Originally Posted By Mr X One thing is for sure, if anyone doubted that Doug truly is a zealot, this thread is your answer.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <Doug and DAR --- you are Christians so am I.> Actually, I'm a Deist. But I know enough about Jesus that I know he didn't turn the other cheek when innocents were being harmed or exploited. He whipped the money-changers, remember. And no one is calling for torture.
Originally Posted By DouglasDubh <You completely missed the most important part of Kar2oonMan's comment to you.> No, I caught it. I just disagree with it.
Originally Posted By DAR Dyg I refer you to post 182 from last night: 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 <One thing is for sure, if anyone doubted that Doug truly is a zealot, this thread is your answer.> If being willing to pour water on a terrorist's face to save innocent lives makes me a zealot, then I'm fine with that.
Originally Posted By DAR Before the term became what it is waterboarding always sounded like something you'd do up at the lake.
Originally Posted By Sport Goofy << If being willing to pour water on a terrorist's face to save innocent lives makes me a zealot, then I'm fine with that. >> You can be fine with that, but it's still torture and fundamentally against all principles of the law of armed conflict.
Originally Posted By DAR Okay so what wouldn't constitute as torture? Depriving a prisoner of a meal for one day?
Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>not get a little thrown back at you<< I see. In other words, since you disagree with me, it's okay to paint me as sympathetic to terrorists and unconcerned about the lives of innocents, completely dismiss, distort and denigrate whatever I say.
Originally Posted By DyGDisney Sorry DAR, I didn't catch that. I thought you were reading kind of different though! And sorry to you too Doug. Don't forget though that Jesus prayed for forgiveness for those who were torturing and killing him. My point was not that our COUNTRY should just let ourselves be attacked and not do anythin. I am 100% for going in and getting the Al Queida and Bin Laden, but making up reasons to go to war in a totally different country I'm not okay with. My point was that it seems the Christian right are the ones somehow okay with torture and the loss of innocent lives in other countries. Just don't understand how that works.
Originally Posted By DAR <<My point was that it seems the Christian right are the ones somehow okay with torture and the loss of innocent lives in other countries. Just don't understand how that works.>> I'm not even remotely close to being associated with the Christian right.
Originally Posted By Sport Goofy << Okay so what wouldn't constitute as torture? >> Trying to come up with things that are quasi-torture isn't really the best way to go about this. Anytime you deprive someone of their human dignity or the necessities of life, it is torturous. We need to get out of that business altogether.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 <<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?> In the case you refer to, they were duly tried and convicted by military tribunal and sentence passed, and were not tortured. Two of them turned themselves in. And they were electrocuted, not hung. Google "get your facts straight." <<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".> Even before it was over, we did not torture them. <And even then, we didn't give them habeus corpus. Google "Eisentrager".> That decision said that the Nazis in question had never been on US territory, and were not entitled to a US trial. They got the Nuremburg trials, and were in fact afforded due process rights, which is very different from the situation in Guantanamo. Google "apple and orange" and "get a clue."
Originally Posted By DAR <<Trying to come up with things that are quasi-torture isn't really the best way to go about this. Anytime you deprive someone of their human dignity or the necessities of life, it is torturous. We need to get out of that business altogether.>> True but we need to make sure future administrations don't move the needle back and forth.
Originally Posted By Sport Goofy << True but we need to make sure future administrations don't move the needle back and forth. >> If they just follow existing laws, we won't have that problem.
Originally Posted By piperlynne >><Doug and DAR --- you are Christians so am I.> Actually, I'm a Deist. But I know enough about Jesus that I know he didn't turn the other cheek when innocents were being harmed or exploited. He whipped the money-changers, remember. And no one is calling for torture.<< You may not be "calling" for it Doug, but the posts below suggest that you certainly wouldn’t rule it out if it “saved innocent lives”. So exactly what are YOUR limits as far as “saving innocent lives”? How far are you willing to go or let our government go? >><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?<< <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. I'm willing to lower our standing with the world to save innocent lives.<<
Originally Posted By Dabob2 Defending torture because "it gets results" was always a dicey proposition, and there's a strong case to be made that even if it did, we shouldn't do it. But for anyone who still defends it on "efficacy," or believes the likes of Dick Cheney and his self-serving tales, Ali Soufan, FBI interrogator who ACTUALLY INTERROGATED Zubaydah, has just set the story straight. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/opinion/23soufan.html?_r=1" target="_blank">http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04...tml?_r=1</a> This is important to read. "FOR seven years I have remained silent about the false claims magnifying the effectiveness of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding. I have spoken only in closed government hearings, as these matters were classified. But the release last week of four Justice Department memos on interrogations allows me to shed light on the story, and on some of the lessons to be learned. One of the most striking parts of the memos is the false premises on which they are based. The first, dated August 2002, grants authorization to use harsh interrogation techniques on a high-ranking terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, on the grounds that previous methods hadn’t been working. The next three memos cite the successes of those methods as a justification for their continued use. It is inaccurate, however, to say that Abu Zubaydah had been uncooperative. Along with another F.B.I. agent, and with several C.I.A. officers present, I questioned him from March to June 2002, before the harsh techniques were introduced later in August. Under traditional interrogation methods, he provided us with important actionable intelligence. We discovered, for example, that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Abu Zubaydah also