One tip-off that you're wrong is the fact that the guy confessed to be part of a terror plot that he wasn't part of. But you've been ignoring that for hours now, so just keep it up.

you can't be this dumb.

he wasn't a bad guy. it was a mistake. are you saying that any valid interrogation technique needs to be 100% accurate? did the guys we did catch who gave us good info not lie at all? i'm sorry, I shouldn't be bothering you with this, which blog "has your proxy" so i can ask it?

Honestly, you are so full of it. I need to stop. bye.

and by the way, if atticus posts and doesn't give me an in to post a eva silverstein post, I'm not replying to him.

I think she was trying to suggest that the cost-benefit analysis you pro-torture folks seem to keep running involves an overestimate of the benefits and a willful disregard of the costs. But I take your point.

so "torture" now includes "psychological tricks". got it.

We Hold These Truths to be Self-Evident
 

That's why I'm calling a draw. I know we will have to agree to disagree on this, but I truly and firmly believe in my heart that the principles we espouse for ourselves and our citizens apply to all people, under all circumstances, where there is government action.

I don't trust the State to pick and choose. If that means I will die at my doorstep fighting off traitors and infidels, foreign or domestic, so be it. I'm ready to die for what I believe in. Even if it means I lose in the end.

Edited to clarify that I'm not saying we can never use deception or coercion. But I don't think threatening a man's family with torture or death is merely deception or coercion. I think it's over the line.

Thank you.

TS

1-0

Do you have any basis for your supposition that it was an empty threat? Even a blog post?

I've learned that Ty is taking steroids. PM me if you want details.

Have you noticed that Harold Ramis has aged into Randy Newman? They compliment each other nicely as opposite poles of the Hollywood hype machine. Ramis is terribly underappreciated and Newman ludicrously overappreciated. At least in terms of awards and such.

I have never been able to stomach more than three minutes of Randy Newman's music, yet he has more Grammies than Bob Dylan.

It's small consolation, but most of America only knows him for "Short People."

More ludicrously overappreciated than Randy Newman by far:

• Lou Reed
• Jim Morrison
• Iggy Pop
• Sonic Youth

He did I Love LA too!

And The Great Nations of Europe! Let's not forget!

Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.
 

Dream on Chinaski -- you may have bested Lizard Boy on the blog cite, but you drew at best a draw with The Queen Of All The Lands, and you never laid a glove on me.

http://www.jeanstephengalleries.com/clay-liston.jpg

I quite like "Louisiana 1927" and "Dixie Flyer." And that classic Charlie Sheen vehicle "Major League" just wouldn't be the same without "Burn On."

Your taste is in your mouth...

1. Lou Reed has a song catalog as classic as any pop musician who has ever lived. "Pale Blue Eyes," "Rock N. Roll" and "Sweet Jane" alone put him in that category.

2. Agreed Morrison and the Doors' thin sound are wildly overhyped. But "Moonlight Mile," "Indian Summer" and and the band's first record are amazing.

3. Agreed Iggy's a little more myth than talent. But the Stooges albums are all classics, as is his first solo record.

4. Agreed. I'm not a huge SY fan. But I know I like them a lot more than Newman

Still, the least of these artists is still 50X better than Randy Newman could ever hope to be on most inspired day. He is simply not that good. At his most listenable his lyrics are those of a dry, sober Warren Zevon with the backing music of Dr. John in a writing-gingles-for-Buick state of mind.

• "You know, torture is the method of choice of the lazy, the stupid and the pseudo-tough."

- Adm. Hutson, former JAG Officer and current Dean of Franklin Pierce Law Center, at the Mukasey hearings.

Seems like the type of facile legal analysis that might be expected from a third-tier law school.

dissent. anyone who can fully sum up and answer a horribly complex issue in a mere 17 words is one well-educated mother fucker.

"America" and "Political Science" are also rather poignant.

Agreed. And the gentleman had one hell of a solid summation.

He forgets the logical, pragmatic and efficient. You can cite all the contrarian eggheads you like for the proposition torture isn't effective, but anyone who's broken a limb or been kicked in the balls would admit, infliction of intense pain will cause results.

Do not reply to this with some Kinsley-esque article where some professor suggests that a more clever form of psychological gaming gets better results. I'll admit there may be such techniques out there, and that a few serious pros know how to use them. But in a world where we have hundreds of these people in custody and need the information as quickly as possible, "torture" is a lamentable necessity. And really, when you start discussing "alternatives" to "torture," aren't you just talking about acceptable degrees of torture? In that regard, this debate is almost as pointless as the semantic contoversy over gay marriage and civil unions.

