[quote]Headhunter wrote:
If your child or someone very close to you died in a terrorist attack, and you then found out that authorities COULD have figured out the plot, but had to be nice to the scum, would you be pissed? Should your wife die because Khalid Sheik Muhammed might be a little uncomfortable?
[/quote]
As a thought exercises go, this one stops thinking DEAD and, as such, is useless. It’s way too visceral to be of any use.
[quote]dhickey wrote:
orion wrote:
dhickey wrote:
Really people. We are talking about torturing enemy combantants. I can’t beleive what a bunch of illogical pussies we have become. This is absolutly insane. It one thing to abide by mutually agreed upon conduct of war, but that’s not what we are dealing with here. Grow a fucking sack.
I would not trust any government with a sharp object, a lighter, or…
Let�?�´s just say, if I would not allow a 4 year old to do it in my name neither can they.
In general, I completely agree. But when it comes to defense, they are our only option. I don’t know how this could be any more clear.
Let me just reiterate. If any kind of torture works and saves lives, why on earth would we not persue this against terrorists that don’t work within the COMPLETELY ARBITRARY moral code some would hope to handcuff us with?
We are talking about a specific tactic that could be used to deal with the situation we find ourselves in. Not how we got here, how we may have fucked up in the past, or why those that want to kill us are pissed off. I don’t know, the brain trust on this forum just can’t wrap their heads around the actual issue at hand. It’s getting rather frustrating, becuase some that have proven themselves very intellegent and capable of logical thought seem to be missing the point on this one. I am used to ignoring idiots on this board, its the intellegent contributors that have me a bit baffled right now.
[/quote]
This is the typical win at any cost crap you see in high school sports. There are literally thousands of ways you could theoretically save lives but people don’t do those things simply because they are inconvenient. Like for instance, if you really want to save your childrens life, don’t ever let them in a car, weather you are driving or someone else is driving period. This will give you a much higher chance of saving your childrens lives than torturing some guy who smells with a beard.
So why do I think you will accept torture to “hypothetically” save someones childrens lives? Because you view terrorists as evil, and thus not human. Either that, or you do not believe in the constitution, nor the declaration of independence. If all men are created equal, then why not torture someone who may or may not know about a kidnapping to make sure they don’t know something, after all he is probably evil and probably knows something.
Look, I respect where your heart is, protecting lives is a noble thing. But you have to look at this from a practical standpoint. If you really cared about people living or dying, you could concentrate on 100 other risk factors before “terrorism targets” and save hundreds of thousands more people. Possibly millions more. So the fact that you are so hell bent on saving people from islamic terrorists shows more that you just want to torture the evil terrorists. Having the potential to save lives is just the little shield you hide behind to justify it to yourself and others. Torture is not right, no matter if it saves 1 life or a million.
And yes I would accept the death of my entire family in a terrorist attack if we never tortured anyone. I have faith in god that he knows more than I do and it was simply thier time. Me commiting (or supporting) an act of evil to prevent another act of evil does not nullify my act of evil. I am not opposed to killing people who try to kill me, but I wouldn’t torture an animal, much less a human being.
V
[quote]Vegita wrote:
Look, I respect where your heart is, protecting lives is a noble thing. But you have to look at this from a practical standpoint. If you really cared about people living or dying, you could concentrate on 100 other risk factors before “terrorism targets” and save hundreds of thousands more people. Possibly millions more. So the fact that you are so hell bent on saving people from islamic terrorists shows more that you just want to torture the evil terrorists. Having the potential to save lives is just the little shield you hide behind to justify it to yourself and others. Torture is not right, no matter if it saves 1 life or a million.
[/quote]
Wow! Fantastic point! Some people see so clearly.
[quote]dhickey wrote:
orion wrote:
dhickey wrote:
Really people. We are talking about torturing enemy combantants. I can’t beleive what a bunch of illogical pussies we have become. This is absolutly insane. It one thing to abide by mutually agreed upon conduct of war, but that’s not what we are dealing with here. Grow a fucking sack.
I would not trust any government with a sharp object, a lighter, or…
Let�?�´s just say, if I would not allow a 4 year old to do it in my name neither can they.
In general, I completely agree. But when it comes to defense, they are our only option. I don’t know how this could be any more clear.
Let me just reiterate. If any kind of torture works and saves lives, why on earth would we not persue this against terrorists that don’t work within the COMPLETELY ARBITRARY moral code some would hope to handcuff us with?
