makkun, we are better than them. We don’t need to artificially shackle our efforts to prove it.
[quote]vroom wrote:
It is not mystifying, it is blatantly obvious dirty politics. Why so many cannot see through the charade is what mystifies me.
If only you could see how applicable your own statements are to you…
Bad bye.[/quote]
Where have I ever played politics by deception such as the Democrats?
I lay out the facts as best I can to support my reasoning.
You claim the US policy is to torture people “willy nilly” and assrape them.
Zap,
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
makkun, we are better than them. We don’t need to artificially shackle our efforts to prove it.[/quote]
We have to prove it every day - that’s what makes “us” different and better.
Makkun
[quote]makkun wrote:
…Any move from this position is, even the slightest hesitation, invites rightful criticism. Everything else - nifty legal definitions of practices which just fly under the torture radar included - is bullshitting yourself out of a moral morast.
…
Mine is a moral/ethical argument, not a legal one. “We” are supposed to be better than “them” - by faffing about on technicalities “we” reveal the ethically thin ground “we” are standing on.
Makkun[/quote]
Makkun,
Allow me to focus on this one small point, and to use the ultimate hypothetical, which was somewhat borrowed from the show “24”:
The hypo:
You have a terrorist in your custody. You know with certainty that this terrorist has information that will allow you to prevent a nuclear device’s explosion in a major city. This terrorist refuses to divulge the information.
Would you still be against using torture in that instance?
If the answer is yes, then you indeed hold an absolute moral position against torture. If not, we’re arguing about where to draw the permissability line, not about whether it’s ever permissible.
Personally, given high enough stakes, I think it should be allowable (which is not to say I think it should be commonplace, or even relatively rare – it should be something that could be used in the most dire of circumstances).
[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
Honestly, this has relevance to the topic at hand in only the broadest sense. Can you please go spew your conspiracy theories and apparent anti-Semitism on your own threads?[/quote]
Just pointing out that the only reason we’re even having a discussion about torture at all is because of 9/11. Isn’t that the point? If we don’t allow torture we’ll have another 9/11.
Directly because of 9/11 we have to talk about:
Torture, the Patriot Act, War in Iraq, Right to Trial (habeas corpus), Secret CIA prisons, Martial Law, Halliburton, expanded surveillance, the Farmer’s Almanac, birdwatchers, ect, ect, ect…
Torture on the Hill
http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20051031&s=editors
Right to Trial Imperiled by Senate Vote
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051128/brecher
The FBI’s Secret Scrutiny
In hunt for terrorists, bureau examines records of ordinary Americans.
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110605A.shtml
Homeland security: Profiting from fear
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-5416893.html
Police Need Not Say Why Arrest Made: U.S. High Court Overview
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aervulEx104o&refer=us
Patriot Act bill would expand death penalty
WASHINGTON - The House bill that would reauthorize the USA Patriot Act anti-terrorism law includes several little-noticed provisions that would dramatically transform the federal death penalty system, allowing smaller juries to decide on executions and giving prosecutors the ability to try again if a jury deadlocks on sentencing.
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/news/nation/13000365.htm
FBI urges police to watch for people carrying almanacs
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2003/12/29/national1426EST0580.DTL
US imposes controls on a new security threat - birdwatchers
Questioning the circumstances surrounding 9/11 is WELL BEYOND conspiracy theory. A president who opposes an investigation into the worst act of terrorism ever and reluctantly funds it with a measley $3 million dollars - then won’t testify under oath or ON RECORD - has something to HIDE.
Amid Crisis Simulation, ‘We Were Suddenly No-Kidding Under Attack’
Sept. 11 was Day II of “Vigilant Guardian,” an exercise that would pose an imaginary crisis to North American Air Defense outposts nationwide.
At 8:40, Deskins noticed senior technician Jeremy Powell waving his hand. Boston Center was on the line, he said. It had a hijacked airplane.
“It must be part of the exercise,” Deskins thought.
http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/story1a012802.html
Profiting From Disaster?
(CBS) Sources tell CBS News that the afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market.
Sources say they have never seen that kind of imbalance before…
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/09/19/eveningnews/main311834.shtml
Bush Opposes 9/11 Query Panel
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/05/15/attack/main509096.shtml
9-11 Commission Funding Woes
The panel has until the end of May 2004 to complete its work, but it will spend the $3 million it was originally allotted by around August 2003 - if it doesn’t get the supplement.
