Posted By: Ken G on Saturday, December 29, 2007
Quite a string of Neocon whacknut editorials here Cagle... So we should all support violation of international and US law? And make our own troops suject tot the same? All those responsible, Bush, Cheney, Gonzales right on down should be set to the Hague for trial...
Posted By: Barry C on Saturday, December 29, 2007
The neocon editorials continue, don't they? More "fair and balanced" views of "reality", I suppose.As an ex-soldier, all I can say is that strong vocal support for torture puts our military very much more in harm's way. I worry what will happen to our future POWs when they are subjected to an enemy's treatment following the ideas that "whatever works is OK - it's the results that count - to hell with the Geneva Convention - what's fair is what we say it is."Good luck, boys and girls. You have my sympathy.
Posted By: Glen Scutt on Saturday, December 29, 2007
Glen Scuttgscutt@msn.comWar is not a nice thing. The object of war is to persuade through extreme violence producing death or devastation. International conventions are meant to make war slightly less vicious. They do not change the essential nature of war. Therefore, our first objective should be to minimize war, not to prettify it.
Posted By: ben fuller on Saturday, December 29, 2007
Why are we in this war anyway, oh yeah, it was because Iraq had WMD's. Ooops, that was the first of many lies we have been sold. Why are we still there? We have not secured the oil fields for our corporate oil masters, plain and simple. And since when did "probably saved lives" become the objective of the USA being allowed to torture?Again, what are we going to say when our boys are waterboarded? What are we going to say when our soldiers are subjected to rendition to torture countries just so the information they have will "probably save lives"? What a joke this administration has become. Our founding fathers must be rolling over in their graves because they no longer recognize the country the founded?
Posted By: Jack Garoud on Saturday, December 29, 2007
to barry C...I am a soldier, you as an ex-soldier how can you say that because your country is torturing people your future POW could be tortured? how about your past POWs? werent they tortured? you are seriously asking to a group of TERRORISTS (not soldiers) to not torture your POWs, just because you don't?? we are soldiers...we LIVE in HARM'S WAY and we new that was going to happen and we entered service FULLY AWARED of thatI am not justifying torture, but you really should take the blindfold...your POWs will be tortured, your future POWs will be tortured and your citizens are being threated.why?...because you believe in something YOU CAN'T EVEN PROVE, and they believe in something THEY CAN'T PROVE and is just slighty different.IMAGINE A WORLD WITHOUT RELIGION
At the end torture is just a symptom.,..at this point our country has the same reputation as the terrorists - Bushco is terrorist ... because it does the same things....Our reputation is in the potty.BTW I can imagine a world w/o religion...it would be great if there were not so many dilutional people, or so many that use religion as a cover for their own evil ends - the current list of GOP candidates being a prime set of examples...
Posted By: rlsauer on Saturday, December 29, 2007
It's hard to defend the torture of a schizophrenic innkeeper even if he was a travel agent for a terrorist group. He confessed to everything from the original bombing of the Trade Center to the Lindberg kidnapping. He had the Feds running around trying to prevent attacks on banks, sports venues, race tracks and anything he could think of. The administration got nothing of value from him and cannot show any solid proof any attacks were averted. Attacks in Europe that were averted were due to honest to goodness police work there. Where do you find these people for your commentaries.
Posted By: rick on Saturday, December 29, 2007
waterboarding is such a awfull thing... some who also think a hamburger has to have cheese on it or its bad... the word torture is used so loosely..it is such torture to have to sit and watch the second hand move so slowly when it is 10 to 5 on a three day weekend...belive me this is really a minor inconvience as to some of the things that are used in most country's...i have seen what the viet cong with there chinese advisors do/did... amazing! torture gives such bad and totaly unreliable lies and untruths and unreliable information but it has been with us since before organized man in society...hmmmm
waterboarding is such a awfull thing... some also think a hamburger has to have cheese on it or its bad... the word torture is used so loosely..it is such torture to have to sit and watch the second hand move so slowly when it is 10 to 5 on a three day weekend...belive me this is really a minor inconvience as to some of the things that are used in most country's...i have seen what the viet cong with there chinese advisors do/did... amazing! torture gives such bad and totaly unreliable lies and untruthful information but it has been with us since before organized man in society...hmmmm
Posted By: Jim Hoover on Saturday, December 29, 2007
Interesting views from all, but the underlaying thing is until the radicals are driven from the face of the earth, only then will there be some sort of chance for understanding of each religion and each group of people and then maybe, just maybe war will end. IMHO boys and girls, I don't ever see that happening as human nature is to kill or be killed if flight is not possible. Besides that whole area has been fighting each other for so long (more than 4000 years) they are incapable of ever having peace with the world, let alone themselves. A distressing thought, but true.
