So true.

Here is Vincent Bugliosi cutting through the irony and setting some facts before the Congressional hearing into the Bush (“administration’s”) conduct.

This is why I get frustrated with you guys and say you don’t listen to me. Your summary has been my position all along, you guys get so focused on absolute positions you don’t listen to people. Of course it isn’t as simple as I’m making it out to be either. In my examples of an individual torturing someone to save a loved one I am taking a calculated risk that the jury will let me off, I also may determine that spending several years in prison is worth the cost of saving their lives. Nations don’t have that luxury. There is also the slippery slope, I’ll acknowledge that. In this case we have to balance the enemy seeing taking any kind of rough treatment off the table as a sign of weakness with out and out torture losing support of our friends, both Arab and Western.

I don’t want to take anything off the table since we are fighting an enemy that doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of rules much less follow them, and yes we will be stooping in the direction of their level, I can live with that. I also find that people on your side of any argument tend to exaggerate or lie and you guys don’t seem to have the experience or will to filter the obvious garbage from the stuff that may be true, you also seem to take absolute positions based on hearsay and platitudes even after facts are presented that show your position is suspect so I just don’t get too excited when I hear this administration is the worst in history stuff. So no, I’m not going to oppose Bush’s sanctioning of torture as you call it based on what is written here, I may at some time, but you guys just don’t have a very good track record with facts.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/08/hitchens200808

Hey here is an idea: if we stop acting like the fucking nazis maybe the rest of the world will stop thinking of us as the fucking nazis. You know, stop torturing, invading the wrong country under a false pretext, etc. That sort of thing. Maybe eventually we’ll force our client state of Israel to trade some land for peace. You know like back to the ’67 borders? (or something close, hey its a deal, everyone has to compromise). Like the Camp David Accords did for Israel’s main antagonists? O right, talking to someone you don’t like is ‘appeasement’ or some such nonsense.

From your examples (over several posts and various threads) of what you consider to be acceptible torture, it can be summarized as: any first person interactions required to elicit immediate information necessary to save a life in imminent danger, where no other options are apparent.

So that is the top of the hill, the pinnacle of your argument to support torture.

From there, you proudly stand and declare your righteous opinions about the need to inflict excruciating pain on others, apparently oblivious to the fact that the earth on which you stand is crumbling away down a slippery slope right into the bowels of hell.

It seems that a state sponsored torture program to determine what information “detainees” might have about possible plans by others to commit acts of violence is not, in your opinion, “appropriate”.

At least it is now clear that your opinion of “appropriate torture” does not include the policies followed at Bagram Air Force base, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, or other prisons (e.g. CIA secret sites, CIA renditions to foreign states that condone torture, etc.)

Therefore you must oppose the Bush administration’s sanctioning of torture to collect intelligence (e.g. for use in future trials) and widespread application of torture on detainees (i.e. the Bush administration’s myriad euphemisms for torture, e.g. enhanced interrogation techniques, etc.)

Why did it take you so long to make that position so clear?

What my story of Ginny May had to do with the subject is simply there is a time and place where “torture” is appropriate in my opinion.

The Boulder Daily Camera reports that five members of the peace-and-love espousing Rainbow Family were arrested after brawling at a campsite near the Colorado mountain town of Ward. One man was hit in the back of the head multiple times and had to be airlifted to a Denver hospital. He may have also been stabbed in the neck and is unable to speak.

Sheriff’s officials said everyone allegedly involved in the fight was part of a “splinter group” of Rainbow Family members who earlier this month were kicked out of a campsite in Pinedale, Wyo., after the group became “very violent” during a national assembly.
…

In 2006, a member of the Rainbow Family angered over another family member’s refusal to help him “regulate” others camping at Ruby Gulch stabbed him in the neck, according to the Sheriff’s Office.

Court records show that Joshua Sunchild Silva, known by his Rainbow name of Karma Chip, pleaded guilty to third-degree assault and was sentenced to six months in the Boulder County Jail in the stabbing of Gilbert Hernandez, 31.

- – - –

Karma Chip… funny!

I love how wwnjs bring up stories from 22 years ago to justify their angry violent natures.