We are talking about a specific tactic that could be used to deal with the situation we find ourselves in. Not how we got here, how we may have fucked up in the past, or why those that want to kill us are pissed off. I don’t know, the brain trust on this forum just can’t wrap their heads around the actual issue at hand. It’s getting rather frustrating, becuase some that have proven themselves very intellegent and capable of logical thought seem to be missing the point on this one. I am used to ignoring idiots on this board, its the intellegent contributors that have me a bit baffled right now.
[/quote]
Because I do not want to “win”, I want to achieve a certain result, which would be to live in a free society.
Torturing does not further my agenda.
It is worse than the rather pointless and arbitrary killings it is supposed to prevent in that respect.
Oh, and torturing is wrong.
Really, really wrong.
[quote]dhickey wrote:
lixy wrote:
dhickey wrote:
This very well may be true. My arguement is that if it works, we should use it.
Terrorism does work.
Do you actually have something to contribute here? Are you saying terrorizing terrorists works? I am not following.[/quote]
I am saying that if your best “arguement” is if-it-works-use-it, then you have been terrorized.
[quote]Vegita wrote:
dhickey wrote:
orion wrote:
dhickey wrote:
Really people. We are talking about torturing enemy combantants. I can’t beleive what a bunch of illogical pussies we have become. This is absolutly insane. It one thing to abide by mutually agreed upon conduct of war, but that’s not what we are dealing with here. Grow a fucking sack.
I would not trust any government with a sharp object, a lighter, or…
Let�??�?�´s just say, if I would not allow a 4 year old to do it in my name neither can they.
In general, I completely agree. But when it comes to defense, they are our only option. I don’t know how this could be any more clear.
Let me just reiterate. If any kind of torture works and saves lives, why on earth would we not persue this against terrorists that don’t work within the COMPLETELY ARBITRARY moral code some would hope to handcuff us with?
We are talking about a specific tactic that could be used to deal with the situation we find ourselves in. Not how we got here, how we may have fucked up in the past, or why those that want to kill us are pissed off. I don’t know, the brain trust on this forum just can’t wrap their heads around the actual issue at hand. It’s getting rather frustrating, becuase some that have proven themselves very intellegent and capable of logical thought seem to be missing the point on this one. I am used to ignoring idiots on this board, its the intellegent contributors that have me a bit baffled right now.
This is the typical win at any cost crap you see in high school sports. There are literally thousands of ways you could theoretically save lives but people don’t do those things simply because they are inconvenient. Like for instance, if you really want to save your childrens life, don’t ever let them in a car, weather you are driving or someone else is driving period. This will give you a much higher chance of saving your childrens lives than torturing some guy who smells with a beard.
So why do I think you will accept torture to “hypothetically” save someones childrens lives? Because you view terrorists as evil, and thus not human. Either that, or you do not believe in the constitution, nor the declaration of independence. If all men are created equal, then why not torture someone who may or may not know about a kidnapping to make sure they don’t know something, after all he is probably evil and probably knows something.
Look, I respect where your heart is, protecting lives is a noble thing. But you have to look at this from a practical standpoint. If you really cared about people living or dying, you could concentrate on 100 other risk factors before “terrorism targets” and save hundreds of thousands more people. Possibly millions more. So the fact that you are so hell bent on saving people from islamic terrorists shows more that you just want to torture the evil terrorists. Having the potential to save lives is just the little shield you hide behind to justify it to yourself and others. Torture is not right, no matter if it saves 1 life or a million.
And yes I would accept the death of my entire family in a terrorist attack if we never tortured anyone. I have faith in god that he knows more than I do and it was simply thier time. Me commiting (or supporting) an act of evil to prevent another act of evil does not nullify my act of evil. I am not opposed to killing people who try to kill me, but I wouldn’t torture an animal, much less a human being.
V[/quote]
nice post.
Oh, NO! Caterpillars!!
“One prisoner was known to have a fear of insects. The CIA was thinking of putting him in a box filled with caterpillars!!! (That is why I thought of the Eric Carle story…) I know…how horrible! Imagine the terror - a murdering terrorist who wouldn’t think twice about shooting or slitting the throat of an American might have to spend a few minutes with fuzzy caterpillars! Egads! The bug adventure never took place, but what kind of nation have we become??? (I swear, I cannot make this stuff up…)”
[quote]Vegita wrote:
This is the typical win at any cost crap you see in high school sports.
