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Greenwald on Mayer on Torture

So, is Glenn Greenwald a shrill, Leftist hysteric?

Discuss.

This entry was posted by jbc on Saturday, July 12th, 2008 at 6:32 pm and is filed under george_w_bush, the_law, the_usa, torture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

46 Responses to “Greenwald on Mayer on Torture”

shcb Says:
July 13th, 2008 at 10:43 am
Yes
knarlyknight Says:
July 13th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
LOL, shcb makes a fool of himself again by (presumably) not reading the article and then with his reponse proving one of the major themes of Greenwald’s article. Great illustration of how shcb is often totally devoid of any rational thought.

shcb just dropped a few more meters below sea level on the ole’ respect altimeter.

BC, there is justice in the universe and members of the Bush administration will receive a fair trial, if not in this world then in a spiritual one.

I cringe to think of how the loved ones of those caught up in error and tortured by the Americans are coping with the horror and terror if it all. (Excuse me, who are the terrorists ? Surely that label fits the CIA in and their torture chambers.)

Two points of Greenwald’s stood our for me. The first:

“[T]he [CIA] analyst estimated that a full third of the camp’s detainees were there by mistake. When told of those findings, the top military commander at Guantanamo at the time, Major Gen. Michael Dunlavey, not only agreed with the assessment but suggested that an even higher percentage of detentions — up to half — were in error. Later, an academic study by Seton Hall University Law School concluded that 55 percent of detainees had never engaged in hostile acts against the United States, and only 8 percent had any association with al-Qaeda.”

And the second is his discussion of whether America is a nation ruled by laws or of men. The jury is out.
knarlyknight Says:
July 13th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
*Third paragraph, the “BC” should have been “JBC” or “John”
shcb Says:
July 13th, 2008 at 7:09 pm
Oh, I read the article, I’m just not enamored with Greenwald. I find him to be a demagogue without many facts. He writes in much the same way as Molly Ivans, except Molly was a good writer. She didn’t really know much about what she wrote about, she just repeated things she was fed by left wing hacks like Mayer. As is usually the case with Greenwald there aren’t many facts or references in this piece. Of course this is mostly about Mayer’s book (like Ivans would have written) but chances are there aren’t many facts in the book either. Your excerpt is good example. Now I haven’t read the book and probably won’t but let me tell you how this little tidbit was probably gleaned. Mayer or one of her associates called the commander of the base and asked him if the prisoners were afforded this or that privilege before they were taken to Gitmo. If history with Liberals like her is any indication and the list of privileges came from the Geneva conventions it was compiled from items in the fourth convention, which of course deals with the treatment of civilians. The commander answered truthfully and said no they were not afforded this or that privilege. From that she makes the assertion that the prisoners are there “in error” of course the relevant convention is the third since it deals with POW’s and of course Article 4 paragraph 2 excludes these terrorists from the Geneva conventions anyway (see, specifics). This may not be her evidence for making the assertion that half the prisoners are there “in error” but I would bet it will be some sort of “when did you stop beating your wife” argument.

I was just answering John’s question in general but this article did nothing to change my mind.
knarlyknight Says:
July 14th, 2008 at 8:24 am
shcb,

That’s a lot of conjecture on your part. I think the point is that a lot of the detainees are civilians, are innocent, and thus are there by mistake.

As you have stated previously that you are a supporter of America’s use of torture, I would like you to state the specific torture techniques of which you approve.

Here are a few for you to start with, please indicate if there are others that you think are good for America:

Do you approve of asphyxiation (i.e. waterboarding)?

Do you support John Woo’s contention that crushing a child’s testicles is a good thing to do in certain situations?

Do you support electric shocks applied under various techniques (or threats of electricution as in the famous scarecrow picture)?

Do you support abusive sexual humiliation of naked prisoners?

Do you support isolation, sleep deprivation, and excruciatingly loud noise (e.g. rap or heavy metal music) 24/7 for days on end to the limit of the prisoner’s sanity or beyond?

Do you support telling the prisoner that horrible things will happen to their innocent family or loved ones unless they cooperate?

