Waterboarding Rocks!

[BeAChooser]

We're moving into CT territory.

No, I simply stated some facts that are all verifiable. It's a fact that several well regarded military officers (specifically, several pathologists and a military photographer at Dover) expressed concern about circumstances surrounding the death of Ron Brown and the investigation into his death, and what the wound and x-rays suggested might be a cause of death. It's a fact that when the matter was investigated by the Department of Justice under Clinton, not one of these individuals was even questioned. It's a fact that the Deputy Attorney General at the time, Eric Holder, had strong ties to Brown (who was about to be indicted for a host of crimes at the time he died and who had told the president he was going to turn state's evidence according to sworn testimony). It's a fact that Nolanda Hill (another close associate of Brown) testified under oath that Holder threatened to prosecute her if she were to testify as to what she knew about Brown's activities and what he told the President just prior to his death. And Holder did indeed prosecute her when she did testify before a judge in the Brown matter. That's not CT, applecorped. Those are just 100% verifiable facts that democrats don't want to discuss and which bear on this matter because Eric Holder is now Obama's Attorney General. Holder would be handling the investigation into these torture allegations. Can we trust him to be non-partisan?

 

[MattusMaximus]

But that only kept us safe from real things. Nothing will keep us safe from the imaginary things inside BeAChoosers head, except agreeing with him about whatever his point is.

I don't want to go anywhere near the inside of BAC's head.

 

[A'isha]

No, I simply stated some facts that are all verifiable. It's a fact that several well regarded military officers (specifically, several pathologists and a military photographer at Dover) expressed concern about circumstances surrounding the death of Ron Brown and the investigation into his death, and what the wound and x-rays suggested might be a cause of death. It's a fact that when the matter was investigated by the Department of Justice under Clinton, not one of these individuals was even questioned. It's a fact that the Deputy Attorney General at the time, Eric Holder, had strong ties to Brown (who was about to be indicted for a host of crimes at the time he died and who had told the president he was going to turn state's evidence according to sworn testimony). It's a fact that Nolanda Hill (another close associate of Brown) testified under oath that Holder threatened to prosecute her if she were to testify as to what she knew about Brown's activities and what he told the President just prior to his death. And Holder did indeed prosecute her when she did testify before a judge in the Brown matter. That's not CT, applecorped. Those are just 100% verifiable facts that democrats don't want to discuss and which bear on this matter because Eric Holder is now Obama's Attorney General. Holder would be handling the investigation into these torture allegations. Can we trust him to be non-partisan?

See? Totally not a conspiracy theory at all!

 

[BeAChooser]

Since your approach is the opposite of the ideals the United States was founded on, and much closer to those espoused by terrorists, I find yours far, far more frightening.

Talk about hyperbole.

Tell us, Prometheus, do you really think the Founding Fathers saw no moral difference between hurting someone and murdering them? If so, why was murder punishable by death at the time but causing someone some pain or discomfort wasn't? Don't preach to me about the ideals the United States was founded on if you can't answer this question.

Furthermore, do you know that Thomas Jefferson, one of the Founding Fathers, said "strict observance of the written law is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation."

We have people in this thread who are saying they wouldn't hurt one apparently guilty person to learn some information that might save the lives of every single human being on the planet. I think Jefferson would have agreed with me, that such a viewpoint is simply insane.

 

[leftysergeant]

No,I'm asking the people on this board that are so adamant against it.

Because people not afflicted with personality disorders find it repugnant and people with applicable experience find it worthless.

 

[Dr Adequate]

Furthermore, do you know that Thomas Jefferson, one of the Founding Fathers, said "strict observance of the written law is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation."

Perhaps he would have agreed with me about the plea of justification, a point that you haven't acknowledged or answered because you were too busy posting gibberish.

 

[BeAChooser]

I answered "Yes" to the question to which they answered "No".

No, in my opinion you added a caveat that for all practical purposes made your answer "no". You said "if you were certain" that hurting the person would save a hundred thousand lives you would do it. But certainty in something like this simply isn't possible. So let's try again to be sure of where you stand since you really didn't seek to clarify it in your post. If you felt there was a 50/50 chance that hurting the person would elicit information that would save 100,000 lives, would you do it?