And the American public knows this. Which is why no one outside the NYTimes, DailyKos and John McCain even cares about the issue.*

*And McCain is biased for obvious reasons.

Oh, no. You have that backwards. Ayn Rand is 1000x smarter than William Butler Yeats or ee cummings.

The "Conserve Ink" movementarians have gotten to you, too, haven't they?

But not always useful results. They tell you what you want to hear, which is why torture has always been used by repressive regimes with an interest in obtaining false confessions. If you want good information, you want to get the source to cooperate with you. The desire to torture people has more to do with wanting to be the kind of person who is ready to kick someone in the balls or break limbs. It's what intellectuals do to pose as tough guys and men of the world. Like you just did -- you call a veteran -- a retired admiral -- you know almost nothing about a "contrarian egghead."

Stop basing your worldview on "24."

No. You're talking about flipping a source so that he identifies with your side. There are different ways to do this, but they generally involve isolation and treating people decently.

All you have to do is look at the current crop of GOP presidential candidates to see that this desire to justify torture isn't really about the results -- it's about wanting to preen and pose, to look and sound tough. Giuliani, for one, is bent on making religious conservatives forget his marriages and cross-dressing and support of gun rights and all that other stuff by sounding more aggressive and tougher than the next guy.

I like your notion that McCain, who has actual experience with torture that you and most other people don't have, is "biased." Don't let reality get in the way of macho posing.

1. Nice try. Third world regimes have used it, badly, and not with the level of sophistication we employ, to obtain false confessions. Comparing Pol Pot or Stalin to us is not a rebuttal. Their goals were false confessions and their mathods were not as advanced as ours. Be careful using the broad brush, counselor.

2. The only television I watch is the Daily Show and Colbert Report and Keith Olbermann and O'Reilly sometimes (for laughs). I have never seen an episode of 24.

3. No. No, I'm not. I'm talking about getting the info out of him with whatever method works.

4. Agreed. I don't carry the candidates water on this issue. I am merely arguing for what I see as a common sense reality of the thing - that torture no doubt works. Other methods might as well, but those are all torture under a different name, which you amusingly suggest involves "treating the person decently." You want to believe that's the only way we can get the best information because that gives the crux of your argument automatic credibility. But we both know that's not a settled fact, and the truth is, in some cases your approach works; in others, torture works; in still some others, blending both approaches works. I'll agree its a greay area and your approach should be the initial one used, for humane reasons. You'll agree, if you're thinking reasonably and not emotionally, that if your approach does not work, or if time is of the essence, torture is the next logical, necessary step.

5. McCain is biased. He cannot speak to this issue as dispassionately as others might because of his history. There is also controversy over what he might have spilled under torture. And he is running for President and trying to define himself against the others, who all, as you note, defend Torequmada techniques.

Summing it, I agree with you. But when your approach fails, I think taking things to the next level is necessary. Unfortunately necessary.

Ah, the swiftboating of McCain has begun. So you guys are even doing it to your own now?

Comparing John Kerry and John McCain and you're accusing me of Swiftboating? I admire McCain. If he coughed anything under torture, I don't care. He's just human, and I'd never hold that against him.

But others would, and he's a politician, so he will shrewdly gird against it.

This was a silly cheap shot, BTW. You need another coffee.

Your faith that torture works is disturbing, not least because the conversation started with a quote from a retired Admiral who said otherwise -- he's the guy you called an egghead. You offer a realistic pragmatism that is utterly impervious to contrary evidence. Why do you think torture works? Because we need to do it. Why do we need to do it? Because it works.

All this talk about how it "works" is, among other things, incredibly short-sighted. You're not going to win the so-called war with Islamofascism by torturing suspected terrorists until they rat out their cohorts. It's a war for hearts and minds, and when you start torturing people, you surrender this country's biggest advantage, the notion that we actually stand for something other than sucking as many petrochemicals into our SUVs for as little as possible.

What you say about McCain is just sad.

Do you think it was wrong for the North Vietnamese to torture McCain, or was it justified by the fact that they were at war and might have learned something?

You're clearly undebatable on this issue. Any suggestion torture works is automatically discounted despite the clear reality that for thousands of years people have used it. Has it always been a failure? Is that your suggestion? Thousands of years of regimes torturing people has never elicted useful information becuase some admiral says it doesn't work?

I am trying to be open minded and accept your view as the best way to start interrogations, but you are being absurd and absolutist here. Yes, torture does work in some circumstances, and I would use it as a last resort.

And you've totally warped the logical steps I used to reach that simple conclusion. You either do that because you know your argument is a silly absolutist solution to an issue which is clearly one of degrees or you're simply so high on self-righteousness and the reinforcement you get from reading left-leaning materials on the matter that compromise on this issue seems offensive.