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,437267,00.html
Independent probes of Clinton Administration cost nearly $80 million
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/04/01/counsel.probe.costs/
Could the Bin Laden video be a fake?
Bin Laden says he wasn’t behind attacks
DOHA, Qatar (CNN) – Islamic militant leader Osama bin Laden, the man the United States considers the prime suspect in last week’s terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, denied any role Sunday in the actions believed to have killed thousands.
http://tinyurl.com/bf3r8
War not realistic option before 9/11
It was only after the Sept. 11 attacks that public opinion here and abroad changed enough to make an invasion politically possible.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-03-23-war-analysis_x.htm
9/11 & Torture - Cause & Effect.
We haven’t found Bin Laden or WMD’s, Cheney’s energy task force had maps of Iraqi oil fields and a list of buyers, we’re paying record gas prices and the US is condoning torture. Only a conspiracy theorist could think something’s wrong here…[quote]
If the U.S. boosts defense spending in its quest to stop Osama bin Laden’s alleged terrorist activities, there may be one unexpected beneficiary: Mr. bin Laden’s family.
Among its far-flung business interests, the well-heeled Saudi Arabian clan – which says it is estranged from Osama – is an investor in a fund established by Carlyle Group, a well-connected Washington merchant bank specializing in buyouts of defense and aerospace companies.
Through this investment and its ties to Saudi royalty, the bin Laden family has become acquainted with some of the biggest names in the Republican Party.[/quote]
http://www.newhumanist.com/wsj.html
No one should ever again question how the people of Germany allowed Hitler into power…
For a guy who’s benefitted from 5 draft deferments and skated through multiple DUI convictions, Cheney sure does have some prunes to play the military hard guy.
[quote]LaJollaJoe wrote:
For a guy who’s benefitted from 5 draft deferments and skated through multiple DUI convictions, Cheney sure does have some prunes to play the military hard guy.[/quote]
No doubt. Remember his line on Vietnam? “I had other priorities.”
[quote]GDollars37 wrote:
No doubt. Remember his line on Vietnam? “I had other priorities.”[/quote]
He really said that? I can’t believe he didn’t get hung out to dry for that.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
makkun wrote:
Makkun,
Allow me to focus on this one small point, and to use the ultimate hypothetical, which was somewhat borrowed from the show “24”:
The hypo:
You have a terrorist in your custody. You know with certainty that this terrorist has information that will allow you to prevent a nuclear device’s explosion in a major city. This terrorist refuses to divulge the information.
Would you still be against using torture in that instance?
[/quote]
-Ah, the 'ol ticking time bomb scenario.
-Suppose this was a fair and reasonable argument, as many on this forum propose, to justify a torture policy. If, indeed, we had a terrorist in possession who we know had such knowledge, it would be irresponsible not to use whatever means needed to extract the information.
-However, suppose we torture the shit out of him and he gives us bad info, allowing the attack to happen anyway. Would " we did what we could" be a sufficient line of defense for the american people? Unlikely. The intelligence community freely admits that tortured suspects are a poor source of accurate information.
Suspects will frequently give misleading info to both stop the pain and throw off their enemy. It’s win-win for them, lose-lose for us. We didn’t stop the attack and we lowered our moral standards enough to justify torture.
-Torture should never be allowed as part of policy. If a unit commander feels the stakes are high enough and decides to torture, he/she should be held accountable. If it stops an attack, it’s unlikely any punishment would come down. He/she should not however, be allowed to hide behind a paragraph in a field manual if they torture or kill somebody for no reason. The circumstances dire enough to warrant torturing shouldn’t even be addressed as part of national policy, it gives an excuse to the wicked.
-How many actual terror attacks have we been able to stop based on information extracted from our prisoners? Take this number and divide it by the number of prisoners we’ve subjected to, if not torture, inhumane treatment. What’s our success percentage so far?
[quote]thabigdon24 wrote:
WMD wrote:
The problem I have is that alot of stories are coming from people who’ve been detained, tortured and finally released when it was figured out they had nothing to do with terrorist activities. They report anal rape, beatings with electrical cords, having their bones drilled with electric drills; waterboarding sounds like the least of their worries. This is well beyond a bit of goosing. Some of these folks got all expense paid trips to such garden spots as Uzbekistan, Syria and Egypt, where they have perfected techniques such as these. This is being done to people who are innocent, not guilty. And people are like “Oh well, it’s okay because it’s just the governments way of keeping us safe.”
