[quote]lixy wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
WTF are you talking about?
Why did you write “foreign battlefield”? How about an American fighting alongside a country that invades the US?[/quote]
This is vague. You mean like the punk from California who hangs with Al-Qaeda? Yeah, water board him too.
[quote]rainjack wrote:
This is silly.
There are three inalienable rights - Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. [/quote]
Why? Because Jefferson said so? You are aware that it was initially “life, liberty, and property” right? So why is it that our inalienable rights are the ones Jefferson puts to paper while the Bill of Rights are granted to us by the Gov’t? Why then also do the words go “endowed with certain inalienable right AND THAT AMONG THESE are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”? That means that there are more than those three.[quote]
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. [/quote]
Perhaps, but that is a rather tall order for a Diest to accept now isn’t it? Besides, for a Christian like me who thinks that the bible is a history book written by man, rather than the word of God, it is easy to see why the Bible doesn’t have any rights enumerated to it.[quote]
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. [/quote]
He said that in 1775, several months before Lexington and Concord. Talk of Independence was still quite rare. In March of that year Patrick Henry was shouted down with cries of “Treason” in the VA House of Burgesses for speaking about meeting British troops with arms if they came for their guns. Yet in the same meeting, Henry also insists that he is an Englishman. [quote]
Now you want to exptrapolate that out to afford our enemy constitutional protection? [/quote]
I was thinking about this last night and I’m not sure that torture IS unconstitutional. The 8th amendment refers to cruel and unusual PUNISHMENT. Torture for info is not the same as torture for punishment. Either way, I am not anti-torture on Constitutional ground; rather I’m against it as it is a violation of human rights. [quote]
Was the Confederacy extended that consideration? Hell no - and that was brother against brother. [/quote]
No shit, and Lincoln was a tyrant. Do you actually support Sherman’s tactics? Do you really support Lincoln’s tactics? Look what we are left with. Our republic is hardly intact. The South would have come back into the fold before the close of the 19th century. The South still teaches “The War of Northern Agression”. Lincoln paved the way for Wilson and FDR. And yet we kiss the feet of our master. [quote]
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.
[/quote]
Which Constitutional protections are you so afraid of? According to natural law, with due process you can strip ANY right.
mike
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
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.
If you compare waterboarding to Japanese wartime atrocities you are seriously misguided.[/quote]
I’m going to assume you weren’t being deliberately obtuse. I am not comparing waterboarding to the rape of Nanking or the Bataan Death March. I am saying that Japanese interrogators were put on trial for waterboarding captives, and American soldiers were court-martialed for it. Once upon a time.
[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]
Are you really this dumb? Opposing use of torture makes you “pro-terrorist”? No wonder you’re a diehard Bush guy, it’s good to see what the few remaining ones look like.
You don’t think the information war has anything to do with the war on terrorism? You don’t think Muslim perceptions of the U.S. matter? Do you ever read anything more intelligent than U.S. Today?
You realize information operations are perceived as vital by most if not all of our military leaders fighting the insurgency. Dr. David Kilcullen, one of the architects of American strategy in Iraq (BBC NEWS | Programmes | Analysis | David Kilcullen)
"On a wider level, he says that the West is losing in the wider conflict with militant jihadists - especially when it comes to the war of information.
He says he learned from watching the Taliban that their military operations function primarily as opportunities for propaganda, and that the West has been failing to respond to this strategy."
USMC Lieutenant-General Jim Mattis has spoken at length about “winning the narrative”, you could Google him if you cared about more than moronic partisan point-scoring.
Or just look at Vietnam, though it doesn’t sound like history’s your thing. The U.S. won all the battles and lost the war. Ever heard of the Tet Offensive?
[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
Are you really this dumb? Opposing use of torture makes you “pro-terrorist”? No wonder you’re a diehard Bush guy, it’s good to see what the few remaining ones look like.[/quote]
I was just playing on your own stupidity. Sorry for going so far over your head. I’ll know to aim lower next time.
If it makes you feel good to put me in a box - go ahead. At this point - truth evidently means nothing compared to the brilliance that flows from your own keyboard.
[quote]rainjack wrote:
GDollars37 wrote:
Are you really this dumb? Opposing use of torture makes you “pro-terrorist”? No wonder you’re a diehard Bush guy, it’s good to see what the few remaining ones look like.
I was just playing on your own stupidity. Sorry for going so far over your head. I’ll know to aim lower next time.
[/quote]
Sure you were. It sounded a little too similar to your usual unhinged rhetoric.
Colonel Stuart Herrington: Two problems with torture
"Persuasive? I’d always thought so, and it certainly worked for us in contingency after contingency in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. But when I explained these immutable principles to an auditorium of young Army interrogators last year, one reaction puzzled me. “Sir,” a young soldier queried, “that ‘tender-loving-care approach’ sounds all well and good, but it takes time. What do we do when the chain of command sends out a requirement and says they need the information by the end of the day, and that thousands of lives may depend upon it?”
The very question tells us that intelligence professionals have failed to educate their commanders that detainee interrogation is not like a water spigot. “Give the inquisitors the freedom to push the envelope of brutality and good information will follow” seems to have become the watchword since 9-11.
It also tells us that our young soldiers take away lessons from today’s pop culture. Self-styled “experts” on interrogation frequently cite the “ticking bomb scenario” (featured on shows like “24”) to justify the Jack Bauer-like tormenting of a prisoner. According to this construct, it is necessary and acceptable to torture in the name of saving an American city from “the next 9-11.” This has a magnetic appeal to legions of Americans, among them future soldiers.
But the so-called ticking time bomb scenario is a Hollywood construct that I never encountered in my 30-year career."
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07294/826876-35.stm#
But according to Zap Branigan, he’s obviously just trying to ease his guilty conscience.
[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
Colonel Stuart Herrington: Two problems with torture
"Persuasive? I’d always thought so, and it certainly worked for us in contingency after contingency in Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. But when I explained these immutable principles to an auditorium of young Army interrogators last year, one reaction puzzled me. “Sir,” a young soldier queried, “that ‘tender-loving-care approach’ sounds all well and good, but it takes time. What do we do when the chain of command sends out a requirement and says they need the information by the end of the day, and that thousands of lives may depend upon it?”
The very question tells us that intelligence professionals have failed to educate their commanders that detainee interrogation is not like a water spigot. “Give the inquisitors the freedom to push the envelope of brutality and good information will follow” seems to have become the watchword since 9-11.
It also tells us that our young soldiers take away lessons from today’s pop culture. Self-styled “experts” on interrogation frequently cite the “ticking bomb scenario” (featured on shows like “24”) to justify the Jack Bauer-like tormenting of a prisoner. According to this construct, it is necessary and acceptable to torture in the name of saving an American city from “the next 9-11.” This has a magnetic appeal to legions of Americans, among them future soldiers.
But the so-called ticking time bomb scenario is a Hollywood construct that I never encountered in my 30-year career."
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07294/826876-35.stm#
But according to Zap Branigan, he’s obviously just trying to ease his guilty conscience.[/quote]
This is laughable. He obviously means that waterboarding should not be the first thing attempted and other tactics should be used at first. Dealing with fanatics like some in AQ that will NEVER cooperate waterboarding should be an acceptable technique.
The ticking timebomb scenario is ridiculous. AQ is a ticking time bomb. If we do not break up their cells they WILL murder people. It may not be today. They may wait a year but they will do it.
There has been ZERO evidence presented that waterboarding does not work and yet there are many people claiming it does not. You have no possible way to know this and yet you are speaking as an authority. Sad yet funny.