Holy Crap, I Liked Fox News

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
101

[quote]tom63 wrote:
It is not torture if : 1. some clown will do it on a Japanese game show or Fear Factor for a prize. 2. If we do it to our own troops in training, ie, waterboarding. I know multiple service men that have had that done in training and they’re just fine.

  1. If college kids do it to themselves. All nighters for studying anyone?

You people remind me of the Spanish Inquisition on Monty Python. Maybe we should get out the comfy chair and tea and crumpets and poke them with the soft pillows? How about getting out the 'rack", ie, the dish rack and pretend.[/quote]

http://www.T-Nation.com/free_online_forum/music_movies_girls_life/editor_of_vanity_fair_asks_a_writer_if_he_wants_to_be_waterboarded_yes

102

[quote]Beowolf wrote:
My Opinion:

Water-boarding is not torture. But it is certainly cruel and unusual.

Therefore, we should not do it.

(Not saying it is ILLEGAL. I’m not a constitutional law scholar. I just think it goes against the spirit of the natural rights described in our Bill of Rights).[/quote]

No, they meant torture when they said cruel and unusual punishment. Taking away a kids favorite toy can be cruel.

103

[quote]Mikeyali wrote:

My personal feelings on torture are irrelevant, but I’m a self-indulgent bastard so ride with me. In the ticking-time bomb situation I’d torture to any level. It should always remain illegal, but I’d still be willing to do it. It’s up to society and a jury of my peers to judge me.

mike[/quote]

Exactly. There is a world of difference between saying “I would personally torture a confirmed terrorist in an absurd, Hollywood ticking time bomb scenario” and having torture made national policy and law. In the former, which basically never happens because that’s not how wars and intelligence work (only real world example that comes close is an Israeli hostage situation once), you do what is necessary and then are judged and/or pardoned. Very different from having an official program to torture.

104

[quote]IrishSteel wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:

You actually just admitted the morality of a death is not equivilant. (D1 is not D2 is not D3)

If your answer to your own original 3 questions is yes, then you agreed to killing the american soldier.

Yes the killing a soldier isn’t morally equivalent, that’s the point. You said the same thing I did. Why are you insisting death is death then saying soldiers are different?

for crying out loud - you really love these straw man arguments. I have not admitted any such thing. and NO, i did not agree to killing the soldier - I told you it was a tangential argument.

You are off in never never land again - trying to extrapolate an whole new argument out of nothing based on an analogy you introduced to prove a straw man argument you created in some weird attempt to move the discussion into the realm of when is killing not killing, when is murder not murder, when is self-defense not self-defense - sheesh - dude, seriously - stick on a point.

Question 1 - would you kill someone to prevent them from killing you (yes or no - and yes this is self-defense - congratulations on that wonderfully astute observation)

Question 2 - would you kill someone to prevent them from killing other people (yes or no - and yes this applies equally to soldiers, cops, and citizens - and no this is not the time for arguing the distinctions of combat, police action or national/community/family defense - resist the rabbits!)

[/quote]
Wait if it applies to soldiers and you answer yes, you are saying you’d kill one.

Why is this not the time for arguing distinctions of killing? That is the whole point of this discourse. We happen to be arguing the morality of death. When I show that assumptions in your progressive logic are situationally dependent, you contend it isn’t the time?

So in a discourse on the morality of killing, when is the time to argue the distinctions of the situation in which the killing takes place?

(as you have admitted step 2 is not always morally acceptable because you wouldn’t kill a soldier to prevent him from killing) You yourself answered maybe to question 2. Innocent by whose standard? The contention of law (what a republic is based on) requires a court conviction of guilt to determine that. There are no convictions in the case at hand.

I think you just got a vocab word a day calendar and decided to use that word without really understanding it. Every argument I’ve made does directly apply to the question at hand. Anything you can’t defend you label strawman.

Unless they agree with your beliefs (a soldier on your side), in which case that point for some unknown reason doesn’t apply to the argument.

