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Another good one for the know-nothings who believe that anything remotely important when it comes to the relationship between the US Government and torture changed during W. Bush tenure in office:
Another good one for the know-nothings who believe that anything remotely important when it comes to the relationship between the US Government and torture changed during W. Bush tenure in office:
The scale of the operation sets it apart, wouldn't you say? It has become an all-American ins ution in a way other covert ops never did.Another good one for the know-nothings who believe that anything remotely important when it comes to the relationship between the US Government and torture changed during W. Bush tenure in office:
I could bring this one up too:
That doesn't mean it was a publicly accepted policy.
The same thing applies with torture up until Cheney/Bush.
The use of torture was widely known and accepted in the US till the early 20th century - for example, by the police forces using "third degree" techniques.
For example, check:
http://www.lexisnexis.com/academic/u...roup.asp?g=256
They just wouldn't call it torture - just like they didn't under Bush, just like they don't under Obama. Third degree, coercive counterintelligence interrogation of resistant sources, stress and duress, everything but actions equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death, etc. etc. No change.
History will be way kinder to Bush than his fanatic opponents of today would like, I think - not because he was good, but merely because he wasn't exceptionally bad relatively to his peers (at least when it comes to torture).
Last edited by mogrovejo; 02-05-2010 at 07:11 PM.
So Americans like torture and want to do it more in the future.
You're pretty disingenuous. That predates the US signing and agreeing to respect both the Geneva convention and the universal declaration of human rights.
Your argument is analogous to the US suddenly prohibiting women from voting "because once upon a time we didn't allow it either and nobody was ing back then"...
I don't thin the Geneva Convention is relevant for the torture America civilians. As for programs like Phoenix and KUBARK they happened after the signature of the Geneva Convention.
In any case, my point is that there's nothing that distinguishes the previous Administration in regards to torture relatively to the previous ones. All of them promoted it while calling it something different than torture.
Again, they were classified programs, and entirely reprehensible. That you're ok with them do not make them ok by any stretch of the imagination. They're definitely a black eye for the CIA.
Sure there is. The previous administration tried to set up a legal framework to publicly justify torture. Please show me another previous administration that attempted to do just that.
Uh? Who told you I'm okay with them? Please, retract from your statement.
The previous administration tried to set up a legal framework to justify something that, in their view, was not torture - by defining torture in a particular way: torture "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death" and didn't include water-boarding, for example.
The same way that when the Kennedy Administration officials elaborated the guidelines for "counterintelligence interrogation of resistant sources" they left electric shocks out of the definition of torture.
Retract is not a phrasal verb. It carries no set preposition in train. You might have hypercorrected here.
perhaps analogy from <<detract from>>.
mogro calls for a retraction.
He won't give one, but he'll sure ask for one.
hee hee hee
I'll retract the comment when you condemn the practice.
They don't get to define what torture is, and THAT is exactly the problem. By any measurable standard, it's been already defined in the Geneva convention they signed and promised to uphold. Furthermore, I have absolutely zero doubt that if an enemy were to do the same things to an American, it would be labeled torture on the spot. Which is what makes the Cheneys of the world a bunch of hypocrites.
Haven't I done that multiple times? I was the one opening this thread. I condemn the practice of torture and its enabling/rationalization/mitigation - in every time and regardless of who does it.
What about you? I confess that I find your narrow focusing on the last Administration very disturbing. Are you really anti-torture or merely anti-Bush?
I agree - except with singling out Cheney when the previous Administrations also tried to define torture in a way that would exclude their practice of torture and the focus on the Geneva Convention and such - if the Geneva Convention didn't exist or was overturned, torture wouldn't be more admissible. Your faith on legalism in such issues is, once again, disturbing. Waterboard is torture regardless of what Cheney says it's torture - and the exact same reasoning applies to treaties like the Geneva Conventions.They don't get to define what torture is, and THAT is exactly the problem. By any measurable standard, it's been already defined in the Geneva convention they signed and promised to uphold. Furthermore, I have absolutely zero doubt that if an enemy were to do the same things to an American, it would be labeled torture on the spot. Which is what makes the Cheneys of the world a bunch of hypocrites.
Last edited by mogrovejo; 02-09-2010 at 03:59 PM.
Relative to his peers, we say in English. It is a preposition. I can see how the adverbial context would throw you off there.
The reference to the ultimate verdict of history is premature in both pre approved flavors, but I'll say this: the *fans* aren't always wrong. They just lived through it.
As is yours. Codifying harsh interrogation techniques as being "not torture", isn't necessary unless you've already been torturing people. You seem to buy the ad hoc Bush legal justifications wholesale, while dismissing the treaty-level convention against torture as a quaint "legalism".
I guess "legalism" is in the eye of the beholder, huh?
Riddle me this mogrovejo: if waterboarding wasn't torture, why did we quit doing it in 2004?
Have you?
That's more like it. I retract my comment then.
I made it clear every time this topic came up that I don't support torture or whatever they want to call it these days (enhanced interrogation techniques?), and any attempts to rationalize it. I have also condemned the continuation of this policy by this administration.
The previous administration tried to bas ize what the entire world understood as torture, and tried to pass it as publicly accepted and justified policy. There's really no two ways to look at it. I singled out Cheney and his office because they were the intellectual and political creators of that abomination.
I'm completely disgusted with the current administration also because they're following in his trail. This is the extinction of due process as we knew it.
hear hear! Again, if anything, Cheney needs to be singled out for being the father of the child. That doesn't mean I don't condemn the continuation of the justifications by this administration.
Yes.
I still can't understand why aren't you disgusted with the previous administrations who did EXACTLY the same, but that's okay.
They started calling it "enhanced interrogation techniques" a few decades ago, it's not exactly a novelty, but it's fine to finally have a more or less unambiguous statement.
(mogrovejo, swinging his censer, blesses the newly baptized euphemism for torture)
In a nuts , the mainstreaming of US torture policy is radical and significant. It is a 180 degree reversal from our traditional PR on the subject.
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