Turning murderers into victims

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (-/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

Debra Burlingame's brother was the captain of the plane hijacked on 9-11 which crashed into the Pentagon. She wrote three years ago in the New York Daily News about the so-called torture of the murderers who killed her brother and so many others.

Tortured? What does that actually mean?

In the Washington bubble, the debate on the so-called torture report has come and gone with disturbingly familiar speed. It was the big story for one week, and then seems forgotten.
Not for those who live daily, hourly, moment-by-moment with the emotional scars of having lost loved ones on 9/11.

The Senate Intelligence Committee members who prepared this report — which essentially labels as criminals those who scrambled to defend us in the immediate wake of the worst terrorist attacks on American soil in our history — have done the unimaginable. They have turned our loved ones' murderers into victims.

...Once the legal memos were published, we learned that enhanced interrogation methods were drawn from the SERE program; Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. Our brother called it "POW school." As a Navy fighter pilot, he was one of the tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel put through SERE since the end of the Vietnam War.

The purpose was to teach pilots, special-force operators and intelligence personnel — those most likely to be captured behind enemy lines — how to mentally prepare for the ordeal. As Chic explained it, the military believed that the command to provide only "name, rank and serial number" was insufficient.

The aim was to expose SERE participants to terrifying conditions to increase their ability to cope in captivity, to give them the means to survive.

Chic was among the tens of thousands of pilots who had attended SERE and had been waterboarded. He didn't call it that. He called it "the water treatment," and would only say that it was "very effective." SERE was a brutal experience, approved by Congress, which members of our own military submitted to in preparation to serve their country. But applied to Al Qaeda terrorists, Sen. Feinstein now says it amounts to "torture."

Read more here.

"Torture works. The generals know it. We’ll find a way to do it if necessary to keep the country safe. You don’t want to know the details."

Adams reports that President Trump

says with surprising candor that he believes torture works but will follow the recommendation of his generals who say it doesn’t.

Interpretation: Torture works. The generals know it. We’ll find a way to do it if necessary to keep the country safe. You don’t want to know the details.

We like to believe that experts are more credible than non-experts. And President Trump is no expert on torture. But keep in mind that President Trump is a Master Persuader who can detect bullshit faster than normal people.

You might even call him an expert at detecting bullshit.

When President Trump presents something as fact, the odds are high that it is hyperbole or just persuasion. You don’t want to assume his facts are literally true, although they are usually emotionally or directionally true.

But if President Trump – The Master Persuader – tells you someone else’s facts are bullshit, you can usually take that to the bank. The man knows bullshit when he sees it. And with his skillset he can also smell it coming from miles away.

Read more here.

"Buy your own ticket back to America"

Fox Business brings us some information about Pastor Saeed Abedini, who was held prisoner by Iran for several years, then released when Obama gave Iran another $400,000.

Iranian president Hassan Rouhani spoke before the United Nations General Assembly Thursday despite protests from Iranian-Americans who feel Iran’s human rights situation has worsened after sanctions were modified earlier this year.

Pastor Saeed Abedini, one of four American hostages released from Iran in January, shared his disbelief of Rouhani’s annual speech during an interview with FOX Business Network’s Trish Regan.

“I was just telling people that imagine leader of ISIS come to the United States after 30 years of all the executions that they did and leaders of the world shaking his hand. It’s unbelievable,” Abedini said.

Abedini said he and other hostages were left to fend for themselves after flying from Iran to Germany when they were released after the Obama Administration’s $400 million payment to Iran.

After spending a few days in a hospital in Germany, Adedini was surprised to hear that he needed to buy his own plane ticket home.

“We were actually all shocked because I came out; I just had prison clothes and [they] just told us you need to buy your own ticket.”

Abedini said he was physically and psychologically tortured in the Iranian prison to the point where his stomach was bleeding for months from all the beatings.

“The whole last three to five years that I was there, it was just torturing, it was so hard,” Abedini said.