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I agree with MacMeal, If someone had info about an attack, and there were thousands of lives at stake, I would use this method to attempt to save thoese lives. In plotting to commit an attack, they gave up their rights to protection from methods of getting information.
I agree with MacMeal, If someone had info about an attack, and there were thousands of lives at stake, I would use this method to attempt to save thoese lives. In plotting to commit an attack, they gave up their rights to protection from methods of getting information.
Would you then be okay with someone doing that to an American POW who had sensitive information about bombing targets abroad that may or may not result in the deaths of the civilian population in a nation we were bombing?
What is good for the goose is good for the gander. If we torture others and then we should not be surprised if the torture of our captured troops increases. Part of the reason such ideas as The Geneva Convention even exists is to protect our own troops while abroad.
The US Military is bona fide evil, to the core, from top to bottom. Conscious awareness of the evil isn't a requirement. The troops are told what to do by 'humans' without souls. Exceptions like the above do not justify waterboarding or other forms of torture. Ever. Case closed.
If you really think the U.S. military is "evil" then there is no way I can rationally discusss it with you. Case closed.
Would you then be okay with someone doing that to an American POW who had sensitive information about bombing targets abroad that may or may not result in the deaths of the civilian population in a nation we were bombing?
Of course, noone would be OK with it, but it would be understandable. War is Hell.
It is a truly sad day when supposed patriots and defenders of America are trying to justify torture. A truly sad day.
I am ashamed to call such people my fellow citizens.
If your neighbor had information that someone was planning on killing your family, what limits would you go to to find out who, what, when, and where? Please answer honestly.
I can understand why folks will always bring up a situation that will rationalize the use of torture as noble. After all if it saves just one life, right. Ok, I can understand this but another problem exist and that is the other side of that coin when it goes wrong. What would Jesus do in this case, other than fall to his knees in disgust?
Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be....Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda's go-to guy for minor logistics.
Which brings us back to the unbalanced Abu Zubaydah. "I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?"
Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety — against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each...target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."
So here's what the tapes would have shown: not just that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative, but that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative who was (a) unimportant and low-ranking, (b) mentally unstable, (c) had no useful information, and (d) eventually spewed out an endless series of worthless, fantastical "confessions" under duress. This was all prompted by the president of the United States, implemented by the director of the CIA, and the end result was thousands of wasted man hours by intelligence and and law enforcement personnel.
I can understand why folks will always bring up a situation that will rationalize the use of torture as noble. After all if it saves just one life, right. Ok, I can understand this but another problem exist and that is the other side of that coin when it goes wrong. What would Jesus do in this case, other than fall to his knees in disgust?
Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be....Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda's go-to guy for minor logistics.
Which brings us back to the unbalanced Abu Zubaydah. "I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?"
Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety — against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each...target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."
So here's what the tapes would have shown: not just that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative, but that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative who was (a) unimportant and low-ranking, (b) mentally unstable, (c) had no useful information, and (d) eventually spewed out an endless series of worthless, fantastical "confessions" under duress. This was all prompted by the president of the United States, implemented by the director of the CIA, and the end result was thousands of wasted man hours by intelligence and and law enforcement personnel.
The legend, Jesus, would never do such a thing. But, then again, Jesus wouldn't really need to know would he, since he supposedly had a direct pipeline to the entity that knows everything?
If your neighbor had information that someone was planning on killing your family, what limits would you go to to find out who, what, when, and where? Please answer honestly.
... that example is always brought up and honestly given the reports of who and why we have engaged in such activities as Waterboarding (e.g. TnHilltopper's report from the Washington Post ) it is not a relevant one.
However ... as much as I would want to do whatever it took to save my family, I do not think I would be able to engage in the act of torturing of another human being, at least I hope and pray that I would never sink to that level.
I can understand why folks will always bring up a situation that will rationalize the use of torture as noble. After all if it saves just one life, right. Ok, I can understand this but another problem exist and that is the other side of that coin when it goes wrong. What would Jesus do in this case, other than fall to his knees in disgust?
Abu Zubaydah, his captors discovered, turned out to be mentally ill and nothing like the pivotal figure they supposed him to be....Abu Zubaydah also appeared to know nothing about terrorist operations; rather, he was al-Qaeda's go-to guy for minor logistics.
Which brings us back to the unbalanced Abu Zubaydah. "I said he was important," Bush reportedly told Tenet at one of their daily meetings. "You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" "No sir, Mr. President," Tenet replied. Bush "was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth," Suskind writes, and he asked one briefer, "Do some of these harsh methods really work?"
Interrogators did their best to find out, Suskind reports. They strapped Abu Zubaydah to a water-board, which reproduces the agony of drowning. They threatened him with certain death. They withheld medication. They bombarded him with deafening noise and harsh lights, depriving him of sleep. Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety — against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty. With each new tale, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each...target." And so, Suskind writes, "the United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered."
So here's what the tapes would have shown: not just that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative, but that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative who was (a) unimportant and low-ranking, (b) mentally unstable, (c) had no useful information, and (d) eventually spewed out an endless series of worthless, fantastical "confessions" under duress. This was all prompted by the president of the United States, implemented by the director of the CIA, and the end result was thousands of wasted man hours by intelligence and and law enforcement personnel.
Thank you, that was the case I wanted to respond to macmeal with, but haven't had the time during work.
This is what happens when you engage in systematic torture, and, unfortunately, it's not quite as neat as when it happens on 24.
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