Beatings and / or breaking bones.

Occasional death.

Given that all these are examples of what America has done to detainees in their so called war on terror, how can America under the Bush administration claim to be anything but amoung the worst of human rights abusers?
shcb Says:
July 15th, 2008 at 5:43 am
oh, please….
enkidu Says:
July 15th, 2008 at 7:13 am
You won’t get a sensible answer out of any wwnj on torture.

Any time you nail a wwnj, they just blow it off and go back to listening to AM hate radio and oiling their boomsticks. What do you expect from morans who don’t know the difference between Arab and Persian? Sunni and Shiite?

Cling tightly to your bitterness, your prejudice, your anger and your colossal stupidity. May they comfort you when Obama is sworn in (heaven knows why he wants the job after the clusterfuck that dumbya and co have worked up)

And McSame is your hero now? oh, please….
shcb Says:
July 15th, 2008 at 7:18 am
you really never listen to anything I write do you?
enkidu Says:
July 15th, 2008 at 8:31 am
you wrote “oh, please…”
I even quoted you verbatim

based on your previous postings, you are pro torture
or have you flip flopped?
shcb Says:
July 15th, 2008 at 9:47 am
In certain very limited instances I am in favor of torture. I can’t imagine a situation where I would be in favor of torturing a child as Knarly insinuated and I don’t consider some things torture that you do. I also don’t think all torture is equal nor all situations equal. Beating the crap out of a terrorist to get him to point out the location of the sniper so you can get to a wounded American soldier is one thing, beating him just to beating him is another. Waterboarding is not the same as feeding someone feet first into a tree shredder. You see I have a “sense of scale” The “Oh please” was for the Bush is the worst offender of human rights comment primarily, evidently you guys have “no sense of scale” or history to make that comment.
Steve Says:
July 15th, 2008 at 9:59 am
There is the general and the specific, and I think Greenwald does an excellent job of illustrating both.

The specific: authorization of torture in the Bush administration, is what really turned me off on the President and the Republican party. However, it’s the general principle that the President is above the law that is the root cause of all these abuses.

Torture just happens to be the most egregious example of the disregard for the rule of law.

Torture and disrespect for the rule of law is what led me to become a liberal. It’s too bad there aren’t more liberals in the Democratic party, but about half of the Democrats buy into the whole lawlessness of our current government.
enkidu Says:
July 15th, 2008 at 10:02 am
yes, you are pro torture. done.

feeding people into a wood chipper was from the movie Fargo…

knarly stated

Given that all these are examples of what America has done to detainees in their so called war on terror, how can America under the Bush administration claim to be anything but among the worst of human rights abusers?

We aren’t the worst (perhaps China? Saudia Arabia?) but we’ve gone a hell of a long way towards being the nazis since bush seized power. We torture. We invade for power and profit. We kill and kill and kill and it isn’t going to stop until we elect a new president. Even then it will be years, perhaps decades, before America can wash the stain of shame from our colors.

Enjoy wearing your bloody shirt.

Hopefully we can start putting some of the troops we are withdrawing from Iraq into Afghanistan and actually kill Osama bin Forgotten.
knarlyknight Says:
July 15th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Smart money says if alive, he is in Pakistan, not Afghanistan.
enkidu Says:
July 15th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
Obama has repeatedly said if there is actionable intelligence that Osama is in Pakistan and the Pakistani’s won’t do it then Obama will. This created quite the wwnj firestorm until the shrubco admin struck inside Pakistan with drone fired missiles (not sure if we hit the bad guys or another wedding party, our batting average isn’t great on that score)
knarlyknight Says:
July 15th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
Enk,
How about simply merging Pakistan and Afghanistan, calling it “Jihadiland” and using the area as basic training and target practice for Americaa’s new GI’s? Maybe I’ve had far too much beer this afternoon because Jihadiland live training camp/country for American GI’s sounds like a great idea! Can’t think of a thing wrong with it right now. Probably would be fun too. I wonder if being thiis shitfaced drunk all the time what it’s like to be a wwnj / shcb?
knarlyknight Says:
July 15th, 2008 at 5:17 pm
“Torture is certainly immoral, inhumane, and an illegal war crime. However, until people realize that it doesn’t work, it will not stop, and those responsible will not be held accountable.”