Posted By: Mort Cohen on Saturday, December 29, 2007
I served in the U.S. Army for 22 years with two tours of duty in Vietnam. My expeirence in the intelligence community totals 32 years. I have been in war, and I have interrogated soldiers and irregulars. I have never used torture nor would I, and I wouldn't minimize 35 seconds of torture, which can have devastating effects physically and mentally. Torture is morally wrong. Our enemies have always used torture against us, but until the current war, we have resisted reducing our nation to the level of our enemies. If the fact that our current enemies use torture is justification for our using torture as national policy, why don't we engage in beheadings and suicide bombings to protect our national security? We have always been governed by the rule of law--torture is against the law for whatever reasons its perpetrators may invoke. Thank the CIA operatives that used torture? No, punish them.
Posted By: Garry Powers on Saturday, December 29, 2007
Hey, God approves of waterboarding--it's right there in the Bible! Ooops, ooh wait a minute, he approves of walking on water, i.e. surfboarding.Actually, when it comes to torture, how about a small dose for Blunderbush & all his slimy apologists!!
Posted By: ellis glazier on Saturday, December 29, 2007
if waterboarding were to get us useful information quickly. why do we stop there. the rack ought to be revived along with all the other practices of the inquisition. the cia, known for its genteel practices, during the vietnam era used to gain info by taking 4 or 5 vietnamese for a plane ride, asking questions and throwing those who did not answer out till someone spoke up. whether they got useful information at least they got what they wanted to hear. probably little of it true.one has got to be stupid to think that people under torture will tell you the truth, especially if they are the fanatics who would commit suicide to kill you. but then most people who would torture are psychopaths to begin with.
Posted By: Paul on Saturday, December 29, 2007
Lots of theory, lots of attacking the messenger (columnist) and ignoring his points. Lots of opinion portrayed as fact (waterboarding as torture. It's like saying "my daughter is pretty" - sounds good, but as a legal, objective matter it's problematic). Can anyone point to a single significant conflict post-WWII where our troops taken prisoner were accorded Geneva Convention protections? The torture and disfigurement inflicted upon our soldiers who have been captured and killed are so horrific the media suppresses providing clear descriptions of what was done. The argument "this will encourage mistreatment of our troops" is nonsense. Neither Geneva Conventions nor criminal law apply when dealing with jihadists. The US gov't needs to develop a new system for handling these people.Last April the Slovakian authorities arrested nine people smuggling 37 pounds of enriched uranium. Czech authorities seized six pounds of 88 percent enriched uranium - ninety is required for a nuke (source: NY Times). Selling this material to jihadists is foreseeable. The likelihood of employment (detonated with conventional explosives in a manner to cause significant civilian casualties) would be high.So people here think, under such circumstances, wherein authorities have captured a jihadist known to have placed the material, but authorities do not know exactly where, that the Pres should not authorize 35 seconds of recoverable discomfort of the type administered to our own special forces during training? I can just imagine the tv address: "My fellow Americans, today the (fill in the name of the city where your family lives) was devastated by nuclear fallout caused by a dirty bomb. We had a key player in custody for one day before the explosion but I was prohibited by law and my moral convictions from causing him a few seconds of discomfort. To the hundreds who died, to those of you afflicted with radiation poisoning, to those who will pass on abnormalities to your future children, you have my deepest sympathy. You should be comforted by knowing that I will hold firm as future events occur and will never do anything other than gentle questioning, no matter the lives at stake. I look forward to your vote in the next election."
