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 softy |
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softy |
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stinky www.andyworthington.co.uk www.thedailybeast.com www.independent.co.uk www.youtube.com www.youtube.com www.youtube.com |
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Softy ... I have witnessed too much needless death in my life to keep a "kill or be killed" attitude inside. That would be a very last resort under duress ... but never a conscious choice. |
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chaz & z z: I asked about HOW FAR you are willing to extend your willingness to kill... how far removed before you do not support a killing. chaz: I asked you and everybody else the same thing. What you would attempt to do is "fine", but does not answer the question. You DO support killing to protect yourself and immediate family. How far removed from 'the action" is it before you do not support the killing. If you are faced with an immediate threat, I understand that. But, do you support another persons right to kill, under the same circumstances, even if they are not related to you or live in a different location? If you do, then it seems that you should also support their right to water-board... a non-lethal method of getting the information necessary to prevent a possibly devastating attack on somebody, somewhere, at sometime. Does it matter if that planned attack is expected to be "immanent" or is thought to be "off in the future", although a certainty at sometime? |
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softy it is situational, naturally. i have been very clear and very consistent: i support killing an attacker to protect an innocent. what exactly are you trying to elicit here, and why? |
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dmaestro 07-Jan-12, 11:40 |
The alleged purpose of water boarding and torture in general is to illicit information that would save lives because other methods are not effective, using the so-called ticking time bomb scenario. But the bulk of evidence continues to be that torture is not more effective at getting the necessary information. It should be obvious that properly brainwashed foot soldiers who believe that heaven awaits for success in jihad are sufficiently resistive to give plausible but incorrect answers. The bulk of evidence has not changed the assessment over the recent centuries that, as Napoleon himself stated, torture is not effective for that purpose. What we find instead once again as the US adopted torture as an acceptable tactic is what was shown historically and in psychological studies addressing scenarios of giving pain to others, that psychological desires and emotional needs on the part of the torturers become paramount over the claimed neutral desire for information. The only way the ticking bomb scenario works in reality is if you have certain knowledge that the person being tortured actually has the answers, and has no martyr tendencies or similar drives of hatred etc. that would cause them not to continue to give totally accurate answers in a reasonable period of time, or you end up chasing your tail. |
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Softy ... |
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z The results are the same. If you kill somebody before they commit a murder, problem solved. If you water board somebody before a killing(s) are committed, problem solved. You seem to be hung up on the proposition that water-boarding or torture do not get the correct answers. That may be/may be not true. I personally feel that under torture, we will get the correct answers, but I do not know that for sure. I suspect it to be true. While I personally could not ever perform torture on another person, I am glad to have people in our service who can do it, in order to prevent innocent lives from being killed or butchered. Just as 300 + million other Americans depend on this, so do I. (They depend on it whether they know & appreciate it or not). |
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i still have not seen reasonable evidence that it works. sans this, all else is meaningless. |
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z That is the height of hypocrisy. |
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well of course not, of course such torture is not effective, of a rook or a Queen. . . to call water-boarding effective torture is like playing chess when you give odds effective torture -- which as civilized, 21st-Century, 1st World people we do NOT condone -- could involve, say in the case of a would-be suicide bomber who aims to go to glory and have his cell give honour and award death benefits to his family, it could involve dragging in his loved ones -- his mother or his sister, or even more unimaginable -- his child -- and -- in front of the taciturn felon -- after letting him know that their suffering is the logical consequence of his silence -- something he controls -- then, physically torturing them in agonizing or irreversibly disfiguring ways until he finds his tongue and gets loquacious with actionable intel that would save thousands of lives (or millions of lives, in the case of delayed-time-release, suitcase nuclear bombs). As torture it is heinous -- it may not even be excusable, though one could rationalize it by the balancing of thousands of prospectively-saved lives against the actual living horror done to one family -- (<< to save a city, one might have to kill a child >>) -- but that is one way to measure how effective torture -- the experience of torture -- truly is in saving the people we love, cherish, protect, and defend. Perhaps how far we will go is also a measure of how much we truly care. |
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softy <You are simply saying that you are insincere and don't mean what you say.> well i can call you a liar too, but what does it prove? <You are posturing politically to be acceptable to your left leaning friends while trying to remain a "reasonable" person to others> 'be acceptable to my left-leaning friends? are you insane? what on earth do i have to gain by trying to be 'acceptable' to people i have never met. this is one of the lamest things you have ever said and shows you have nothing meaningful or intelligent to add. <but in fact you are saying one thing (you will kill) but denying that same right ( and the right to use non lethal force) to others in order to protect themselves and their loved ones.> you are hallucinating. i think everyone has the right to self defense, myself included. and i have no more right to torture than anyone else. completely consistent. you keep repeating the same stupid thing over and over again like a four year old, thinking repetition will make it true. you keep assuming and stating that torture saves lives and refuse to give any evidence to support your claim while i have posted 7 sites that have given expert testimony to the contrary. then you continue to equate torture to self-defense. that is the height of rationalization and self-deception. if you are really able to convince yourself that state sanctioned torture is the same as killing in self defense, you truly are a dangerous fool. see how nice i can be when i try to be restrained |
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Softy ... |
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Chaz |
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softy you do not trust the government to regulate business you do not trust the government to impose taxes you do not trust the government to run schools you do not trust the government to run health care you do not trust the government in general and it is too big and too involved in our lives but you trust the government to decide to torture people? can you explain this apparent discrepancy? |
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Z- I do trust government to do those things, but I believe government has overstepped it's bounds by a wide margin. And, I believe that government is doing an incredibly bad job of it now. As I have stated many times, there is a role for government to play, but it is not in micromanaging everything about everyone. It is laid out in the Constitution pretty well. The military seems to be the most responsible for determining who gets water-boarded or not. They seem to act pretty responsibly and are much more effective and efficient in completing their duties and roles than is the civilian government. I trust them more than the civilian government to do things legally, morally, and "right". |
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softy |
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"Memo acknowledges that White House-approved interrogation techniques amounted to 'war crimes.' internal memo from the Department's then-counselor opposing Justice Department authorization for "enhanced interrogation techniques" by the CIA. All copies of the memo (Document 1), which reflect strong internal disagreement within the George W. Bush administration over the constitutionality of such techniques, were thought to have been destroyed. But the State Department located a copy and declassified it in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the National Security Archive. The author of the memo, Philip D. Zelikow, counselor to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, described the context of the memo in congressional testimony on May 13, 2009, and in an article he had previously published on foreignpolicy.com site on April 21, 2009. "At the time, in 2005 [and 2006]," he wrote, "I circulated an opposing view of the legal reasoning. My bureaucratic position, as counselor to the secretary of state, didn't entitle me to offer a legal opinion. But I felt obliged to put an alternative view in front of my colleagues at other agencies, warning them that other lawyers (and judges) might find the OLC views unsustainable." (OLC refers to the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.) "My colleagues were entitled to ignore my views," he continued. "They did more than that: The White House attempted to collect and destroy all copies of my memo. I expect that one or two are still at least in the State Department's archives." ">> www.gwu.edu |
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