[/quote]
I am not talking about sports. If you would like to, start anohter thread.
Are you arguing that interogating terrorists is inconvenient and not worth the effort?
Do not understand the difference between protecting someone from themselves and protecting them from murdering terrorists? Is that what we are doing? Arbitrarily torturing bearded stinky people for shits and grins? You are off to a spectactular start on this post. I can’t wait for the rest.
I am not talking hypotheticals here junior. We are talking about circumstances we find ourselves in and tactics we have used.
I don’t define them as anything but someone that is trying to kill us. It make no differense to me whether they are evil or human. I have no emotional attachment to this issue. Only a logical one. You should try it.
The constitution does not protect foreign terrorists. This part here is absolutly rediculous as has you one step away from the ignor list.
Sorry pausing to laugh my ass off.
Protecting them from themselves or those that would kill them?
This has nothing to do with religion or evil. If we are fighting an enemy that does not adhere to an agreed upon code of conduct in war, we should do what we can to defeat them in the most efficient way possible. I’ll take extracting information over firebombing or other “acceptable” tactics.
Completely illogical. You are now on the ignor list. I suggest others do the same.
I should have read the whole thing before commenting.
You need to re-read your religious book of choice.
[quote]PatMac wrote:
Vegita wrote:
Look, I respect where your heart is, protecting lives is a noble thing. But you have to look at this from a practical standpoint. If you really cared about people living or dying, you could concentrate on 100 other risk factors before “terrorism targets” and save hundreds of thousands more people. Possibly millions more. So the fact that you are so hell bent on saving people from islamic terrorists shows more that you just want to torture the evil terrorists. Having the potential to save lives is just the little shield you hide behind to justify it to yourself and others. Torture is not right, no matter if it saves 1 life or a million.
Wow! Fantastic point! Some people see so clearly. [/quote]
Another one for the ignore list
[quote]dhickey wrote:
PatMac wrote:
Vegita wrote:
Look, I respect where your heart is, protecting lives is a noble thing. But you have to look at this from a practical standpoint. If you really cared about people living or dying, you could concentrate on 100 other risk factors before “terrorism targets” and save hundreds of thousands more people. Possibly millions more. So the fact that you are so hell bent on saving people from islamic terrorists shows more that you just want to torture the evil terrorists. Having the potential to save lives is just the little shield you hide behind to justify it to yourself and others. Torture is not right, no matter if it saves 1 life or a million.
Wow! Fantastic point! Some people see so clearly.
Another one for the ignore list
[/quote]
You have to do what you have to do. Cheers brother!
[quote]orion wrote:
Because I do not want to “win”, I want to achieve a certain result, which would be to live in a free society.
Torturing does not further my agenda.
[/quote]
In order to live in a free society, you must live. I am not aware of any free society that was maintained without forcably protecting it.
how? Is sending someone to jail worse than the crimes it is supposed to prevent? Is killing someone worse than letting them kill you?
But killing is not? What constitutes torture?
[quote]dhickey wrote:
I should have read the whole thing before commenting.
[/quote]
That is good advice. When you break it down line by line you only allow for emotional and automatic responses.
[quote]lixy wrote:
I am saying that if your best “arguement” is if-it-works-use-it, then you have been terrorized.[/quote]
How so? I don’t feel terrorized, but I would like to avoid being terrorized if at all possible.
[quote]dhickey wrote:
orion wrote:
Because I do not want to “win”, I want to achieve a certain result, which would be to live in a free society.
Torturing does not further my agenda.
In order to live in a free society, you must live. I am not aware of any free society that was maintained without forcably protecting it.
It is worse than the rather pointless and arbitrary killings it is supposed to prevent in that respect.
how? Is sending someone to jail worse than the crimes it is supposed to prevent? Is killing someone worse than letting them kill you?
Oh, and torturing is wrong.
Really, really wrong.
But killing is not? What constitutes torture?
[/quote]
In order to live in a free society I must accept some risks.
Since the risks posed by terrorism so far is less than that posed by cars, swimming pools and electricity and I do not demand torture to safe me from those…
I also do not think that that “forcibly protecting” does you any good. It only makes you enemies. Lots of them. Should they ever attack the US in earnest you can fight them there.
Then, we do not jail people for the crimes they might do but for those they have already committed- Unfortunately you torture people because you do not know if they have or will commit any crimes. Afterwards however they have very good reason to blow up a few Americans.
