bbarsh wrote:
According to who? That statement is not provable (one way or the other). I certainly cannot say torture works - I have never performed it and I have no knowledge therein. But that does not make the opposite true, either.

And by the way. If water-boarding is out the door, I guess we will have to stop using it in training. Because we do. It is is used by the Army and I suppose the Navy uses it in Seal training, have no idea about the Air Force (but I am sure they use something similar in their E&E course).

Regardless of my opinion, the door has swung and the president has made his call. He will sign the order and that will be that - on the surface at the very least. But he has stated the government will be transparent and I, for one, will believe him.

There have been MANY studies on the effectiveness of torture, lots of which can be found on the internet.  Most if not all of them have all come to the conclusion that the only thing tortuing people does is to getting people to say things that they think that torures WANT to hear to make the torture stop.

Prufrock wrote:Technically, any attack on a US Embassy is an attack on American soil.  And I do believe there has been attacks on embassies since 9/11.

It doesn't really matter anyway, it's all just based on a continuouysly ticking clock.  I mean, we didn't resort to torture back in 1993 when he terrorists tried to blow up the NTC with a car bomb and yet still managed to get through the rest of Clinton's 2 terms without it happening either.

bbarsh wrote:
They do it already. American soldiers have been tortured and murdered after capture by every opposing force we fought. I am not talking about American spies, but uniformed soldiers. Terrorists are not uniformed soliders.

And please note my distinction between terrorists and soldiers. We do not torture soldiers. I was very clear on that.

There is no cowardly tactic in war. You win or you are defeated. I would employ every dirty trick in the book to bring my men home. In fact, we train daily on how to defeat the enemy with unconventional warfare.

I agree with Paul 100%.

And again, it brings us back to the question of why just stop at waterboarding?  Why not just do all the same things I listed above?  If you really believed that you should deploy every dirty trick in the book to win, then you should have no issues with those means of torture as well.

bclarkie wrote:
I agree with Paul 100%.

And again, it brings us back to the question of why just stop at waterboarding?  Why not just do all the same things I listed above?  If you really believed that you should deploy every dirty trick in the book to win, then you should have no issues with those means of torture as well.

Brian, you walk away from water-boarding with all your digits.

My discussion of tactics is for the battlefield, maybe I was not clear enough on that.

I have been shot at in two wars. Whether you want to take my word for it or not, all that pc bullshit goes out the door. You do whatever it takes to win. End of story.

You can disagree and that is more than fine. In fact it is great.

Again, this discussion is worthless if you cannot distinquish between uniformed soldiers and terrorists. I have given you my point of view on each. They are not interchangable.

Brian, we agree more than we do not.

The difference between them is that you can win a war and end the hostility against a foreign nation. This is not the case with terrorism. Therefore, different methodologies were concieved and intiatied.

We had an election and the result favored your opinion. The president has made our new policy clear. U.S. Army Interrogation Manual only (it is worthless; I can guarrantee it will not produce any actionable intelligence). That is the soon to be the policy of the land. If that is what the president has ordered, I would follow his order. I don't have to agree, but I respect the office and the decision.

I know you were not lecturing me on the value of human life. Nobody needs to do that. But apparently, the terrorists who are determined to end our way of life have not had that particular lesson.

bbarsh wrote:The difference between them is that you can win a war and end the hostility against a foreign nation. This is not the case with terrorism. Therefore, different methodologies were concieved and intiatied.

bbarsh wrote:But apparently, the terrorists who are determined to end our way of life have not had that particular lesson.

When you allow the terrorists to change the away you do things and alter your morals and values, they have already started to win.  Those people are barbarians and evil and we weren't before it started.  The only thing that has changed is that we have lowered ourselves to their level, not the other way around.

bbarsh wrote:We had an election and the result favored your opinion.

Truthfully though, this past election wasn't really a referendum on torture.   Rarely is any election a referendum on one issue, but if there was, this one wasn't about the use of torture. Neither McCain, nor Obama were going to continue the practice of waterboarding or other "enhanced interogation techniques" if they won.  Both made it very clear in their platforms early on that was the case.

ETA:  Whether or not you choose to beleive them or not is an entirely different story though.

bclarkie wrote:
Truthfully though, this past election wasn't really a referendum on torture.   Rarely is any election a referendum on one issue, but if there was, this one wasn't about the use of torture. Neither McCain, nor Obama were going to continue the practice of waterboarding or other "enhanced interogation techniques" if they won.  Both made it very clear in their platforms early on that was the case.

