No need to torture or gather intel if you practice TOTAL war.
Kill everyone and everything in your way and burn what is left.
If we did that to Iraq and Afghanistan we wouldn’t have any problems there now. We would have a bunch of free oil. And every single other country in the world would be scared to speak a word against us.
[quote]CrewPierce wrote:
Every government around the world tortures people period. [/quote]
I sure never heard of Sweden torturing people. Now, queue the idiots trying to make a smart-ass comment about that in 3, 2, 1…
[quote]mmllcc wrote:
No need to torture or gather intel if you practice TOTAL war.
Kill everyone and everything in your way and burn what is left.
If we did that to Iraq and Afghanistan we wouldn’t have any problems there now. [/quote]
Yeah. That way, people might still believe there were WMDs in Iraq. And by the way, what’s the Iraqi people done to you that’s so bad, you want to exterminate them?
[quote]lixy wrote:
rainjack wrote:
The pro-terrorist crowd (and that is exactly what you are) will do anything, say anything, and quote whoever is convenient at the time to make the US look as bad as possible.
That’s quite a leap. Anyone who thinks torture is wrong does not necessarily root for “the terrorists” (whoever they may be).[/quote]
I had to wait until I stopped laughing to offer a response to you. You are the queen of the pro-terrorist crowd, and if you can’t see your blatant hypocrisy wrt this issue…well…you never do, so never mind.
When the only group being held to any standard wrt torture is the US, and no one in the pro-terrorist crowd says a fucking word about the beheadings, the hangings, and other evil actions perpetrated by your sisters - it could be argued that the only reason people are paying so much attention to the US is because they are rooting for their defeat. That would qualify as pro-terrorist.
[quote]No one has stood up with any proof that waterboarding is ineffective.
Look at it this way; stealing is a very effective way to make money. Does it make it right? Hell no!
Torture is wrong, period. You’d think that, in the 21st century, people wouldn’t be arguing about that. edited[/quote]
Pay attention dipshit - I didn’t say it was moral, or immoral. I asked for proof that it was ineffective as was charged by your fellow propaganda whore, 100M. He said waterboarding was ineffective. I asked for proof.
As for the morality of war - get a fucking clue. Torture is part of warfare. Always has been. Always will be. Your sisters in arms are living proof that you can take the trash out of the trailer - but you can’t take the trailer out of the trash.
I am not on a fucking moral crusade. I want to destroy the sorry motherfuckers that attacked us, and all of those that support them. AQ should have thought twice about setting up shop in Iraq. But they thought they could beat us. They can’t. If we have to chop off a few hands, or run some bamboo chutes up a few fingernails, I really don’t give a shit - as long as the sorry bastards pay.
Hell - I have said all along that we should carpet bomb the entire region with pig fat. Is that torture?
[quote]rainjack wrote:
GDollars37 wrote:
The pro-torture crowd (that’s what it is) is missing the forest for the trees. Leaving aside the main point, which is that torture is reprehensible and it’s a mark of our degradation as a society that so many people are willing to condone it, the forest is being missed for the trees when it comes to its effectiveness in the war against Islamic extremism.
This is not a conventional war. I don’t know why some people are still too stupid to grasp this. It is a global counter-insurgency, according to the likes of Colonel David Kilcullen, who’s just a bit more of an expert than most people on here. Success ultimately depends on winning the war of ideas, like we did against the USSR (whose agents and soldiers we never felt the need to torture). Even if torture were to give us useful, time-sensitive tactical information, strategically it is a disaster.
It convinces those on the fence, especially Muslims, that we are the bad guys, and all the talk of democracy and human rights is nothing but hypocrisy. The damage it does to America’s image drastically outweighs any immediate benefits. Pretty simple.
You guys are hopeless. The pro-terrorist crowd (and that is exactly what you are) will do anything, say anything, and quote whoever is convenient at the time to make the US look as bad as possible. Especially when it gets air-time from a willing press.