told us about Jose Padilla, the so-called dirty bomber. This experience fit what I had found throughout my counterterrorism career: traditional interrogation techniques are successful in identifying operatives, uncovering plots and saving lives. " Got that, everyone? We got KSM's name from Zubaydah using time-tested NON-TORTURE interrogation techniques, BEFORE torture was introduced. He calls claims like Cheney's "false claims" and the torture memos based on "false premises." And he was in a position to know. "There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics." Read that again. Torture is both morally wrong, and unnecessary. "In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions — all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process. Defenders of these techniques have claimed that they got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a top aide to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Mr. Padilla. This is false." Repeat: this is false. "The information that led to Mr. Shibh’s capture came primarily from a different terrorist operative who was interviewed using traditional methods. As for Mr. Padilla, the dates just don’t add up: the harsh techniques were approved in the memo of August 2002, Mr. Padilla had been arrested that May." And using torture had other negative consequences. "One of the worst consequences of the use of these harsh techniques was that it reintroduced the so-called Chinese wall between the C.I.A. and F.B.I., similar to the communications obstacles that prevented us from working together to stop the 9/11 attacks. Because the bureau would not employ these problematic techniques, our agents who knew the most about the terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An F.B.I. colleague of mine who knew more about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than anyone in the government was not allowed to speak to him." Wonderful. Just when our intelligence services should have been working together most closely. "It was the right decision to release these memos, as we need the truth to come out. This should not be a partisan matter, because it is in our national security interest to regain our position as the world’s foremost defenders of human rights." It SHOULD not be a partisan matter, but... "Just as important, releasing these memos enables us to begin the tricky process of finally bringing these terrorists to justice. The debate after the release of these memos has centered on whether C.I.A. officials should be prosecuted for their role in harsh interrogation techniques. That would be a mistake. Almost all the agency officials I worked with on these issues were good people who felt as I did about the use of enhanced techniques: it is un-American, ineffective and harmful to our national security. Fortunately for me, after I objected to the enhanced techniques, the message came through from Pat D’Amuro, an F.B.I. assistant director, that “we don’t do that,” and I was pulled out of the interrogations by the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller (this was documented in the report released last year by the Justice Department’s inspector general). My C.I.A. colleagues who balked at the techniques, on the other hand, were instructed to continue. (It’s worth noting that when reading between the lines of the newly released memos, it seems clear that it was contractors, not C.I.A. officers, who requested the use of these techniques.) As we move forward, it’s important to not allow the torture issue to harm the reputation, and thus the effectiveness, of the C.I.A. The agency is essential to our national security. We must ensure that the mistakes behind the use of these techniques are never repeated. We’re making a good start: President Obama has limited interrogation techniques to the guidelines set in the Army Field Manual, and Leon Panetta, the C.I.A. director, says he has banned the use of contractors and secret overseas prisons for terrorism suspects (the so-called black sites). Just as important, we need to ensure that no new mistakes are made in the process of moving forward — a real danger right now. "
Originally Posted By RoadTrip I do not support torture and wish the United States had not engaged in it. On the other hand, there is NO WAY these prisoners qualified as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention, so I disagree with arguments that what we did was illegal. Immoral perhaps, but not illegal. <<Article 4 defines prisoners of war to include: * 4.1.1 Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict and members of militias of such armed forces * 4.1.2 Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, provided that they fulfill all of the following conditions: o that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates; o that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance (there are limited exceptions to this among countries who observe the 1977 Protocol I); o that of carrying arms openly; o that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war. * 4.1.3 Members of regular armed forces who profess allegiance to a government or an authority not recognized by the Detaining Power. * 4.1.4 Civilians who have non-combat support roles with the military and who carry a valid identity card issued by the military they support. * 4.1.5 Merchant marine and the crews of civil aircraft of the Parties to the conflict, who do not benefit by more favourable treatment under any other provisions of international law. * 4.1.6 Inhabitants of a non-occupied territory, who on the approach of the enemy spontaneously take up arms to resist the invading forces, without having had time to form themselves into regular armed units, provided they carry arms openly and respect the laws and customs of war.>>
Originally Posted By Sport Goofy << On the other hand, there is NO WAY these prisoners qualified as prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention, so I disagree with arguments that what we did was illegal. Immoral perhaps, but not illegal. >> Under the law of armed conflict, these prisoners would be classified as unlawful combatants. Unlawful combatants should be prosecuted as criminals with all of the rights inherent in a judicial process. You are correct to point out that prisoners of war have different rights. Among those are very strict rules on interrogations. It was incovenient for us to classify the Al Quaeda combatants as POWs because it did not allow the interrogations that were being pursued by the CIA. Therefore, we gamed the system and classified them as something else. That has led to all sorts of different problems that we now have to deal with. It's also worth noting that unlawful combatants should not be removed from the country where they are captured unless hostilities make it impossible to ensure their safety there. Of course, we ignored that legality as well when we shipped them all off to Guantanamo Bay.