NOT.
We have set foot on the path of the Nazis and commies and every other brutal government by doing this at all. There is no way to soft peddle this, no way to justify it in my eyes. I don’t want to descend to the level of barbarians because I am afraid. I do not want my country to go there. Like I asked earlier, what makes you think you are immune? Everyone thinks they are not affected, as long as it happens to some other guy. Then comes the day when for whatever reason YOU are the one on the waterboard or it’s your ass being reamed, because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or you just look wrong. And because of the currentadmin, you don’t have any recourse.
Would you really want to just be alive rather than free? We keep hearing about how this is all for our freedom and way of life. But you would willingly be part of a society that denies freedom, justice and basic human rights to certain vaguely defined groups of people? Where does it stop?
What we can do to keep ourselves safest? Become a closed society. Become xenophobic. Enact draconian laws. Kill anyone that looks cross-eyed at us. Build huge wall around the country to keep undesirables out. An open democratic society is inherently vulnerable. There is no way to make ourselves completely safe except to close ourselves off from the world.
And what makes you think we will always have voting powers? Martial law can shoot that in the ass. The major problem with this whole situation is lack of accountability. No one is going to hold GeeDubs feet to the fire about this or congress’s. The people being detained have no legal rights or recourse; the American public, by and large, seems to have been convinced this is best for the country. So no one is making the government be responsible or liable for any abuses of the power or the deaths that have occured. It all kept behind closed doors, and further obscured with smoke and mirrors.
YOu are right when you say that many things will change when another major event takes place on American soil. The terrorists will win. Because we will surrender to the fear and give up more liberties in the name of a false sense of security. We will surrender more and more of what made us the most amazing country, what made us the proudest, most obnoxious people on the planet. What made me proud to serve my country.
And that really sucks.
WMD
Again, we see things differently, i dont see it getting out of hand. This is oneor two centers that bush doesnt want the world to know about. He doesn’t have a master plan to hurt people , as much as i dislike the guy. And yes i would be willing to be part of a society that treats inhuman people like dogs. Im not a cruel guy, im pretty soft-spoken and not prone to violence but those tendencies end when i see people being intimidated, shoved or anything of the sort. I am drawing a similar analogy w/ our foreign policy - that is for us to stay out of trouble but when it finds us to agressively go after it.
We have in a sense started on this path granted, the Germans started up their nazism after the versailles treaty basically punished them for WW1 , not that it wasnt their fault but their economy was in ruin. If you look at America’s situation, we see terrorism all around us, and yes we can have harsher laws in some instances but I beleive that this would be a curb to future terrorism and also I dont see it getting out of hand. Why? Our position as the world’s leader would be kaput. If we indiscriminatly did the things you are speaking of we would have no credibility, instead selective and mild procedures are used on a fraction of the terrorists.
Ok , do you have any reliable sources to back these admittedly horrific stories up? I would think that would be going overboard but im skeptical until i can get a reliable source.
What i think ( and this is just my humble opinion) we should do is get out of iraq, and try to find some way that we can get out of the palestenian/israeli conflict perhaps encouraging a vast migration of israeli’s over to the U.S. Not everybody agrees w/ this but hey thats the nature of politics.
I am not a guy that is into conspiracy theories, i usually beleive in the most boring , what is the most likely thing to happen. I see America as being a center of freedom for a long long time. That is until we are conqured and even Rome was you have to realize OR natural resources like coal oil water are depleted and we become another africa.
Im not going to entertain this slippery slope stuff b/c this conjecturing on where a few interrogation centers that treat these jerks like they deserve is leading us onto a similar path as nazism or totolitarianism is a very big logical leap.
WMD : to me this isn’t about flowery ideal, we aren’t about go the route of the nazis. I think your living in world filled with magic and miracles and little blue hummingbirds that drop satin robes on your shoulders in a little forest as you might kneel down to feed vegetable shavings to cute little rabbits with big blue eyes and quivering little noses. Ok , this about staying alive and well to me.
