AG nominee "unsure" about waterboarding

Status
Not open for further replies.
The fact that we are even discussing the use of torture techniques is a symptom of the decay of our own morality and society.
Click to expand...
The fact that people believe they have a higher moral obligation to terrorists than to innocent lives is a sign that some people haven't just lost their moral compasses, they've actually smashed their moral compasses and thrown the pieces into the trash.
 
I don't think killing someone who needs to be killed is immoral. But I do think torturing him is.

Jeff Cooper argued that the death penalty is not immoral, but imprisoning a man for life is immoral. I pretty much agree with that.

My higher moral obligation is NOT to terrorists, but to ourselves. I believe it hurts us morally to torture others. What good is savying your body if you lose your soul in the process?
 
I believe it hurts us morally to torture others.
Click to expand...
I believe it hurts us morally to put the lives of innocent people in such low regard that we won't do what is necessary to save them. A tad selfish too, since it means we value our own self-esteem more than the lives of others.
 
Waterboarding a terrorist who likely has information about an upcoming mass attack is necessary and moral.
Click to expand...

I disagree, which is probably why we're not really coming to any sort of consensus. And unlikely to.

I believe it hurts us morally to put the lives of innocent people in such low regard that we won't do what is necessary to save them. A tad selfish too, since it means we value our own self-esteem more than the lives of others.
Click to expand...

You keep arguing for things in the name of "necessity." Horrible things have been done in the past in the name of necessity. I saw a good Revolutionary War-era quote just recently talking about "necessity," but I'm too busy to go track it down again.
 
If we consider waterboarding to be an acceptable interrogation technique, and not torture, how long will it be before the government starts using it on US citizens?

RICO was supposed to be used to bust gangsters, not white collar criminals.

Patriot was supposed to be used to stop terrorists, not drug dealers.

The government has a long history of broadening its powers to meet whatever needs it has at the time. Do we really want to start down that slippery slope?
 
For those who oppose waterboarding terrorists so as to stop a mass attack, the scenario comes down to this:

You have a terrorist in a cell. He tells you he knows where a nuke is planted. It's planted in a city somewhere in the US. It's going to blow up in 2 hours. And then he tells you to go screw yourself.

And what do you, the anti-waterboarder, do? Nothing. Because you can't do anything. You don't know what city or where in the city the nuke is. But since you won't force the terrorist to talk, you simply stick your hands in your pockets and watch the clock while the time ticks by. Then the nuke explodes, kills thousands of people, irradiates thousands more who will die slow and agonizing deaths over the next few months, causes still more thousands to develop fatal cancers in later years, and creates an radioactive wasteland where a city once stood. Maybe with an enourmous amount of luck, our national economy isn't ruined.

At this point, the anti-waterboarder believes he has made the superior moral decision. Ironically, it is only at this point, the point where death and destruction actually happen, that the anti-waterboarder has actually made the superior moral decision. That's because it is only at that point that we know for certain that the anti-waterboarder didn't cave-in at the last moment and succumb to waterboarding the terrorist (and thus make the lesser, immoral decision after all).

If that is your definition of the superior moral decision, you and I will never agree.
 
Whyte, the answer to your dilemma is the same as the answer to the question of what to do when someone tosses a grenade into the middle of a group of your buddies.

It is immoral to sanction torture. As a society we will collectively lose our soul if we go down the path of accepting torture. We must not do this.

If the scenario you postulate arises, I pray there will be individuals there with the courage to 'jump on the grenade' and sacrifice themselves to save the thousands.

To admire and forgive the individual willing to make such a sacrifice is a long way from accepting a society that codifies such behavior.
 
Whyte, the answer to your dilemma is the same as the answer to the question of what to do when someone tosses a grenade into the middle of a group of your buddies.

It is immoral to sanction torture. As a society we will collectively lose our soul if we go down the path of accepting torture. We must not do this.

If the scenario you postulate arises, I pray there will be individuals there with the courage to 'jump on the grenade' and sacrifice themselves to save the thousands.
Click to expand...
I understand your concern, but this situation is not like a grenade at all.

