Torture poll

[MaggieMae]

No he's not. He's got it exactly right. DO refresh our memories on who howled the loudest for Bush to "do something" after 9/11? Most people on the right I know were too busy cleaning their guns to go crying to "daddy" to "save us.".

Most of my peers were too busy doing rescue and cleanup to howl about anything at all.

My point exactly. While the collective left was crying for someone to come wipe their asses and tuck them in, others were DOING something and not waiting on anyone else to do it for them.

Yeah, I forgot that it is only conservative Republicans who make up the NYC police/fire/rescue and of course all those volunteers from out of state must have all been non-lefties.

 

[amrchaos]

why is it stupid? Because he is flipping it around on you?

Flipping it around? You mean playing a semantical game? Because that's all it amounts to.

Define "torture." Then define "terror." Every time you threat to punish your child or DO punish your child, it can be dishonestly misconstrued to say it's one, the other, or both. There is no honesty to the argument, and as is typical of most leftwing arguments/accusations, it then just becomes a matter of misconstruing words or using broad, general terms they can twist to mean whatever they want.

And for some reason, this board seems to have recently attracted quite the little group of leftwing, word-game players. Unfortunately for them, they aren't even good at it.

The simple facts are, we, as a Nation, do not torture. We as a nation have ALWAYS used coercion to obtain information, and the limit gets pushed every time. By every administration; regardless, which side of the aile they are on.

Until one of the blabbermouths on here can provide an instance where waterboarding was used AFTER it was ruled illegal in a US court, then this is just more leftwingnut, beating a dead horse to take the attention off their own fuckups bullshit.

Losers.

It's a DISCUSSION for God's sake. What would YOU like to talk about? Why don't YOU start a thread to discuss some OTHER fuckup by leftwingnuts. Maybe then it wouldn't get moved to the Flame Zone, which is probably where this one is destined since it was started by someone I'm sure you consider a flaming liberal.

Did you catch this part of the post?

Until one of the blabbermouths on here can provide an instance where waterboarding was used AFTER it was ruled illegal in a US court, then this is just more leftwingnut, beating a dead horse to take the attention off their own fuckups bullshit.

SO If I create new methods of torture, then it is not considered torture until a US court says it is. That arguement does not hold water, and I can not believe some one actually made it.

 

[MaggieMae]

No he's not. He's got it exactly right. DO refresh our memories on who howled the loudest for Bush to "do something" after 9/11? Most people on the right I know were too busy cleaning their guns to go crying to "daddy" to "save us."

You lefties demand a perfect world from the right and your expectations are unrealistic. You can't tie people's hands behind their backs, throw them in the ring and expect them to win.

A surprising bunch of hooey....

I'll let all the people I know who were actually AT ground zero cleaning up the mess and looking for bodies that they didn't DO anything.

We didn't WANT Bush to invade a country that had nothing to freaking do with 9/11!

There was action that should have been had... Bush's pretend BS war of choice wasn't it.

Calling bullshit on you there. The war in Afghan was justified. From the start. We had a clear mission, with a clear objective that went to the heart of the cause of 9/11.

Yup. And Bush had nearly 90% of Americans in favor of going into Afghanistan. Unfortunately, due to a side excursion, that war has just now begun in earnest 7+ years later.

 

[WorldAHope]

What this will come down to is not "The ends justifiy the means "
it will come down to adhering or exceeding to EXISTING laws and regulations.
An elected executive or a field commander cannot unilaterally, arbitrarily decide to exceed their written restrictions.
Whether it is civilian or military, law enforcement or commercial business or international relations.
Laws are REAL, and they exist for a reason.
The argument "Well, The other guys are doing it, and even worse" does not work when a kid says it to a school principle or a parent, when an employee says it to their supervisor, when a defense attorney says it to a judge,
and it does not justify the unauthorized, illegal actions of any individuals in the federal government.
ANY individuals.

It is the same as if they had secretly directed troops to plunder villages, or to rape and beat detainees. There is no gray area in the laws covering treatment of prisoners. The laws are agreements, restrictions.
The US signed those laws, Geneva convention and others, and we have prosecuted foreigners for performing those these exact same actions on Americans.
It has not helped in the battle against terrorist groups, and has severely damaged our credibility and our alliances, especially with moderate muslims.

