Originally Posted By DAR After a good meal and a little bit of exercise to clear my head, I'm going to do something a lot of people on these boards should do more often. I'm going to admit that I'm wrong. We shouldn't torture our enemies. No matter how much they may deserve it. No matter how evil they are. No matter that they want to kill as many of us as possible. No matter that they'd like to see every person of Jewish descent dead. No what we should do is continue to fight them on the battlefield. Punish the guilty through our laws and what ever happens, happens. And if some slip through the cracks of the legal system then we face the consequences of those decisions.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <We captured Nazis, who were not only as evil as Al Qaeda, they were a great deal more powerful. Nearly took over all of Europe. But we didn't torture them, because that's not who WE are.> No, we hung them, if they were unlawful combatants. Google "ex parte quirin". Which would you rather be, waterboarded or hung? <And after it was over we gave them trials with rights of due process, rather than stick them in some black site prison outside of any sphere of law.> Keywords - "after it was over". And even then, we didn't give them habeus corpus. Google "Eisentrager".
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <But it hasn't been demonstrated that we can't win without doing this. It further hasn't been demonstrated that torturing will help us win faster.> The memos said otherwise. According to John A. Rizzo, the senior deputy general counsel for the CIA, "the intelligence acquired from these interrogations has been a key reason why al Qa’ida has failed to launch a spectacular attack in the West since 11 September 2001.” They also said, "In particular, the CIA believes that it would have been unable to obtain critical information from numerous detainees . . . without these enhanced techniques." And "once enhanced techniques were employed" interrogations of Abu Zubaydah furnished detailed information regarding al Qaeda's "organizational structure, key operatives, and modus operandi". As I mentioned earlier, both George Tenet and Michael Hayden, the last two Directors of the CIA, said these interrogations saved lives. They are on record; the guys saying it didn't work are not or weren't in a position to know.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh "The CIA used the waterboard extensively in the interrogations of KSM and Zubaydah, but did so only after it became clear that standard interrogation techniques were not working." <a href="http://72.3.233.244/pdfs/safefree/olc_05302005_bradbury.pdf" target="_blank">http://72.3.233.244/pdfs/safef...bury.pdf</a>
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>The CIA used the waterboard extensively in the interrogations of KSM and Zubaydah, but did so only after it became clear that standard interrogation techniques were not working<< Uh huh. So by that standard, the sky is the limit. If waterboarding doesn't work, maybe we move on to some other thing we'll rename "enhanced techniques".
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <If waterboarding doesn't work, maybe we move on to some other thing we'll rename "enhanced techniques".> Either that, or we could let innocent people die. How many people are you willing to sacrifice for your sense of morality? 10? 100? 1000?
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>Either that, or we could let innocent people die.<< Like that's the only two choices. You know, there was a fascinating piece about the fellow that got all sorts of information from Saddam in captivity. It took patience and creativity. And I'll bet beating the hell out of him wouldn't have provided half the insights that interrogator was able to get by playing to Saddam's ego. Check out that 60 Minutes piece on him if you haven't seen it. >>How many people are you willing to sacrifice for your sense of morality?<< How much of your morality are you willing to sacrifice? 10%? 50%? 100%?
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <I'll bet beating the hell out of him wouldn't have provided half the insights that interrogator was able to get by playing to Saddam's ego.> Well, I guess watching 60 minutes makes you more the expert than the CIA. Why didn't they just call you? <How much of your morality are you willing to sacrifice?> Saving lives will keep my morality intact.
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>Well, I guess watching 60 minutes makes you more the expert than the CIA. Why didn't they just call you? << Now, let's remember this line when you start claiming a few posts from now that it's always everyone else who starts getting insulting and not you. We've been having a good exchange and now you start getting insulting. But insults aside, I didn't claim to be an expert -- I was commenting on what an expert did, and the results an expert got with patience and creativity from a very important prisoner.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>Like that's the only two choices.<< Exactly. That's the red herring that keeps popping up over and over again in these discussions. "If Jack Bauer doesn't hook the car battery up to Khalim al Satan then Sally Baseball and Stevie Applepie will get all blowed up when the nuclear bomb in Manhattan goes off!" Nonsense. Every time there's a report saying that torture didn't work and that it led to false leads, those who support torture and waterboarding dismiss it. Every time there's a report saying it worked, they crow about it and play on fears and try and portray us as a-ok with Americans dying. "You'd rather see the blonde haired, blue-eyed kindergardener killed instead of pour a little harmless water on a terrorist with brown skin?" Don't fall for the dichotomy. It's that kind of black and white foolishness that guided our policy for eight years, and it was a total failure.
Originally Posted By DyGDisney >>>Either that, or we could let innocent people die. How many people are you willing to sacrifice for your sense of morality? 10? 100? 1000?<<< Seems innocent people are dying, but Americans have ignored this fact. Hundreds of innocent Iraqi and Afghan people have been killed in the wars we are fighting in their countries. Do they count less because they are brown skin or because they had the poor fortune of being born in a country where Sadaam Hussein or the Al Queida were in charge?
Originally Posted By DAR <<Seems innocent people are dying, but Americans have ignored this fact. Hundreds of innocent Iraqi and Afghan people have been killed in the wars we are fighting in their countries>> One of the downsides is innocent people die in war. But our military is the best at what they do and they will bend over backwards to make sure that few innocent lives are lost.
Originally Posted By Mr X ***But our military is the best at what they do and they will bend over backwards to make sure that few innocent lives are lost.*** You are right. But there would be even fewer innocent lives lost if our military had not been there in the first place. Go figure.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <Now, let's remember this line when you start claiming a few posts from now that it's always everyone else who starts getting insulting and not you.> Well, I'm sorry K2M, but I find it a little insulting that you're condemning our CIA and military personnel based on idle speculation. As if they were just chomping on the bit to waterboard someone, and either didn't consider or weren't willing to try any other techniques that might be effective. No one "beat the hell" out of the three detainees in question. The memos show that these techniques were limited, highly regulated, and effective.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <But there would be even fewer innocent lives lost if our military had not been there in the first place.> Not necessarily. Saddam had goons line people up and mow them down and bury them in ditches. Plus there was mass starvation going on as he took the money from "Oil for Food" and lined the pockets of European bureaucrats and built palaces. And yes, lots of innocent Afghanis and Iraqis have died, but most of the blood is on the hands of the terrorists, not ours. We're not the ones who set off bombs in crowded marketplaces.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh I'm willing to lower our standing with the world to save innocent lives.
Originally Posted By Mr X ***Well, I'm sorry K2M, but I find it a little insulting that you're condemning our CIA and military personnel based on idle speculation.*** How convenient. Talk about moving the goalposts. It would have been a lot cooler to just say "sorry". Why am I not surprised.
