Our Gulag

Off Topic Politics and World Issues
21

[quote]rainjack wrote:
pookie wrote:
doogie wrote:

Cutting off pieces of you is torture.
Drilling holes in you is torture.

If you can practice it and walk away unscathed, it isn’t torture. It’s stress.

You’re confusing torture with mutilation. You can torture someone just fine without cutting pieces off or drilling holes in them.

You could torture someone for years and then let him go “unscathed.” At least physically.

If us depriving a terrorist of his beauty sleep will help us stop a car bombing - I am all for it.

If pouring pig fat on them and having a dog shit in their cell will yield valuable information that will save lives - I’ll donate my dog. She shits like a bear. [/quote]

And if it doesn’t it? or worse gives us the kind of useless information that led us into Iraq…after all the “Saddam training al qaeda in bioweapons” was extracted by torture.
There is no evidence that we’ve prevented anything with this information, and certainly no information that couldn’t be gotten by traditional techniques…

so I’d hold on your dog.

22

[quote]rainjack wrote:

If us depriving a terrorist of his beauty sleep will help us stop a car bombing - I am all for it.

If pouring pig fat on them and having a dog shit in their cell will yield valuable information that will save lives - I’ll donate my dog. She shits like a bear. [/quote]

We should take advantage of American pop-culture. If someone will voluntarily subject themselves to it on Fear Factor, it’s definitely not torture. Throw the Qur’an, Bible, and I-ching in the toilet all you want, I’ll never talk!

23

GDollars,

This is not ‘Kiss and Tell’. These are fanatics who would LOVE to rape your wife, torture your baby while you watch, burn down your home, then laugh and praise Allah while dancing around in your front yard. You spend more effort worrying about these demented animals than you do about decent Americans.

24

I’d feel a lot better about this if someone would just say “yes, we use mild forms of torture which are stutorily limited.” Instead, there’s a sort of doublespeak going on.

C: “There is no torture.”
L: “Yes there is, look at X”
C: “X isn’t torture”
L: “According to Y, X is torture and can leave lasting impact Z”
C: “Well, if X is what it takes, then X is what we should do.”

In this scenario (and most scenarios) everyone is conveniently talking around each other. By denying that there is a such thing as torture (we have “interrogation techniques,” instead) one side gives the impression of wishing to avoid any sort of oversight on the methods employed. The other side is getting too worked up over the definition to bother to wonder if maybe such methods are required by the situation.

So here you go: Yes, there is torture. Yes, there are times when torture is called for and necessary. No, this is not extreme torture, and it is limited.

25

[quote]nephorm wrote:
I’d feel a lot better about this if someone would just say “yes, we use mild forms of torture which are stutorily limited.” Instead, there’s a sort of doublespeak going on.

C: “There is no torture.”
L: “Yes there is, look at X”
C: “X isn’t torture”
L: “According to Y, X is torture and can leave lasting impact Z”
C: “Well, if X is what it takes, then X is what we should do.”

In this scenario (and most scenarios) everyone is conveniently talking around each other. By denying that there is a such thing as torture (we have “interrogation techniques,” instead) one side gives the impression of wishing to avoid any sort of oversight on the methods employed. The other side is getting too worked up over the definition to bother to wonder if maybe such methods are required by the situation.

So here you go: Yes, there is torture. Yes, there are times when torture is called for and necessary. No, this is not extreme torture, and it is limited.[/quote]

Screw you and your rational attitude.

26

If torture will save one american from being killed, I say do whatever it takes.

27

[quote]five-twelve wrote:
If torture will save one american from being killed, I say do whatever it takes.[/quote]

So when other countries torture your soldiers and/or captured citizens – to save at least one life of their own, of course – you’ll have no problem with that, right?

28

[quote]five-twelve wrote:
If torture will save one american from being killed, I say do whatever it takes.[/quote]

What if torture kills five innocent men?

29

[quote]nephorm wrote:
I’d feel a lot better about this if someone would just say “yes, we use mild forms of torture which are stutorily limited.” Instead, there’s a sort of doublespeak going on.

C: “There is no torture.”
L: “Yes there is, look at X”
C: “X isn’t torture”
L: “According to Y, X is torture and can leave lasting impact Z”
C: “Well, if X is what it takes, then X is what we should do.”

In this scenario (and most scenarios) everyone is conveniently talking around each other. By denying that there is a such thing as torture (we have “interrogation techniques,” instead) one side gives the impression of wishing to avoid any sort of oversight on the methods employed. The other side is getting too worked up over the definition to bother to wonder if maybe such methods are required by the situation.

So here you go: Yes, there is torture. Yes, there are times when torture is called for and necessary. No, this is not extreme torture, and it is limited.[/quote]

Do you remember how the war on drugs started?

With the prohibition.

After it was over, the people that worked for it were still there and did not want to give up their careers and powers,so they fund another drug, Cannabis and they had no problems to lie, use racial prejudices and fear to
further their agenda.

Now, millions of non violent “criminals” were sentenced to sometimes obscene sentences, government agencies and privat companies think it is a-ok to demand mandatory drug screens from their employees and last but not least, that little fascist undertaking costs around 400 billion dollars per year.

You really, really, really think that institutionalising torture is a good idea?