As well as being the best damn recruiting tool the Terrorists ever had.
It was Stupid, it was ineffective, and it was sadistic.

So what if our opponents kill captives and innocent people?
We have (inadvertently, mostly) killed far more civilians in this conflict than "they" have,
(whomever "they" may be - that is a murky and difficult definition. Fully 1/2 of all detainees we have held have been released because we determioned they were not involved with terrorist activities).

We need to set standards, and stick to them. If those standadrs are to include these particular behaviors, than let it be so. Let it be directed.
But it cannot be an arbitrary, sliding line, based upon the mood or whimsy of the person making the decision.

Bush et al should have gone to Congress and SCOTUS and gotten legal authority to change the existing laws before directing our troops to exceed their legal boundaries.
They did not.
And then the lied about it, tried to hide it, tried to pawn the blame off on low level subordinates (how COWARDLY can people be ?????) who were following orders.

Stupid.

 

[Gurdari]

the dishonest fuckery is when librals want you to believe that we have a choice in whether or not our soldiers get tortured.. as if the terrorists gave a shit how good we are! that's just plain dishonest F......

well, when we give them logical reasons to act a certain way - and show them that violence is the way the super powers conduct themselves, what do you think is going to sink in? Pacifism?

 

[Gunny]

Most of my peers were too busy doing rescue and cleanup to howl about anything at all.

My point exactly. While the collective left was crying for someone to come wipe their asses and tuck them in, others were DOING something and not waiting on anyone else to do it for them.

Yeah, I forgot that it is only conservative Republicans who make up the NYC police/fire/rescue and of course all those volunteers from out of state must have all been non-lefties.

Building those strawmen again I see, I didn't say a damned thing about conservative Republicans, did I?

I made a division between people who do for themselves and those that wait on Big Brother. And the fact, by the very stance of the two political ideologies, the former would be the vast majority on the right and the latter the vast majority on the left.

Don't put absolutes in my mouth. You know perfectly well what I meant and you are just a perfect example of my initial post in this thread. A leftwinger that tries to play word games.

 

[Gunny]

Flipping it around? You mean playing a semantical game? Because that's all it amounts to.

Define "torture." Then define "terror." Every time you threat to punish your child or DO punish your child, it can be dishonestly misconstrued to say it's one, the other, or both. There is no honesty to the argument, and as is typical of most leftwing arguments/accusations, it then just becomes a matter of misconstruing words or using broad, general terms they can twist to mean whatever they want.

And for some reason, this board seems to have recently attracted quite the little group of leftwing, word-game players. Unfortunately for them, they aren't even good at it.

The simple facts are, we, as a Nation, do not torture. We as a nation have ALWAYS used coercion to obtain information, and the limit gets pushed every time. By every administration; regardless, which side of the aile they are on.

Until one of the blabbermouths on here can provide an instance where waterboarding was used AFTER it was ruled illegal in a US court, then this is just more leftwingnut, beating a dead horse to take the attention off their own fuckups bullshit.

Losers.

It's a DISCUSSION for God's sake. What would YOU like to talk about? Why don't YOU start a thread to discuss some OTHER fuckup by leftwingnuts. Maybe then it wouldn't get moved to the Flame Zone, which is probably where this one is destined since it was started by someone I'm sure you consider a flaming liberal.

Did you catch this part of the post?

Until one of the blabbermouths on here can provide an instance where waterboarding was used AFTER it was ruled illegal in a US court, then this is just more leftwingnut, beating a dead horse to take the attention off their own fuckups bullshit.

SO If I create new methods of torture, then it is not considered torture until a US court says it is. That arguement does not hold water, and I can not believe some one actually made it.

If you call them "torture" and believe them to be torture, then you are wrong. If you do not consider it torture, and others do, then it comes down to a legal ruling, does it not?

The argument is sound. You just have no answer for it.

 

[Gunny]

A surprising bunch of hooey....