First, someone who willingly falls onto a grenade must, by definition, know where the grenade is. Otherwise, he can't fall onto it. But if we knew where the nuke was, we wouldn't be wasting our time with the terrorist. Thus, no one can throw themselves on the nuke.

Second, throwing yourself on a nuke isn't going to save anyone. After all, it's a nuke. It will destroy most of a city (or an entire small city or town). A human body isn't going to stop that. It will simply make you the first victim of a mass attack. Thus, a martyr isn't going to stop it. And neither will someone opposed to waterboarding.

Again, if doing nothing to stop a mass attack is your definition of the superior moral decision, you and I will never agree. It's not the moral high ground; it's the moral chasm.
 
For those who oppose waterboarding terrorists so as to stop a mass attack, the scenario comes down to this:

You have a terrorist in a cell. He tells you he knows where a nuke is planted. It's planted in a city somewhere in the US. It's going to blow up in 2 hours. And then he tells you to go screw yourself.

And what do you, the anti-waterboarder, do? Nothing. Because you can't do anything. You don't know what city or where in the city the nuke is. But since you won't force the terrorist to talk, you simply stick your hands in your pockets and watch the clock while the time ticks by.
Click to expand...

I suppose you could do that. Or you could attempt to follow up any other leads your intelligence might have produced. Actively pursue further intelligence. And so on. I mean, it's not like the only two options are "torture time" and "let's go watch Transformers and wait for the 'boom.'"

Besides which, there's little guarantee that waterboarding alone would help here anyway. Based on the somewhat absurd boilerplate "ticking-time-bomb" scenario you've set up, the terrorist knows he only has to hold out for two hours. If a guy really wants to see some people he hates explode, It's highly possible he can put up with almost anything for two hours...at least anything we'd be willing to voluntarily subject our military personnel to. Once you've let it get to the point where you have only two hours left, a nuke ready to go off, and no leads whatsoever (even a likely target city) except a closed-mouth terrorist in custody, your counter-terrorism/intelligence efforts have already failed horribly.

But maybe that's just me.
 
You watch too much TV, Whyte.

Your action-movie scenario has nothing to do with reality of fighting terrorism. It's just a desperate attempt to justify torture.

Torturing people, any goddamn people at all, is the bottom of the moral barrel. If you slop around down there you are just as dirty as the worst humans who have ever walked the earth. If we can't draw the line at waterboarding and the rest of it, history will judge us to be a bunch of barbarian criminals who deserved to lose their spot at the top of the food chain.

When we stomped the nazi pigs we didn't torture them. We set up a generous court system where they could get some sort of justice. If the damn nazis deserved it, so do the terrorists. Doing less means that we are a morally inferior generation of Americans.
 
Whyte, your scenario is very specific. I think there are a few problems with it.

First, is simply the reality is that it is impossible to get a team that could diffuse a nuclear weapon to the scene in less than 2 hours. If you have that little time left before the bomb explodes, you might as well just kiss your ass good bye, because even if he sings like a bird, you probably aren't going to make the deadline.

Second, lets say you waterboard him for a few minutes, and he caves in and tells you the bomb is in New York. Do you stop waterboarding him at that point and dispatch your team to NY? What if he just lied about New York to stop the waterboarding and send your bomb team on a wild goose chase? I think there is a very good chance a dedicated terrorist would do this, and you would accomplish nothing. How do you tell if he lying?

Third, none of the people we have waterboarded have been in a "ticking bomb" situation where a US city was in imminent danger. We seem to be using waterboarding for much less critical interrogations.
 
Torturing people, any goddamn people at all, is the bottom of the moral barrel. If you slop around down there you are just as dirty as the worst humans who have ever walked the earth. If we can't draw the line at waterboarding and the rest of it, history will judge us to be a bunch of barbarian criminals who deserved to lose their spot at the top of the food chain.
Click to expand...