And hey, once we start torturing people, how about torturing drug dealers? After all they sell stuff that endangers thousands of peoples lifes.

What about the makers of child porn or illegal weapon dealers?

You think it is a good idea to give the same government that much power that brought to you the DEA?

30

[quote]orion wrote:
You really, really, really think that institutionalising torture is a good idea?
[/quote]

I think that there are situations in which exigence demands torture. If you knew that a madman had a nuclear bomb rigged in each major city of the world, and you had a henchman in your possession, I doubt you’d want to try to rationally persuade them to give you information.

If someone jaywalked, but you weren’t sure who, torture isn’t a great idea.

Clearly when our survival is dependent upon extreme methods, the executive authority must utilize them. But if we can’t agree on that, then we can’t even have a discussion.

The difference with the “drug war” is that it has never been justifiable to begin with. There was not an urgent need to ban alcohol or cannabis. And to argue that we can’t give any power to anyone because they might abuse it is to put a strangelhold on our government and effectively sets us up as sitting ducks.

31

[quote]pookie wrote:
five-twelve wrote:
If torture will save one american from being killed, I say do whatever it takes.

So when other countries torture your soldiers and/or captured citizens – to save at least one life of their own, of course – you’ll have no problem with that, right?
[/quote]

How is what occurs to our soliders and civilians captured in Iraq any different? I don’t think cutting off the heads of captured soliders and civilians is part of the Geneva Convention do you?

We are playing by different rules. And it is obviously not working.

32

Your not understanding me…

If torture will save one American solider I don’t care what happens. Obviously the people that are conducting the torture understand if a prisoner has information or not depending on what they do.

But to not get into a gray area I will say this again. If torture will save one American solider I don’t care what happens.

33

[quote]five-twelve wrote:
pookie wrote:
five-twelve wrote:
If torture will save one american from being killed, I say do whatever it takes.

So when other countries torture your soldiers and/or captured citizens – to save at least one life of their own, of course – you’ll have no problem with that, right?

How is what occurs to our soliders and civilians captured in Iraq any different? I don’t think cutting off the heads of captured soliders and civilians is part of the Geneva Convention do you?

We are playing by different rules. And it is obviously not working.

[/quote]

So, to fight evil, we must become evil?

34

[quote]five-twelve wrote:
Your not understanding me…

If torture will save one American solider I don’t care what happens. Obviously the people that are conducting the torture understand if a prisoner has information or not depending on what they do.

But to not get into a gray area I will say this again. If torture will save one American solider I don’t care what happens. [/quote]

To not get into a gray area? The whole operation is a gray area. The whole reason for torturing someone is to find out information. If we already knew the info there would be no reason to torture them. Therefore, it is very possible (and no doubt occuring) that we are torturing innocents people along with any possible terrorists. This is ok to you as long as a theoretical “one American” might be saved if we go through enough of them?

35

[quote]Professor X wrote:
five-twelve wrote:
pookie wrote:
five-twelve wrote:
If torture will save one american from being killed, I say do whatever it takes.

So when other countries torture your soldiers and/or captured citizens – to save at least one life of their own, of course – you’ll have no problem with that, right?

How is what occurs to our soliders and civilians captured in Iraq any different? I don’t think cutting off the heads of captured soliders and civilians is part of the Geneva Convention do you?

We are playing by different rules. And it is obviously not working.

So, to fight evil, we must become evil?[/quote]

Use any tool necessary to win.

If saving lives occurs by using torture. And this is your description of “evil”. Then yes we should be “evil”.

36

[quote]five-twelve wrote:
We are playing by different rules. And it is obviously not working.[/quote]

Yeah, but that’s why you get to call yourselves “the Good Guys,” because you don’t do the barbaric shit the other side does.

If you stoop down to the same level, how are you any better?

37

[quote]five-twelve wrote:

Use any tool necessary to win.

If saving lives occurs by using torture. And this is your description of “evil”. Then yes we should be “evil”.

[/quote]

How can someone possibly complain then when they murder our own men in the military if we are willing to act just like them?

The more time passes, the more I think Bin Ladin accomplished his goal in spades.

38

[quote]pookie wrote:
five-twelve wrote:
We are playing by different rules. And it is obviously not working.

Yeah, but that’s why you get to call yourselves “the Good Guys,” because you don’t do the barbaric shit the other side does.

If you stoop down to the same level, how are you any better?

[/quote]

I think this is true – but the argument stems from where to draw the line between barbaric and necessary.

Which is why there is a semantic debate over the definition of “torture.”

39

[quote]Professor X wrote:
five-twelve wrote:

Use any tool necessary to win.

If saving lives occurs by using torture. And this is your description of “evil”. Then yes we should be “evil”.

How can someone possibly complain then when they murder our own men in the military if we are willing to act just like them?

The more time passes, the more I think Bin Ladin accomplished his goal in spades.[/quote]

Who said anything about killing as a form of torture.

40

[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
I think this is true – but the argument stems from where to draw the line between barbaric and necessary.

Which is why there is a semantic debate over the definition of “torture.”[/quote]

Which is why, as I said before, torture isn’t defined by whether or not it is necessary. I wouldn’t even say it is a semantic debate… it’s a legal one. You can not argue right and wrong or necessary and unnecessary with a lawyer who is busy arguing legal or illegal.