Supporting that claim are many examples, here is one:
“Army Field Manual 34-52 Chapter 1 says:
“Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.” ”

Ther rest of the discussion, including Douglas Feith’s support for torture in Congress, is here: http://www.georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2008/07/torture-doesnt-work.html
shcb Says:
July 16th, 2008 at 5:00 am
Well Knarly, you stumbled onto one of the best forms of interrogation according to Bob Newman, alcohol.

Enky, goody for Obama, let me guess, the intelligence will never be quite good enough to act on getting OBL, close, but not good enough. Just like liberals always do with war. They say they are in favor of using violence in certain cases and they draw a line in the sand, when the enemy crosses it they draw another line, then another, the net effect is nothing gets done, but all the while they are saying they aren’t opposed to war in certain cases. Even if we kill OBL, so what? Al Qaeda was formed in 1988, the aggressions by Muslim terrorists was going on well before that. It will continue well past his death.
enkidu Says:
July 16th, 2008 at 8:37 am
yes, i say load em up with two buck chuck (if they are forbidden alcohol by their aboriginal beliefs, all the better) and let the questioning begin! It would be more humane then the torture wwnjs deem so necessary. And I bet every iota as effective: torture generally gives you crap information, drunks wouldn’t be much better or worse.

wwnj, you don’t read anything I write do you? ;-)
I am not against war, just stupid wars. I am not in all cases against violence, just counterproductive and indiscriminate use of force. Neither are reasonable Rs, Ds, Is, and all others. Your strawman attacks on Libs and war just do not match up with reality. If you had said your crap to FDR in ’42, he would have risen from his wheelchair, gave an inspirational speech then kicked your fat ass in 17 different ways.

So OBL is unimportant? Mr deadralive!?!? Come on, if he actually perpetrated 9/11, then he very much deserves to die. Oh wait that may not match up with your strawman caricature of anyone to the left of saint ronnie.

You won’t label western meddling murder and mayhem in the arab world (from the colonial period on) as anything other than a valiant struggle of good free perfect people against a horrid existential musselman jihadi crusade. Wake up and stop using so much middle eastern oil and these people would be about as important to world events as the aborigines of the deep Amazon (except we’ve spent decades pouring wealth into the societies, fueling the rise of their religions whack jobs etc).
shcb Says:
July 16th, 2008 at 7:57 pm
Enky,

So we can count you in the legions of war mongers now? (little smiley face) I wasn’t referring to you specifically, liberal’s in general. I’m not for war when it’s not justified either. I wasn’t for our involvement in Kosovo, not because I didn’t think it was justified or Clinton was in charge, I just thought that was a situation the Europeans should have handled on their own, or with minimal support from us. There have of course been liberal Democrats that have stood strong against our enemies FDR and Kennedy come to mind, and Obama may turn out to be one of them. But an educated guess is he is no Scoop Jackson, he will react like the typical leftist liberal he is.
knarlyknight Says:
July 17th, 2008 at 9:13 am
Correction to shcb last comment: that is less of an “educated guess” than it is a “biased opinion based on a hatred of anything that has been labelled as progressive, liberal or left.”
enkidu Says:
July 17th, 2008 at 10:52 am
re: Bosnia etc
It is called leadership
So how many US troops died in combat in the Balkans?
zero
and we were defending Muslims from genocidal Christians btw

But don’t let the facts get in the way of your typical wwnj rant against leftist liberals. As everyone knows, facts have such a liberal bias!
shcb Says:
July 18th, 2008 at 4:21 am
I don’t hate liberals, I just think you’re wrong. At one point in my political infancy I espoused liberal dogma myself. Lasted about three weeks, I’m being serious, I remember the day I started bitching about rich people, and the day I stopped. And they were literally three weeks apart. It just seemed so counterproductive to be angry at things were actually working quite well.

