Where will we stop... nobody knows!

Quote :

"QUESTION: The New York Times has a piece today about legal opinions from the Justice Department authorizing harsh interrogation techniques. Do you challenge the accuracy of that report at all? PERINO: Let me start off by saying that our programs have always been designed within U.S. law and in keeping with our international obligations. Our intelligence agencies, they work every day to make sure that they're keeping our country safe, and they legally obtain information that they need to protect us from attack from foreign terrorists who aim to kill Americans. The article is quite long. You're asking me if everything in is accurate. No, I would not think that everything in it is accurate, and I would have to refer you to the Justice Department for some specifics on that. QUESTION: Well, how about the central points, about the legal opinions? PERINO: What about the legal opinions? What's the ... QUESTION: Shortly ... shortly after Alberto Gonzales got there, did the Justice Department issue a legal opinion that ... PERINO: That is different from a December 2004? No, I don't ... no. My understanding is that there is the December 2004 opinion, which is publicly available for everyone to read. Additional opinions on specific applications were done. They are classified. I have not seen those, but they were not ... the general opinion was the one that was done in December 2004, and as I understand it this February 5th one, was just talking about ... it was different in that it was focusing on specifics, not reinterpreting that memo. QUESTION: Well, it says for ... that the February one authorized things like head-slapping, simulated drowning, and ... PERINO: I don't know about that. But again, look at what I just said. The December 2004 memo, which is publicly available for all of you to read, is more ... is broad and general about interpreting the statute. And, not commenting specifically on any particular memos, what I just said is that the memo ... any opinions that were issued in February of 2005 were specific to the ... were more specific to applications under that agreement. QUESTION: But that would not deny ... that wouldn't deny what the Times is reporting. PERINO: I didn't say that I was. I said, are there two different ... were there two different pieces of paper or opinions that were released. There was the broader opinion, yes, and I think ... it's not apples and oranges, but it was an altogether different type of document that was released in February 2005. QUESTION: You're being specific to applications. PERINO: Well, if you look at the December 2004 opinion, which I haven't in a long time, but it's publicly available, you can see it, and it's a general overview of OLC's opinion ... Office of Legal Counsel's opinion ... interpreting the statute more broadly. Then there are specifics that ... regarding interrogation techniques that were reviewed and that are classified, that I haven't seen. So it's a different document altogether. But it's within ... still within that overall broad framework of the December 2004 document. QUESTION: The New York Times also says that the U.S. is still using black sites for prisoners, to interrogate them. Is that accurate? PERINO: I'm just not going to comment. I would refer you back to what the President said in a December ... I'm sorry ... September 10th ... I'm sorry ... September 6, 2006, when the President held a East Room event where he laid out the fact that we have been holding some of the people responsible for the 9/11 attacks and that they had been transferred to Guantanamo Bay. QUESTION: Have you heard whether any other ... they've started holding prisoners again? PERINO: I would refer you back to that speech, and in it the President said, I will not be coming back to you every time we might hold somebody in the future because these are classified for a reason; we're trying to protect the American people and the more information that's out there that gives other people clues as to what we might or may not ... who we may or may not have ... the President said we're not going to be providing information. And we did do ... I think there was one ... we have told you when we have transferred people to ... terrorists to Gitmo, but we haven't been in the habit of doing a press release every time we have a prisoner. QUESTION: Does the administration still assert that it does not engage or authorize torture? PERINO: Absolutely. This country does not torture. It is the policy of the United States that we do not torture ... and we do not. I would also say that one of the things that I would challenge in this article is the characterization of Steve Bradbury, who is one of the most decent, patriotic human beings I know. He is dedicated to the law. He calls them like he sees them. He is asked to consider very complex and unique legal questions. He provides his best guidance, his best judgment. Is it ... it is possible that reasonable people could disagree on opinions regarding complex and unique and novel questions that are put to them, but this is an individual who the President nominated a long time ago. He deserves to be confirmed in the United States Senate. He has given a lot to his country, and we fully appreciate all he's done for us. QUESTION: You maintain that the administration still does not torture? PERINO: Correct. QUESTION: But is it not possible that some of these classified opinions may have changed the definition of "torture"? PERINO: No. I don't believe so. I have not seen them. But as everything was described to me, no, I don't believe that's possible. QUESTION: Isn't it inconsistent with the commitment to democracy to hold people outside the country when we want to do things to them we cannot do under the laws inside the country? PERINO: Wendell, the policy of the United States is not to torture. We have not and we are not torturing anyone. QUESTION: It is oft declared that the policy of the United States is not to torture, but, of course, you won't describe to us what you do ... that you don't call torture. PERINO: Well, there's a very good reason for that. QUESTION: So once again I will say, whether or not you torture them, whether or not you consider what you're doing to these people torture ... isn't it inconsistent with a commitment to democracy to hold someone outside the United States when you want to do to them what you cannot do inside the United States?"