To be quite honest, I could care less what the rest of the world thinks of us. I'm fed up with bailing their loser butts out of jams and then having them judge us. If they don't like something we do; tough. Where does Europe store their superpower trophy? Oh yea, they don't have one. Where is Russia's second place trophy? Probably hocked along with all of the weapons they've sold at bargain basement prices throughout the world to kill Americans.
Wholesale torture, no I don't agree with it. I also don't consider waterboarding torture and could care less about the mental damage it could cause to an insurgent. If that makes me a barbarian and low life, fine, I'll wear the badge proudly and with honor. At least I'll have my dignity intact.

When we stomped the nazi pigs we didn't torture them. We set up a generous court system where they could get some sort of justice. If the damn nazis deserved it, so do the terrorists. Doing less means that we are a morally inferior generation of Americans.
Click to expand...


The Nazi pigs weren't blowing themselves up, hijacking and flying aircraft into our buildings, killing our civilians all over the world, blowing up our embassies all over the world, using our legal system and good nature against us...........
The list can go on.
 
Second, lets say you waterboard him for a few minutes, and he caves in and tells you the bomb is in New York. Do you stop waterboarding him at that point and dispatch your team to NY? What if he just lied about New York to stop the waterboarding and send your bomb team on a wild goose chase? I think there is a very good chance a dedicated terrorist would do this, and you would accomplish nothing. How do you tell if he lying?
Click to expand...

Well, ideally you'd have more than one team...you'd dispatch one to the first location, and keep up with the waterboarding accusing him of lying. Then if he gives up another location, you could move on that info as well.

So at least that aspect is solvable.

You're still stuck with the idea that life isn't 24 and defusing a nuclear weapon isn't as simple as getting Jack Bauer there with 30 seconds to spare. Chances are if you've let it get to the two-hour mark (at which point defusing the bomb is unlikely and evacuation pretty much impossible) you have, as I've already asserted, completely and utterly screwed the pooch.

Third, none of the people we have waterboarded have been in a "ticking bomb" situation where a US city was in imminent danger. We seem to be using waterboarding for much less critical interrogations.
Click to expand...

Oh yeah. This too.
 
If you continue to waterboard the guy after he tells you a city, it looks to me like it removes all his incentive to ever tell the truth. Sooner or later, you are going to run out of teams before he runs out of cities to name.

If he realizes he is going to be waterboarded whether he tells the truth or not, he might as well keep lying. In order for torture to work, the terrorist has to believe the torture will end when he tells the truth.
 
To waterboard them after capture is moral if it is NECESSARY. Why do people assume that once a terrorist is captured, he's no longer a part of the threat? A terrorist who knows about an upcoming terrorist attack...
Click to expand...

There's the rub. Lots of people in custody in our prisons in Iraq were caught in sweeps of whole neighborhoods and towns. No one knows if any given person is a terrorist or not, much less if they have info about "upcoming terrorist" attacks. How on earth can it be ethical to just torture every single person in prison in either Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo, or the black locations simply on the assumption that some of thousands of prisoners must have some useful info? Is it just that all foreigners (Muslims specifically) are considered guilty, so torturing them is always justified on the off-chance that they might have some info? And just how is anyone to prove beyond a doubt that they really don't know anything, or that they were just innocently living in their houses when the door was kicked in and they were hauled off? You think this doesn't happen, or does it just not matter?

I'm happy to see that at least some on this forum have taken moral stands on the subject of torture. It dehumanizes not only the victim, but also the perpetrator, and I don't like seeing Americans defending practices we've always roundly condemned when other regimes did them.
 
Ever dawn on you that if you stopped invading and bombing and trashing and just generally ****ing around with other peoples' countries other people might not hate and want revenge upon your country?
Click to expand...

They ask and cry for our money, you don't get the money without the baggage that comes with it. I would be perfectly happy to stay out of their countries and stop giving them handouts because they are poor little savages that can't do squat on their own.


And I defy you to show me evidence of one single Iraqi or Afghan or Iranian aboard any of the 911 planes - or one single Arab for that matter.
Click to expand...

