Waterboarding is Torture...Period

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
121

[quote]GDollars37 wrote:

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]

This seems a tired argument and we should drop it. For every military man I bring forth to say it works, you can bring forth another that says it doesn’t. I think out of respect for the men themselves we should stop using them as tools to push our personal beliefs. Both the pro and anti torture guys are dropping names of those military folk that support them and ignoring those that don’t.

mike

122

[quote]100meters wrote:

And obviously policy gives more resolve than Jane Fonda. (In the real world, anyway)
[/quote]

Prove it.

123

[quote]lixy wrote:
CrewPierce wrote:
Every government around the world tortures people period.

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]

lol fair enough but no one hates them! Even if they do piss someone off all they have to do is parade around their hot women! Our country is too fat too pull that off :frowning:

124

[quote]rainjack wrote:
100meters wrote:

And obviously policy gives more resolve than Jane Fonda. (In the real world, anyway)

Prove it.

[/quote]

Any OBL speech…zero mentions of jane fonda…all about U.S. policy.
Any website, forum, media outlet for al qaeda, iraq insurgents (anbar council etc…) All decry policy, still zero mentions of jane fonda.

Just laughable idiocy, and a great indicator of how little you actually know (or are trying to know)

125

[quote]100meters wrote:

Just laughable idiocy, and a great indicator of how little you actually know (or are trying to know)
[/quote]

Your idiocy is beyond laughable.

You provided nothing but your opinion. You do know the difference between fact and fidction, right? Look who I am asking - the guy that can provide nothing but talking points, and stupidity.

126

[quote]Mikeyali wrote:
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.

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]

Yes. All of AQ is a ticking time bomb. I don’t care how slowly the fuse is burning.

127

[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
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.

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]

If you compare waterboarding to Japanese wartime atrocities you are seriously misguided.

128

Questions for Zap and RJ,

Do you guys think that torturing an American citizen would be a violation of his/her rights? Does that violate protection from cruel and unusual punishment?

If so, would you be ok with violating those rights if it meant we might get good intel from torturing an American citizen?

Is protection from cruel and unusual punishment a right afforded only to American citizens by our Constitution, or is it a right granted to all people by “the Creator”?

129

[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
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.

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]

Oh, and I think your position is immoral and disgusting. I think it sells out your fellow citizens, and is therefore un-american. My position is that when conventional techniques fail, and this is a key player in planning/carrying out attacks on civilian targets, subject him to possibly 30-60 sec. of water-boarding. See, 30-60 sec. of an extremely shitty experience for some terrorist, does not outweigh hundreds/thousands of my countryman’s lives. Ever.

I didn’t tell these fuckers that deliberately attacking civilians was a legitimate form of combat. I didn’t tell them that breaking/dismemberming limbs, burning with a blowtorch, beatings with dog chains, and finally decapitation, were all proper in the treatment of prisoners. Yes, that’s right, I damn well admit it. I support the form of torture known as waterboarding. I support waterboarding a member of a Torture (the methods directly above) and Death Squad Cell for 30-60 seconds to capture and prevent the rest of his crew from DISMEMBERING and decapitating the dozens of prisoners they just rounded up. But hey, that terrorist’s extreme discomfort (but non-maiming) outweighs the dismemberment and execution of a dozen or so people…Um, which is immoral?

I"m not talking about some conventional soldier who attempts to avoid civilian casualties, or treats their prisoners within a reasonably humane manner. I"m talking about key members of an enemy which deliberately targets civilians and parades around the decapitated heads of it’s prisoners.

130

[quote]Moriarty wrote:
Questions for Zap and RJ,

Do you guys think that torturing an American citizen would be a violation of his/her rights? Does that violate protection from cruel and unusual punishment?

If so, would you be ok with violating those rights if it meant we might get good intel from torturing an American citizen?

Is protection from cruel and unusual punishment a right afforded only to American citizens by our Constitution, or is it a right granted to all people by “the Creator”?
[/quote]

American citizens should not be waterboarded unless they volunteer (Army training) or unless they are captured fighting against us on a foreign battlefield.

American citizens get a higher level of protection by our government than non-citizens.

131

[quote]Moriarty wrote:
Questions for Zap and RJ,

Do you guys think that torturing an American citizen would be a violation of his/her rights? Does that violate protection from cruel and unusual punishment?

If so, would you be ok with violating those rights if it meant we might get good intel from torturing an American citizen?

Is protection from cruel and unusual punishment a right afforded only to American citizens by our Constitution, or is it a right granted to all people by “the Creator”?
[/quote]

I don’t think that constitutional rights are guaranteed by our creator. They were voted on and ratified by Congress, and by 2/3 of the individual sates.

Americans are being tortured daily. They are being beheaded, drug through the streets, hung off bridges, among other things.

Do I like it? Hell no. But is it is a fact of war. Soldiers are trained on what to say when they are captured. Why? Because they know damn good and well if they are - they will most likely be tortured.

Should we do it to our own citizens? That has nothing to do with this discussion. It never has.

