Posting Towards Gomorrah

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
Maybe "anger" is the wrong word. Around the world, the USA stands for ideals that those countries do not. You want us to be more like them. No thank you.

I want to protect our citizens from harm. You want to tie the hands of those who would protect us.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
I want to protect our citizens from harm. You want to tie the hands of those who would protect us.

Yeah, right, Ty just wants to kill Americans.


Shut it.

[SlaveNoMore]

Gattigap
People from around the world come here in part because they live in regimes that do that shit and worse, including to their own citizens. They come here and look up to this place in part because we've said we don't do that shit. They watch and eat up Rambo movies where they see the OTHER GUY doing the torturing, not our guys.

Dissent. Tell that Jack Bauer...er Kiefer Sutherland and his Emmy.

If you believe that the only people who care are the Angry Left in the US and some assorted Frenchmen, you're entitled to that opinion. I think you're wrong, but no matter. It's inherently intangible. We could talk about polls, I suppose, but I suspect that you won't put much value in them.

These same people would, will and do find fault with us for umpteen other reasons.

[ltl/fb]

Originally posted by Spanky
So it is not OK to torture, but beating on detainees and pretending that you are drowning them is not torture, so it is OK to use those techniques.

Give me a break.

Um, slapping -- not torture, unless like the person's face is already all broken or something and so slapping is akin to breaking more bones or driving bones into the brain or something.

Pretending to drown -- torture.

My argument was not as stupid (in the opposite direction) like yours was, which is that anything that inflicts pain is torture, which means torture is OK.

Posner has a new book out on the whole "constitutional rights should be set aside" thing. Wonder how Scalia would view that. I think maybe they'd get to the same place, but from diametrically opposite places. Interesting. There's a review in NYT today. NYT didn't like it -- I'm sure you are all shocked.

[SlaveNoMore]

taxwonk
You're going with "but they do it, too," as your best argument? I don't buy it from my 10 year old, either.

So you agree that McCain's remarks suggesting this will prevent harm to our own troops is a crock?

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
If you are truly interested, there are numerous cites.

eta: This book is a good start.


http://www.amazon.com/Interrogators-...e=UTF8&s=books

that is so annoying. Somtimes I wonder why I even click on your links. You and Ty think that referencing an entire book is a cite. It is not. You both also seem to think that information from a person that talked to an anonymous source, is a cite. It is not. A reference to someone elses opion is not a cite - unless of course you are arguing about someone's opinion and not a fact. A person alleging that somone else said somthing is only a cite, if the person who said it, confirms they said it.

If a person from the FBI or Army (and from a section that does interrogations not someone from the transportation division) is on record saying they don't need to use torture or tough interrogation techniques I would be really interested in that. But absent that, don't tell me you have a cite.

[SlaveNoMore]

Spanky
I agree with this except for the stupid part. But is it worth being vicious and debasing to all Americans if it will save innocent lives?

Of course not.

Why worry about a few human lives, so long as everyone can sleep warm and fuzzy at night knowing that the terrorists aren't getting slapped.

[SlaveNoMore]

taxwonk
It's wrong and it disgraces all of us.

:violin:

[Spanky]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Of course not.

Why worry about a few human lives, so long as everyone can sleep warm and fuzzy at night knowing that the terrorists aren't getting slapped.

I am going to worry about the few human lives, thank you very much.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Spanky
that is so annoying. Somtimes I wonder why I even click on your links. You and Ty think that referencing an entire book is a cite. It is not. You both also seem to think that information from a person that talked to an anonymous source, is a cite. It is not. A reference to someone elses opion is not a cite - unless of course you are arguing about someone's opinion and not a fact. A person alleging that somone else said somthing is only a cite, if the person who said it, confirms they said it.

If a person from the FBI or Army (and from a section that does interrogations not someone from the transportation division) is on record saying they don't need to use torture or tough interrogation techniques I would be really interested in that. But absent that, don't tell me you have a cite.

You may have noticed that it's an amazon.com link. You also may have noticed that I described it as a book. From this, an intelligent reader should have been able to infer that I was referencing a book. An intelligent reader also may have noticed that the book is by an Army interrogator. In the book, he is on the record as saying they don't need to use torture. I thought you might be interested in that.

[SlaveNoMore]

Spanky
So it is not OK to torture, but beating on detainees and pretending that you are drowning them is not torture, so it is OK to use those techniques.

This is close to my position, yes.

[SlaveNoMore]

Shape Shifter
Yeah, right, Ty just wants to kill Americans.

Shut it.

No, you bozos want to extend liberties to the same animals that would take them from you at gunpoint.

Notwithstanding the fact that this entire conversation is bullshit anyway, since the bill at the heart of the discussion does not advocate torture in the first place.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
Cite?

The Army position was cited in the Washington Post editorial I quoted and linked to earlier today. An Army general gave a press conference about the issue last week. The FBI's position has been reported in a number of places in the last couple of weeks. They generally feel that they get better information by treating people well. I'll try to keep my eye out for a cite. If you're reading The Looming Tower, look for the description of the FBI's interrogation of the guy in Yemen after the bombing of the USS Cole.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
I want to protect our citizens from harm. You want to tie the hands of those who would protect us.

As Ronald Reagan said in that speech I quoted last week, there are principles that are worth taking risks for.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Spanky
If a person from the FBI or Army (and from a section that does interrogations not someone from the transportation division) is on record saying they don't need to use torture or tough interrogation techniques I would be really interested in that.

Lt. Gen. John Kimmel, Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, said:

• I am absolutely convinced [that] no good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tell us that. . . . Moreover, any piece of intelligence which is obtained under duress, through the use of abusive techniques, would be of questionable credibility, and additionally it would do more harm than good when it inevitably became known that abusive practices were used. And we can't afford to go there.
  
  Some of our most significant successes on the battlefield have been -- in fact, I would say all of them, almost categorically all of them, have accrued from expert interrogators using mixtures of authorized humane interrogation practices in clever ways, that you would hope Americans would use them, to push the envelope within the bookends of legal, moral and ethical, now as further refined by this field manual.
  
  We don't need abusive practices in there. Nothing good will come from them.

;ink