Rick Santorum: John McCain Doesn't Understand Torture

tyr_13 said:
This is point is simply false. Neither Joe nor sarge have tried to do anything offering apologetics for Santorum. They both believe Santorum is wrong, completely.

The only difference is that they are critical of him for his actual faults. To say that Rick Santorum claimed that McCain doesn't understand torture is true because enhanced interrogation is torture, but false in that it isn't what he thought he was claiming. Santorum is so messed up that he doesn't see the link between the two, in addition to not realize that McCain could have been 'interrogated' with 'enhanced' methods in addition to being tortured.

If you believe that Santorum was actually claiming that McCain doesn't understand torture, that's actually giving Santorum the credit of knowing that 'enhanced interrogation' and 'torture' are the same bloody thing.
Click to expand...

Do ID advocates know that it's really just Creationism in a tux? I believe they do.
 
BobTheDonkey said:
Saying a rapist wasn't really a rapist because he didn't realize it was rape is still apologetics. Even if you still believe what he/she actually did was wrong. Trying to minimize the value of what someone did/said is apologetics - even if you still disagree with the statement/beliefs behind it.
Click to expand...

Exactly. No one here is doing that. So by your own definition, what Joe and Sarge said isn't apologetics, yet you call it that.

And no one is saying that Santorum isn't incredibly ignorant all around, and including about torture, McCain, and what 'enhanced interrogation' actually is. So no one is not 'calling a rapist not a rapist' as it were.
 
thaiboxerken said:
Do ID advocates know that it's really just Creationism in a tux? I believe they do.
Click to expand...

I believe Santorum is actually ignorant enough not to know why what he's saying is wrong on so many levels.


I'm getting the impression that many people here are outraged when someone else doesn't seem as outraged as they are. It's the type of 'with us all the way or against us' attitude I'm used to seeing in conservative circles, but it obviously does rear it's head in liberal circles as well.
 
R.A.F. said:
Notice how joe and sarge have "zeroed in" on other posts and have completely ignored Bob's.

I wonder why. :)
Click to expand...

You're quite wrong again, and again I suspect you're not reading my posts.

The point Bob the Donkey made is exactly the correct criticism of Santorum's comments. Santorum implies that "enhanced interrogation" is something other than "torture". It is legitimate to criticize him on that point. And I am a strong critic of the position Santorum holds, and I have been for years.
 
leftysergeant said:
Sick Rick is a lawyer. He had no grounds on which to base a position that enhanced interrogation is not torture.
Click to expand...

The exact same thing is true of Yoo and others. Personally, I think just claiming that it's impossible for any reasonable person to hold a position is a far weaker argument than arguments against the actual merits of that position--the kind of arguments I've been making literally for years.
 
tyr_13 said:
Exactly. No one here is doing that. So by your own definition, what Joe and Sarge said isn't apologetics, yet you call it that.

And no one is saying that Santorum isn't incredibly ignorant all around, and including about torture, McCain, and what 'enhanced interrogation' actually is. So no one is not 'calling a rapist not a rapist' as it were.
Click to expand...

I think you're wrong. I think what they're doing, whether intentional or not, is minimizing the value of what Santorum said.

By allowing Santorum to redefine torture to something else, it minimizes the claim Santorum was actually making. Apologetics.


ETA: Note that Joe and Sarge and I are all on the same page, mostly. I just don't think we should be giving Santorum the benefit of the doubt with regards to the terms he uses. And while I understand they're not truly giving him the benefit of the doubt, it certainly is easy to take what they have posted to infer that they are - and why give Santorum supporters ammunition/defensive tactics?
 
Last edited:
BobTheDonkey said:
I think you're wrong. I think what they're doing, whether intentional or not, is minimizing the value of what Santorum said.

By allowing Santorum to redefine torture to something else, it minimizes the claim Santorum was actually making.
Click to expand...

No no no a thousand times no. I think criticizing Santorum for implying that "enhanced interrogation" is not "torture" is exactly what we should be doing. We should not be criticizing him because he claimed McCain doesn't understand torture. We really should stay on the issue, and not on some more outrageous-sounding spin.

Where Santorum is wrong is exactly where Yoo and Gonzales were wrong, yet no one claimed that they dissed McCain's war record somehow.