10/4/2007 1:06:06 PM

Quote :

" PERINO: I will tell you what ... the reason that we don't provide the classified information on interrogation techniques is because we know very well that individuals like al Qaeda ... let me finish, Wendell ... that individuals like al Qaeda ... QUESTION: I'm granting you that. PERINO: That ... well, then let me say it ... that individuals like al Qaeda train to interrogation techniques. And we know that these are people who will make sure that they can resist any type of interrogation technique in order to carry out horrible, murderous deeds, like killing 3,000 Americans in New York City and at the Pentagon. And we are in a global war on terror. The President ... go back to the September 6th speech. The President was very clear as to the situation that we are in and why are we are endeavoring to protect the American people like we are. That's exactly why we do it. QUESTION: I will stipulate these are bad people. I am not asking you to tell me what is being done to them; I'm asking you about the principle of holding them someplace where you can do what you can't do in the United States. PERINO: Look, regardless of where they are, we do not torture anyone. And getting that information from those individuals is critically important to protecting this country. QUESTION: Can I go back to ... you say we do not provide information ... is it because you're saying you don't want al Qaeda to train its people to resist your techniques; is that the reason? PERINO: That's right. QUESTION: That's the reason. PERINO: You don't hand over your game book to the opposing team. And we know that these are ruthless individuals who will do anything, and that they're very patient ... that they'll do anything to try to carry out their attacks. And this President has put in place ... all within the foursquare corners of the law ... tools in the global war on terror that we need and that the future President ... and Presidents, plural ... will need in order to protect this country. QUESTION: Dana, these techniques that have been talked about through intelligence sources and published ... whether it's waterboarding, simulated drowning, subjection to extreme temperatures, loud music, deprived of food or sleep for periods of time ... all of that is well known. And if al Qaeda needs a game book, they can read The New York Times and figure out, well, those are a few techniques we might try to train against. So doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of saying that it is not something we want to ... PERINO: Just because it's printed in The New York Times doesn't mean that we should talk about it publicly. I just reject the notion ... QUESTION: But the idea that you can't discuss it and that you blanketly say there's no torture when, clearly, in the Department of Justice there has been a debate about if those techniques were too severe ... and to simply say there's no torture, but then to never provide any insight as to what the limitations are, with the exception of death or organ failure ... PERINO: I'm not disputing that there can be legal disagreements between reasonable people who may look at something one way and another person looks at it in another way. I'm not disputing that. What I am saying is that we do not torture, and I disagree with the notion that just because information is leaked or provided to The New York Times or any other news organization that this country should ... that this government should then have to spell out any specifics. And I'm not confirming or denying anything that you just listed ... all the ones that you just listed. QUESTION: How can you say that ... how can you say with assurance that we don't torture if you don't know what was in the ... PERINO: Because we follow the law. QUESTION: ... if you don't know what was in the other opinions, the classified opinions? PERINO: Because all of the opinions and all of the discussions, everything has to be within the law and the policy, and the policy of the United States is that we don't torture. QUESTION: Well, we'd like to believe that, but there's no way to assure us, is there? QUESTION: Do you think the people have a right to know what we do to others? PERINO: I think to a certain extent, yes, and that's why we have, for example, that December 2004 opinion that lays out broadly how we interpret the law. QUESTION: Taking your word for it, though, is not true ... PERINO: Well, I think that the American people can understand ... I believe that the American people can understand why there are certain pieces of information and tools that we use in the global war on terror that remain classified in order to protect them ... QUESTION: Why do you believe that? PERINO: ... and I believe they have every right to know that. QUESTION: Why do you believe they are not disgraced and shamed when torture is attached to our name? PERINO: Helen, the United States policy is not to torture, and we do not. QUESTION: I hear what you're saying, the policy. But what do we really do ... PERINO: The American people have every right to be very proud of what we've done, and we have not had another terrorist attack on this country. And they should be glad of that, as well. QUESTION: So the end justifies the means. PERINO: Our end is that we don't ... our means are that we don't torture, and the end result is that we've not had a terrorist attack. QUESTION: Just you saying it doesn't mean it's true. PERINO: Well, Helen, look, I can't decide ... if I can't change your mind, I mean, that's fine. I just ... I'm giving you the information that I have. QUESTION: Well, I think the testimony of the people who have been tortured themselves. PERINO: Elaine. QUESTION: What can you tell us about members of Congress and sort of how they fit into this picture and that time frame you described, December 2004 being the broad overview, but then any kind of more specific classified opinions coming out in February of '05? PERINO: I would ask the Department of Justice, I don't know what the congressional ... QUESTION: Were there briefings taking place to kind of ... PERINO: I'd have to refer you to Justice Department, because I don't know. I'll see if I can get more for you."