[quote]

And YES,it is morally acceptable to keep someone awake for a few days to try to prevent the deaths of yourself and other innocent individuals.

That’s it - that’s the whole point - the whole enchilada.

That is what 99.99% of all of the “enhanced interrogation methods” amounted to - sleep deprivation and the occasional slap, finger poke and “Come on Over” marathon . . .

RESIST THE RABBIT![/quote]

Unfortunately I’m a man of principals. And that doesn’t satisfy them.

105

Funny how nobody seemed to care what we had to do to protect ourselves on 9-12-01

Just wait for the next round of domestic attacks to get underway and see how quickly people revise their high minded indignation, especially those close to where it happens.

I don’t understand why this is so complicated. We obviously have deemed those we are killing in a war as having forfeited their unalienable right to life itself by their positions and actions. We aren’t supposed to deprive them short of that in the prosecution of our objectives.

We deprive people of rights everyday. Warring enemies, by definition, view EACH OTHER as less deserving of rights than themselves or they wouldn’t be trying to kill each other and blow up each other’s shit. Here’s a clue. The side that does that more effectively wins, read survives.

Anybody willing to trade victory for some groovy concept of fair minded humanitarianism needs to hire a couple of NFL linebackers to pull his head out of his ass. Do you think these animals we’re fighting are unwilling to use any means necessary to achieve their ends? Do you not hear them laughing at our foolish debate while they throw acid in the face of their own women and murder their own daughters?

YEAH BUT, YEAH BUT, YEAH BUT, we don’t wanna be like them. For God’s sake, we don’t anything we do for the same reasons they do it. That is the difference. We do what we do for the purpose preventing the unthinkable alternatives. They do what they do in the name of some twisted barbaric religion. Don’t people understand? In their minds god has spoken. GOD!!! the debate is over. They will only be stopped by unflinching overwhelming force.

I repeat, anybody unwilling to do whatever is required for decisive victory should stay home.

106

Groovy concept of fair minded humanitarianism, Indivisible human rights endowed by our creator. toe-mae-toe, toe-ma-toe.

We are fighting from a moral hi-ground. That is a very very slippery place to fight.

I see compromise of what this country stands for as defeat. Anything to win is a loss in my book.

107

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:
IrishSteel wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:

Wait if it applies to soldiers and you answer yes, you are saying you’d kill one.

Why is this not the time for arguing distinctions of killing? That is the whole point of this discourse. We happen to be arguing the morality of death. When I show that assumptions in your progressive logic are situationally dependent, you contend it isn’t the time?

So in a discourse on the morality of killing, when is the time to argue the distinctions of the situation in which the killing takes place?

(as you have admitted step 2 is not always morally acceptable because you wouldn’t kill a soldier to prevent him from killing) You yourself answered maybe to question 2. Innocent by whose standard? The contention of law (what a republic is based on) requires a court conviction of guilt to determine that. There are no convictions in the case at hand.

I think you just got a vocab word a day calendar and decided to use that word without really understanding it. Every argument I’ve made does directly apply to the question at hand. Anything you can’t defend you label strawman.

Unless they agree with your beliefs (a soldier on your side), in which case that point for some unknown reason doesn’t apply to the argument.

Unfortunately I’m a man of principals. And that doesn’t satisfy them.[/quote]

holy crap - you could not resist the rabbit. I am so sorry for you.

alrighty, here we go again . . .

We can start a whole new thread if you like about the justifiable uses of deadly force. That is not the point of this thread or the strength of the main argument.

The questions assume rightly that there are cases in which it is morally acceptable to use deadly force in the prevention of the deaths of yourself or other and is predicated upon those approved scenarios.

Your argument is an tangential argument because you are focusing on side issues - case in point - the soldier is the one being sent to kill others to prevent those he is protecting from being killed and you are trying to move the argument into a citizen killing the soldier to prevent him from killing enemy soldiers. You can spend all day coming up with scenarios in which it would not be right to kill someone - fan-freaking-tastic for you! totally unrelated to the point I am making.