Enky, I thought we measured the badness of war by the number of civilians that have been killed. Using the Palestinian woman’s math to figure civilian casualties there have been over 1.2 million killed in Bosnia. That is almost 25% of the population. And billions and billions in lost treasure for what? This was a civil war, we had no business there, Milosevic was no threat to America. How many nukes were found there? This adventure was just to enrich the industrial military complex that make up a large, scratch that, huge percentage of the American bloated, corrupt, corporate, bad, Halliburton, oil, capitalism, nuns, Bush/Cheney, spit, baby killers, torture…. Crap, I forgot what I was talking about.
enkidu Says:
July 18th, 2008 at 7:50 am
you really don’t read or understand anything I post here do you?

Why do you bring hate into it? I didn’t mention your anger or hatred, just that you had a rant against libs etc. Methinks thou doth protest to much.

I’m sorry to hear that you think rich folks should get enormous tax cuts during a time of ‘War’. That doesn’t match with successful wars and economies in the past (taxes and involvement in public life go up during wartime… if you want to win… if it isn’t a bald plot to manufacture consent). As an IND voter I find ‘dogma’ in politics as attractive as dogma in religion: a case for anthropological study and respect, but of little to no use in deciding about the future.

It is actually somewhat humorous to me that our opinions of this long ago war match up to a surprising degree. I wanted the EU to step in and act responsibly, but was actually impressed that when we did go in, it was to overwhelming military and political victory. No half measures, no stay for pay sweetheart oil deals or endless occupation. We did have some business there, it was saving and respecting the dignity of human life. Something wwnjs seem to have forget (unless its a blastocyst, then it is holy, until it grows up Mooslim and we gets ta shoot it! har har har!) /snark, but the other important business in the Balkans was shoring up the EU and the newly freed eastern bloc countries. Civil war/genocide on the borders of Old Europe undermines our allies (the EU/NATO) and strengthens the former USSR/communist elements in that part of the world.

I was unaware ‘we’ had ‘agreed’ on anything, much less a metric for measuring the ‘badness’ of wars. One measure might be our involvement as the years go on. I don’t think we have any troops in Bosnia/Kosovo. Certainly nothing more than a perfunctory diplomatic presence. It isn’t all sweetness and light there to be sure, but compare it to Iraq. Thousands of our people dead for all those WMDs we never found (because they didn’t exist). Tens of thousands of US wounded. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis dead (perhaps as many as a million or two, who is counting eh?) An open ended occupation (unless we get real leadership, GObama!) Maybe the Iraqi’s will name a sewage plant after GWB (like San Francisco, har har har!)

We didn’t go into Bosnia for the WMDz.
knarlyknight Says:
July 18th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
yea, you went there for the chicks.
shcb Says:
July 18th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Jeeze Enky, there is more than one person in this conversation, the hate liberals comment was to Knarly. The rest was a parody on all you liberal’s arguments on Iraq.
knarlyknight Says:
July 18th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
No, I’m not really in this conversation, I’m happy to sit back and laugh at the idiocy of people who believe torture yields good results and wonder about the absolute lack of humanity in “people” who think torture is a good thing for America to do.
shcb Says:
July 19th, 2008 at 4:48 am
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. Of course you are overstating my position quite a lot, no surprise there.
enkidu Says:
July 19th, 2008 at 8:36 am
If we knew that the Bad Guy KNEW where the really bad thing was, why then you’d do any bad thing to make him talk! No. Just. No. Your hypothetical is a strawman argument in favor of torturing human beings (once you start torturing, they’ll say anything, so then you are justified, right? wrong)

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.
knarlyknight Says:
July 19th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
Enkidu’s answer is as good as I could have done, but I’ll add a little.

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.
shcb Says:
July 19th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
you (both of you) are overstating my points to rediculous levels
knarlyknight Says:
July 20th, 2008 at 11:54 am
No we are not. History has shown over and over again that points like yours and such positions always lead to ridiculous (i.e. horrific) levels; if not initially resisted and ridiculed by cooler heads.