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004378.php

10/4/2007 1:06:35 PM

Quote :

"We have not and we are not torturing anyone."

Shoot the fucking liar

10/4/2007 1:34:17 PM

Dana Perino is a lying douchebag

Bush should be made to answer questions like they do in the British House of Commons. No carefully prepared statements that do not answer anything. No lying press secretaries. Just raw, bare fisted democracy.

10/4/2007 1:48:12 PM

your girls have your panties in a wad....let the intelligence services do their jobs and quit trying to bring down the United States

[Edited on October 4, 2007 at 2:01 PM. Reason : dfa]

10/4/2007 2:00:59 PM

Yea, because we all want America to be taken over by the terrorists right?


More like we want America to be a powerful and moral nation. That way, when we despose dictators and everything of the sort we can claim to be just without people rolling their eyes and waiting until they can take us over.

10/4/2007 2:26:43 PM

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/10/war-criminal.html

Quote :

"The way in which conservative lawyers, and conservative intellectuals, and conservative journalists aided and abetted these war crimes; the way in which the president of the United States revealed so much contempt for the law that he put a candidate to run the Office of Legal Counsel on probation before he appointed him in order to keep the torture regime in place, the way in which Republicans and Democrats in the Congress pathetically refused to stand up to these violations of American honor and decency in any serious way (and, I'm sorry, Senator McCain, but in the end, you caved, as you always do lately): these will go down in history as some of the most shameful decisions these people ever made. Perhaps a sudden, panicked decision by the president to use torture after 9/11 is understandable if unforgivable. But the relentless, sustained attempt to make torture permanent part of the war-powers of the president, even to the point of abusing the law beyond recognition, removes any benefit of the doubt from these people. And they did it all in secret - and lied about it when Abu Ghraib emerged. They upended two centuries of American humane detention and interrogation practices without even letting us know. And the decision to allow one man - the decider - to pre-empt and knowingly distort the rule of law in order to detain and torture anyone he wants - is a function not of conservatism, but of fascism. ... There is no doubt - no doubt at all - that these tactics are torture and subject to prosecution as war crimes. We know this because the law is very clear when you don't have war criminals like AEI's John Yoo rewriting it to give one man unchecked power. We know this because the very same techniques - hypothermia, long-time standing, beating - and even the very same term "enhanced interrogation techniques" - "verschaerfte Vernehmung" in the original German - were once prosecuted by American forces as war crimes. The perpetrators were the Gestapo. The penalty was death. You can verify the history here. We have war criminals in the White House. What are we going to do about it?"

10/4/2007 2:57:31 PM

^^^

let humans denounce ugly/immoral/illegal behaviour and quit trying to justify those behaviours.