I have never contended that the first 2 questions were not situation dependent - in fact the opposite is true and implied by the fact that I gave qualifying conditions for each question. Any one with half a brain knows there are situations in which killing is not morally acceptable - congratulations to you for reaching this zenith of informational awareness.

The discussion is not about the morality of killing - it is based on the fact that since there are situations when it is morally acceptable to actually kill someone - and then asks the simple question of would it not be also morally acceptable to deprive someone of sleep in order to prevent the exact same outcome?

If question one can be answered affirmatively, and question two can be answered affirmatively, then on what logical grounds do you object to question three being answered affirmatively - that’s the whole logical progression that you have avoided for all of these posts. You will not deal with the third question and continually come up with tangential issues, straw-man arguments and other various devices to try to skirt this simple logical progression.

And your introduction now of the issue of when is it acceptable to kill, and who defines innocent are AGAIN tangential (you know this word right?) to the main crux of the argument. I will gladly allow that there are times when it is not right to kill- but that is not the point - see earlier comments in this post.

And again with the ad-homen, never-never land attacks - There is a difference between being related and being included - there are all sorts of related topics and rabbit trails we could follow (as you seem readily inclined to do) - but they avoid the main issue.

A straw-man argument is any argument constructed out of whatever side issue and added content you wish to insert that allows you to attack that newly created issue (the morality of killing) rather than the actual issue being discussed (morality of sleep deprivation to prevent deaths). It is your favorite method and one you pursue at the drop of a hat.

Once again to be perfectly clear - I am not arguing the morality of killing, gladly allow that there are times when killing is morally acceptable and times when it is not, will acquiesce even that there can be a whole different discussion of perspectives of innocence, will willing agree that true torture is reprehensible, will completely agree that we should follow all applicable international and national law, will buy the kid down the street a freaking ice cream cone, and hope to God that you finally shoot the stupid rabbit and stay on topic.

108

"OK Q1- Do you believe it is right to kill someone who is trying to kill you?

Q2 - Do you believe it is right to kill someone who is trying to kill 3,000 people?

and finally Q3 - if it is right to kill people under those circumstances, why is it wrong to keep someone awake for 48 hours to prevent them from killing someone else?"

Determining the “rightness” of killing in situations isn’t arguing about the morality of killing? Really? Maybe the word right means something different in your language.

If you admit the questions are situationally dependent, then you have to specify the specifics of the situation to answer them.

Trying to say that if you can answer yes than you can apply that to any situation is retarded.

You are using a situationally dependent argument to make a generalized statement.

109

McCain’s thoughts:

“Waterboarding is torture”

110

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
Groovy concept of fair minded humanitarianism, Indivisible human rights endowed by our creator. toe-mae-toe, toe-ma-toe.

We are fighting from a moral hi-ground. That is a very very slippery place to fight.

I see compromise of what this country stands for as defeat. Anything to win is a loss in my book.[/quote]

Even allowing for some flexibility in “what this country stands for”, whatever that means anymore, we have done plenty in violation of that in the quest for allowing it to continue. That is reality. While we certainly didn’t hold the institutionalized barbarism of the Axis powers in WWII, we committed all sorts of acts of savagery, especially where the Japanese were concerned, in an effort to gain intelligence and demoralize their efforts. I don’t just mean the atom bomb though that was the ultimate act of merciless force and even torture in the aftermath.

We deprived a few hundred thousand civilian men, women and children of life and liberty and put a serious damper on the survivors pursuit of happiness. If you oppose that as well then you’re at least consistent. The pacific islands were host to hand to hand face to face butchery on our part toward the Imperial Japanese that people must either not know about or not want to think about. They had no problem when actually faced with the realities of war outside of some academic debate on a forum with doing whatever the hell they needed to win and hopefully get outta there alive.