I'll let all the people I know who were actually AT ground zero cleaning up the mess and looking for bodies that they didn't DO anything.

We didn't WANT Bush to invade a country that had nothing to freaking do with 9/11!

There was action that should have been had... Bush's pretend BS war of choice wasn't it.

Calling bullshit on you there. The war in Afghan was justified. From the start. We had a clear mission, with a clear objective that went to the heart of the cause of 9/11.

Yup. And Bush had nearly 90% of Americans in favor of going into Afghanistan. Unfortunately, due to a side excursion, that war has just now begun in earnest 7+ years later.

And we STILL are doing patrols in Bosnia 16 years later. Your point?

 

[WorldAHope]

Yes it would. The Bill of Rights are Rights afforded US citizens, not POWs, and the Constitution is the law of the US, not any other country.

While this is true, Gunny, the question of torture is also a moral issue. The Founders did not think that the rights were enjoy here were granted to us by our government. They felt that these rights were inalienable rights granted to us by our Creator. If that's the case, then at least the 'fundamental' rights we enjoy come from God to us by virtue of our humanity, and not from government to us by virtue of our citizenship.

And if that's the case, then we should apply those principles to all people who come under the control of our government.

These same founders that burned out Tories and waged war against them and their families? Must have felt guilty after the fact.

I am not arguing in favor of torture. My initial statement stands as my opinion on the topic. "Torture" is a subjective term. IMO, it's being dishonestly used by the left for no more reason than to substantiate in their minds their partisan attacks.

Using their standards, I consider having to listen to all this baseless, partisan rhetoric to be torture. It's causing me undue pain in my ass.

Torture is not subjective. It is clearly defined in many of our laws. The actions and incidents in question exceeded the existing legal restrictions.
If they had not, then there would be no controversy, and there would have been no attempts to coverup or to hide and secret memos requested to justify their actions.

Same as running a red light or breaking into a house or embezzling cash from an account, or drawer.
They are defined as Illegal actions.

 

[MaggieMae]

Waterboarding once is not torture.

Waterboarding 183 times is.

So what's the magic number where WBing IS torture?

Actually, as I said in the other thread about this topic, after the third or fourth time, the one being tortured has figured out how to survive it. Mind over matter? Since KSM survived, it seems he got the last laugh anyway.

 

[Gunny]

the dishonest fuckery is when librals want you to believe that we have a choice in whether or not our soldiers get tortured.. as if the terrorists gave a shit how good we are! that's just plain dishonest F......

well, when we give them logical reasons to act a certain way - and show them that violence is the way the super powers conduct themselves, what do you think is going to sink in? Pacifism?

You can't blame that on "Superpowers." Arabs have been killing each other over slights and who owns this or that sand dune for centuries, and they have INVENTED methods of torture as cruel and barbaric as it gets.

 

[Gunny]

While this is true, Gunny, the question of torture is also a moral issue. The Founders did not think that the rights were enjoy here were granted to us by our government. They felt that these rights were inalienable rights granted to us by our Creator. If that's the case, then at least the 'fundamental' rights we enjoy come from God to us by virtue of our humanity, and not from government to us by virtue of our citizenship.

And if that's the case, then we should apply those principles to all people who come under the control of our government.

These same founders that burned out Tories and waged war against them and their families? Must have felt guilty after the fact.

I am not arguing in favor of torture. My initial statement stands as my opinion on the topic. "Torture" is a subjective term. IMO, it's being dishonestly used by the left for no more reason than to substantiate in their minds their partisan attacks.

Using their standards, I consider having to listen to all this baseless, partisan rhetoric to be torture. It's causing me undue pain in my ass.

Torture is not subjective. It is clearly defined in many of our laws. The actions and incidents in question exceeded the existing legal restrictions.
If they had not, then there would be no controversy, and there would have been no attempts to coverup or to hide and secret memos requested to justify their actions.

Same as running a red light or breaking into a house or embezzling cash from an account, or drawer.
They are defined as Illegal actions.

Torture IS subjective when you get to the middle ground. That's a no-brainer. The actions in question exceeded no legal restrictions. That is fact.

