Waterboarding Rocks!

[Cicero]

That is, I believe, the worst analogy I have ever seen.

Really? Both the interrogation of German POW's and the A-Bombs dropped on Japan involve the actions of WWIi Allies. Both actions have since been superimposed on arguments relating to contemporary issues. Whether it is wrong to waterboard the three detainees because these vets in the article say they never did it to their German captives (but the OSS did it to Germans during WWWII), and whether it was wrong to drop atomic weapons on Japan because the U.S. is still the only country to have used these weapons in anger.

 

[BeAChooser]

But up here we have a different view of justice than you guys - less punitive, more focus on rehabilitation.

Can you Canadians figure out a way to bring back the lives of the hundred thousand people you say you are prepared to let die, rather than inflict some non-lethal, temporary pain and discomfort on one person? Instead of focusing on rehabilitating the man who was behind all those deaths?

 

[Praktik]

Can you Canadians figure out a way to bring back the lives of the hundred thousand people you say you are prepared to let die, rather than inflict some non-lethal, temporary pain and discomfort on one person? Instead of focusing on rehabilitating the man who was behind all those deaths?

Yep, we actually have a working prototype on a Resurrection Ship we plan to launch to low-earth orbit.

Never doubt Canadian ingenuity! First the Canada-Arm - now this!!

 

[Cicero]

You misunderstand the importance of what these men were saying.

These veterans had the same job to do during a worse period of our history. They are speaking not of preference, but out of experience. Their opinion does out weight those vets who were not interrogators because they are speaking with authority on the subject. And they say that torture is not only not necessary, but not as effective and degrading to the honor of the US.

They did what you and BAC seem to think is impossible: both saving lives and upholding the moral high ground at the same time.

A hundred of you two aren't worth one of them.

Members of the OSS are also veterans of WWII, and they used the waterboarding technique on Wehrmacht and Schutzstaffeln personnel captured during the war.

Of course the OSS wasn't in the cozy surroundings of Fort Hunt Virginia when they questioned their captives. They were in Sicily/Italy/France when they needed to get information in a hurry. Do their actions invalidate your notion that the U.S. held the moral high ground in WWII?

 

[BeAChooser]

Originally Posted by BeAChooser
You really are desperate to defend your views on moral equivalency.

You keep using that term. I do not think it means what you think it means.

It means exactly what I think it means.

It refers to the denial that a moral hierarchy exists between two actions or the goals of two sides. It refers to a denial that there are shades of evil and wrong. Moral equivalency is seeing no difference between inflicting some temporary pain on a person and killing that person. Because in the mind of the person who believes in moral equivalency (that would be YOU), both are indistinguishably bad.

 

[BeAChooser]

All we need is a "rehabilitated" Charles Manson to turn loose on society.

Or a "rehabilitated" KSM! Such is the insanity of the left.

 

[A'isha]

Says the guy who would let a hundred thousand people die, when all he might have to do is waterboard a single probably guilty person.

Let me explain something to you, BAC. Your question there isn't as clever as you think it is. It's not even close.

See, while you may have constructed an elaborate hypothetical situation where the cold equations of moral calculus do indeed point to a single correct answer, you made a mistake in thinking your little scenario has any bearing on the real world in any way, shape or form. Because, outside of the crazed fantasies of a Hollywood scriptwriter, your situation will never come to pass. It won't even come close to being almost a possible "maybe". Even in a multiverse of infinite alternate worlds, your situation will never happen. The creation of mutant superheroes who can shoot laser beams from their eyes will happen before your hypothetical comes about.

Pretty much everyone who has responded to your insistent questions about your hypothetical recognizes this. Their refusal to play along is not indicative of any moral failing on their part - what they say about your ridiculous situation doesn't reflect their actual moral stance on any issue affecting the real world because your created situation doesn't have anything to do with the real world.

Zero. Zip. Zilch. Nada. Nothing.

So, before you go crowing about the dementia of your leftist butcher messageboard foes who'd vaporize a city rather than accidentally bump into a slavering baby-eating terrorist, you might want to actually ask them a question that is grounded in even a tiny, wee modicum of reality first.