Look, I don’t wanna hurt anybody. I don’t like war. I don’t go to bed at night praying for the next opportunity to torture somebody. However, what in the name of all that’s rational is the point of spending untold billions of public funds, decades of R&D and maintaining well trained personnel who are willing to kill and to die for us to gain a dominating advantage in the international arena only to be unwilling to pour water on somebody’s face or put them in a box with a caterpillar to make those things effective?

111

[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
DoubleDuce wrote:
Groovy concept of fair minded humanitarianism, Indivisible human rights endowed by our creator. toe-mae-toe, toe-ma-toe.

We are fighting from a moral hi-ground. That is a very very slippery place to fight.

I see compromise of what this country stands for as defeat. Anything to win is a loss in my book.

Even allowing for some flexibility in “what this country stands for”, whatever that means anymore, we have done plenty in violation of that in the quest for allowing it to continue. That is reality. While we certainly didn’t hold the institutionalized barbarism of the Axis powers in WWII, we committed all sorts of acts of savagery, especially where the Japanese were concerned, in an effort to gain intelligence and demoralize their efforts. I don’t just mean the atom bomb though that was the ultimate act of merciless force and even torture in the aftermath.

We deprived a few hundred thousand civilian men, women and children of life and liberty and put a serious damper on the survivors pursuit of happiness. If you oppose that as well then you’re at least consistent. The pacific islands were host to hand to hand face to face butchery on our part toward the Imperial Japanese that people must either not know about or not want to think about. They had no problem when actually faced with the realities of war outside of some academic debate on a forum with doing whatever the hell they needed to win and hopefully get outta there alive.

Look, I don’t wanna hurt anybody. I don’t like war. I don’t go to bed at night praying for the next opportunity to torture somebody. However, what in the name of all that’s rational is the point of spending untold billions of public funds, decades of R&D and maintaining well trained personnel who are willing to kill and to die for us to gain a dominating advantage in the international arena only to be unwilling to r to make those things effective?

[/quote]

No, I don’t think we should have dropped the bombs, it did a great job to ignite the cold war in hindsight. But those are extraordinarily different situations.

And you know very well, “pour water on somebody’s face or put them in a box with a caterpillar” is like calling solitary confinement “time out”.

112

[quote]Mikeyali wrote:
Gambit_Lost wrote:
Personally, I can’t wait for the day when the doubleduces and gdollars37s of the world are running the republican party. Hell, that day I might even find myself pulling the “R” tab.

Ummm, wasn’t McCain strongly anti-torture?

mike [/quote]

Yes.

He is also old, and Palin didn’t seem to share his stance on the issue.

113

[quote]Beowolf wrote:
My Opinion:

Water-boarding is not torture. But it is certainly cruel and unusual.

Therefore, we should not do it.

(Not saying it is ILLEGAL. I’m not a constitutional law scholar. I just think it goes against the spirit of the natural rights described in our Bill of Rights).[/quote]

I am not arguing with what you are saying, but I am curious about everyone?s opinion on cruel and unusual punishment. My question is when is a punishment cruel and/or unusual? For example if a man kills another man by shooting him is it cruel to shoot him as punishment? How about something more extreme like a man burying another man alive or setting a woman on fire is it cruel to do the same to the murderer or is that true justice?

114

[quote]usmccds423 wrote:
Beowolf wrote:
My Opinion:

Water-boarding is not torture. But it is certainly cruel and unusual.

Therefore, we should not do it.

(Not saying it is ILLEGAL. I’m not a constitutional law scholar. I just think it goes against the spirit of the natural rights described in our Bill of Rights).

I am not arguing with what you are saying, but I am curious about everyone?s opinion on cruel and unusual punishment. My question is when is a punishment cruel and/or unusual? For example if a man kills another man by shooting him is it cruel to shoot him as punishment? How about something more extreme like a man burying another man alive or setting a woman on fire is it cruel to do the same to the murderer or is that true justice?[/quote]

On the flip side it says, cruel AND unusual. If you use a punishment frequently enough it doesn’t violate the rule no matter how cruel it is.

