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That the US captured? They sure did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus
You're nuts. The POW's of the Gulf War in 1991 had habeas corpus rights? Vietnam? Korea?
That the US captured? They sure did.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus
If waterboarding did not work to produce a result, would you approve of using more extreme methods?
Only if I thought it would produce results. Which, if waterboarding didn't work, would be dubious at best. I might even try someting less extreme. I think interrogation techniques are situational, don't you?
Surely, there are, but there are lines I won't cross. Is there a line you wouldn't cross? For instance, if you thought a terrorist had a nuke. Would you do something, say, like threaten his daughter in front of him? Perhaps even cause harm to her, if you thought it was necessary to obtain information?
You know what? All we need to do to stop terrorists is give them a stern "talking to". They are highly reasonable people.
Well, if he had the nuke, that wouldn't be necessary. I'd just relieve him of it.
Seriously, I understand what you're saying and, back to my other answer, I'd do whatever necessary to secure the information. If the information is obtainable, I wouldn't rule out any technique so long as there was still time to avert a nuclear blast in an Ameican city.
But, again, it is situational in that there are experts that can make a judgement call on what technique to which the terrorist will best respond. I'm not an expert on interrogation so, I'd defer to the interrogator over the method.
But, if I were in charge and an interrogator convinced me a method, you might find objectionable, will work in extracting time-sensitive data that could result in saving innocent lives; I'm not much going to worry about what makes you squeamish.
You can always thanks me later.
More groundwork-laying for an Obama approach to terror that looks a lot like Bush’s?
Odd NYTimes Opinion piece, if you ask me. It seems they’re trying, in advance, to excuse, what most of us already know, that Obama will soon resort to the same intelligence gathering methods used by the two presidents before him. And, unfortunately, because of his asinine assurances to close down Gitmo and end water boarding, he may be left with the more unsavory extraordinary rendition.
Way to go Democrats!
I'd put the emphasis the other way. Not that Obama takes dictation from the NYT, but that the NYT is reading the tea leaves. The lefty blogosphere (notably, Greenwald and Digby) has been squirming about this for weeks. Obama already reversed himself on FISA and domestic spying. Pretty soon he'll be in charge of Gitmo. We'll see pretty soon what he does and what he doesn't do.
Not sure I get you, YV. Are you saying you'll give Obama your full support, and defend him to the Nth, like you've done with Bush?
You may never know if he decides in favor of extraordinary rendition.
If he continues Bush's foreign policy, yeah, I'll support him in his foreign policy initiatives.
Do you think it is morally justifiable to torture an innocent to save a great number of lives?
1) I never said torture was or was not absolutely effective, dipwad.
2) I have said before, if not in this thread then elsewhere, that torture is immoral, no matter what your motives are.
Moral questions are hard to prove one way or another, and anybody who thinks it is ok generally lacks the morality to argue the point with.
What can be proven more conclusively is whether or not it is more or less effective.
If the purpose is preventing attacks, not torturing people works better in the long run. It is both the moral and more effective option. Oddly enough it is more effective because it is the moral option, and immoral people can't wrap their brains around that.
I never said you did, dipwad. I called you an idiot because of your stupid oversimplification: "torture = high cost, low benefit, not torturing = low cost, high benefit." Learn to read, dipwad.
Given that you do not think it is morally justifiable to torture an innocent to save lives, do you think it is morally justifiable to torture someone who might be guilty of a crime, but might not be?
I'll let the vice president answer that...
In the video Cheney defends himself and his defense of our nation, when asked by ABC News about the interrogation of terrorists like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed:
Vice President Cheney
The video clip comes from the Daily Beast, which headlines it, "Torture? I'm for it." Personally, I don't think waterboarding is torture but don't argue that point because -- in the situation in which it was used, it wouldn't matter to me if it were or not. In fact, as applied to the two or three terrorists in question, I'm in favor of it. The administration could have used more of this kind of straightforward defense of its policies over the last four years.
In answer to your question, that's too ambiguous. I think interrogations are all situational and the interrogator should weigh the risks against the potential rewards of whatever technique they choose to employ.
Certainly, the reason that we have laws are to define ambiguous situations as clearly as possible?
I thought conservative thought was to distrust those in power. Yet you seem to be explicitly trusting CIA agents to do the correct thing, or are at least willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. Do you agree with this assessment?
Additionally, did you read the bipartisan report on torture, which stated that some of the abuses of Abu Ghraib were signed off on by administration leadership such as Bush and Cheney?
Being for torture in 'certain instances' is the same, in my mind, as being against 'freedom of speech' in certain instances.
No, it's not. In the narrow instance described, I think the administration did the right thing.
Nope. Bipartisan reports have a nasty habit of being compromised to the point of not bearing any resemblance to reality.
D'okie dokie; fine by me. Frankly, the people we're discussing aren't en led to any of our cons utional protections.
And how do you know they're guilty? I thought that courts of law were used to determine proof of guilt or innocence. Mayhaps we should just have these interrogators presiding over our court of law instead?
We're talking about a war not a criminal case. This has been the problem with lefties since Clinton held office. You don't prosecute wars at the courthouse.
And, in the narrow case we're talking about, 3 known al Qaeda operatives, guilt and innocence wasn't the consideration. Intelligence gathering was the aim.
Last edited by Yonivore; 12-17-2008 at 08:09 AM.
I'm not talking about an individual case. I'm merely looking for you to state that you would be willing to support torturing POSSIBLE innocents to obtain vital information, correct?
Because frankly, I'm sure you're aware that innocent people HAVE been captured, abducted, extradited and interrogated.
Do you accept the fact that some innocents will be tortured in order that we may obtain better intel?
That was pretty much the implication of your post. If you meant otherwise, you should have made that a bit more explict.
It isn't an oversimplification, it was a summary. The issue isn't really that complicated.
Torture has a high long run cost (credibility, cooperation, increased recruiting and funding for terrorists, more attacks), with limited short term benefits (preventing a short term attack).
High cost, low benefit.
Not torturing has a low long-run cost (the opportunity cost of perhaps not preventing one or two immediate attacks) , with a high long term benefit (increased moral authority and credibility, decreased recruiting and funding for terrorists).
It would take an idiot not to understand that.
If cons utional protections are really that optional, why not get rid of them altogether?
That's been the policy the last seven years.
Fortunately for us all, the courts are finally beginning to reel in the executive branch, and restore the Cons ution our President and his men swore to uphold and protect, but trashed instead.
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