The past election was based on:

1) President Bush's performance in Iraq, and why we are still there, and who will be best to lead us out of Iraq (if that is truly possible anymore...)

2) The Economy

bbarsh wrote:
Let's face it Club Gitmo was a campaign promise. The decision to close it has nothing to do with the reality of the situation. Afghanistan is too far removed to gain the same attention.

Want a quick way to destroy the moral of the soldier on the ground? Just keep awarding U.S. constitutional rights to the f...king pieces of shit that are shooting at our boys. Apparently someone has realized this and actually made a good decision.

I opened up a what seems intelligent dialogue with my post.  I have to admit I agree with most of what Bbarsh has said up to now.   I am glad Obama and his minions have decided to live in the "real" world and not the campaign promise Happyland so many politicians pretend to support.  I know the ACLU and progressives are dismayed by Obama's reiteration of Bush's tactics, but realistically as was said you cannot give jury trials to war combatants without gumming up the works.  I think they made the right choice here even though they will get a lot of flack by the left (and the right, who will rightly point to the massive hypocrisy here in pre-election rhetoric from Obama).  But there is a large difference in saying something to get elected and realizing when you are in office you have to do the right thing.  If Obama keeps this up he can avoid becoming Jimmy Carter II and carve his own legacy.

And to be on the record, I am against torture. Flushing a Koran, playing some rock music loud, or posing some ninnies naked for pictures isn't torture and when that gets thrown into the mix it blurs the entire picture.  Some of the crap pulled was torture, and it wasn't done to gain intelligence but to satisfy some bullshit sadistic shit.  But when some American soldiers slice off a muslim non-combatant's head and film it, I'll worrry about it a little more. Until then, frankly I don't give a damn what they do long as it gets results.  

For those who say torture is always wrong....If you have a child molestor that has admitted kidnapping your kid and hiding him, he's tied to a chair in front of you, and you have the means to employ waterboarding....if you would enjoy "reasoning" with him instead of going to town on the scumbag to get your kid, you're worse than he is...you don't deserve to HAVE kids.

Upshot is I'd NEVER say I'd never do something just in case you need to do it. The slippery slope is when you keep justifying it again and again....and that's the dilemma.

Mike B.

Badmike wrote:I opened up a what seems intelligent dialogue with my post.  I have to admit I agree with most of what Bbarsh has said up to now.   I am glad Obama and his minions have decided to live in the "real" world and not the campaign promise Happyland so many politicians pretend to support. I know the ACLU and progressives are dismayed by Obama's reiteration of Bush's tactics, but realistically as was said you cannot give jury trials to war combatants without gumming up the works.

I think they made the right choice here even though they will get a lot of flack by the left (and the right, who will rightly point to the massive hypocrisy here in pre-election rhetoric from Obama).  But there is a large difference in saying something to get elected and realizing when you are in office you have to do the right thing.  If Obama keeps this up he can avoid becoming Jimmy Carter II and carve his own legacy.

Truthfully though, I realy don't think Obama ever promised to give them jury trials or Constitutional rights.  He promised to close down Gitmo and to also make sure that whatever was going to happen to these guys got started as opposed to holding them in a foreign country indefintely with no plan to anything other than hold them there.  Again, whether or not you choose to beleive any politician is a completley different story.

  

Badmike wrote:For those who say torture is always wrong....If you have a child molestor that has admitted kidnapping your kid and hiding him, he's tied to a chair in front of you, and you have the means to employ waterboarding....if you would enjoy "reasoning" with him instead of going to town on the scumbag to get your kid, you're worse than he is...you don't deserve to HAVE kids.

This is really an apples to oranges type scenario so its really not applicable.  

Beyond the fact that it's no more or less likely to get a definitive and good answer, it also has a much higher potential to find out immediately whether it was a correct answer or not, where torturing enemy captives is not ever that simple.  Also, regardless of the end payoff of either scenario, the fact is that you have made yourself the evil one in the process of doing it and resorted to the exact same type of behavior that you are decrying others for doing and TORTURING them for.  When you torture people, regardless of the "reasons", you are just like every other torturer out there.  They all had their "reasons" too, most of which I am sure that validated their behavior as well.