What makes this “ticking time bomb scenario” so worthless is that in this scenario all I have to do as a terrorist is to mislead you long enough so that my dirty, dirty bomb explodes.
Let´s see you infidels, will Allah give me the strength to just lie to you for another two hours until I have my revenge?
I think he will.
[quote]dhickey wrote:
PatMac wrote:
Vegita wrote:
Look, I respect where your heart is, protecting lives is a noble thing. But you have to look at this from a practical standpoint. If you really cared about people living or dying, you could concentrate on 100 other risk factors before “terrorism targets” and save hundreds of thousands more people. Possibly millions more. So the fact that you are so hell bent on saving people from islamic terrorists shows more that you just want to torture the evil terrorists. Having the potential to save lives is just the little shield you hide behind to justify it to yourself and others. Torture is not right, no matter if it saves 1 life or a million.
Wow! Fantastic point! Some people see so clearly.
Another one for the ignore list
[/quote]
I always love tools who write shit like this on message boards.
Why the fuck do you think anyone cares who you are or are not ignoring? You’re obviously an extremist who has stopped listening to other opinions long ago. No need to announce it every few threads.
[quote]dhickey wrote:
Vegita wrote:
This is the typical win at any cost crap you see in high school sports.
I am not talking about sports. If you would like to, start anohter thread.
There are literally thousands of ways you could theoretically save lives but people don’t do those things simply because they are inconvenient.
Are you arguing that interogating terrorists is inconvenient and not worth the effort?
Like for instance, if you really want to save your childrens life, don’t ever let them in a car, weather you are driving or someone else is driving period. This will give you a much higher chance of saving your childrens lives than torturing some guy who smells with a beard.
Do not understand the difference between protecting someone from themselves and protecting them from murdering terrorists? Is that what we are doing? Arbitrarily torturing bearded stinky people for shits and grins? You are off to a spectactular start on this post. I can’t wait for the rest.
So why do I think you will accept torture to “hypothetically” save someones childrens lives?
I am not talking hypotheticals here junior. We are talking about circumstances we find ourselves in and tactics we have used.
Because you view terrorists as evil, and thus not human.
I don’t define them as anything but someone that is trying to kill us. It make no differense to me whether they are evil or human. I have no emotional attachment to this issue. Only a logical one. You should try it.
Either that, or you do not believe in the constitution, nor the declaration of independence. If all men are created equal, then why not torture someone who may or may not know about a kidnapping to make sure they don’t know something, after all he is probably evil and probably knows something.
The constitution does not protect foreign terrorists. This part here is absolutly rediculous as has you one step away from the ignor list.
Look, I respect where your heart is, protecting lives is a noble thing. But you have to look at this from a practical standpoint.
Sorry pausing to laugh my ass off.
If you really cared about people living or dying, you could concentrate on 100 other risk factors before “terrorism targets” and save hundreds of thousands more people. Possibly millions more.
Protecting them from themselves or those that would kill them?
So the fact that you are so hell bent on saving people from islamic terrorists shows more that you just want to torture the evil terrorists.
This has nothing to do with religion or evil. If we are fighting an enemy that does not adhere to an agreed upon code of conduct in war, we should do what we can to defeat them in the most efficient way possible. I’ll take extracting information over firebombing or other “acceptable” tactics.
Having the potential to save lives is just the little shield you hide behind to justify it to yourself and others. Torture is not right, no matter if it saves 1 life or a million.
Completely illogical. You are now on the ignor list. I suggest others do the same.
I should have read the whole thing before commenting.
And yes I would accept the death of my entire family in a terrorist attack if we never tortured anyone. I have faith in god that he knows more than I do and it was simply thier time. Me commiting (or supporting) an act of evil to prevent another act of evil does not nullify my act of evil. I am not opposed to killing people who try to kill me, but I wouldn’t torture an animal, much less a human being.
You need to re-read your religious book of choice.
[/quote]
Your rerading comprehension is terrible. I’m not even going to go through and re-explain myself. You didn’t get my point with a clear well thought out post and you never will. Luckily I know you are the crazy one and not me because two other people have already responded that they understood my points and even agreed with them.
I can’t say I’m surprised you put me on the ignore list. It just really goes down to how emotionally underdeveloped you are. Somthing like an 8 or 9 year old in a mans body I would guess. I feel really bad for you, hopefully one day you will grow up emotionally and be able to have a discourse with someone and not take your ball and go home when they disagree with you.
