Apparently the difference between pain and fear of pain is over your head.

I agree that waterboarding is torture, I also think torture is acceptable on a convicted terrorist. They do not get the the benefit of having a country (the geneva conventions of prisoners) and the benefit of not having a country (no one to negotiate with, no country to declare war on etc). They are taking advantages from both sides.

I will go so far as to say I am in favor of taking organs from convicted terrorists and giving them to people in need on the donor list. The only issue I have is how do you properly convict someone to insure they get a fair trial and are not railroaded by some political agenda (ie. the McCarthy era). I don't know how to insure that doesn't happen, which is why the whole organ thing is hypothetical, since I can't guarantee that only the truly guilty will be convicted, but that is how little regard I would have for their lives if I could have such proof.

Simply epic. You don't have an attention span past three sentences, do you? Just for you, I'll keep this conversation to that limit.

Why would you wait till after conviction? Sorry but I think people are a little delussional when it comes to having any clue what is being done 24/7 to keep stuff like 9/11 from happening. Not only post 9/11. I do think the government should have more rules about freedom of information. To allow secrects out after 40 years.

Hind sight will always make you #1 board whore.

Ahh the good old insult fallback. Classic stuff.

The intelligence failure was a failure with the intelligence, it was a failure with how it was disseminated. The majority of this failure lies with the politicization, and subsequent polarization of the intel community. If you are where I think you are, Sarissa, you should be familiar with that by now.



The knowledge gained is a minor point. The major point, that you missed, is that the cost is too high. We are sacrificing our entire high ground here.



Because it IS absurd. Put it into perspective. You might as well be a South Park character screaming "Dey tuuukk ourrr joooooobbbsss!", because it's equivalent.



Two points. One, I won't quibble over that being the government's job according to the framers, so I'll stick to the point. The key words in your statement are "do everything in its power" It's NOT in the government's power to torture. Two, the dead people may not be keen on dying (no shit, who is?). What about the LIVING people, of which there are far more, who have to watch their rights degrade, watching torture occur and the suspension of habeas corpus. I'm sorry, but the revolutionaries who fought, and also died, for this country thought those rights were worth dying for. You rhetoric erases that. The people who died, didn't die defending our rights exactly, but they did die with them intact. And frankly, given the choice, I'd be happy to do the same. That's a true patriot. Not the asshole cheering as we kick the shit out of the brown people while putting a ribbon on the bumper of their F-150.



Great, then YOU are a traitor to your country and all that we've stood for. Be very careful what you wish for. You may get it, to the detriment of us all. And that's the REAL danger to this country, not the crazy arabs who can barely put together functional IED's in their own country.

So, you're blind to your own actions when you choose to berate another for their usage. Funny how that fits into your support of waterboarding, really. Oh, and still three sentences, as the pending post-script smiley doesn't count.

It's very sandbox-ish, which could define the first failure. Agencies also like to overreact. They ended up in a situation where there were few good options. Either they wait a few months to rebuild good HUMINT, and get fired if another attack happened, or they press their assets as hard as they could. Congress wanted guarantees, so they took the harsher track. Folks that are crying out in opposition now, were briefed on the specifics and chose to remain silent at the time. Hence the rabid fighting over what information gets released and when.

I guarantee KSM told them a lot more than was reported. These things aren't shared with the public, which is why there's pressure to declassify the memos.

You insulted me so I responded in kind. Just because I recognize when someone is using a ploy to avoid the subject we were discussing before they came in and started throwing shit like a monkey doesn't mean I'm above getting into it. Hell, I'm talking about it being okay to trick someone into thinking they might die and you think I'm going to hesitate to respond to a childish post with some frivolous insults of my own. Everything else aside that is pretty ignorant.

http://news.findlaw.com/nytimes/docs/do ... 102mem.pdf

I would love to have a real discussion about this because I'm trying to be open minded and enjoy seeing other points of view, but it's getting a little too playground name calling for me to be interested anymore.

Didn't we execute Japanese soldiers for torture via waterboarding?

I thought so, but I'm not sure.

I'm pretty sure it would have been one of a long list of charges.