Which gives the terrorists more resolve? Interrogation practices, or Hanoi Jane like sympathizers?
No one has stood up with any proof that waterboarding is ineffective.
[/quote]
Factually you have supported the policies that have predictably created more terror/terrorists/etc.
You want (and have gotten) more.
I want less.
Little bit of a difference.
And obviously policy gives more resolve than Jane Fonda. (In the real world, anyway)
[quote]lixy wrote:
mmllcc wrote:
No need to torture or gather intel if you practice TOTAL war.
Kill everyone and everything in your way and burn what is left.
If we did that to Iraq and Afghanistan we wouldn’t have any problems there now.
Yeah. That way, people might still believe there were WMDs in Iraq. And by the way, what’s the Iraqi people done to you that’s so bad, you want to exterminate them?[/quote]
Their skin is brown. Duh?
[quote]pat36 wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Oh…nevermind!
Its like when we kill 20 innocent civilians when we were only gunning for 2 evildoers. Yes…this is perfectly moral…<scratches head?>
Well, that’s better than killing 20 innocent civilians because your gunning to kill innocent civilians.[/quote]
Slightly…
But nothing to brag about either…
[quote]orion wrote:
This is why I think it is stupid to start one even for the most altruistic motives, like ousting Saddam.
You cannot bomb, maim and kill people or their relatives and convince them that it is in their best interest.
If you do not bomb, maim and kill people the war lasts longer which lead to even more bombing, maiming and killing.
You cannot be the “good guys” and win wars.
[/quote]
Exactly. We should not want to convince anyone of anything in a war — except that they’d better surrender or die.
Rainjack is right about no morality in war. The purpose of the war can be very moral but the prosecution of the war cannot be.
[quote]Mikeyali wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
It works. It is not the only method to be used and should be a last resort but it works. Too much abuse is counter productive but just the right amount works. Some guys end up never talking but that is not because waterboarding doesn’t work.
Zap, we often talk about using water-boarding or other torture methods as a last resort. Do you feel that we were right in water-boarding KSM?
mike[/quote]
I’d like to add, if you don’t mind, that sure, KSM could have been totally talking out his ass and making stuff up left and right, but there was the possibility that some of it was true and we prepared ourselves to defend against those things, true or not, and we’ve not seen an attack on our soil for 6 years.
[quote]orion wrote:
People that think that coming to the rescue in WWII was Americas finest hour often forget that it was Americas meddling in WWI “to make the world safe for Democracy” that in part led to four revolutions and to the rise of two of the most brutal dictatorships in mankinds history, Hitlers and Stalins.
[/quote]
3 questions about this:
How did the US play a part in the Communist Revolution, which started before and ended during the war, which eventually lead to the rise of Stalin?
Did we have a hand in carving up Germany after WWI which led to the rise of Hitler?
Europe is totally innocent in the creation of these 2 madmen?
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Can we please stop saying water-boarding motivates the enemy, or people into joining the enemy to fight us? "Holy Jihad, the US waterboards? I’ll go join the fight against them.
[/quote]
I tend to agree:
I think there were plenty of terrorists before we began waterboarding them and plenty of people who would join purely because of their propaganda and ideology.
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
orion wrote:
People that think that coming to the rescue in WWII was Americas finest hour often forget that it was Americas meddling in WWI “to make the world safe for Democracy” that in part led to four revolutions and to the rise of two of the most brutal dictatorships in mankinds history, Hitlers and Stalins.
3 questions about this:
How did the US play a part in the Communist Revolution, which started before and ended during the war, which eventually lead to the rise of Stalin?
Did we have a hand in carving up Germany after WWI which led to the rise of Hitler?
Europe is totally innocent in the creation of these 2 madmen?[/quote]
By prolonging the war by creating fiat currency to give aid and more importantly credit to England and France.
Absolutely. To ensure the victory of your allies and then back down when your allies divide Europe means playing a role.
Definitely not. It is just that America did intervene and that altered the course of history.
There is just no way to start and end the history of American intervention so that the US always are the good guys.
