I accurately described it. You are trying to stretch it into wanton rape and murder. Why do you do that instead of dealing with the reality of the situation?
Do you let the politicians and media play you so easily?[/quote]
Let me remind you we executed three Japanese soldiers for having water boarded some of our soldiers.
It’s a matter of not being a hypocrite. If we hadn’t been so outspoken when this stuff was happening to our soldiers, I don’t think it would be as big an issue.
It’s making us look obnoxious and arrogant on the world stage, which is something we can’t afford these days.
[quote]pat wrote:
pookie wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
This is exactly the type of phony crap I am talking about. We dunked 3 Al Qaeda leaders heads under water. Big deal.
Yet, if it’s such a non issue, one wonders why you feel the need to minimize it as you do… “only three” … “dunked their heads in water” and so on. Either torture is ok and it doesn’t matter then what is done to how many, or it’s not.
Why such an insistence on the low number of victims, or the factually incorrect description of the process? Why seek to minimize what happened as much as possible, if the government was entirely right in doing it?
Numbers DO matter. Otherwise saying for instance torturing 1 is like torturing 100, or killing 10 people is as bad as killing 1. Clearly, killing 10 people is worse than killing one, even though killing one person is a really bad thing.[/quote]
You are right, numbers do matter.
If the US were the first to stumble over the ticking bomb scenario, a US agent could easily be pardoned by the president.
You already have rules in place for situations like this and they work for small numbers because they are not meant to be used often.
To make something official policy has a another quality and will practically ensure the spread of the practice. After all, why not torture drug dealers, kidnappers, etc…
I accurately described it. You are trying to stretch it into wanton rape and murder. Why do you do that instead of dealing with the reality of the situation?
Do you let the politicians and media play you so easily?
Let me remind you we executed three Japanese soldiers for having water boarded some of our soldiers.
It’s a matter of not being a hypocrite. If we hadn’t been so outspoken when this stuff was happening to our soldiers, I don’t think it would be as big an issue.
It’s making us look obnoxious and arrogant on the world stage, which is something we can’t afford these days. [/quote]
They did far worse than waterboard and are you drawing comparison between average American GIs and top AQ leadership???
[quote]pat wrote:
Numbers DO matter. Otherwise saying for instance torturing 1 is like torturing 100, or killing 10 people is as bad as killing 1. Clearly, killing 10 people is worse than killing one, even though killing one person is a really bad thing.[/quote]
You said it yourself: Killing ONE person is a really bad thing. Zap’s argument is that since you only tortured 3, then it’s no big deal. I don’t know at what number he becomes concerned, but it’s the reasoning itself that’s idiotic. Because it’s “only” 3 guys since 9/11, and they were Al Qeada (says the government), then torture is no big deal.
Of course, torturing hundreds would be worse than 3, but even at only one, it’s bad. Zap has a personal “OK” number below which he doesn’t think torture is worth getting concerned about. As long as the government tells him they’re Al Qaeda members, I’d bet no number would concern him. Anyone the government stamps with “AQ” member/sympatiser/collaborator is fair game for anything they might wish to do to him, and people like Zap will quietly, maybe even gleefully, go along with it.
[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Why DO they use waterboarding anyway? Don’t they have all sorts of drugs that makes a person sing their head off? Or is that only in the movies?[/quote]
Because it’s incredibly effective at breaking people?
Guess the Vietcong should’ve kept McCain. Becoming president is only the final step in his plan for revenge. As soon as he enters the Whitehouse, he’ll launch a nuclear strike on Vietnam and finally get even for everything those assholes did to him while he was held captive.
Would McCain sign an anti-waterboarding bill? I was under the impression that, outside of Paul, he was firmly against torture under any circumstances. I could be wrong, but I seem to recall at least one debate in which he left the impression he was on the anti side.
The authors fails to address an important point: Was any information obtained from waterboarding useful? Was it verifiable? Actionable? Getting someone to talk is useless if he’s telling you what he thinks you wish to hear.
As for the rest, it’s a pretty weak defense. The author hopes the US never has to use it again; he doesn’t think it should be used as a punishment, nor does he think information obtained should be usable in trials… since he doesn’t address whether any actionable intelligence was obtained, what’s left? All that remains is another attempt to minimize the torture and make it seem almost as if it never happened… “.03 seconds” “less than five minutes” etc. Why is there such a need to minimize what occurred. If it effectively saved thousands of lives, who cares how bad it was?
I accurately described it. You are trying to stretch it into wanton rape and murder. Why do you do that instead of dealing with the reality of the situation?
Do you let the politicians and media play you so easily?
Let me remind you we executed three Japanese soldiers for having water boarded some of our soldiers.
It’s a matter of not being a hypocrite. If we hadn’t been so outspoken when this stuff was happening to our soldiers, I don’t think it would be as big an issue.
It’s making us look obnoxious and arrogant on the world stage, which is something we can’t afford these days.
They did far worse than waterboard and are you drawing comparison between average American GIs and top AQ leadership???
How can you possibly be serious?
[/quote]
A) Three soldiers were executed ‘for the preforming the practice of torture known as water boarding’.
B) When the hell did I say anything about AQ, let alone it’s leadership? Hypocrisy has nothing to do with what the opponent does; it has to do with doing the opposite of what you’ve said in the past, which is exactly what we’d be doing if we made waterboarding an excepted policy.
I don’t want the three waterboarded going free. I don’t care that they’ve been waterboarded. I just want the government to “condemn” it, and keep using the practice in the most scarce of cases (such as the three already done) without telling us. That’s what intelligence agencies do. Making it an acceptable, legal form of torture is a hell of a lot different than practicing it in a spare few cases, on absolutely guilty subjects, when lives are most likely on the line.