If anything, arguing against a strawman position is what minimizes criticism of Santorum.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, when you make up false quotes and put them into your opponent's mouth, it's a pretty good sign that you might be arguing against a strawman. (Even though there are no quotation marks in the thread title, the headline convention is that when you use a colon that way, what follows is what that person said.)

It would be as if we allowed the pro-lifers to change the abortion debate to the trivial debate over whether or not we all agree that murder is wrong. That's really not the question at hand. Even Bush claimed that he disapproved of torture. The question at hand is, what comprises torture? That's the discussion we should be having. And that discussion should involve conventional and legal definitions of torture from the C.A.T. and the U.S. Code. IMO, the answer is abundantly obvious, for example, that waterboarding is in fact torture.
 
tyr_13 said:
I believe Santorum is actually ignorant enough not to know why what he's saying is wrong on so many levels.
Click to expand...

I don't. Even if he is, the level of stupidity is to the point that it really doesn't matter. His opinion is wrong, whether or not it's sincere. He's claiming that John McCain doesn't know the difference between torture and "enhanced interrogation." Santorum is freaking wrong.

Enhanced interrogation IS torture.
 
Last edited:
Okay, best case scenario, the moron is just taking the word of people whom he considers to be experts that EI is not torture.

Stilll leaves him looking bad. He seems to be taking the word of Gonzo, Rummy, Yoo and rotting husk of a VP that it is not torture.

As a lawyer, the fool should know better.

Worst case scenario, he knows it is torture and doesn't give a rat's because he thinks it get results. This would, again, mean that he is a sorry excuse for a lawyer, thus not really presidential material.

The boy has yet to prove that he is really good at anything that requires reasoning and ethics. We had too manyt fools like that calling the shots in the last decade and look where it got us.
 
Sometimes, you run into an interlocuter that actually believes what he is typing, no matter how illogical his position. I am at that point with RAF. At first, I believed him to be practicing intentional obtuseness. Now however, I believe that the nuances of the argument simply escape him. In that case, his errors are incorrectable.

For the rest of you, I offer the following bulletized synopsis of my position:

1. Waterboarding is torture.
2. Santorum is an idiot if he believes otherwise, and a liar if he doesn't.
3. If Santorum is idiot enough to make a distinction between "torture" and "waterboarding", then he is not claiming that McCain does not know about torture.

There is no logical path to take from these three statements to "Sarge is apologizing for Santorum".
 
thaiboxerken said:
So it's definition was changed during the Bush years, therefore during Bush's rule, it wasn't really torture?!
Click to expand...

Legally? That's a fine question for the courts to answer. What impact would a presidential decree have on an untested legal matter?

There is zero chance that a person could be convicted of war crimes in a US Court for having practiced waterboarding if a court had not previously ruled on the matter and if the entire NCA (including the AG) had issued an opinion that waterboarding is not torture.

Also, why the crap do you think the opinions of Bush/Cheney's yes men trumps international law and the anti-torture agreements that the USA agreed to?
Click to expand...

Is wasn't just their yes-men, it was the President that said so. As a practical matter, that will always trump international law, and always should so long as it doesn't contradict US law.

Also, you've just agreed that water boarding is obviously torture. If so, then why are you apologizing for Santorum's position that it is not torture?
Click to expand...

Of course I did not.

Are you so naive that you actually think these guys are sincere in their belief that it's not torture?!
Click to expand...

I didn't offer an opinion either way. I said that "if Santorum doesn't believe...."

Either way, for Rick to say McCain doesn't understand "enhanced interrogation" is the same as saying McCain doesn't understand torture.
Click to expand...

It obviously is not.

Why? Because he's saying McCain doesn't understand the difference between torture and enhanced interrogation.
Click to expand...

Then he is calling McCain stupid. That isn't quite the same as what you are claiming.
 
thaiboxerken said:
So it's [sic] definition was changed during the Bush years, therefore during Bush's rule, it wasn't really torture?!
Click to expand...
FWIW, the effort to redefine "torture" preceded the Bush Administration. When the U.S. signed the C.A.T. it did so with a signing statement reserving the right to make more reservations when it was ratified. Upon ratification, the U.S. issued those reservations, declarations and understandings. Basically it said we agree to this as long as the definition of torture is taken to be something pretty different than what the clear text of the C.A.T. says. For example, it added that the intentional infliction of suffering must be prolonged. This is the bit, I think, that Yoo and the others were making much of. The word "prolonged" does not appear in the C.A.T. definition at all. It does appear in the definition in the U.S. Code. (The CAT requires signatory states to pass their own laws reflecting the requirements of the Convention, which complicates the legal status of the definition as given in the CAT leaving wiggle room for those who would use the less conventional definition of torture.)