Posted By: Chicken Little on Saturday, December 29, 2007
The sky is falling ! ! !
Posted By: Cdr Cabot on Saturday, December 29, 2007
Well stated, thank you. Many people do not understand that this is a war without boundaries against an enemy without uniforms, There are times when extreme measures are needed. Our enemies do not deserve constitutional protections as they try to destroy us and our constitutional government. If water boarding saves one American from death or injury, or does the same for our allies, then THANK YOU for having the courage to do what has to be done. Respectfully, Cdr Cabot
Posted By: Pierre on Sunday, December 30, 2007
We can moralize forever, pro or con. The past is over. What we need to do is move on. We have a challenge: Protecting the West. We are facing people who will do anything to harm us. Fanatics. What we need to do is find some constructive, useful, positive, productive tools to interrogate them.... tools that get good and timely results... AND tools that do not make a mockery of what we stand for!We can say one thing: The tools our "protectors" used before, good or bad, were repugnant to most of us. We can be thankful they were used on only a handful of people. We MUST develop new and valid tools. We must stop arguing about past errors.And... we must recall that the people we are trying to stop, would use waterboarding or anything (even something worse) to get what they want.... The tragedy is not so much if an actual terrorist was waterboarded or something else. The worry, the tragedy is: Did we do this to someone innocent, like our opponents did-before/do-now/will-do? If we did harm an innocent, we must make amends as best we can. We must learn from our part errors, and rise above our enemies in all ways, moral and otherwise, to defeat them by being better than them, in all ways.And we must make sure that the world knows our righteousness.
Posted By: Ken G on Sunday, December 30, 2007
Sad, very sad, the moral depths to which this country has fallen. Read back up through these posts - starting with the editorial and see how many twisted ways torture is justified. Torture corupts the very fabric of this once great country..... IMPEACH NOW!
Posted By: Jim on Sunday, December 30, 2007
We can't impeach him because he is us. He is doing the will of the American people. Read the above posts. Torture is justified. The ends justify the means. There is no moral code. "We must protect the West," even though there are no Western values left.Pelosi says impeachment is "off the table" because she realizes the awful truth that America no longer stands for anything beyond rampant comsumerism and protecting its own self-interest no matter what the cost or the methods.What was once a shining star showing the way for millions of oppressed people has now become a corrupt parody of its former self. We have met the enemy and become them.
Posted By: Bob Cottrell on Sunday, December 30, 2007
I believe waterboarding is NEVER acceptable and those who use it should be prosecuted.
Posted By: Mark Peterson on Monday, December 31, 2007
It's one thing to grant that torture has been used by governments forever and quite another to wish to justify it by making it a part of official policy. Must we, as a great and strong nation, sink to the level of our enemies? Don't we have any other arrows in our quiver? Shall we overturn one by one all of our "Western values" in the course of defending them?
Posted By: V. W. Turkus on Wednesday, January 02, 2008
“Probably saved lives.” Quite a claim, isn’t it? And Iraq probably had WMD’s. Where is the OUTRAGE?! This administration has lied to the American public since they and the supreme court stole the election in 2000. When we act as does the enemy, we demean our professed national morality, self-celebrated principals and vaulted national values. Only it’s OK with the neocon bunch and their so-called patriots. Anything is OK, as long as it advances their cause. As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
Posted By: Jean on Thursday, January 03, 2008
If the tapes proved the claim that waterboarding actually got Zubaydah to reveal what conventional means failed to do, the CIA would most certainly not have destroyed them. It is far more likely that those tapes revealed nothing of the sort and that whatever information the CIA is claiming to have obtained came not from torture but other methonds or other sources. And info that "probably saved lives" is a hardly a reason to descend into the barbarism of torture. I give no "thanks" to the CIA or any person for such conduct. Nor should anyone else who wished to call themselves civilized.