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
Zap, we often talk about using water-boarding or other torture methods as a last resort. Do you feel that we were right in water-boarding KSM?
mike
I’d like to add, if you don’t mind, that sure, KSM could have been totally talking out his ass and making stuff up left and right, but there was the possibility that some of it was true and we prepared ourselves to defend against those things, true or not, and we’ve not seen an attack on our soil for 6 years.[/quote]
Yes, but that’s not my question. I want to know if it was okay to waterboard KSM. To the best of our knowledge he was a terrorist with lots of info, but we weren’t actually in a ticking time bomb scenario.
Maybe we were and it was never released, I don’t know. But assuming that we weren’t and he was just a guy with plenty of info on future attacks, was it okay to waterboard him for info on a slow fuse?
mike
Well, that rules out Hillary for left leaning anti-waterboarding, no matter what the situation, folks. Unless she flip flopped again.
[quote]Mikeyali wrote:
Yes, but that’s not my question. I want to know if it was okay to waterboard KSM. To the best of our knowledge he was a terrorist with lots of info, but we weren’t actually in a ticking time bomb scenario.
Maybe we were and it was never released, I don’t know. But assuming that we weren’t and he was just a guy with plenty of info on future attacks, was it okay to waterboard him for info on a slow fuse?
mike[/quote]
Did we know he was a ticking bomb or not? How could our guys know if there were any plans in the works already, and if there were, how fast they needed to know this?
If he was just a guy with plenty of info, and not a ticking bomb, and they knew it, they could have applied a lot of persuasion on him, but what if he just refused to talk?
Would it have been better to let him sit in a cell for years and never give a single bit of information, or better to make him spout a lot, so at least we’ve
got something to work with?
I’d go with the second.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
I’m comfortable with waterboarding them. I’m comfortable with boarding them to save a captured soldier or civilian about to get his/her head removed. I’m comfortable with waterboarding to keep a couple dozen (maybe hundreds) people from being turned into chunks of meat and gristle by a suicide bomber. My name is Sloth, and I flat out support torture of this nature, for preventing acts such as the above. [/quote]
I think your position is rephrehensible and basically un-American, but at least you have the guts (internet that it is) to state it honestly. Unlike, say, the president.
[quote]mmllcc wrote:
No need to torture or gather intel if you practice TOTAL war.
Kill everyone and everything in your way and burn what is left.
If we did that to Iraq and Afghanistan we wouldn’t have any problems there now. We would have a bunch of free oil. And every single other country in the world would be scared to speak a word against us.
[/quote]
And the keyboard warriors rise again. Nothing like advocating genocide over the internet.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
GDollars37 wrote:
…
Blatantly false. I have posted on this before, most notably an interview with Colonel Stuart Herrington, one of the Army’s chief interrogators in Vietnam, and a man who’s convinced torture is counter-productive. You can google “Stuart Herrington” and “Hugh Hewitt” and it oughta turn up.
I’m not convinced torture doesn’t work. I’ve heard that a key part of Jordanian successes against Al Qaeda has been a room full of tools normally found in the hands of a carpenter and a butcher. But it is not a closed case.
Is he conducting the waterboarding today? No? Then he has no idea what info has been produced.
[/quote]
No offense, but I’m gonna take the opinion of one of the U.S. Army’s most experienced interrogators, as well as that of a host of retired servicemen, ranging from NCOs to four star generals, over that of some dude on the internet or some asinine right wing pundit.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
GDollars37 wrote:
… like we did against the USSR (whose agents and soldiers we never felt the need to torture). …
You really are naive. Some of the shit we did in Viet Nam was 100 times worse.
[/quote]
Sure. But there is a world of difference between wartime atrocities and the condoning and legalization of a tactic that led to war crimes trials for Japanese interrogators and court-martials for Americans who did it. I hope you can grasp that.
[quote]Gkhan wrote:
3 questions about this: [/quote]
You seem to confuse cause with catalyst.