 

[BeAChooser]

Originally Posted by Cicero
Whether they died in their custody was not of the slightest interest to them.

Is it to you?

Says a guy who would let 100,000 people die rather than inflict temporary pain on one person who may know information that could save those 100,000.

 

[Praktik]

Or a "rehabilitated" KSM! Such is the insanity of the left.

LOL

I see you must draw me and other "libs" with paint-by-number.

Here's a fact for you: solitary confinement happens to people other than the headline-grabbing-irredeemables you've both mentioned here (KSM and Manson). If someone is going to be getting out after say, a 7-year sentence, or paroled early on a 12 year sentence, I'd rather that person come out of prison without acute rage spiking up at the most innocuous stimuli, someone who is actually able to carry on a conversation and socialize - since those exposed to long durations of solitary confinement often have these and other problems (demonstrated by a growing body of empirical research I have linked to in this thread three times already).

Look - I can play the "paint your opponent in caricature" game too! Why is it that you want to send rage-prone social misfits into general society when their sentence is complete or they are parolled?

You like sending ticking time bombs into the general populace?

Such is the insanity of the rabid right...

 

[Upchurch]

Members of the OSS are also veterans of WWII, and they used the waterboarding technique on Wehrmacht and Schutzstaffeln personnel captured during the war.

Of course the OSS wasn't in the cozy surroundings of Fort Hunt Virginia when they questioned their captives. They were in Sicily/Italy/France when they needed to get information in a hurry. Do their actions invalidate your notion that the U.S. held the moral high ground in WWII?

Maybe I missed this part of the conversation, but do you have a link?

 

[boloboffin]

Hitchens equivocated about his waterboarding because he could stop his by using a prearranged signal. He maintained control over the experience. That is not something a captive prisoner could do. Absent his control of the situation, Hitchens rightfully maintains that waterboarding is torture.

 

[tsig]

One of the things ANTPogo said is "Those techniques were considered good enough to protect us during a shooting conflict (and potential nuclear war) with the "Evil Empire" itself, after all."

But that situation was far different from the current one. We didn't rely on intel or interrogation to prevent a nuclear attack on the United States, like we must where terrorism is concerned. We relied on deterrence and the threat that we would utterly annihilate with nuclear weapons any country that attacked us with them. The US was prepared to absorb a nuclear attack so we could be sure that one was underway. That's why so much money and effort went into making sure our arsenal was survivable against a full scale nuclear attack by our largest rival. That, not intel, was why this country was never attacked by the "Evil Empire". Nuclear war was at any level was not acceptable unless it was to be for all the marbles. MAD. A policy that worked very well for many decades.

But terrorism is different. It will come in a form that we simply cannot afford to "ride out". Doing so could potentially cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of lives. That is not acceptable. And after the attack, we might not know with any certainty how to effectively retaliate ... who to retaliate against ... how to prevent the next attack? Except by doing what we are now doing; ie., trying to wage an information war against terrorism and find out about plots before they mature. That was the lesson of 9/11. I hope the current Administration hasn't forgotten that lesson but I'm beginning to have my doubts.

deleted

 

[A'isha]

Really? Both the interrogation of German POW's and the A-Bombs dropped on Japan involve the actions of WWIi Allies. Both actions have since been superimposed on arguments relating to contemporary issues. Whether it is wrong to waterboard the three detainees because these vets in the article say they never did it to their German captives (but the OSS did it to Germans during WWWII), and whether it was wrong to drop atomic weapons on Japan because the U.S. is still the only country to have used these weapons in anger.

No, you don't understand at all. Asking former Allied interrogators about how they obtained valuable information during a no-holds-barred conflict for societal survival with a depraved enemy and whether tactics they disdained as tools of their hated and brutal enemy is entirely unlike claiming that no one can gainsay the pilots of the B-29s that dropped the atomic bombs unless they dropped bombs too.

One is asking the opinion of those who performed similar duties under similar cirumstances. The other is just a non sequitur.