10/4/2007 4:14:35 PM

bushs homeland security advisor told wolf blitzer that they dont toture, i believe she put it as "significant interrogation techniques"

lol

10/4/2007 8:25:31 PM

torturing in interrogations is a great way to get bad intel. But thats ok...thats another way for American soldiers to die needlessly, after all, isn't that what most Americans want?

10/4/2007 8:52:53 PM

Quote :

"Bush should be made to answer questions like they do in the British House of Commons. No carefully prepared statements that do not answer anything. No lying press secretaries. Just raw, bare fisted democracy."

Every state of the Union address should be this way.

Quote :

"your girls have your panties in a wad....let the intelligence services do their jobs and quit trying to bring down the United States"

What is the United States? I like to think it is a series ideals enshrined in the Constitution, and not just a nation defined by geography and conspicuous consumption.

On a more practical level, events like Abu Ghraib have utterly enraged otherwise relatively moderate Muslims. I'm not sure that is the goal we should be pursuing.

10/5/2007 1:42:59 AM

Quote :

"bushs homeland security advisor told wolf blitzer that they dont toture, i believe she put it as "significant interrogation techniques""

i see both sides of this debate, at least sometimes.

there's a spectrum when it comes to exploitation and coercion for the purposes of gaining information. at one end is stuff that we all agree is torture. I'm 100% against this kind of stuff (unless maybe the President personally signed off on it, as a matter of public record, for the purpose of preventing a specific national tragedy).

In the middle are these so-called "significant interrogation techniques".

At the other end is simple questioning or even soft-soaping people into spilling some intel for you. Obviously nobody has a problem with this end of the spectrum.



I have personally experienced up through somewhere a little past the "significant interrogation techniques" part of the spectrum, up to the low end of what most of us would define as "torture". Some of those mid-grade interrogation techniques are OK in my book (for example, i think that a certain degree of sleep deprivation is legitimate and useful.). The hotter side of the spectrum (beating, waterboarding, and on up from there in terms of severity) is not OK in my book.

Quote :

"torturing in interrogations is a great way to get bad intel."

yeah, the softer/more insidious approaches often work better, anyway.

10/5/2007 2:16:56 AM

Dana Perino? C'mon, what's not to love?

/message_topic.aspx?topic=474532

10/5/2007 2:20:19 AM

Not bad. Tony Snow was way better though.

10/5/2007 4:43:51 AM

^ You mean "better" at doing the job? If so, yes, I agree.

10/5/2007 5:00:24 AM

http://economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9833041

http://economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9832909

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9867324

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9909351

Some excellent articles from The Economist, particularly the first two. They're long though, so I doubt many of you have the attention span to actually read them.

Quote :

"If the war against terrorism is a war at all, it is like the cold war—one that will last for decades. Although a real threat exists, to let security trump liberty in every case would corrode the civilised world's sense of what it is and wants to be. When liberals put the case for civil liberties, they sometimes claim that obnoxious measures do not help the fight against terrorism anyway. The Economist is liberal but disagrees. We accept that letting secret policemen spy on citizens, detain them without trial and use torture to extract information makes it easier to foil terrorist plots. To eschew such tools is to fight terrorism with one hand tied behind your back. But that—with one hand tied behind their back—is precisely how democracies ought to fight terrorism. Take torture, arguably the hardest case (and the subject of the first article in our series). A famous thought experiment asks what you would do with a terrorist who knew the location of a ticking nuclear bomb. Logic says you would torture one man to save hundreds of thousands of lives, and so you would. But this a fictional dilemma. In the real world, policemen are seldom sure whether the many (not one) suspects they want to torture know of any plot, or how many lives might be at stake. All that is certain is that the logic of the ticking bomb leads down a slippery slope where the state is licensed in the name of the greater good to trample on the hard-won rights of any one and therefore all of its citizens. Human rights are part of what it means to be civilised. Locking up suspected terrorists—and why not potential murderers, rapists and paedophiles, too?—before they commit crimes would probably make society safer. Dozens of plots may have been foiled and thousands of lives saved as a result of some of the unsavoury practices now being employed in the name of fighting terrorism. Dropping such practices in order to preserve freedom may cost many lives. So be it."