There is controversy because leftwingers had to create one slinging shit against the wall just as Obama released the classified documents to take attention away from himself. He knows his bleeting constituency well and y'all have not disappointed.

 

[MaggieMae]

But the people we have tortured planned 9/11. I don't think waterboarding and the what the 9/11 victims went through are equivalent. I'm not saying torture is right, only that waterboarding is not equivalent to what these men did.

That's not the reason they were waterboarded. If you wanted an eye-for-an-eye, they would be dead already.

To me, the entire question remains whether or not torture practices like waterboarding are really effective in getting information. The experts say no. And we have only the word of whoever wrote these "reports" that actionable intelligence for future attacks was obtained by torture.

Dishonest fuckery will get you nowhere!

And that profound statement is supposed to mean...what?

 

[amrchaos]

It's a DISCUSSION for God's sake. What would YOU like to talk about? Why don't YOU start a thread to discuss some OTHER fuckup by leftwingnuts. Maybe then it wouldn't get moved to the Flame Zone, which is probably where this one is destined since it was started by someone I'm sure you consider a flaming liberal.

Did you catch this part of the post?

Until one of the blabbermouths on here can provide an instance where waterboarding was used AFTER it was ruled illegal in a US court, then this is just more leftwingnut, beating a dead horse to take the attention off their own fuckups bullshit.

SO If I create new methods of torture, then it is not considered torture until a US court says it is. That arguement does not hold water, and I can not believe some one actually made it.

If you call them "torture" and believe them to be torture, then you are wrong. If you do not consider it torture, and others do, then it comes down to a legal ruling, does it not?

The argument is sound. You just have no answer for it.

But what if I knowingly create a new method of torture and used it, then later a court (must it be US?)rules it was torture?

Does that mean that I can not be accused of torture?

Also, how detailed must a troture method be in order to say that some one used torture method A? For instance, if The Spanish cure is to pour water on the face in order tto simulate drowning, what If I had the person lie on their torso and sprayed a high jet stream of waters upwards into the victims face to produce the same effect? Would that be the Spanish Cure as well?

And you talk about semantics.....

 

[Gunny]

Waterboarding once is not torture.

Waterboarding 183 times is.

So what's the magic number where WBing IS torture?

Actually, as I said in the other thread about this topic, after the third or fourth time, the one being tortured has figured out how to survive it. Mind over matter? Since KSM survived, it seems he got the last laugh anyway.

Incorrect. The objective of torture to gain information is not death, so there is no last laugh to be had. The only laughing he is doing is at fools attacking their own government over to him, nonsensical political partisanship.

Go to the Middle East and tell some jihadist it's okay because you're a liberal. You'll find out REAL quick just how American and nothing more you are to them.

 

[Gunny]

Did you catch this part of the post?

Until one of the blabbermouths on here can provide an instance where waterboarding was used AFTER it was ruled illegal in a US court, then this is just more leftwingnut, beating a dead horse to take the attention off their own fuckups bullshit.

SO If I create new methods of torture, then it is not considered torture until a US court says it is. That arguement does not hold water, and I can not believe some one actually made it.

If you call them "torture" and believe them to be torture, then you are wrong. If you do not consider it torture, and others do, then it comes down to a legal ruling, does it not?

The argument is sound. You just have no answer for it.

But what if I knowingly create a new method of torture and used it, then later a court rules it was torture.

Does that mean that I can not be accused of torture. Also, how detailed must a troture method be in order to say that some one used a mthod. For instance, if The Spanish cure is to pour water on the face, what If I had the person lie on their torso and sprayed a high jet stream of waters upwards into the victims face. Would that be the Spanish Cure as well?

And you talk about semantics.....

Word games. Got to love them. If you KNOWING create a method of torture, and believe it to be torture, and everyone else believes it to be torture, then it doesn't need to be ruled on by a court. It already has.

If however, you use a means of coersion not defined as torture, and is borderline, I most certainly would not condemn you for torture just because a court later ruled it is unlawful to use.

And yeah, I'm talking about semantics. Stop trying to play them with me.