Do you think enemy POW’s should fall under the protection of the US constitution? If so - why?

132

[quote]Sloth wrote:

I"m not talking about some conventional soldier who attempts to avoid civilian casualties, or treats their prisoners within a reasonably humane manner. I"m talking about key members of an enemy which deliberately targets civilians and parades around the decapitated heads of it’s prisoners.[/quote]

What if we’re talking about a good conventional soldier, a colonel or general of an actual army who has information about an attack on an American military base with a really big conventional weapon?

Of course we’re playing “what if” but you have to hash these things out beforehand to figure if your ideological stance is sound. Do you subject this general to 30-60 seconds of waterboarding to prevent a major attack on a U.S. military base?

mike

133

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
American citizens should not be waterboarded unless they volunteer (Army training) or unless they are captured fighting against us on a foreign battlefield. [/quote]

Why did you specify foreign battlefield? What’s the logic here? Is some American citizen trying to defend other countries from US aggression (assuming the States attacks a country unprovoked - think Iraq) supposed to be worse than an American citizen joining some aggressor country to attack (and invade) the US mainland?

Doesn’t compute.

134

[quote]rainjack wrote:

I don’t think that constitutional rights are guaranteed by our creator. They were voted on and ratified by Congress, and by 2/3 of the individual sates. [/quote]

The Constitution merely enumerates rights that are granted to us by our Creator. Such is the reason of the 9th amendment.

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

The founders couldn’t necessarily think of all of the rights we have, so they decided to account for them here. If nothing else this is a case for natural law. Many key federalists opposed putting the Bill of Rights in for two reasons:

1-It was unnecessary. Our rights are given to us by God and not a Constitution; natural law would protect them. There was no threat of a republic taking those rights.

2-By making a Bill of Rights you are limiting the number of rights that are truly God-given. This of course resulted in the 9th amendment.

Madison and Jefferson corresponded on this topic at length while TJ was the American ambassador to France.

And if you don’t like that argument, there’s always Hamilton:

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of the divinity itself and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.
-Hamilton, “The farmer refuted”, 2/23/1775

[quote]

Americans are being tortured daily. They are being beheaded, drug through the streets, hung off bridges, among other things.

Do I like it? Hell no. But is it is a fact of war. Soldiers are trained on what to say when they are captured. Why? Because they know damn good and well if they are - they will most likely be tortured.

Should we do it to our own citizens? That has nothing to do with this discussion. It never has. [/quote]

But why shouldn’t it be done to our own citizens then? If the next Timothy McVeigh could be stopped with a minute of waterboarding why not support that? He is protected merely because of the country in which he crawled out of his mom’s vagina?

I concede that if you look at it on a legal standpoint you can make your argument. But the rights of man are universal sir! We hold these truths to be self evident that ALL men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights…The Bill of Rights merely wrote a great many of them down. Our rights are not given to us by a paper. They are given by God and retained only by our own blood and steel.

mike

135

[quote]Mikeyali wrote:
Sloth wrote:

I"m not talking about some conventional soldier who attempts to avoid civilian casualties, or treats their prisoners within a reasonably humane manner. I"m talking about key members of an enemy which deliberately targets civilians and parades around the decapitated heads of it’s prisoners.

What if we’re talking about a good conventional soldier, a colonel or general of an actual army who has information about an attack on an American military base with a really big conventional weapon?

Of course we’re playing “what if” but you have to hash these things out beforehand to figure if your ideological stance is sound. Do you subject this general to 30-60 seconds of waterboarding to prevent a major attack on a U.S. military base?

mike[/quote]

Nope. Would never support water-boarding for such a scenario. Would never support water-boarding even Osama Bin Laden himself, had he only targeted military assets, and treated prisoners with some modicum of human decency (i.e. not having their hands removed with a buzz saw). That’s not the case though.

There is a point where one must accept that combatants are just that, combatants. Not to be tried or punished simply for participating in combat against other combatants.

Here’s a hypothetical. Say we went to war with Canada. Why? Who cares. But each country reflects what we have today, respectively. Both sides probably wouldn’t even need to formally work out details regarding the treatment of prisoners, and reasonably attempting to limit avoid civilian casualties (i.e. no deliberate targeting of, nor placing military asset in, say, a hospital or school.) More than likely, it would be an unspoken understanding, later solidified by diplomats through some signed paper.

Unfortunately, that’s not the enemy we’re facing.

136

[quote]Mikeyali wrote:
rainjack wrote:

I don’t think that constitutional rights are guaranteed by our creator. They were voted on and ratified by Congress, and by 2/3 of the individual sates.

The Constitution merely enumerates rights that are granted to us by our Creator. Such is the reason of the 9th amendment.

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

The founders couldn’t necessarily think of all of the rights we have, so they decided to account for them here. If nothing else this is a case for natural law. Many key federalists opposed putting the Bill of Rights in for two reasons:

1-It was unnecessary. Our rights are given to us by God and not a Constitution; natural law would protect them. There was no threat of a republic taking those rights.