PUSH IT TO THE LIMIT

PUSH IT REAL GOOD.

DUN dun DUN dun DUN dun...

You're arguing from a rainbows and unicorns supposition. You qualify your support for torture by saying IF it were possible to convict them with some unquantified degree of proof then it would be okay to do anything we want to them: torture, removal of organs, whatever. In another post you mention having UN people on juries; do you realize what countries currently sit on the UN human rights commission? They are a joke.

There is no way to convict, with any degree of certainty, these alleged terrorists. 1) Every time it goes into a courtroom US human intelligence assets will have to be revealed which means that we'd have to start from scratch getting new assets in the field after every trial. 2) We send innocent people to death row in the best judicial system in the world often enough that public opinion is turning from pro-death penalty to anti-death penalty. 3) Where exactly do you propose trying them? What standard of proof is admissable? What discovery will their defense team be allowed? What appeals process will be put in place? 4) We chose to make these alleged terrorists our prisoners thus it is our responsibility to see that justice is served. (Ellessar was already very eloquent on this point)

It's all well and good to say your view is hypothetical but those men being held and tortured are real and so are the ones who were held for years before we released them because we determined they were no threat. Supporting what has been done to them is about as unamerican as it gets.

The dictionary definition and the legal definition of torture are two separate things. The dictionary definition is not important when debating the legality of waterboarding.

I disagree. The word torture is a very subjective word, and it is rather difficult to establish what it does and doesn't include. By that, it falls to a majority of people to decide how they do or don't interpret it - and thus, under the purview of a dictionary definition. An encyclopedic definition might elaborate on it a bit, but the common interpretation of what it actually means to people is going to be found in the dictionary. IMO, the legal definition should follow the same guidelines.

But, even if we were to go the encyclopedic route, there are still many interpretations that include mental torture. For many people, mental pain can cause MUCH more agony than most types of physical pain. Of course it might depend on your pain threshold as well.

If anything should be a measure of torture, should it not be based on the distress or suffering of the victim?

The problem I have with that definition is that the word anguish is so broad that almost any negative action one human being takes towards another could be said to cause mental anguish and therefore according to that definition it would be torture. When a convicted killer receives the death penalty does that not cause mental anguish to their family? Torture. Does a prisoner with a life sentence suffer from mental anguish when they think about their actions and the consequences they are suffering? Torture. When someone gets mugged or has another crime committed against them do they suffer mental anguish thinking about what happened? You would have to tack torture onto almost every other crime someone was convicted of if you use that definition.




To me it would depend on whether that distress or suffering was acute or if it was prolonged. I assume that we still have custody of the four individuals that waterboarding was used on. Are they still suffering from distress or suffering? I don't think waterboarding causes suffering at all, it causes acute distress and it is possible for someone to develop prolonged distress from any situation that causes them distress.

What about the morality of it?

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Shh. Don't confuse the man, Tyral.

You're right Tyral It would be pretty immoral to let these guys sit on information that would save the lives of innocent civilians.

Except that you don't know if they have information, so you could be doing it to someone who genuinely can't tell you anything.

And, frankly, we're the United States of America. We're the good guys, or we used to be. Torturing people isn't what the good guys do.

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So interesting how lines on this issue get drawn. This thread definitely separates the Libertarians from the chaff.

Why do Libertarians have such a strong presence on the internet but such miniscule voting power?



/ramble

Because if they say this kinda shit in public people see them for the {crackpot|moron|monster} that they really are.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

I'm not sure we agree which side most Libertarians would fall on in this particular conversation.

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considering the ideal libertarian government is quasi-organized anarchy, I'm relatively sure torture would be "okay", or at best mildly frowned upon

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

I don't get where that idea comes from. Libertarians are typically fiscally conservative and socially "progressive." I don't think many people would view torture as progressive.

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Having been a member of the libertarian party for a number of years, I can tell you that the vast majority of the "official" libertarians are really nothing more than anarchists who "talk pretty"

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

"Anarchy is the least stable form of government. It falls apart at a touch." -Larry Niven

johnny rotten for president 2012

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