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.
knarlyknight Says:
July 20th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Justifying Torture: TWO BIG LIES

http://www.consortiumnews.com/Print/2008/071808e.html
shcb Says:
July 20th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
If we were resorting to the excesses you guys exagerate to you may have a point. you see you exagerate my stance on a subject and then base you rebuttal on on your infated view of my statements.

Where does it say anything about conduct in time of war in the Declaration of Independence?
knarlyknight Says:
July 20th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
shcb, try to look past your blinders.

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
knarlyknight Says:
July 20th, 2008 at 6:44 pm
“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
enkidu Says:
July 21st, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Seems to me knarls and I just reiterated the wwnj viewpoint that if you are Bad then Any Old Bad Thing can happen to you.

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.
shcb Says:
July 21st, 2008 at 7:41 pm
There was a gentle farm wife and mother by the name of Ginny May that lived in Byers, a small town 30 miles east of here. Her husband came home one day to find Ginny gone. The children said the people down the road had taken her. They forced her into their car in front of her children the kids said. Her husband went to their house, the man, Gary Davis and his fat wife were both drunk and said they had not seen Ginny. The husband called the sheriff but he couldn’t do anything until she was missing for 24 hours. So the three May boys fell a telephone pole blocking the only entrance of the farm and stayed up all night with shotguns and Winchesters. In the morning Davis came out of the house and offered the boys coffee and asked them to let he and his fat wife leave the farm. Eventually the sheriff came to the farm and found Ginny’s raped, sodomized, strangled, battered, and bullet riddled body in a pile of hay behind the barn. The ACLU types wanted the case thrown out because the May boys had in effect kidnapped Davis and his fat wife. But not here, we sent the ACLU types packing. The fat wife not only let her husband rape the young mother she not only egged him on, she made Ginny engage in sex with her. Eleven years later Davis was executed in a sterile room. The May boys without the husband shook hands and smiled as the last twitches and gasps of life left the body of a pathetic piece of shit named Gary Davis. As far as I know the fat wife still rots in jail. Davis would have been knee capped if it had been me. I don’t know if it would have saved Ginny, but I would have shot the son of a bitch. Call it torture, call it revenge, call it what you want but the son of a bitch would have been bleeding, telling me where my wife was.
enkidu Says:
July 22nd, 2008 at 7:31 am
And this has bearing on torturing prisoners how?
The Sherif had probable cause (witnesses saw her abducted). If he is too fat and lazy to do his job, then you should be pissed at him.

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!
enkidu Says:
July 22nd, 2008 at 8:37 am
file this under human nature:

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!
shcb Says:
July 22nd, 2008 at 9:55 am
Ward is a special place.

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.
knarlyknight Says:
July 22nd, 2008 at 11:26 am
shcb,

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?
enkidu Says:
July 22nd, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Christopher Hitchens (surely the most eloquent wwnj scribbler still at large today) thinks waterboarding is torture. How would he know? Well he had himself waterboarded, for one thing. His verdict: it is torture. But wwnjs are AOK with torture. Not just AOK, they always imagine themselves as the righteous defender of FREEDUMB! having to do the dirty work to stop The Really Really (Really) Bad Guys from their nefarious plots.

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.
shcb Says:
July 23rd, 2008 at 4:50 am
Knarly,

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.
knarlyknight Says:
July 23rd, 2008 at 8:21 am
yea, we keep harping on the fact that Iraq had no WMD’s but you believe otherwise (they were exported to syria?) We provide links to hundreds of instances where lies were told by the bush administration, you maintain they were “deceptions” not lies. You fail to recognize facts such as the molten metal under THREE wtc buildings and other evidence as indicative of controlled demolitions with super-thermite and stubbornly hold to the official consipracy theory despite profound contra-indicators. Etc.
enkidu Says:
July 23rd, 2008 at 10:00 am
wwnj lecturing us on ‘the facts’…
the irony is so thick you could insulate your house with it
knarlyknight Says:
July 26th, 2008 at 8:43 am
Enk,

So true.

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

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Greenwald on Mayer on Torture

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