BTW: why would the bush administration even set these places up for interrogation if they didnt think that they would be useful? [/quote]
I managed not to condescend to you, I’d appreciate it if you’d do the same for me. If we are going to get on the subject of logical leaps, how is that I went to war, fired upon people in combat, saw how ugly and nasty war truly is but you say I live in a magic forest full of blue-eyed bunnies? I’d be real freakin’ impressed if any of the people who support this vileness were to actually put themselves on the line.
Rome was never, in fact, conquered. You might want to read something more recent than Edward Gibbon (17th cent).
I think it is delusional to think we could never go the way of the Nazis. We already are.
Torturing at all makes us just like the Nazis, al-Quaeda and any of the other groups we vilify. Justify it any way you want. It does not change the fact that it is wrong.
And given the ineptitude and venality demonstrated by this administration, I think the reason they set up torture centers is self-evident.
Please do a bit of reading on the gradual move towards National Socialism in Germany prior to the outbreak of WWII. You might see some similarity.
What concerns me most is folks like you. The apathy is really scary. I fear that the admin could do anything and you’d just go along with it if you thought it gave you some specious sense of security.
WMD
That’s an impossible question for me to answer on several levels. Firstly, how would people like us know about terrorist attacks that hadn’t occurred? Especially if we start accounting for Iraq and Afghanistan?
Second, it’s an established fact that al Queda instructs people to claim torture irrespective of how they’re treated, so without something more to go on than people’s general claims of mistreatment (especially at Guantanamo, in which case such claims were almost certainly false). As to the number of people who have actually been subjected to authorized interrogations with methods that fall short of the definition of torture, such as waterboarding, I don’t know how many people have been subjected to those either – do you?
So, we don’t know how many terrorist attacks have been stopped, and we don’t know how many people have been subjected to authorized coercive interrogation techniques on the level of waterboarding – how can I answer your question?
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
Big Dave56 wrote:
…What do you support Zap, freedom or cheap oil?
Are the terrorists now bringing freedom?
Shouldn’t these Islamic radicals be resisted with all means? Why disarm our intelligence gathering apparatus of one of the few tools that works in this war?[/quote]
Torture does not work, you are poorly informed. You won’t even take the word of former intel officers, senators who lived through torture, the intel community itself… the list goes on forever, torture doesn’t work.
And just because you won’t support our troops in Iraq by giving them a noble cause, doesn’t mean the conrtrary is true, that the insurgents have a noble cause of freedom.
Sidenote; you mention Islamic radicals, just how big was the threat of Iraqi Islamic radical in 2003 before we invaded? How do you think Iraq’s neighbors view the threat from Islamic radical suicide bombers now? They must be so thankful our torture policy is working so well.
[quote]WMD wrote:
…
I think it is delusional to think we could never go the way of the Nazis. We already are.
…[/quote]
This is clearly irrational. When you make statements like this you ruin your credibility.
[quote]Big Dave56 wrote:
…
Torture does not work, you are poorly informed. You won’t even take the word of former intel officers, senators who lived through torture, the intel community itself… the list goes on forever, torture doesn’t work.
…[/quote]
You are wrong. Torture works on some, not on all. There is a law of diminishing returns with torture. The more it is used on an individual the less you get. It is the fear more than the actual pain that gets people to talk.
This has been well documented from the English to the Inquisition to the Nazis.
Even some of our highly trained airmen in Vietnam cracked under torture and did as they were asked. Many also resisted.
Stop getting your information from politically motivated sources and read some books.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
WMD wrote:
…
I think it is delusional to think we could never go the way of the Nazis. We already are.
…
This is clearly irrational. When you make statements like this you ruin your credibility.[/quote]
Explain how it is irrational.
We commit torture. We imprison people without offering any recourse. We went to war against a country that had no way of fighting back (kind of like Poland in WWII). Plenty of people in the US are happy to trust whatever the government tells them, without question as long as the trains run on time…er…it makes them feel safe from terrorists. Doesn’t sound very freedom loving to me. Just sounds like a bunch of frightened people looking for someone to tell them it’s okay. Just like pre-war Nazi Germany.
[quote]WMD wrote:
Zap Branigan wrote:
WMD wrote:
…
I think it is delusional to think we could never go the way of the Nazis. We already are.
…
This is clearly irrational. When you make statements like this you ruin your credibility.
Explain how it is irrational.