10/5/2007 8:33:11 AM

US OF FUCKIN A

BRAH!!!!!!!!!!!

10/5/2007 8:38:16 AM

define torture.

should we be shoving bamboo up people's fingernails? no.

should we be creative and do whatever possible to obtain viable intel from bad guys? yes.

10/5/2007 11:39:24 AM

None of the presidential candidates has given the right answer about the nuclear weapon scenario. If I were president and I knew that an individual had information about a nuclear device that was set to go off soon somewhere in the United States, I would order that the relevant information be obtained from that individual by any means necessary--and any rational person should expect nothing less of this nation's leader.

Any person who's not prepared to actually make such a call shouldn't be president. And God help us if he or she becomes president.

10/5/2007 11:48:07 AM

'the nuclear weapon scenario'...ZOMFG THERE'S A TICKING TIME BOMB AND ONLY ONE PERSON KNOWS WHERE IT IS AND WE KNOW WHO THAT ONE PERSON IS AND WE HAVE HIM IN CUSTODY AND ZOMFG WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE....the odds of that happening are slim to fucking none. Good job latching onto a scenario that any rational person can see will never happen.

That said, nobody gives a shit what you would order if you were president. You couldn't get elected chairman of the office party committee.

[Edited on October 5, 2007 at 12:01 PM. Reason : ]

10/5/2007 11:59:20 AM

^ If you weren't so uninformed, A Tarzansanus, you would know that the scenario at issue has been posed to the presidential candidates of both parties during recent debates. You really should try to keep up with current events.

[Edited on October 5, 2007 at 12:16 PM. Reason : .]

10/5/2007 12:16:17 PM

But what you don't realize is that allowing for scenario A does not make doing scenario B okay.

If I ask you if you will eat a dead human being if you're on a deserted island and the only thing left to survive on is a dead human being, you might say yes. This does not mean that eating human beings is okay and that it should be done all the time.

10/5/2007 12:50:15 PM

pretty cool wall o text there.

10/5/2007 12:55:21 PM

^^^ What's your point? How does a presidential debate question increase the likelihood that a particular event will occur?

The fact that questions have been asked in no way validates the 'nuclear weapon scenario' as a probable event. The 'nuclear weapon scenario' is nothing more than a cheap emotional ploy.

10/5/2007 12:55:39 PM

Quote :

"None of the presidential candidates has given the right answer about the nuclear weapon scenario. If I were president and I knew that an individual had information about a nuclear device that was set to go off soon somewhere in the United States, I would order that the relevant information be obtained from that individual by any means necessary--and any rational person should expect nothing less of this nation's leader."

What the fuck are you going to do, call Jack Bauer? In this situation, of course, we need to do what it will take to get the necessary information. But I'm sure you know that torture does not get reliable information. And I'm sure you also know that this hypothetical has practically nothing to do with the discussion at hand.

10/5/2007 1:05:23 PM

Quote :

"I like to think it is a series ideals enshrined in the Constitution"

yeah, like the 2nd amendment, the 10th amendment, et al, right? oh, fuck those, they don't fit my agenda...

10/5/2007 10:29:48 PM

hey dumbass:

tell me, what does owning guns have to do with torturing citizens and foreign nationals?

10/5/2007 10:39:33 PM

I think I just saw this on CSPAN. I think it's playing again at 1:10am.

10/5/2007 10:43:34 PM

^x5 Prove it.

^x4 Some stupid Jack Bauer references were made by a couple of Republican candidates, as I recall. At any rate, a president in the scenario at issue should order that the relevant information be obtained by any means necessary--call it what you will. And as far as I'm concerned, a president who doesn't recognize that necessity is more dangerous than any terrorist.

10/7/2007 6:55:10 AM

Prove what? That the 'nuclear weapon scenario'--where only one person knows the location of a ticking time bomb--is an unlikely scenario?

'Prove it' is a pretty cheap out on your part.