 

[Upchurch]

No, in my opinion you added a caveat that for all practical purposes made your answer "no".

To make that distinction given the complete unlikelihood of your hypothetical question, now that is irony.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

This question is for those that are so opposed to the waterboarding and techniques that were used in this instance.

What specifically is acceptable to interrogate the suspects?

I would again point you to the pertinent laws (the C.A.T. and the U.S. Code). If you're not intentionally inflicting severe pain to get information, then you'd probably just need to look at regular criminal law for all the specifics (Miranda rights, access to counsel, etc.).

I assume your question isn't about all that stuff, but just about what it takes to avoid committing torture. I don't think it's that difficult to avoid committing torture. I think the vast majority of police investigations are conducted without torture.

 

[SezMe]

... Ron Brown ...

BAC bringing up Brown for the umpteenth time in a thread about torture is so on topic.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

This is simply a lie. There is evidence, even if you don't like it. Even if you don't trust it.

Nova said "there is no more evidence" for the effectiveness of torture vs. that of psychic techniques. I think psychics also claim that their techniques work. That sounds like it's on par with someone who conducts torture claiming that it works.

I very much hope they think it works. Otherwise, I'd assume they're just doing it for their own sick jollies, and I don't think that's the case. In a debate, I don't think citing that one side believes its position makes for a very substantial case.

I know I sound like a broken record, but part of the reason the C.A.T. says this:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political in stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

is that it's easy to delude oneself that in this case torture "works" and is therefore justified.

 

[leftysergeant]

I think the vast majority of police investigations are conducted without torture.

The new version of FM 34-52 even includes the good cop/bad cop technique.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/terror/main1976599.shtml

Torture never was part of the routine and the specific prohibitions against it were added because some idiot with no conscience reverse-engineered what the Chinese and North Koreans did to our guys and told the CIA to try that if KSM wouldn't roll over on Saddam.

ETA: They only had to revise the manual to make it clear that no soldier thought that the additions that the useless little critters in the Executive Branch were trying to stick in there would ever occur to another soldier, but then Yoo and Rummy proved that you do have to prohibit some ghastly stupid things in advance.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Another way that torture is ineffective (that I have mentioned on this or another of these torture threads) is that even if you get true information or an accurate confession, that stuff would be inadmissable as evidence in any legitimate court.

It might well be that waterboarding these guys has ruined any hopes of getting a real conviction.

I'll head off your objection that this is somehow just a legal technicality. People confessed to witchcraft during interrogation under torture. People have confessed to being demons or having sex with demons or to flying around the room or to changing other people into animals during interrogation under torture. That's the reason why no legitimate court will accept information gathered from torture as evidence.

 

[Pardalis]

Lot's of things are well established and yet have no consequence simply because the liberal mainstream media refuses to investigate and present them to the public ...

The" liberal mainstream media", your answer for everything.

ROTFLOL!

You can laugh all you want, the way you are trying to instigate fear about your democratically elected president is unpatriotic.

You're worst than the leftist kooks who did the same for eight years about Bush.

Obama boasted to the press in 2004 that he attended Reverend Wright's church services EVERY saturday.

And what about Bush and the countless Evangelical war mongers and insane demagogue kooks he seeked advice from?

Obama worked side by side for years with William Ayers,

Well, guilt by association, welcome back to the 50's witch hunts!

Seems most of what he does is apologize for America and shake hands with (or bow to) dictators.

Bush kissed them, is that better?

Well how much certainty would you need ... if you were dealing with the lives of hundreds of thousands compared to the temporary suffering of one?

183 times will not do the trick I'm afraid.

 

[BeAChooser]

I would, however, settle for an instance or two of anyone on "the left" who objected, per se, to "monitoring calls from known al-Qaeda members to people in the US".

Senator Carl Levin, democrat - "Where does he find in the Constitution the authority to tap the wires and the phones of American citizens without any court oversight?"

Senator Byrd, democrat - "The American public is given vague and empty assurances by the president that amount to little more than, 'Trust me. Trust me.'"

Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, democrat - "The president seems to have admitted that he secretly eliminated this entire legal process. That raises very serious questions about U.S. intelligence operations and about the president's commitment to obeying the law."

Senator Harry Reid, democrat - "We need to investigate this program and the president's legal authority to carry it out."