115

[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
"OK Q1- Do you believe it is right to kill someone who is trying to kill you?

Q2 - Do you believe it is right to kill someone who is trying to kill 3,000 people?

and finally Q3 - if it is right to kill people under those circumstances, why is it wrong to keep someone awake for 48 hours to prevent them from killing someone else?"

Determining the “rightness” of killing in situations isn’t arguing about the morality of killing? Really? Maybe the word right means something different in your language.

If you admit the questions are situationally dependent, then you have to specify the specifics of the situation to answer them.

Trying to say that if you can answer yes than you can apply that to any situation is retarded.

You are using a situationally dependent argument to make a generalized statement.[/quote]

The questions assume that IF you can approve of a scenario in which you would kill to prevent killing - why would you not agree with not killing and only depriving someone of sleep in the same scenario for the same outcome - is it that hard for you to understand a simple logical progression without getting distracted by the nuances we are negating by the original questions?

I did not say that determining the rightness is not arguing about morality - i said we are not arguing about the morality. AGAIN - If you can find a specific scenario where you would kill to prevent deaths and that is morally acceptable, why wouldn’t you agree to only deprive someone of sleep to accomplish the same thing in the same scenario and find that also morally acceptable.

I am not using denying the conditional nature of the first 2 questions - i am asking you if you can find it morally acceptable to kill someone to prevent deaths in a specific scenario - why wouldn’t find it morally acceptable to only deprive someone of sleep to accomplish the same goal in the same scenario?

I am not trying to change scenarios - I am trying to get you to apply the same reasoning and moral judgment in the same scenario by using different methods of accomplishing the same goal of preventing deaths - very plain and very simple.

I using a set of conditional questions to prove a conditional reality.

Was that easy enough for you or can you find another rabbit trail in that as well . . .never mind - i should know better by now. Bring on the rabbits.

116

[quote]Gambit_Lost wrote:
McCain’s thoughts:

“Waterboarding is torture” [/quote]

Yes, water torture as he had to endure is indeed torture, but please understand the specific differences in technique.

Real water torture involves submerging the person’s head under water while they are completely restrained and unable to prevent you from drowning them. Also keep in mind that the Vietnamese were perfectly willing to kill him on a whim and that they used additional tortures such as beatings, breaking bones, electrical shock, etc.

The technique as used at Gitmo does not involve submerging the person’s head, and there is no threat of actually being drowned - the person is given the sensation of drowning for a maximum of 20 seconds (the average person can easily hold their breath for twice that length of time) during which time he is under no real danger of actually dying - in addition, the person has to cleared by a medical doctor to ensure that there are no underlying medical conditions (such as a weak heart, asthma, etc) that would compromise his health and actually make the procedure physically dangerous for him.

UNDERSTAND THE DIFFERENCE - real torture involves real harm. These techniques have no real harm involved and all possible care is taken to ensure that no harm comes to the the individual.

What McCain experienced was real torture with the real threat and actual AFFECT of physical harm!

117

Those of you spouting the “extreme interrogations” line and resorting to disgusting, Hannity-esque trivializations of what we’ve done to people should really watch the documentary “Taxi to the Dark Side.” We aren’t talking about making guys pull all-nighters while listening to bad pop music. We are talking about breaking people’s minds and psyches. That is torture even if it never leaves a mark.

118

[quote]borrek wrote:
Jeff R wrote:

Yawn. Maybe, you should take a peek at the LA terrorist attack that was averted primarily due to these techniques.

Oh, 100% guaranteed, if you lived in LA and it was coming, you’d be all for doing whatever it takes.