I'm not going to spend time attempting to 'prove' a negative, especially to you. You're blind if you can't see that the 'nuclear weapon scenario' torture question is a cheap emotional ploy and not a likely scenario. It is no different than other 'An old man can't afford expensive life-saving medicine for his ailing wife. Is it OK for him to steal the medicine?' type questions. The scenario exists only to provoke discussion by presenting a moral dilemma.

[Edited on October 7, 2007 at 9:49 AM. Reason : ]

10/7/2007 9:49:29 AM

I always liked the old mechanism by which such techniques were utilized, in the rare possibility they were needed. Some FBI or CIA guy tortured the relevant suspect, gets the information and saves the day; then the information is thrown out of court and the relevant agent is imprisoned for 5 years after being convicted of assault. It really is not that severe a punishment to suffer for your country and it makes sure torture is only used when it is really necessary.

[Edited on October 7, 2007 at 10:01 AM. Reason : .,.]

10/7/2007 9:59:43 AM

^^ You should alert the media about that--they're the ones asking that question to every presidential candidate.

10/9/2007 12:44:40 AM

Good job to hooksaw for failing, once again, to address a point. Also, nice deflection--it's the media's question.

And we all know that the media only asks pertinent and valid questions during presidential debates.

10/9/2007 7:52:07 AM

^ *Sigh*

1. Certain members of the media must believe the question at issue is relevant because they have posed it to all presidential candidates.

2. All the candidates must believe the question is relevant because none has said, "I do not accept your premise" or some such.

10/9/2007 11:14:02 AM

*sigh*

1. Just because certain members of the media believe the question at issue is relevant, doesn't mean that the question is, in fact, relevant.

2. Just because all the candidates believe the question is relevant doesn't mean that the question is, in fact, relevant.

On the other hand, I do believe that you are dumb enough to believe that because a question is asked at a debate, the 'nuclear weapon scenario' must be a probable event and a relevant topic of discussion.

Once again, you refuse to defend something on your own, instead appealing to numbers.

10/9/2007 12:25:27 PM

Quote :

"DaBird: should we be shoving bamboo up people's fingernails? no."

I'm not totally against this. Like, maybe we could allow ourselves one every eight years or so.

10/9/2007 2:51:09 PM

Nah, but seriously all this "no torture" talk seems a little disingenuous.

We still send our young men and women off to war to have their limbs blown off, but we don't torture!

We still accept the killing of innocent civilians as an inevitability of war, but we don't torture!

Who are we fooling?

We're still the same barbaric bastards we have been since the beginning of humanity.

So, I say, torture on, America. Torture on!

10/9/2007 5:46:01 PM

your posting is torture

10/9/2007 5:46:48 PM

AHAHA

I'm just sayin...

10/9/2007 5:51:35 PM

We will always torture suspects of consequence, regardless of what any administration says about what they are or are not doing.

10/9/2007 10:24:59 PM

^x6 You can't be that stupid.

1. As a journalist, I wouldn't have asked the question at issue; and as a candidate I wouldn't have answered a hypothetical--particularly of this sort. Had I given an answer to this question as a candidate, there would have been only one right answer, which is the one I gave: ". . .I would order that the relevant information be obtained from that individual by any means necessary--and any rational person should expect nothing less of this nation's leader" hooksaw.

2. Whether you think the question at issue matters or not is truly irrelevant. The fact that it has been asked of and answered by all the presidential candidates makes it relevant as (a) a position taken on a political issue in a presidential debate, which could shape policy for years to come; (b) as an important part of a current event; and (c) for what the candidates' answers have revealed to us about them, which leads me to my next point.

3. Does a given presidential candidate have the balls (or ovaries, I suppose) to not answer a particular question--like Clinton should have done with the Lewinsky sex question? And this leads to my final and most important point in this exchange.

4. "Any person who's not prepared to actually make such a call [enhanced interrogation techniques, torture--call it what you will] shouldn't be president. And God help us if he or she becomes president" hooksaw.

If you can't understand this, I'm not going to invest anymore time in explaining it to you. Now piss off.

[Edited on October 10, 2007 at 12:01 AM. Reason : .]

10/10/2007 12:00:30 AM

you know, you can really be such a pretentious and self-important twat.