 

[scissorhands]

I'd rather that person come out of prison without acute rage spiking up at the most innocuous stimuli, someone who is actually able to carry on a conversation and socialize - since those exposed to long durations of solitary confinement often have these and other problems.

I think KSM may have had these problems with you and your society, prior to solitary confinement or being "tortured by a wet flannel".

 

[Cicero]

Hitchens equivocated about his waterboarding because he could stop his by using a prearranged signal. He maintained control over the experience. That is not something a captive prisoner could do. Absent his control of the situation, Hitchens rightfully maintains that waterboarding is torture.

So as long as you can tap out of waterboarding after it has begun it isn't torture? OK. Suppose you tap out after having only one nail pulled out, is that also not torture?

How do you know that KSM could not signal his interrogators when he had enough?

 

[Cicero]

No, you don't understand at all. Asking former Allied interrogators about how they obtained valuable information during a no-holds-barred conflict for societal survival with a depraved enemy and whether tactics they disdained as tools of their hated and brutal enemy is entirely unlike claiming that no one can gainsay the pilots of the B-29s that dropped the atomic bombs unless they dropped bombs too.

One is asking the opinion of those who performed similar duties under similar cirumstances. The other is just a non sequitur.

You can ask OSS agents who used the waterboarding technique on captured Nazis in the field and possibly get a different assessment.

 

[tsig]

I am going to say it as plainly as i can. Only a degenerate lunatic approves of including torture in our intelligence reppetoire.

Only a degenrate lunatic would order that our military or our CIA to employ torture.

Only a degenerate lunatic thinks that there is ever likely to be any exigency so desperate that it would become justified to torture a prisoner to get answers.

Only a degenerate moron with a bunch of loose headbolts think that this country has ever gained anything from torutring prisoners.

Only a degenerate moron believes a war criminal who tells us that torturing someone has made us any safer, especially after that war criminal had been involved in violations of our civil rights.

The degenerate lunatic who initiated this program brought shame and disgrace upon our nation and spat on the teachings of generations of soldiers and sailors before him and put the lives of our soldiers at risk because now enemy soldiers will be afraid to surrender to our soldiers.

The only apology I will accept from the brain-damaged monsters behind this torutre program involves their making large incisions in their abdominal walls. That's really how much they disgust me, and how much shame an American should feel about having allowed these vermin to have ever held any power of any kind in this country.

Also the fact that torture doesn't work seems to never get thru. That one hole sinks the whole boat but the pro torture folks keep acting as though witches were real.

I don't think that information is what they are really after, punishment is the real goal.

 

[Upchurch]

Maybe I missed this part of the conversation, but do you have a link?

I did a quick google and could find nothing credible that claimed the OSS tortured, let alone waterboarded, captured Germans during WWII. What I did find was assertions that they did so in the comment sections of various websites.

I also found more credible claims that captured German soldiers were abused by servicemen after the war was over, but this was neither systemic nor approved of higher up the chain of command.


eta: in fact, official policy was to treat captured Germans very well and to publicize the fact in hopes that they would treat our captured troops similarly.

 

[A'isha]

You can ask OSS agents who used the waterboarding technique on captured Nazis in the field and possibly get a different assessment.

So why don't you, if you disagree with the recollections and assessments of these particular interrogators?

 

[Cicero]

LOL

I see you must draw me and other "libs" with paint-by-number.

Here's a fact for you: solitary confinement happens to people other than the headline-grabbing-irredeemables you've both mentioned here (KSM and Manson). If someone is going to be getting out after say, a 7-year sentence, or paroled early on a 12 year sentence, I'd rather that person come out of prison without acute rage spiking up at the most innocuous stimuli, someone who is actually able to carry on a conversation and socialize - since those exposed to long durations of solitary confinement often have these and other problems (demonstrated by a growing body of empirical research I have linked to in this thread three times already).

Look - I can play the "paint your opponent in caricature" game too! Why is it that you want to send rage-prone social misfits into general society when their sentence is complete or they are parolled?

You like sending ticking time bombs into the general populace?

Such is the insanity of the rabid right...

No doubt you believe sex offenders can be "rehabilitated" as well. Why does society have to suffer for your social engineering experiments?