 

[midcan5]

I think anyone but a blind partisan recognizes, had anything critical been found out in any of the many torture sessions, we would all have known about it LOUD and CLEAR. Aside from the fantasy of 24 a genuinely stupid show, nowhere has it been proven that torture does anything except disgrace the nation who commits this crime. Facts are in the world and would eventually come forward.

"Pribbenow sought an answer by revisiting the arcane case of Nguyen Van Tai, the highest-ranking Vietcong prisoner captured and interrogated by both South Vietnamese and American forces during the Vietnam War. Re-examining in detail the techniques used by the South Vietnamese (protracted torture that included electric shocks; beatings; various forms of water torture; stress positions; food, water, and sleep deprivation) and by the Americans (rapport-building and no violence), Pribbenow reached a stark conclusion: "While the South Vietnamese use of torture did result (eventually) in Tai's admission of his true identity, it did not provide any other usable information," he wrote. In the end, he said, "it was the skillful questions and psychological ploys of the Americans, and not any physical infliction of pain, that produced the only useful (albeit limited) information that Tai ever provided.""

NATIONAL JOURNAL: CIA Veterans Condemn Torture (11/19/05)

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep6hvIi-LDw[/ame]

183 times? by the time they were done he wouldn't have the brain cells left to know anything.

"...In one memo it states that it was thanks to waterboarding 9/11's mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (who was, according to the memo, subjected to the procedure 183 times) that we learned about a "Second Wave" of attacks. There has been little heard since about the "Second Wave," so without more documents declassified, it can be assumed that KSM made it up to stop the waterboarding."

Why Obama Needs to Reveal Even More on Torture - TIME

 

[amrchaos]

So what's the magic number where WBing IS torture?

Actually, as I said in the other thread about this topic, after the third or fourth time, the one being tortured has figured out how to survive it. Mind over matter? Since KSM survived, it seems he got the last laugh anyway.

Incorrect. The objective of torture to gain information is not death, so there is no last laugh to be had. The only laughing he is doing is at fools attacking their own government over to him, nonsensical political partisanship.

Go to the Middle East and tell some jihadist it's okay because you're a liberal. You'll find out REAL quick just how American and nothing more you are to them.

Gunny, this is not a question of politics. It is question of morality.

Now, there are some that will throw politics into this but it does not take much to realize there is no political gain if we make Torture, or whatever you wish to call it, a policy of the nation.

In fact, once it becomes publicly accepted, it does not take much to make it domestic policy.

 

[MaggieMae]

My point exactly. While the collective left was crying for someone to come wipe their asses and tuck them in, others were DOING something and not waiting on anyone else to do it for them.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I forgot that it is only conservative Republicans who make up the NYC police/fire/rescue and of course all those volunteers from out of state must have all been non-lefties.

Building those strawmen again I see, I didn't say a damned thing about conservative Republicans, did I?

I made a division between people who do for themselves and those that wait on Big Brother. And the fact, by the very stance of the two political ideologies, the former would be the vast majority on the right and the latter the vast majority on the left.

Don't put absolutes in my mouth. You know perfectly well what I meant and you are just a perfect example of my initial post in this thread. A leftwinger that tries to play word games.

Excuse me? Your ABSOLUTE is hightlighted in red, above. Sorry, but your continued characterization of anyone who doesn't walk in lockstep with your personal opinions as lefties, or leftwingnuts, or some other choice labeling is just as much of a biased word game as those you accuse of being "strawmen."

The torture subject is one that has been widely debated by both "sides" having strong opinions, but apparently your own strange opinion is that it's a leftist talking point only and should be treated as such. What?

 

[MaggieMae]

Calling bullshit on you there. The war in Afghan was justified. From the start. We had a clear mission, with a clear objective that went to the heart of the cause of 9/11.

Yup. And Bush had nearly 90% of Americans in favor of going into Afghanistan. Unfortunately, due to a side excursion, that war has just now begun in earnest 7+ years later.

And we STILL are doing patrols in Bosnia 16 years later. Your point?

If I have to explain it, then I give up. Your analogy is lame, at best.