Let's start this with you need to first learn that Iranians are Persian not Arab, Afghanis are Persian/Pashtu/Kazak/Tajik/Baloch/ and a few others but not Arab. The hijackers were Arab of the Saudi and Jordanian variety, trained in Afghanistan and the U.S., funded by a Saudi living in exile in Afghanistan.
I can pretty much guarantee I have more time in the region working, training, with living with the locals in Central Asia (north and south) as well as the Middle East. I call many of them friend. We both call these abominations of Islam terrorists and seek to rid the world of them.


Of course you can't. All you can do is parrot the hate propaganda that you hear on your radio and tv.
Click to expand...

Sorry, but I've lived the history while you were home shaping your tinfoil in the correct shape to deflect the evil government mind altering radar waves.
 
WTF are you talking about? Like Yugoslavia and Iraq and Afghanistan and Somalia and Libya and Sudan - to pick out just a few recent examples - you need a ****ing scorecard! - were asking for money and so they got the "baggage that comes with it" instead, namely bombs from 30,000 feet? What the f are you talking about!?
Click to expand...

Yugoslavia, Somalia and Sudan all asked for intervention from the U.N. an organization that we are unfortunately a member of and lion's share financial supporter of.
Libya let's see, state sponsored terrorists bombed a disco in Germany and killed 200. We bombed them in return.
Afghanistan, they allowed a rich Saudi to establish terrorist training camps to train terrorists to kill Americans. They provided safe haven and were bombed into submission.
Iraq, they repeatedly broke the U.N. resolutions they agreed to in 91 after they were kicked out of Kuwait. WMD arguments aside, we should have kicked their rearends in the 90's while they were taking pot shots at the jets enforcing the no fly zones, but we had a nutless CINC at the time.



"Poor little savages"? Iraq is the oldest civilization on earth!!!
Click to expand...

It may be the oldest populated space on earth, but it's far from a civilized. Don't preach to me about a country being civilized that still condones the honor killing of their children and views blowing yourself up in a crowded street as an acceptable practice.

I'll compromise with you though, instead of waterboarding; how about we just strap a bomb to them and set them out in a field with 10 of their best friends.
 
Tell me about tin foil hats, champ - and tell me about how this dialysis patient hiding in a cave in the Himalayan foothills - and he just happened to be Bush family long time biz partner (Carlysle Group, etc.), financer of Dubya's first biz venture, an oil well, long time CIA asset, and his 19 evil little islamaniacs - now Newspeak-altered to "islamo-fascists", and the story line goes that they did 911 because "they hate our freedom" - never mind the fact that they couldn't even fly a tiny Cessna - or even drive a car according to their disgusted flight instructor - and were goofing off as conspicuously as possible at CIA-connected airports in the USA and drunk at strip joint the night before (some islamaniacs!), weren't even on board, and half of them were alive and well after 911, according to no less than the BBC. So you tell me about tin foil hats, champ!
Click to expand...

Nice connection except for the fact that those business ventures were with the business that his family owned. The same family who disowned him.
Getting drunk, big deal, visit Bahrain sometime you see plenty of "hardcore" muslims getting liquored up. Visit Islamabad and Rawalpindi, you find a few liquor stores, dvd stores selling pirated American dvds(porn if you ask) and whore houses. Take a trip to Jordan and you'll find bars and whore houses with Syrian ladies. BTW, there is a nice little Greek pub down the road from the Le Meridian Hotel in Amman.
They have pilots in their militaries that can't fly for crap and they get paid for it. It's nothing new. Driving, take a trip to any of the countries we've talked about and see the driving style. It's a little different, not exactly the American standard. All you're talking about is conspiracy theory, you would fit in well in the muslim culture. That is what they are always most interested in during our conversations as well. They love a good conspiracy theory. Champ:rolleyes:
 
X,
I'm not sure what blog you're getting your info from, but you back nothing up with anything but conspiracy theory. For some reason you have this idea that the blogs you seem to be reading written by people living in tinfoil huts has some bearing on the way life really is, sorry but they are written by fools for fools.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top