2-By making a Bill of Rights you are limiting the number of rights that are truly God-given. This of course resulted in the 9th amendment.

Madison and Jefferson corresponded on this topic at length while TJ was the American ambassador to France.

And if you don’t like that argument, there’s always Hamilton:

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of the divinity itself and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.
-Hamilton, “The farmer refuted”, 2/23/1775

Americans are being tortured daily. They are being beheaded, drug through the streets, hung off bridges, among other things.

Do I like it? Hell no. But is it is a fact of war. Soldiers are trained on what to say when they are captured. Why? Because they know damn good and well if they are - they will most likely be tortured.

Should we do it to our own citizens? That has nothing to do with this discussion. It never has.

But why shouldn’t it be done to our own citizens then? If the next Timothy McVeigh could be stopped with a minute of waterboarding why not support that? He is protected merely because of the country in which he crawled out of his mom’s vagina?

I concede that if you look at it on a legal standpoint you can make your argument. But the rights of man are universal sir! We hold these truths to be self evident that ALL men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights…The Bill of Rights merely wrote a great many of them down. Our rights are not given to us by a paper. They are given by God and retained only by our own blood and steel.

mike[/quote]

If I could borrow your argument and follow it to it’s conclusion. So, wouldn’t we be obligated to subpoena members of the enemy, have a police officer announce his presence at the door of the enemy stronghold and attempt to serve an arrest warrant? Aren’t these procedures meant to safeguard rights?

If so, and we must extend the full set of rights, to all men, we’d have to outlaw 99% of warfare. No unannounced bombing run. No sniper shots. Announce and allow for an opportunity to surrender after the subpoena has been shown. Needless to say, we’d lose every and all wars.

I make a distinction at foreign enemies of the United States who deviate brutally and drastically from certain standards of warfare, as standard policy.

137

[quote]lixy wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
American citizens should not be waterboarded unless they volunteer (Army training) or unless they are captured fighting against us on a foreign battlefield.

Why did you specify foreign battlefield? What’s the logic here? Is some American citizen trying to defend other countries from US aggression (assuming the States attacks a country unprovoked - think Iraq) supposed to be worse than an American citizen joining some aggressor country to attack (and invade) the US mainland?

Doesn’t compute.
[/quote]

WTF are you talking about?

138

[quote]lixy wrote:
Gkhan wrote:
3 questions about this:

You seem to confuse cause with catalyst.[/quote]

Regardless, it is one man’s theory and can be discounted.

139

[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
WTF are you talking about?[/quote]

Why did you write “foreign battlefield”? How about an American fighting alongside a country that invades the US?

140

[quote]Mikeyali wrote:
rainjack wrote:

I don’t think that constitutional rights are guaranteed by our creator. They were voted on and ratified by Congress, and by 2/3 of the individual sates.

The Constitution merely enumerates rights that are granted to us by our Creator. Such is the reason of the 9th amendment.

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”

The founders couldn’t necessarily think of all of the rights we have, so they decided to account for them here. If nothing else this is a case for natural law. Many key federalists opposed putting the Bill of Rights in for two reasons:

1-It was unnecessary. Our rights are given to us by God and not a Constitution; natural law would protect them. There was no threat of a republic taking those rights.

2-By making a Bill of Rights you are limiting the number of rights that are truly God-given. This of course resulted in the 9th amendment.

Madison and Jefferson corresponded on this topic at length while TJ was the American ambassador to France.

And if you don’t like that argument, there’s always Hamilton:

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of the divinity itself and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.
-Hamilton, “The farmer refuted”, 2/23/1775

Americans are being tortured daily. They are being beheaded, drug through the streets, hung off bridges, among other things.

Do I like it? Hell no. But is it is a fact of war. Soldiers are trained on what to say when they are captured. Why? Because they know damn good and well if they are - they will most likely be tortured.

Should we do it to our own citizens? That has nothing to do with this discussion. It never has.

But why shouldn’t it be done to our own citizens then? If the next Timothy McVeigh could be stopped with a minute of waterboarding why not support that? He is protected merely because of the country in which he crawled out of his mom’s vagina?

I concede that if you look at it on a legal standpoint you can make your argument. But the rights of man are universal sir! We hold these truths to be self evident that ALL men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights…The Bill of Rights merely wrote a great many of them down. Our rights are not given to us by a paper. They are given by God and retained only by our own blood and steel.

mike[/quote]

This is silly.

There are three inalienable rights - Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Those are God Given -if there is such a thing. I am pretty sure that if God truly cared - he would have enumerated our rights in the Bible - not the Constitution.

The context of Hamilton’s words were not that of the War on Terror, but rather that of a new country trying to express it’s strong belief in self-determination and freedom from tyranny.

Now you want to exptrapolate that out to afford our enemy constitutional protection?

Was the Confederacy extended that consideration? Hell no - and that was brother against brother.

I don’t think we extend constitutional protection to those that want to see our constitution replaced with their version of the Koran - or however you spell the book of murder.