Posting Towards Gomorrah

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Given this, what I can't understand is why you think that it's important that we try to bring democracy to other countries. Perhaps you think that every person has some sort of innate right to vote, but not an innate right to be free of torture or indefinite detention. Or perhaps you think that democracy is a good way to make people rich, and you are entirely indifferent to human rights, except as a way to increase aggregate utility.

I've left the board, but for legacy purposes I would like to know if this means you now acknowledge torture works- not that its right- simply it works, right?

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
Perhaps you think that every person has some sort of innate right to vote, but not an innate right to be free of torture or indefinite detention.

Perhaps every person has an innate right to be free of torture...

But just as individuals forfeit certain rights by their actions, folks like Khalid Mohammed forfeited his right to be free of torture* by conspiring with other terrorists.

*I remain steadfast in my belief that waterboarding - which amounts to nothing more than scaring someone - isn't torture.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Perhaps every person has an innate right to be free of torture...

But just as individuals forfeit certain rights by their actions, folks like Khalid Mohammed forfeited his right to be free of torture* by conspiring with other terrorists.

The concept of human rights doesn't have a whole lot of force if other people can decide that you've forfeited them. Not very innate.

I understand that you think they deserve it. Let's just say that the rest of us aren't exactly moved by a sympathy for the plight of the Khalid Sheikh Mohammeds of the world.

*I remain steadfast in my belief that waterboarding - which amounts to nothing more than scaring someone - isn't torture.

So noted. I have never heard you explain what does constitute torture, so I get this vibe that the "they deserve it" idea is combining with the "it isn't that bad" idea in your head.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
The concept of human rights doesn't have a whole lot of force if other people can decide that you've forfeited them. Not very innate.

I understand that you think they deserve it. Let's just say that the rest of us aren't exactly moved by a sympathy for the plight of the Khalid Sheikh Mohammeds of the world.



So noted. I have never heard you explain what does constitute torture, so I get this vibe that the "they deserve it" idea is combining with the "it isn't that bad" idea in your head.

I've left the board, but for legacy purposes I would like to know if this means you now acknowledge torture works- not that its right- simply it works, right?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
I've left the board, but for legacy purposes I would like to know if this means you now acknowledge torture works- not that its right- simply it works, right?

In what sense? Torture successfully is used for intimidation, deterrence, revenge, punishment, and sadism, although conservatives who formerly took a pessimistic view of the power of governmental institutions to revise human nature apparently have now concluded that membership in the Republican Party and election to U.S. government office will immunize people from any instinct to anything unpleasant.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
In what sense? Torture successfully is used for intimidation, deterrence, revenge, punishment, and sadism, although conservatives who formerly took a pessimistic view of the power of governmental institutions to revise human nature apparently have now concluded that membership in the Republican Party and election to U.S. government office will immunize people from any instinct to anything unpleasant.

helpful to get information- agree?

[Tables R Us]

Evidence that the Geneva Convention does not apply to terrorists.

Under Ronald Reagan, the United States refused to adopt amendments to the Geneva Convention because the administration thought the amendments would extend treaty protection to terrorists:

Message to the Senate Transmitting a Protocol to the 1949 Geneva Conventions

January 29, 1987


To the Senate of the United States:

...

It is unfortunate that Protocol I must be rejected. We would have preferred to ratify such a convention, which as I said contains certain sound elements. But we cannot allow other nations of the world, however numerous, to impose upon us and our allies and friends an unacceptable and thoroughly distasteful price for joining a convention drawn to advance the laws of war. In fact, we must not, and need not, give recognition and protection to terrorist groups as a price for progress in humanitarian law.

...

I believe that these actions are a significant step in defense of traditional humanitarian law and in opposition to the intense efforts of terrorist organizations and their supporters to promote the legitimacy of their aims and practices. The repudiation of Protocol I is one additional step, at the ideological level so important to terrorist organizations, to deny these groups legitimacy as international actors.

Therefore, I request that the Senate act promptly to give advice and consent to the ratification of the agreement I am transmitting today, subject to the understandings and reservations that are described more fully in the attached report. I would also invite an expression of the sense of the Senate that it shares the view that the United States should not ratify Protocol I, thereby reaffirming its support for traditional humanitarian law, and its opposition to the politicization of that law by groups that employ terrorist practices.

Ronald Reagan

The White House,

January 29, 1987

The NY Times agreed that the Senate ought to reject the amendments because they would extend Treaty protection to terrorists:

Published: February 17, 1987
President Reagan has faced more important but probably no tougher decisions than whether to seek ratification of revisions to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. If he said yes, that would improve protection for prisoners of war and civilians in wartime, but at the price of new legal protection for guerrillas and possible terrorists. He decided to say no, a judgment that deserves support.

...

