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True but since Bush and Cheney didn't see it as torture they didn't see it as official policy so therefore it was never official policy.
It worked in real life, that is enough.
True but since Bush and Cheney didn't see it as torture they didn't see it as official policy so therefore it was never official policy.
Maybe he was faking it.
Why limit yourself to the OP? The public record is extensive.
I doubt it.
True, but this judgment was invidious. I hate to think who'd be tempted to repeat the experiment.
Probably.
That's really past the 'torture' mark there, into 'killing'.
The thing is, these things in ISOLATION wouldn't be so bad. But taken together, their effects multiply. They have a synergistic effect.
Let's put it this way. You could come home and say you had a bad day at work if you were late, the boss was an asshole, you had a headache and you couldn't finish up the big proposal.
Any of those things by themselves, you'd be pissed, but it wouldn't affect you nearly as much as all of them occurring either together or within a short amount of time.
Sleep deprivation is one of the worst, in my mind, as it confuses the mind and is very good for forcing people to say whatever you want them to as long as you promise them sleep.
Darrin, do you believe EVERYONE we've tortured is guilty? Or has actionable intelligence?
Or do you think that a few might have been captured due to a mistake?
I'm in the military, putz.
As a rule, I'm against REAL torture. I don't have any issue with the list of unpleasantries in the OP.[/quote]
So, are you of the mind that Germans shouldn't have been prosecuted for doing the same after WWII?
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.co...fte_verne.html
The military shouldn't have anything to do with the sort of interrogation under discussion IMO. I know that reflects a pre-9/11 mindset, but I don't believe 9/11 was a bridge we burned after crossing it.
9/11 didn't erase our previous history, it only rendered it *temporarily* quaint.
So you are fine with all that being done to our soldiers if they were ever captured in any war.
Ok, I disagree.
Heaven forbid you could ever understand whose hearts and minds are actually at issue.
We should slap around our own soldiers suffering from PTSD?
Sure we do. We don't like some of the things they are ordered to do.
...forget captured troops, would he be fine with this kinda torture happening to him in a Mexican prison....So you are fine with all that being done to our soldiers if they were ever captured in any war.
One of my arguments was based on respect for the military, and my having been a proud member of that mil ary.
your useless stereotypes.
As I said before, a dangerous idiot.
9-11 came along and slapped us in the face with our collective ignorance of the rest of the world.
The first thing I did was seek out middle easterners and muslims, and start picking their brains about it.
I read and researched as much as I could on Afghanistan, the Al Qaeda movement, and islamic extremism in general.
Did people like you go out and bother talking to muslims after this to learn something?
No.
You and Darrin, and Yonivore, and just about every other conservative I have ever talked to seems to be comfortable in a bubble of ignorance.
For some reason, you want to feel comforted by some simplistic view of the outside word in which "us" and "them" are black and white, survival depends on doing things that undermine our most deeply held principles and morals, and every muslim is out to get us. That is dangerous.
Knowing the enemy is one of the most basic principles of war, and as obvious thousands of years ago as today.
Understanding the nature of the conflict you are fighting is *the* first step in formulating a cohesive response.
Patton fought a standing army of a formal nation state. His opponents used a level of technology similar to his, sometimes superior actually, they wore uniforms, and were rather easy to spot on the battlefield.
I'm sorry, but islamic extremists have none of those characteristics.
The nature of this struggle is that of a war of ideas.
On one side is the USA.
Our idea is that we are a righteous democracy, generous, and respecting of the basic human rights embodied in our cons ution and fought for by millions of our own citizens willing to give their lives for nothing more concrete than principles.
Their idea is that we are an evil empire. We are hypocrites who not only don't respect the supposed rights we say we promote, we are a force of evil by supporting the various corrupt tyrannies that populate developing world governments. Our secular, liberal "democracy" is hollow and out to get islam. We are interested in nothing but power.
The more people they convince of this idea, the more recruits they have, and the more ability they have to harm us.
The more we convince people of our idea, the more cooperation we get in general, and the fewer recruits they get.
The more violent and less ethical we become the more they win.
So did you the read part about the terrorists being crazy ing lunatics and hate every single non-muslim and it was their duty to kill us all?
Indeed.
The hard core fanatics are hard to turn.
I have also read up on a few of them who have turned their back on the extremism.
Your problem with perceiving this conflict correctly is that you seem to think that all muslims are part of Al Qaeda.
They aren't.
It isn't the opinion or sympathies of the hard core types that you have to sway, is it?
It is the fence sitters who *might* join. THAT is the group of people you fight for by not being violent and unethical.
We won the fight in Iraq against them, partly because they are murderous s who kill indescriminantly. The sunni population turned against Al Qaeda partly for that reason.
Our change in tactics was actually to release MORE prisoners, and use LESS force. We got "softer" and became stronger.
Wrap your mind around THAT.
"Why do you think this admin released that memo"
why do you think dubya kept those do ents secret? national security? war on terror?
We learned a lot of lessons in Vietnam, and that all got boiled down into the Army's counterinsurgency manual.
We fought Iraq for 3 years the "conservative" (read: ignorant) way. Round up anybody who we even *thought* was a sympathizer, stick 'em all in a prison, and don't worry about a little collateral damage from that airstrike...
Then suddenly we discovered that (gasp) we learned something from Vietnam, and had actually written a book on it. They changed strategy and tactics to take advantage of this, and unsurpisingly it worked.
Soft power is far more important than hard power in the struggle against extremists.
Killing is necessary, but not sufficient.
Torturing prisoners, for any reason, hurts your cause far more than any short-term intelligence gain.
Before this issue of torture by insects and diapers was on the table, before the EEEEEVIL George W. Bush was even governor of Texas, why did Islamic terrorists bomb the WTC in 1993?
Were we not winning their hearts and minds back then?
No, not really.
We had always been dimly aware of terrorism up until then, but it had been mostly a few hijacked airliners.
We became a bit more aware of it, and concentrated a few more resources to it, but it takes a good bloody nose like 9-11 to get people's attention.
Cry Havoc and unleash the dogs of war!...... Washington and the British both prosecuted war under a common understanding called the "Rules of War"
an understanding that was kept in order to minimize the barbarity that is war. I don't think for a moment he would have extended that understanding to Al Queda. The tatic Al Queda uses, is to use war to maximze terror and barbarisim not minimize it. But that's not really the question your asking is it.
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