Oh P.S. Sorry for using analogies, I now realize the faults in my ways. No one should ever compare one thing to another, what a dumb move on my part. /sarcasm
V
[quote]orion wrote:
dhickey wrote:
orion wrote:
Because I do not want to “win”, I want to achieve a certain result, which would be to live in a free society.
Torturing does not further my agenda.
In order to live in a free society, you must live. I am not aware of any free society that was maintained without forcably protecting it.
It is worse than the rather pointless and arbitrary killings it is supposed to prevent in that respect.
how? Is sending someone to jail worse than the crimes it is supposed to prevent? Is killing someone worse than letting them kill you?
Oh, and torturing is wrong.
Really, really wrong.
But killing is not? What constitutes torture?
In order to live in a free society I must accept some risks.
Since the risks posed by terrorism so far is less than that posed by cars, swimming pools and electricity and I do not demand torture to safe me from those…
I also do not think that that “forcibly protecting” does you any good. It only makes you enemies. Lots of them. Should they ever attack the US in earnest you can fight them there.
Then, we do not jail people for the crimes they might do but for those they have already committed- Unfortunately you torture people because you do not know if they have or will commit any crimes. Afterwards however they have very good reason to blow up a few Americans.
[/quote]
Dood, You are asking for him to add you to the IGNORE list. What are you crazy? If I were you I would go out and torture some kittens right now. They might be talking to him telling him who and who not to ignore, therefore if you torture a couple thousand of them, you might get the one or two who in fact are giving him his ignore list info. Hurry, Do it NOW!!!
V
[quote]orion wrote:
In order to live in a free society I must accept some risks.
Since the risks posed by terrorism so far is less than that posed by cars, swimming pools and electricity and I do not demand torture to safe me from those…
I also do not think that that “forcibly protecting” does you any good. It only makes you enemies. Lots of them. Should they ever attack the US in earnest you can fight them there.
[/quote]
Beleive it or not, I agree with you here. Our foreign policy has done us more harm than any “evil” we may perceive.
But the fact remains that we are engaged with those that have and will attach us at home. We need to do what will most efficiently prevent this. If capturing terrorists and interogating them will keep them from killing us, have at it. I’ll even volenteer to pull out the toe nails. If it does not efficiently combat the killing they have and will commit, then I would not waste my time.
I don’t believe we should be in Iraq, Afganistan, or any of the other 100 countries we house our men and women in uniform. The fact is that we are in these places. If we capture someone that is actively trying to kill us, we should extract information from them. Again, if there is no strategic value in capturing these people they will be killed. They only reason they are not killed is the assurance that they will be kept off the battle field.
If we happen to aprehend know terrorist in our own country, we should try and gather information from them. I honestly cannot see the blurred moral line many of you espouse. I am really not even sure how to structure the debate.
Again, I must be missing something here. Are we torturing people that have not already participated in the killing or planned killing of americans?
We do jail people for crimes they might do. Consiracy to commit murder comes to mind. I am sure there are others.
This is the part that I can’t seem to reconcile. Are we not interogating those that already wanted to blow us up? To say that interogation techniques are creating enemies of the US just seems laughable to me. Foreign policy, absolutly. Tactics that are uncomfortable to those that have or would already do us harm, I just don’t see it.
You are one of my favorite posters on this board, but I just can’t reconcile your position on this with other posts I’ve seen from you. It just doesn’t appear that you are thinking of this in an economic sense? By this I mean a cost benefit perspective. Rough the bad guy up a bit to save some good guys. Just trying to simplify the arguement, not asserting who is the good guy and who is the bad guy.
[quote]Vegita wrote:
Your rerading comprehension is terrible. I’m not even going to go through and re-explain myself. You didn’t get my point with a clear well thought out post and you never will. Luckily I know you are the crazy one and not me because two other people have already responded that they understood my points and even agreed with them.
I can’t say I’m surprised you put me on the ignore list. It just really goes down to how emotionally underdeveloped you are. Somthing like an 8 or 9 year old in a mans body I would guess. I feel really bad for you, hopefully one day you will grow up emotionally and be able to have a discourse with someone and not take your ball and go home when they disagree with you.
Oh P.S. Sorry for using analogies, I now realize the faults in my ways. No one should ever compare one thing to another, what a dumb move on my part. /sarcasm
V[/quote]
Your problem was not with the use of analogies, it was with the use of thinking. Anything that requires more cognitive effort than binary thinking is grounds for an immediate ignore in these parts.