torture

[DOGS THAT BARK]

While I don't always agree with him--I have always liked him and considered him a straight shooter--he tells it like it sees it with little political bias.

Harsh Methods of Torture Not Always Necessary for Interrogating Terrorists
By Col. David Hunt

We have the latest bombshell, or turd in the punch bowl, depending on your point of view: the intelligence community has destroyed tapes of our guys using ?harsh? questioning techniques on terrorists.

OK, now listen: CAN WE FIRST STOP TAPING our guys doing things? Do we not get that if you tape it CHANCES ARE IT WILL APPEAR ON TELEVISION AND THE INTERNET?

How stupid can we be? I will answer that. VERY.

However, the debate should not be about the destruction of the tapes; clearly, that is massively stupid and wrong. The debate we should be having is whether, as a nation, use should even be using torture methods. And, let me say this upfront: Waterboarding is 100 percent torture.

What happened is that the intelligence community ? and by community, I mean the damn horde, a huge city of 22 separate, competing, overlapping, not doing their jobs, intelligence agencies ? panicked over the revelations of Abu Grahib.

'Factor' in Iraq So, one of the 22 national intelligence agencies ? in this case, the CIA ? decided to destroy all evidence of the way they successfully interrogated two very bad men. I say successfully because we are told that the terrorists that were ?tortured? gave up information that saved lives.

I think the question this week and for many weeks to come is: should we, as a nation, use torture for any reason? Niccol? Machiavelli wrote something I really wish I had, but it fits this argument: ?Good men bent on doing good must learn how to be bad.?

Torture is abhorrent. It is dehumanizing to all involved. The very idea of torture is to cause so much pain that the person you are torturing thinks they are going to die.

Torture does not work all the time, and, when it does, you really have to verify what you learn, since most will say anything to stop the pain. Oh, and yes, sometimes those being tortured do tell the truth.

So what are we going to do? Some argue that if we torture, we are no better than the terrorist. I would argue that sometimes we should not be. Sometimes we have to crawl into the cave to kill the bad guy. Remember, ?good men bent on doing good must learn how to be bad.?

However, our government must protect those who are protecting us. We should not be destroying tapes. We should be in the business of protecting our soldiers and intelligence personal that are on the frontlines, making critical decisions ? the hard ugly decisions most of us do not want to make. Those who do these things for us are not paid a hell of a lot. They are not rewarded often and they spend years away from their families and the country they protect. Those who do the noble but ugly business of going to war cannot be left hanging in some legal limbo.

So, our government must have the discussion and decide whether this country will use torture or not. I hope we use this terrible tool only as a last resort. I hope we have the guts to back our people up and to carry this fight to the enemy. However, we must decide so that our own government stops burning tapes. We are for sure better than that.

We are in war with murderers, protected by countries who are burdened with our ethics and beliefs. We have to decide how we really want to fight them. To date, we have not, and we all have witnessed, and our soldiers have experienced first hand, the result of what happens when you fight with one hand tied behind our back. We, as a nation, have to wake up and fight. We have to decide what kind of a nation we are going to be ? and, whether it?s really worth fighting for.

 

[WhatsHisNuts]

I really don't understand the fuss about torture when used to collect information that will prevent future losses. I found an old post of mine that expresses pretty much the same ideal.

The question of whether or not (torture)is ethical is comical when you really break it down. Protecting the rights of an individual should not be more important than that of the rights of many....such as the right to life. If you knew that the torture of this particular criminal offered a 25% opportunity to protect the future/lives of 10 people, would you proceed? I would.

I believe torture is only justified in situations where human life can be saved or prevented from being taken.

 

[Roger Baltrey]

I really don't understand the fuss about torture when used to collect information that will prevent future losses. I found an old post of mine that expresses pretty much the same ideal.



I believe torture is only justified in situations where human life can be saved or prevented from being taken.

G,

Who do you trust to make that decision? What if you were wrongly accused by a law enforcement official who didn't like you to begin with. Our highest officials now seem to have made grievous errors on the nuclear capability of 2 countries that purportedly were a threat to us. Meanwhile, our best friend in the Middle East provided 85% of the hijackers on 9/11. If you knew that someone was about to kill someone of course you could make that decision but the question is How do you know.

 

[DOGS THAT BARK]

agree Gary--and fineline on whether waterboarding which causes very short term discomfort butno bodily injury is truely torture--
Would imagine many would opt for it over the chopping block.

--and Roger as per your arguement--lets put it in very simple terms--

I'll write the family of any innocent person that may be subject to discomfort of waterboarding and apologize

---and you do the same to the families of those that die as result of our not getting info because we didn't use coerced interrogation

--fair enough?

 

[roc612]

DTB,
McCain was in that situation in a prison camp in Vietnam= Read below what he think's-

Ironic how one when feels about an issue when they are forced to brutally experience it from the other side wouldnt you say?
--------------------------------------------

Our enemies didn't adhere to the Geneva Convention. Many of my comrades were
subjected
to very cruel, very inhumane and degrading treatment, a few of them even unto
death.
But every one of us -- every single one of us -- knew and took great strength
from
the belief that we were different from our enemies, that we were better than
them,
that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing
or countenancing such mistreatment of them: - John McCain, Republican US Senator

=
... the United States, for generations, has sustained two parallel but opposed
states
of mind about military atrocities and human rights: one of U.S. benevolence,
generally
held by the public, and the other of ends-justify-the-means brutality sponsored
by counterinsurgency specialists. Normally the specialists carry out their
actions
in remote locations with little notice in the national press. That allows the
public
to sustain its faith in a just America, while hard-nosed security and economic
interests
are still protected in secret: - Robert Parry, investigative reporter and author

=
The debate here isn't only how to protect the country. It's how to protect our
values.

If cruelty is no longer declared unlawful, but instead is applied as a matter of
policy, it alters the fundamental relationship of man to government. It
destroys
the whole notion of individual rights. The Constitution recognizes that man has
an inherent right, not bestowed by the state or laws, to personal dignity,
including
the right to be free of cruelty. It applies to all human beings, not just in
America
-- even those designated as 'unlawful enemy combatants.' If you make this
exception
the whole Constitution crumbles: - Alberto J. Mora, former Navy General Counsel
[Feb. 27, 2006 issue of The New Yorker, entitled "The Memo"]


=== The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons: -
- Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881), Russian novelist

 

[gardenweasel]

i`m just thankful to mccain...because he assures us that by not waterboarding monsters like sheik khalid muhammed(which admittedly thwarted terrorist plots and saved american lives),our boys will be treated fairly by al qaeda and other radical islamists(translation:they`ll use "sharp" swords to chop our boys` heads off).... .....

my hope is that in time...when they grow out of puberty,some of our forum libs will graduate from the theoretical world to the real world....

 

[roc612]

GW,
McCain survived 6 years under the worst of conditions togive alot thought to and come to the conclusions he has on the subject of torture and the merits of such. Since you ,nor I have walked a mile in those kind of shoes I think we can say he is a more than just a credible person to offer an opinion.
He may be ONE of the most credible person's in Washington on this subject. His opinion's on TORTURE arent THEORY!
Last time I looked McCain was a Republican, Vietnam war veteran (who has never been slandered for his service ) and a POW for 6plus YRS.
Even when its someone highly credible on the conservative side who disagrees with some of the misguided foreign policy's being utilized by this administration- it still really upsets other conservatives to the degree that you bury your heads in the sand. Just wondering- Why is that?