10/10/2007 2:07:09 AM

^^ But you haven't explained anything (as usual). You just keep falling back on 'everyone else is talking about it, therefore it must be important and relevant.'

Of course, we all know that politicians only discuss events and scenarios that are likely and probabable, and are not given to fluff or rhetoric [/sarcasm]--which takes us back to the original topic of our exchange: Whether or not the 'nuclear weapon scenario' is even likely enough to make it worth talking about.

The answer is still no. The ticking time bomb--zomg only one guy knows where it is--question is designed to provoke a moral dilemma and not to be a realistic situation. Secondly, even if the scenario was probable, it's such a singular event that it is worthless in a general discussion about whether or not torture is acceptable. Unless, of course, you're trying to say that torture should be allowed because you can imagine specific scenarios (however unlikely) that you believe warrant torture.

[Edited on October 10, 2007 at 7:49 AM. Reason : ]

10/10/2007 7:46:38 AM

TIMEOUT!

You guys are arguing semantics, ironically resembling the title of this thread. Lets get to the root the debate, which I think you guys actually agree upon:

1) Is the nuclear bomb scenario a relevant topic?

Yes, because (as hooksaw stated) it's been introduced by journalists, politicians, and debate moderators. It will continue to be an issue until someone steps up and explicitly states why it is irrelevant, as A Tanzarian has. You can't ignore a stupid topic bouncing around political forums and the media, but you can put in its place. No one, or rather not enough people have done this.

2) Is the nuclear bomb scenario relevant to to defense of torture?

Absolutely not. Baring the existence of a "clear and present danger," like a nuclear threat, this scenario does not apply to torture practices being implemented today. Additionally, it's not very efficient to go about torturing prisoners without determining what specific piece(s) of information are needed. Allowing the torturing of a prisoner on the offchance that he/she knows something useful shows a tremendous amount of moral neglience.

Finally... in response to the article posted by A Tanzarian:

Quote :

"We accept that letting secret policemen spy on citizens, detain them without trial and use torture to extract information makes it easier to foil terrorist plots. To eschew such tools is to fight terrorism with one hand tied behind your back. But that—with one hand tied behind their back—is precisely how democracies ought to fight terrorism."

3) Should we accept terrorist-fighting tactics like torture, suspension of habeus corpus, secret policing and spying?

The simple answer is no. Torture, in the absence of a "clear and present danger" to the country, is morally inexcusable. Torture is something we denounce our enemies for doing. A right to due process is written in our Bill of Rights for a reason. Suspending it makes us no better than the terrorists we're fighting. Spying on their people, authoritarian government policies, secret police forces... these are the tools of FACISTS. These are the tools of the very "Islamofacists," a popular term among conservatives, that we are currently fighting.


Adopting the tactics of the enemy loses us the moral high ground that we claim to defend. There is nothing moral, christian, or just about becoming the very evil we're trying to fight. We continue to make policy based on fear, and this fear has caused us to handover control of our most basic liberties to the government. Fear brought about the Patriot Act, the Iraq war, and the expansion in size and scope of the federal government. We are becoming the very thing that we fear the most.


It must stop and it must stop NOW.

[Edited on October 10, 2007 at 12:57 PM. Reason : sadf]

10/10/2007 12:49:59 PM

amen

10/10/2007 2:41:23 PM

the rules aren't the same and the stakes have been raised by proliferation of nuclear weapons...if we have to use torture techniques to reduce our chances of being hit by a nuclear suitcase then I support whatever means necessary...

10/10/2007 4:38:07 PM

so... either you didn't read it, or you can't comprehend it.

which is it?

10/10/2007 4:54:30 PM

just stating my opinion on it

10/11/2007 10:02:43 AM

So you're saying it's a little of both, then.

10/11/2007 10:08:33 AM

im sorry spooky dookie but why is my statement at all not relevant to the issues discussed in this thread....you obviously think the nuclear scenario is something that shouldn't be brought into the discussion, but I do. do you honestly think that it can't happen or do you think it won't happen. It's about COULD it happen. the answer is yes, it could happen, and during that situation I would encourage the use of torture to produce the answers we would need to save lives.

10/11/2007 10:26:55 AM