Had Al-Zarqawi been captured alive, would you advocate torturing him for information?

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Pointer, calling people you disagree with "Liberals" is hardly effective and not really full of meaning. Maybe you just find it easier to lump things you disagree with under simple labels.

So what I asked is more hypothetical than the original question? I guess it is more about belief - and I believe in the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the difference between right and wrong.
No, I won't torture - or have early parole, nor do I have any sympathy with any of Saddam's courtroom antics. For the last, it reminds me of the OJ trial where the judge lost control.
 
I'd be in favor of making him listen to RAP Music for hours. That's enough to make me blabber away like an idiot, just to make it STOP !!
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I'm with you on that. However, I'd probably have to draw the line at listening to Connie Chung's farewell song. That thing was both cruel and unusual punishment.
 
Croyance
The mentality that sucks in air and says things like "Yeooooooh, torture?" and "We should never use torture under any circumstances, is the liberal mentality...
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I did not mean to call you a liberal per se...
I was speaking of a mentality which is commonly found in liberals...
If you aren't a liberal, I can see why you are offended...

You have my sincere apology...

I was taught that liberals were bleeding hearts...
As I grew up... I learned on my own that their hearts only "bleed" for elite causes...

They could care less about the tortured Shiites when they are mad at the President and his WMD's.

I've seen them pound pavement and doors for Greenpeace...
and pound spikes into trees for "huggers"...
Burn buildings down for the "tortured" animals...

But for oppressed and tortured people??
Only when "forced by circumctances", and then they go kicking and screaming all the way.

Why not?
They can always deny it later or say the "administration" "lied" to them. :mad: :p

Again, my apologies for calling you a liberal... I would be offended too... :o
 
So Pointer, you have no standards except the personal survival of what you personally deem relevant to you.

Thus, you have voided the force of law and morality in society.

Then, do you claim protection for your firearms under the 2nd Amend.? If you are willing to violate most moral and legal standards for expediency, then if the state views firearms ownership as dangerous, are they justified to seize your weapons and use any method against gun owners?

If one has no legal, religious or moral standards due to expediency, then one cannot claim them to protect themselves.

If the AWB was still in force and you were suspected of having some illegal weapon or equipment, would the state be justified in hooking up your testicles to the batteries? If they did, would you take it like a man or complain about your rights?

BTW, this liberal vs. whatever debate is irrelevant to the issue. Is torture acceptable to expedite the goals of the state?
 
The media was horrified when they found out their favorite terror leader was alive in enemy hands for an hour before death.

For days we had read headlines from all the liberal media outlets about zaqaui. That article was squeezed in between articles of how their beloved Gitmo terrorists were being feed fruit loops for breakfast :eek:

I still haven't seen one headline about our two service men that were ground into hamburger and boobie trapped with bombs from the flower power media.

And YES, we should have sent him on an all expense paid trip to the worlds finest information extraction center on earth! If he would have lived.
 
Does an antigun administration have the right to torture you to find out where you and your buddies have stored the banned guns?

Some folks here cannot get passed emotional and situational morality views. They are rightfully angry at outrageous behavior and want to do the same. They view righteously angry at whiners in the press, etc.

However, does that mean squat in the debate about the issue of the USA sinking to the level of our opponents? Do we keep to higher moral grounds?

If the answer is that we become savages - as I said before - how can you then prattle about JBT, the BOR, blah, blah - the right to bear arms?

There are no rights or morals, only the expediency of the situation.
 
I still haven't seen one headline about our two service men that were ground into hamburger and boobie trapped with bombs from the flower power media.
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carbiner, you mean like this headline from the other day?

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/06/20/soldiers.missing/index.html

carbiner and Pointer, for some reason you two seem obsessed with making the issue of torture into a partisan talking-point. It's simply unnecessary. If you want to make a political football out of this, well, let's see, it seems to me that it's the actions of a conservative administration that brought this issue to the fore. Now, do you really want to continue down the partisan path?
 
Mr. Meyer, I submit that your scenario is unnecessarily convoluted and far-fetched, whereas your comment:
Is torture acceptable to expedite the goals of the state?
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is too simplistic.

Since you are posting on a gun-related forum, it's reasonable to assume you are a gun owner. Further, it's reasonable to assume that at least one reason why you own a gun is for self-defense. So if an armed BG enters your home and threatens you and/or your family with death or serious bodily injury, would you shoot him? Or would you refuse to shoot him because you don't want to be like him in using a gun in a violent manner?

There is a difference between murder and killing. All societies have recognized this difference, including our current legal system. Intent matters.

There is a difference between a BG who uses weapons as a practice to further his aims, and a person who uses weapons as an urgently necessary means of preventing BGs from achieving their aims. A difference of intent exists between the BG and the protector. Again, intent matters.

I do not favor torture for non-urgent situations. However, given a more reasonable scenario, torture may well be appropriate. If the situation existed that we had captured a known terrorist, and we had reason to believe that he knew of a WMD or ambush that would soon kill hundreds, thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people, I believe it is our duty to do what must be done to thwart the terrorists' plans. Torture may not get you the information you need, but if the situation is urgent with hundreds of lives or more in the balance, and torture is the only option or the option most likely to get the information you need, it should be done. To discard the option simply because it isn't perfect is illogical. If perfection is your standard, you won't find it in this world.

We abdicate our responsibilities to innocents when we avoid taking necessary actions to save them simply because we draw a false comparison between ourselves and murderers.

Using a gun to defend myself does not make me the same as the BG who uses a gun to harm innocent people. Using torture in urgent circumstances involving hundreds of lives does not make us the same as those who use torture on a routine basis.

Anyone who believes that using torture for such urgent situations is the same as using torture as a regular practice should not own guns for self-defense, nor should they associate with people who own or use guns for self-defense, including law enforcement.
 
Your evaluation of my motivations and philosophy are so off base. To try the hackneyed argument that I am not blood-thirsty or vicious enough to own guns is laughable. Find a better and not so cheap rhetorical trick. In your perfect state, you can choose who should associate with whom you want. However, I don't live in that alternate reality.

The idea that my postulated situation won't happen is also laughable if one knows the history of state use of power.

Given we have had home grown terrorists as we have seen:

1. McVeigh
2. Church bombings
3. The Atlanta Olympic and abortion clinic bomber - Rudolph.

I pose to you as an American citizen who probably bleats about the absolute nature of the 2nd Amend and perhaps other moral codes - if the government of the United States arrests a citizen who may have knowledge of an upcoming similar attack, should the government of the United States torture him.

Please also submit your rewriting of the Constitution and you own religious tomes to justify such.

If you can't answer this question by using the excuse it is far-fetched then you are really just full of it and shouldn't be allowed to participate in intellectual discussions on gun forums that value human rights. :D
 
Are we done yet?

:mad:

I have just about had it with the incivility and spittle-spraying here in Legal & Political. You folks who cannot debate an issue without resorting to labeling and name-calling had best reconsider your posting styles or find another board on which to hone them.
 
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