture to give an offender the chance to exonerate his crimes before appearing before St. Peter.

My understanding is that the torture was primarily used to establish the connection between the 9/11 attacks and Saddam (via ‘confessions’).

So at least we know that the end they were after, as in ‘the means to an end’, was a beneficial one — without that torture, it would have made it much harder to justify the invasion of Iraq. And we all know how great that turned out.

The quotes around “Dr” are in the wrong place. These men earned PhDs, which come with the title “doctor” as academic degrees; that title can never be revoked, except by the issuing institution.

No, the quotes belong around the word “Psychologist.” They are no longer licensed, and therefore, no longer have the right to that title.

Many psychologists are deeply ashamed of these men, and profoundly embarrassed for our profession.

Glad you’re still doing the Sunday strips, Garry! We need you!

And he has way more experience in the field than those two combined.

Sadly, despite his campaign promises, Obama let it continue. He pledged that “on day one” he’d close Gitmo….we are embarrassingly still holding prisoners there 8 years down the road.

I like the show. It’s fantasy. I think that they have pretty much proved that torture doesn’t ever lead to good intel. The people that practice it need to receive counseling because no normal human could do that to another.

You are why the world is swirling down the bowl, sir. How sad.

Perfect. Our religious zealots are more dangerous to our federal republic then the religious zealots who attacked Paris last week.

“If your enemy is immoral and you are immoral, what was that difference again?”?The ends don’t justify the means claim??Is it better to let everyone on earth die to avoid an immoral act against one guilty person?What about just a million people?100,000 people?1 child??How much harm should we cause by our inaction for the belief that doing so would “make us as bad as they are”??Understand that this is a separate question of whether or not we COULD do so effectively.IF we could effectively save that child or that larger number of people, how could we NOT ??It would be hard to live with either way.(This is for the individual, governments have no morals or souls.)

Not a problem…when it comes to the military, money is no object.

@lindz.coop “Not a problem…when it comes to the military, money is no object.”.Dislike of the military is common, but this is not a military project.( Everybody blames the military for the actions of the politicians, the CIA, NSA, FDA, HUD.)

Instead of a neighborhood, maybe he would do well to take over the tri-state area?

Well, I sure hope they paid plenty of income tax for that $81 million! Then we might have gotten a third of it back to spend on drones and half-billion dollar aircraft to bomb the innocents along with the insurgents.