That’s rich. Perhaps you should take your own advice and take a peek at the LA plot. Here, I’ve done your work for you…

From a whitehouse press briefing on Feb 9th, 2006 Press Briefing on the West Coast Terrorist Plot by Frances Fragos Townsend, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism

Khalid Shaykh Muhammad was the individual who led this effort. He initiated the planning for the West Coast plot after September 11th, in October of 2001. KSM, working with Hambali in Asia, recruited the members of the cell. There was a total of four members of the cell. When they – KSM, himself, trained the leader of the cell in late 2001 or early 2002 in the shoe bomb technique. You all will recall that there was the arrest of the shoe bomber, Richard Reid, in December of 2001, and he was instructing the cell leader on the use of the same technique.

*Note: Khalid Shaykh Muhammad was one of the three detainees waterboarded.

The cell leader was arrested in February of 2002, and as we begin – at that point, the other members of the cell believed that the West Coast plot has been canceled, was not going forward. You’ll recall that KSM was then arrested in April of 2003 – or was it March – I’m sorry, March of 2003.

So, the plot was busted in Feb 2002, yet KSM wasn’t arrested (and subsequently waterboarded) until March 2003. Your statement that the LA plot was averted primarily due to these techniques is 100% impossible.

That’s nice. Again, you are going to see that it lead to actionable intelligence that averted at least one large attack. You can’t be for waterboarding to avoid the deaths of your family without applying the same criteria to other American families.

Think about that within your context of “justice.”

Wrong. Waterboarding did not lead to actionable intelligence.

Justice doesn’t have context, it has text. Text that says torture is illegal.

If torture/saying “NI” 10000000 times, or showing nude pictures of hillary clinton procures the intelligence needed to save American lives, that’s what you do.

You do everything you can THINK OF to get that intelligence.

Period.

We don’t do everything, we don’t torture. Furthermore, you know we’re talking about waterboarding. Don’t try to blunt that by lumping it in with benign crap.

Most of the people who are objecting to this are either the usual Anti-American cabal, or people who cannot (or won’t) imagine their families in harm’s way.

Wrong. People objecting to this are people who love America enough to not want her going down the path of evil.
[/quote]

borrek, I found the website you took your information from (be careful about using verbatim quotes without citation.)

What you’ll find (if you are interested) is that the cell wasn’t confined to 4 guys. It was at least 17 members. What happened is that the 4 guys were captured, then ksm was captured, then waterboarded (he wasn’t talking prior to the waterboarding), then the CIA put the pieces together (including more direct questions to ksm), then more of the cell was captured and the plot was foiled.

Let me repeat, the plot didn’t end with the capture of the four guys.

It’s important to let me know if you are interested in the actual facts. If you are going to think about the rest of the information, I’ll continue to discuss this with you. If not, we are done.

Thanks in advance,

jeffR

119

[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
Those of you spouting the “extreme interrogations” line and resorting to disgusting, Hannity-esque trivializations of what we’ve done to people should really watch the documentary “Taxi to the Dark Side.” We aren’t talking about making guys pull all-nighters while listening to bad pop music. We are talking about breaking people’s minds and psyches. That is torture even if it never leaves a mark.[/quote]

Hey, gdol:

What would you do to protect your family?

Thanks,

JeffR

120

[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
Those of you spouting the “extreme interrogations” line and resorting to disgusting, Hannity-esque trivializations of what we’ve done to people should really watch the documentary “Taxi to the Dark Side.” We aren’t talking about making guys pull all-nighters while listening to bad pop music. We are talking about breaking people’s minds and psyches. That is torture even if it never leaves a mark.[/quote]

Dude - when the line is crossed, it is crossed and no one would condone the actions committed in that case. I would agree with you 100% that this type of behavior is intolerable, criminal and illegal (that might be a bit repetitious and redundant). As I have said repeatedly throughout this thread - beatings are torture. Plain and simple.

If this was systemic of the whole military - then I would agree with you that it would need to be addressed. But you don’t prove systemic reality - you have only illustrated thru a singular horrific case that torture is really torture - well outside the keeping of the ROE’s and guidelines established to protect the lives of detainees.

Those responsible are tried and punished and guidelines strengthened to ensure that such atrocities don’t occur again.