I bet Gary Davis was registered R.
Fat stupid and fucked up: Rethugglican!

If one of your kids were kidnapped and you had the lunatic in your hands. He refused to tell you where your kid was and gave that smug remark “I have my rights” you would change your mind on the use of torture in certain cases rather quickly.

Only problem is you would most likely be torturing the wrong person! Sure you can set up some ridiculously far fetched scenario where your average Joe would say “yeah! If I KNEW I had the guy that knew where my kids were I’d $*@^#% him!” Problem is you never know that. Instead you get Abu Griab, Baghram and gitmo, where torture is institutionalized. What another Bad Guy?!?!? Straight to Room 101 with him! That’ll show the world how tough we are!

The nazis tortured. Saddam tortured. Now we do too under the moral misleadership of the current band of thieves.

You wwnjs are fueling the ienjs. Then you put their oil into your giant car and go go go (to the mall to shop). You freaks really don’t belong in civilized society.

“The administration’s claims of having ‘saved thousands of Americans’ can be dismissed out of hand because credible evidence has never been offered — not even an authoritative leak of any major terrorist operation interdicted based on information gathered from these interrogations in the past seven years. … It is irresponsible for any administration not to tell a credible story that would convince critics at home and abroad that this torture has served some useful purpose.”

Bearden said professionals he describes as the “old hands” in the CIA, the ones who know something of interrogation and intelligence, don’t believe administration claims. Worse still, they say, torture is counterproductive:

“This is not just because the old hands overwhelmingly believe that torture doesn’t work — it doesn’t — but also because they know that torture creates more terrorists and fosters more acts of terror than it could possibly neutralize.”

http://www.truthout.org/article/the-truth-is-out-cia-and-torture

Considering that your “brilliant” leaders think America is involved in a war that will not end in your lifetimes, I guess the Declaration of Independence is just a quaint artifact now. You know, like your Constitution and Bill of Rights.

With faint hope, I looked through the Declaration of Independence for conduct in the time of war, but there were no particulars (except a complaint about how the savages – i.e. Indians – kill indiscriminately in war.) It didn’t say anything about invading Iraq or about Al Qaeda either. Clearly it is an archaic document. It seems that Americans can no longer be a people striving towards the lofty ideals set forth by their country’s founders. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

So enough of that. How about that Consortium news article! Wow is it ever impressive in the way it puts all your arguments to shame and then some!

One thing has me confused though, if torture is as good as you and your sadistic buddies claim, then how come torture (or I guess the kids are calling it “interviewing” these days) wasn’t used on Moussaoui?

Moussaoui remained the only al-Qaeda terrorist in custody for many months, but the Justice Department’s ban on interviewing him remained in place — at huge potential cost by forfeiting the possibility of acquiring information on other terrorist activities about which Moussaoui was very probably aware.

http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2008/071808e.html

Where does it say anything about conduct in time of war in the Declaration of Independence?

http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2008/071808e.html

Framers of your Declaration of Independence were well aware of that and sought to prevent the type of Republic that would resort to TORTURE and rounding up foreigners in secret prisons and foreign bases after invading foreign nations in wars of aggression.

Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

SHCB, your strawman argument about a father torturing a lunatic to reveal where the father’s kids were fails on at least two counts.

First, as Enk points out, America is not (yet) torturing kidnapping suspects.

Second, I would EXPECT police to use far more effective methods than torture in such an emergency, a combination of drugs (e.g. sodium pentathol) as a truth serum and an intelligent psychological questioning. Results of torture a lunatic are too unpredictable, e.g. anarchist anti-social egotistical masochists or a wwnj redneck would get off on the torture and simply clam up and enjoy all the attention they were getting from the torturer and from proving to the torturer how tough they were.

shcb is just ichin to turn america into a lousy two bit human rights violating nazi state.

Torture = wrong

We do more harm than good torturing traffic stop arrests. More than half of the Really Bad Guys in gitmo aren’t there for any reason other than we can’t admit we shouldn’t be holding them.

You’d gleefully crush the testicles of a child (ref J Woo iirc) if you think his father might have some really bad info. You freaks don’t belong in civilization.