Article 1 of the protocol, however, says that the provisions apply to nations and ''peoples'' who ''are fighting against colonial domination and alien occupation and against racist regimes in the exercise of their right of self-determination.'' Nice words, but also possible grounds for giving terrorists the legal status of P.O.W.'s. The protocol also provides that regional groups like the Organization for African Unity and the League of Arab States could decide which ''peoples'' constituted a legitimate party in armed conflict.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
helpful to get information- agree?

Compared to what? If you start waterboarding a guy, you can't use the approaches the Army and the FBI prefer, which they feel produces better and more useful information. In that way, it's counterproductive.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Yglesias:

• At this point, I think I need to bring up what one might call the Craziest Goddamn Thing I've Heard In a Long Time. This story came to me last week from an anonymous individual who I would say is in a position to know about such things. According to this person, the DOD has (naturally) been doing some analysis on airstrikes against Iran. The upshot of the analysis was that conventional bombardment would degrade the Iranian nuclear program by about 50 percent. By contrast, if the arsenal included small nuclear weapons, we could get up to about 80 percent destroying. In response to this, persons inside the Office of the Vice President took the view that we could use the nukes -- in other words, launch an unprovoked nuclear first strike against Iran -- and then simply deny that we'd done so. Detectable radiation in the area of the bombed sites would be attributed to the fact that they were, after all, nuclear facilities we'd just hit.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Meanwhile, I'm waiting for some conservative to try to defend the saga of the Canadian whom we kidnapped as he was changing planes in New York -- seems we thought he was a terrorist -- and sent to Syria, where he was tortured for a year or so until the Syrians decided he wasn't a terrorist and sent him back.

Those who take a non-apologist view of things might start to think that one reason to permit judicial review of executive decisions is that it makes for better decisions.

[Tables R Us]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Meanwhile, I'm waiting for some conservative to try to defend the saga of the Canadian whom we kidnapped as he was changing planes in New York -- seems we thought he was a terrorist -- and sent to Syria, where he was tortured for a year or so until the Syrians decided he wasn't a terrorist and sent him back.

Those who take a non-apologist view of things might start to think that one reason to permit judicial review of executive decisions is that it makes for better decisions.

It's good to see that the government is finally starting to monitor connecting flights. Time was criminals, terrorists and other scoundrels could take a connecting flight and wander off unimpeded.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Compared to what? If you start waterboarding a guy, you can't use the approaches the Army and the FBI prefer, which they feel produces better and more useful information. In that way, it's counterproductive.

wait. are you saying the admin compels torture, even from military entities that would prefer to try something else, at least intially? wow! cite?

[Sexual Harassment Panda]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
from our Thai patent associated firm:
[/list]

It would have to be a monstrous fucking invention for us to file in Thailand.

Maybe different for a pharmaceutical firm, but then enforcement's a real bitch.

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone Slothrop
Meanwhile, I'm waiting for some conservative to try to defend the saga of the Canadian whom we kidnapped as he was changing planes in New York -- seems we thought he was a terrorist -- and sent to Syria, where he was tortured for a year or so until the Syrians decided he wasn't a terrorist and sent him back.

You mean the guy that the Canadian police told us was a terrorist, so that we put him on a watch list and apprehended him when on American soil?

A Canadian federal inquiry has found that that a Syrian-born Canadian who was seized by US officials at Kennedy Airport in New York in 2002, sent to Syria as a terrorist suspect, tortured, and eventually released after a campaign by his wife, should not have been on the US watch list for terror suspects that led to his ordeal.

The Toronto Star reports the inquiry found that Maher Arar and his wife "were on a US watch list wrongly described as 'Islamic extremist individuals' suspected of being linked to Al Qaeda, based on incorrect information" provided to US authorities by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP). [Editor's note: The original version misstated Maher Arar's first name.]

Justice Dennis O'Connor's newly released report on Arar's deportation by American authorities to Syria portrayed the RCMP as an inexperienced police force that passed erroneous information to American officials both before, and after Arar's detention on Sept. 26, 2002 ...

"The potential consequences of labeling someone an Islamic extremist in post-9/11 are enormous," O'Connor wrote in his 822-page report.

Justice O'Connor also concluded that US officials acted alone in sending Arar to Syria, and that his deportation came as a "complete surprise to Canadian officials." The US refused to take part in the inquiry. O'Connor also said that even after he was deported and people had begun to raise questions about him, the RCMP continued to try and prove he was involved in terrorism.

The Canadians fucked up. The Syrians tortured the guy. And you want to blame the administration? Typical.

Those who take a non-apologist view of things might start to think that one reason to permit judicial review of executive decisions is that it makes for better decisions.

Do the Syrians have habeas corpus?

[Spanky]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Perhaps every person has an innate right to be free of torture...

But just as individuals forfeit certain rights by their actions, folks like Khalid Mohammed forfeited his right to be free of torture* by conspiring with other terrorists.

*I remain steadfast in my belief that waterboarding - which amounts to nothing more than scaring someone - isn't torture.

Exactly.

However, whether or not waterboarding is torture is immaterial. If it will save innocents lives then it should be implement. Whatever will save innocents live should be implemented. That is just my opinion.