That would be sad.

"Hearts and minds"? I agree with winning hearts and minds. But what if that doesn't work? What if the zealot progamming is too deply entrenched for the "soft interrogation" angle? What shall we do then? Are you foolish enough to suggest your "feel good" approach works 100% of the time?

Back up and put your emotion and political leaning aside.

Justified has nothing to do with it. They did what they did and if it was effective it was effective.

I'd like to think we're better than that, and that we would only stoop to that level when all other techniques are exhausted.

Weigh the value of the information to be discovered (possible attacks on our soil) against the disturbing reality of having to torture someone.

You may stand on principle and say we can NEVER torture no matter what. And doing that would make the perfect the enemy of the pragmatically sensible. When I've done that in the past, you've chided me for being unrealistic. Rightly.

There are other reasons to torture. The lazy, stupid and pseudo-tough are not a recent invention.

That said, I'm willing to acknowledge that torturing people will sometimes get useful information out of them. I think we ought not torture people anyway, for a variety of reasons: (1) it's wrong, (2) as a method to extract information, it generally doesn't work as well as the alternatives, and (3) to take a longer view, torture doesn't "work" because it is a strategic blunder -- it undermines us in larger, more important ways.

I think U.S. law should bar torture -- I still find it surreal that the point is even in question -- and that anyone in the government who finds themselves wanting to use torture should make damn well sure that the circumstances are so compelling that a prosecutor would not bring charges. For a variety of reasons, there is a great temptation to turn to torture, and if you just trust people to do the right thing, often they won't.

I don't think this position is particularly absolutist. It is, after all, what the law was for the first 225 years of this country.

So you can't bring yourself to say that the North Vietnamese were wrong to torture U.S. airmen because they might have gotten effective information out of it. I'd like to think that we are better than that, too, but 30 years ago there would have been no real disagreement in this country that what the North Vietnamese were doing was wrong, and now we find ourselves on a slippery slope.

It's always wrong when it's happening to your guys. Different story when you're the torturer. We're nothing in this country if not unbelievably self-righteous and stuck on this silly notion that, as Zell Miller amazingly put it, "God is not indifferent to the future of the United States."

We're not on any slippery slope. The only difference between now and then is the media is a lot more powerful. We did it then and no one knew. That we said it was wrong means nothing.

Your position is clarified. We're not that far apart. Really, the only difference is, you want torturers to have to work around a law, which they do (hence, rendition). Since that's the reality already, I could even agree with that. Make torture something akin to dope in Amsterdam. Illegal on the books, but the law's not enforced when we ship people to other countries so they can torture them.

This is one of those odd debates where the reality of our animal nature and the ugly realities of armed conflict run up against the law. Which should trump which is a tough question, so we wind up with quasi-legal loopholes as the only soultion allowing both systems to co-exist and not interfere with one another.

Setting aside the obvious problem here, you lose the ability to have anyone else in the world take you seriously when you say, do as I say, not as I do. Since most Islamofascist terrorists are hiding out in other countries, this is not just a pointy-head intellectual concern.

I believe he is not just a "former JAG Officer", but the former Judge Advocate General of the Navy.

Carry On.

S_A_M

P.S. Interrogation techniques can and often should be classified. That said -- the idea that interrogators make false threats is sort of like the idea that police will lie to you in interrogation -- no big surprise, and I don't see the justification for classifying THAT technique.

Arrests and coercion of innocent people should surely be actionable -- not to say he should collect, or how much, but he should not be thrown out of Court. That's the quickest way to allow society to moderate the inevitable excesses.

P.P.S. We should apologize to the innocent Canadian we shipped to Syria to get his balls electroshocked. Yes, Canadian intelligence made the initial false identification as a "terrorist" [and have since paid him about $10mm I think] but for god's sakes we should at least say: "Sorry about your 'nads, Dude."

P.P.P.S. And if we're really fighting a War without end, which I think we are, where and when does it all stop if we let this stuff go unchecked?

I'm calling this one. 34509-19

S_A_M

I don't really see a principled reason to think that government agents should have the unbridled discretion to torture people but can't be trusted to decide whether to prosecute others for torture.

As much as anything else, this whole debate is about the Bush Administration's desire to do away with checks and balances so that the executive branch can do whatever the hell it pleases. All government agencies would love to be free of oversight. It doesn't mean they make better decisions -- quite the opposite.

How do you know it was a false threat? I asked Hank that question, and he never tried to answer.

We do not know -- the circumstantial evidence we have is that we have no information that Egyptian security actually did anything to his family.

In the "right" case, I wouldnt be surprised if we did such a thing.

S_A_M