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As far as "Russian" (The Russian state itself is actually pretty big in "outsourcing" such things too) "torture" practice is concerned: 1: Even they know that it usually does not work very well to gain actually truthfull information. 2: Some actors torture, knowing full well that the resulting intelligence is bullshit, but use the bullshit intelligence (which they happily shape) to gank someone they wanted to gank anyway. This can be quite profitable to those "actors", but is not very profitable for the interests of Russia. This is what happened with various great Soviet purges. Certain actors within the high state sees themself more as a potential target of such purges, and thus isnt very keen on that. Efforts at restraining such actors exist(ed), but have met with mixed success. 3: Other actors see torture as a sometimes usefull deterence tool. The state actually disagrees, since it this "deterence" also deters potential and real adversaries from reaching an accomodation with Russian interests. In pure powerpolitics, Torturing actually isnt a sign of strength at all, strength is the ability to gently caress with powerfull people, the torturer is just loving with someone who is by far weaker. Putting a huge emphasis on "look, I can really mess with people that are shackled" doesnt exactly project strength. In the case of the USA, it is "look, I can gently caress with people that are shackled and whom I didnt even capture myself! Be very scared of me!". To a Pashtun, that makes the US look like a bunch of weak idiots, or make them look like Chtullu, "Can rain death from the sky, but acts so weak otherwise, they are completely alien!". 4: Serious torture of important people usually means that you either have to kill them or their torturers later. Since option B isnt very available for the USA (to the best of my knowledge) that leaves option A. Since an important prisoner would generally speaking know this, he will be strongly inclined to provide as much made up "intelligence" as possible. Option B is by the way why Russian authorities are so keen on outsourcing certain acts to outright criminals. Disclaimer: The Russian high state sees itself as "totally cunning machiavellian awesomesouce", and often tries to act like that (very varying degrees of success). Reality is often different, but this is what they "think", or sometimes even "say in private" about this topic.
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Dec 10, 2014 20:46
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mds2 posted:What exactly would they do? Murder a family member of a US Congressman? I dont see that happening. They would have to be hilariously dumb to try that. USA is not Stalinist USSR.
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Dec 10, 2014 21:00
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Badger of Basra posted:Accidentally posted this in the USpol thread. I dont really get this. You show that something is illegal by persecuting the perpetrator for it. End of story.
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Dec 10, 2014 21:45
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Ghost of Reagan Past posted:Being critical of rectal feedings means you hate America first. Got it. Yep. I am really hoping that the full report comes to light eventually. Frankly, what we are seeing is the tip of the tip of the iceberg.
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Dec 10, 2014 23:11
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Orange Devil posted:This isn't entirely true. There are cases of Germans refusing orders on ethical grounds and most of the time the reaction was to just get someone else to do it instead. There was iirc only one or 2 cases where getting shot for refusing that kind of order happened, and these are contentious. The situation may have been different for non Germans und German command.
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Dec 13, 2014 10:32
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Calling Obama one of the worst is an overstatement. You would also have to clarify if you mean "worst" morally or "worst" as being totally inefficient. President Polk was certainly pretty bad morally, but kind of "efficient". I would argue that there is no shortage of presidents that are worse morally, or worse efficiency wise, or both.
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Dec 13, 2014 19:36
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Mister Adequate posted:This is my favorite part of all. The idea that the President and SIC have to 'negotiate' with the CIA over anything, instead of just giving orders and having them followed. It's the most What was confusing for the Soviets is why the CIA didnt just take the whole nation over, as the Soviets regarded them as powerfull enough. Some people in Moscow actually did think that this happened post Kennedy, the important people in Moscow thought that America is basically the same no matter who is in charge anyway. They were also surprised that the Church commision didnt get shot, and that, after it did its job, didnt shoot anyone.
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Dec 19, 2014 21:12
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line I've yet seen about this whole catastrofuck, and it really drives home how out of control the CIA are.
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UberJew posted:As soon as the next administration came around the CIA was right back to business as usual with the Church Commission having accomplished exactly jack and poo poo so why would they have shot anybody? The Church comission did end up firing a lot of people, and it took the CIA to get back to business as usual. CIA dudes today still totally hate it. It also set a precedent that the one can try to rein in the CIA without risking once live. I mean, Chruschev "reined in" by the NKVD by shooting the gently caress out of Lavrentij Berija, and also have Zhukov (later Malinovsky) threaten to shoot everyone else while still extending Olive branches to other secret service people. IIRC there is a quote by him about the affair being higher risk than Stalingrad. That a bunch of people without massive military power (like well, Zhukov or Malinovsky) hosed around with the CIA accomplished something and survived was pretty uncomprehensible for a number of Soviet decision makers.
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Dec 19, 2014 22:12
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Kazak_Hstan posted:I mean, that is one of the basic tenets of classical realist theory in international relations - countries are rational actors w/r/t their national interests, and internal politics are just fluff. I don't really agree with that, and realism has developed into many more nuanced flavors today, but that theory isn't just a Soviet view of America. There were Soviets who didnt exactly think like that, and who prefered a more democratic USA over a military coup USA or over a CIA run USA (I think they were wrong. USSR would have had better cards against a CIA run Oligarchy, or against a US military dictatorship, then they had against a working democracy), because they believed it to be weaker. Chruschev was worried about Kennedy getting couped for showing weakness in Cuba, so he threw him a bone, Which resulted in Chruschev getting couped by more hard line Soviets. History is chock full of such ironies.
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Dec 19, 2014 22:15
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