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New York, 2:38 AM
Sun Dec 20
11 posts in the last 24 hours
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05/06/09
Me? I'll go with the better angels of humanity and, when confronted by threats, always rely on brains and persuasion before brute force, which will serve to justify our enemies' attacks against us.
[www.amazon.com]
05/06/09
I have changed my position from not agreeing that water-boarding was torture (I think changing position is fine, as long as you acknowledge it). This was in part because of arguments that I heard on here, but mostly it came from talking to some ex=special forces acquaintances that had been subjected to water-boarding in training. Although I can imagine worse things, the sheer number of incidents put any argument I had that "it was not as bad as it sounds" to rest.
If the point is that we should not torture because it is morally reprehensible, then you get no argument from me. The US should not torture, put its citizens in concentration camps or use white phosphorous rounds on enemy personnel.
On the other hand, if you are trying to make a case against the effectiveness of torture, you and the experts can all blow it out of your asses. Every human being has a breaking point. Once that point is reached they will tell you anything that you want to know. That may not have been the case with this fistful of scumbags because they had already spilled their guts, but there are hardened cases that will never talk to you until you take the gloves off.
No. The ends do not justify the means and torture should not have been used. The United States stands for something beyond our safety. But don't delude yourselves for a minute that the reason we should stop is because it's not worthwhile. Torture has been around as long as warfare. If it wasn't effective in any situation it would have been dropped in the Stone Age.
I hate to keep referring to Stratfor because I can't link it, but they made an excellent point last week in saying that at the time that the water-boarding was going on, we didn't even know where to start, what we were looking for or how much time we had before the next attack. Now that we have marginalized al Qaeda to a large degree, the choice seems easy.
My point in bringing this up is that we should have said "no" to torture when the choice was still a lot harder, but I can understand the reasons that we didn't.
05/06/09
Rape and infanticide have been around since the Stone Age too, and they are just as 'effective' as torture - at causing human misery and death. The fact that a practice has been in place since the beginning of human history in no way justifies that practice.
Now that we have marginalized al Qaeda to a large degree, the choice seems easy.
My point in bringing this up is that we should have said "no" to torture when the choice was still a lot harder, but I can understand the reasons that we didn't.
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."
05/06/09
TWIST
This is my position: "No. The ends do not justify the means and torture should not have been used."
"The US should not torture, put its citizens in concentration camps or use white phosphorous rounds on enemy personnel."
05/06/09
"In abstract terms, trained interrogators already have decent methods for getting accurate information out of prisoners. Subjecting the prisoner to coercion, physical suffer, and mental torment can certain get someone to say more things but the very fact that the "things" were coerced out of the captive by torture limits their value. You'll almost certainly get him to say some accurate stuff. He might, for example, correctly insist that he doesn't know anything more. But he'll also say all kinds of inaccurate stuff. He'll say whatever he thinks will get you to stop torturing him.
In historical terms, you don't look back on the Spanish Inquisition or on Stalin's Russia and say man, those guys had some crack investigators! Rather, you see that historically the function of torture has been to extract false confessions and to inspire a general climate of fear." [yglesias.thinkprogress.org]
05/06/09
@persimmon: First of all, read some of the past posts on this subject, before you go spouting off. There are tons of liberals who make compelling, ethically based arguments about torture and then add side arguments that it is ineffective and puts our troops in more danger due to reprisals. Hamilton's whole fucking article was about someone who retracted his position on the effectiveness of torture.
I took the time out to talk to people who were actually tortured in military training exercises. One was waterboarded. Those people were convinced that it would actually work if it were a real scenario. It's a little irritating when I take a moderate position that is not conservative, but a little left of my usual stance and some idiot like you attacks me because I am not on the extreme liberal side of every issue. So, pardon me if I don't give a fuck if any part my opinion is wearing thin with you. My opinion is that we were wrong to resort to torture. I think that it is an effective but immoral way to obtain information. Period. If I'm riding a fence, it's my balls that are being chafed.
@Paul_Is_Drunk: Thank you. Sincerely. My reasons are stated above.
05/06/09
Could I get a couple of cites for this? Defense of torture doesn't seem to be a terribly liberal position.
ps: Alan Dershowitz is not a liberal.
05/06/09
I'm not asking for a pat on the back. Before I found out about the number of times the water-boarding was used I didn't see it as torture. If you punch me in the stomach once it's a battery. If you do it repeatedly it's torture. By the way, I'm not interested in receiving a prize from any body that celebrates Yasser Arafat's achievements.
What an asshole you are for denigrating the military service of my friends. If you do it in the future, at least be funny. You owe them that much, punk.
@valet_of_the_dolls: They weren't defending torture. I was saying that they were trying to bolster their arguments against torture by saying that it was ineffective. I said "arguments about torture" but I meant "arguments against torture," in my previous post. Hope this clears it up. My bad.
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