I think waterboarding is nonetheless obviously torture under the CAT and U.S. law (which reflects some of the reservations including ). The reason is that the category of mental suffering caused by the threat of imminent death is specifically mentioned in the definition. I don't think it's the burden to prove that the suffering caused by that instantaneous sensation of drowning isn't prolonged. I think we can assume it is. If it were transient, and only lasted for the duration of the sensation, then the technique would be utterly ineffective in getting the victim to talk. (You can't talk during the instant when you have water in your airway.)

Again, this is the kind of debate we ought be having--not whether or not Santorum is dissing McCain's war record. And not name calling. While I find Yoo and Gonzales to hold despicable positions on torture, they're not idiots or morons.

Santorum may be a moron, but not simply because he holds the position that "enhanced interrogation" is not "torture". Again, name calling doesn't win a debate.
 
sarge said:
Legally? That's a fine question for the courts to answer. What impact would a presidential decree have on an untested legal matter?
Click to expand...

See above. The conflicting definitions of "torture" especially between the U.S. legal system and the one most of the civilized world uses has been around since at least Clinton's presidency.

Bush's legal advisors didn't invent this notion. It really was already part of U.S. jurisprudence. The requirement that mental pain be "prolonged" is part of the U.S. code. To my knowledge, no legal challenge to the standard U.S. definition (which, as I've been arguing is NOT the conventional definition used by most of the civilized world, but is the one Santorum uses) has been taken up by the judiciary, so the legal definition has been the same since ratification of the C.A.T. (during Clinton's presidency) and arguably since the signing of it during Reagan's term.
 
Last edited:
Again, my position is that even using the less-conventional standard U.S. legal definition of torture, waterboarding obviously qualifies. In the definition, the section that applies is 2 (C) "the threat of imminent death". That is given itself as a type of torture that causes prolonged mental harm. That the threat of imminent death itself is not prolonged doesn't change this.

Yoo et al. disagree. They think you have to prove that there is prolonged harm even though you have satisfied (C), but the listing under 2 is separated by "or"s. Satisfying 2(C) is enough.

They also attempted to redefine the "severe physical pain" portion (which I don't think even applies wrt to waterboarding) as pain that might come from organ failure or even death. This is obviously far more restrictive than anything in the CAT or in the U.S. Code.

But again, to my knowledge, it's an idea asserted by the Bush Administration that has never been subject to judicial review.

ETA: I note the irony that people putting posts that contribute not at all to this debate and resort to name calling are the very ones ignorant of much of what I've been posting about the C.A.T., the U.S.'s ratification reservations, declarations and understandings, and the U.S. Code.
 
Last edited:
Scroll up, R.A.F. This is a "place to discuss skepticism, critical thinking, the paranormal and science in a friendly and lively way". I've been pointing out the flaws in strawman and ad hominem arguments.

Your contribution has been to engage in name-calling and to completely mischaracterize my posts.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
Again, this is the kind of debate we ought be having--not whether or not Santorum is dissing McCain's war record. And not name calling. While I find Yoo and Gonzales to hold despicable positions on torture, they're not idiots or morons.

Santorum may be a moron, but not simply because he holds the position that "enhanced interrogation" is not "torture". Again, name calling doesn't win a debate.
Click to expand...

Then start a thread on that discussion. This thread is about Santorum dissing McCain's war record. It's what we're discussing here, even if you don't feel it is as important as what you want to discuss.

That said, you are engaging in apologetics for Santorum, whether you agree with him or not.

Right now, we have two points we're dinging Santorum for:

1) Dissing McCain's war record (regardless of what you think of McCain's politics, he is still a former POW who did his duty)
2) Attempting to redefine torture


Both of these are valid criticisms of Santorum given his aspirations for higher political office. That we are not discussing what you feel we should be discussing has nothing to do with what we are actually discussing. Insisting that point 1 is less important than point 2, or not even worth being discussed, is arguing apologetically for Santorum by diminishing the value of his comments and dismissing, practically out of hand by claiming "benefit of the doubt", criticisms regarding the attack on a POW's experiences while in captivity.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top Bottom