…[/quote]
Do a little thinking and soul searching on this subject. If you still think your irrational statement is valid, then you are likely irrational too.
I will not waste my time explaining to you how we are not Nazis.
Jesus Christ, the Nazis murdered 10 million people in concentration camps.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Let’s clarify something for a moment. Torture produces inaccurate information in that it elicits false confessions from people who will tell their tormentors what they think they want to hear in order to get them to stop. However, that would be a much smaller worry in the above hypo. If you had a discreet piece of information that you knew the person possessed (and likely a lot more background intelligence on the subject against which to cross-check information), it would be much harder for the terrorist to feed you bad information. And you wouldn’t be worried about an innocent person giving false corroboration just to make it stop.[/quote]
-No, but I would be worried that we were torturing innocent people because we knew an incident was pending, in the name of doing all we could.
-Second, false confessions come from the guilty as well. Why would a terrorist who, in many cases would give up his life for the cause, readily admit were this hypothetical bomb was? I think the risk of a wild goose chase is very high in this scenario.
[quote]
In this case, we disagree, in that I think it should not be completely disallowed, and I would be inclined to allow the top decisionmaker in a particular field command to authorize it in certain, limited circumstances, with fact-finding to be held after the fact to ensure it was not misused.[/quote]
We do agree with the after-the-fact investigation part. I think it should be totally disallowed from a policy standpoint, but if a field commander knows that an attack is immenent he should do what he needs to in order to stop it. He should also be prepared to put his career and liberty on the line if he’s wrong.
-I don’t know how many captives we’ve tortured. You’re correct in that, but judging by the information that’s out there, I would guess that it’s more than a handful. Regarding stopped attacks, I feel confident that the current administration, considering the present situation, would be trumpeting each of these successes as evidence that the war is working. Since we haven’t heard any…
[quote]AZMojo wrote:
…
-I don’t know how many captives we’ve tortured. You’re correct in that, but judging by the information that’s out there, I would guess that it’s more than a handful. Regarding stopped attacks, I feel confident that the current administration, considering the present situation, would be trumpeting each of these successes as evidence that the war is working. Since we haven’t heard any…
[/quote]
Bad argument. Torture is illegal. The administration has stated repeatetly that we are not torturing.
Abuse of prisoners has been prosecuted.
We recently rescued some abused and tortured prisoners from the Iraqis.
If torture is happening the administration will not admit it, even if it is wildly succesful.
Every time we kill or capture terrorists (which is every day) we are stopping future attacks.
[quote]Bad argument. Torture is illegal. The administration has stated repeatetly that we are not torturing.
Abuse of prisoners has been prosecuted.
We recently rescued some abused and tortured prisoners from the Iraqis.
If torture is happening the administration will not admit it, even if it is wildly succesful.
Every time we kill or capture terrorists (which is every day) we are stopping future attacks.[/quote]
Do you get your talking points straight from the White House every morning?
I like how you too are willing to say two different things out of both sides of your mouth. Torture is illegal, we don’t do it, but it works and is saving lives.
There are costs involved in torturing people. Some are related to foreign affairs and hence will fall on deaf ears anyhow. Others are related to more touchy feely things in-country, and so will also fall on deaf ears.
Ignore it all you like. It’s going to bite you in the ass for decades… and it sure as hell won’t be my fault since I’ve been trying to cry foul since day one of this issue.
Bad bye.
[quote]vroom wrote:
Bad argument. Torture is illegal. The administration has stated repeatetly that we are not torturing.
Abuse of prisoners has been prosecuted.
We recently rescued some abused and tortured prisoners from the Iraqis.
If torture is happening the administration will not admit it, even if it is wildly succesful.
Every time we kill or capture terrorists (which is every day) we are stopping future attacks.
Do you get your talking points straight from the White House every morning?
I like how you too are willing to say two different things out of both sides of your mouth. Torture is illegal, we don’t do it, but it works and is saving lives.
There are costs involved in torturing people. Some are related to foreign affairs and hence will fall on deaf ears anyhow. Others are related to more touchy feely things in-country, and so will also fall on deaf ears.
Ignore it all you like. It’s going to bite you in the ass for decades… and it sure as hell won’t be my fault since I’ve been trying to cry foul since day one of this issue.
Bad bye.[/quote]
You are dense. I will not get into a pissing match with you.