Meanwhile, here is what the left's media accomplices where busy telling the public:

http://patterico.com/2006/01/28/

A recent L.A. Times/Bloomberg poll, trumpeted in a front-page LAT article yesterday, contained the following misleading questions regarding the president’s NSA surveillance program (all emphasis mine):

Q34. As you may know, George W. Bush authorized federal government agencies to use electronic surveillance to monitor phone calls and emails within the United States without first getting a court warrant to do so. Do you consider this an acceptable or unacceptable way for the federal government to investigate terrorism? (IF ACCEPTABLE/UNACCEPTABLE) Do you feel strongly about that or not?

Q35. Would you mind if you found out that your phone calls were being monitored by the U.S. government as part of the fight against terrorism?

Q36. Do you think Congress should hold hearings to investigate the legality of George W. Bush’s authorization of electronic surveillance to monitor American citizens without a court warrant, or not?
Q37. If a congressional investigation finds that George W. Bush broke the law when he authorized government agencies to use electronic surveillance to monitor American citizens without a court warrant, do you think that is an impeachable offense, or not an impeachable offense?

These questions all omit an important fact: the administration has said that the program was designed to intercept communications that were 1) international, and 2) involved suspected members of Al Qaeda or related groups.

... snip ...

This is quite a different scenario from that described in the poll questions, which repeatedly refer to warrantless “electronic surveillance to monitor American citizens” — with no mention of the requirement that the monitored calls be international calls in which one party is suspected of a connection to Al Qaeda or related groups.

... snip ...

As Ed Morrissey observed about another recent poll (by the New York Times and CBS) with similarly misleading questions:

Neither form of the question mentions two salient facts: the monitoring involved only international communications [except for a small number of accidentally intercepted domestic calls, as noted above -- Patterico] and were initiated by other evidence showing at least one of the participants had connections to terrorist organizations.

And of course the ACLU was busy fighting the program. They filed suit (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/08/18/WIRETAP.TMP ) and got a judge to order a stop to the program. Never mind that the experts said this was one of the most important tools we had to fight terrorists planning to attack this country and that just exposing it's existence crippled it.

Draw your own conclusions, folks, about whether the left was really supportive of this type of program.

 

[BeAChooser]

I'm most definitely opposed to physically attacking or hurting someone to get information, but if doing so would (with 100% certainty) save even one life, how could you not?

But I'm not insisting on a 100% certainty when it comes to mass casualty attacks. Like I asked someone else, would you be against waterboarding someone if you only thought there was a 50/50 chance you'd learn information that would stop an attack that might kill 100,000 people?

 

[BeAChooser]

Would you sketch out for us the set of actions, short of killing even more hundreds of thousands of innocent people, that you would not commit to avert such a tragedy? If you can't come up with anything, then I still find your question kinda pointless.

It's not pointless at all. I'm demonstrating that there are circumstances where what is now being called torture might be justified. Something that several in this thread have denied and that the UN agreement outlawing procedures like waterboarding also denies. Those people (and that agreement) are lacking moral clarity because their view requires moral equivalence between hurting one person and killing thousands. Which is ludicrous.

 

[BeAChooser]

This torture or non-lethal whatever, as you like, only works if you know beyond the shadow of a doubt that the person you're doing it to is in the possession of useful information.

Not true. You could be 50% sure that the person in question has information that will save a 100,000 people and will give it up if you waterboard him. Take the chance and you might save 100,000 people while temporarily harming only one. Do nothing and they all with almost 100% certainly perish in perhaps unspeakable horror.

People like you are what's wrong with America.

Do you remember those folks who jumped from the burning skyscrapers, DG? What if that could have been prevented by applying a brief amount of pain or discomfort to one person? Who would be more moral? The person who prevented that by temporarily hurting someone or the person who was too self righteous and *principled* to do that and as a result let it happen?

 

[BeAChooser]

as I have said, we can imagine hypothetical situations under which any act would be justified.

But that's not what many of the people on the thread believe, DA. They've said they wouldn't plead justification but would let the hundred thousand die rather than hurt a single human being even in a temporary way. They say I'm a monster and that I'm what's wrong with America.

 

[MattusMaximus]

Edited by chillzero: 

Edited for Rule 12