Hitchens' voluntary waterboarding
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mountainclmbr
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The people who oppose water boarding never seem to publicly oppose cutting off people's heads, suicide bombing of our soldiers and innocent civilians, IED explosive devices and mass murder of civilian populations by means that include chemical weapons. To me it shows they have chosen sides. I suppose we are supposed to give the terrorists a time out.
IZinterrogator
New member
I am going to stop the bastard. If he lives, I'm going to call for the cops and an ambulance. Once he is stopped, I am not going to rub salt in his wounds, makita his kneecaps, or waterboard him. He has ceased to be a threat. I'm an advocate of hunting these terrorists down on the battlefield 24/7. But once they are no longer a combatant and I have total control of their lives, the time to treat them mercilessly is over. If that wasn't the way things were supposed to be, we wouldn't be having this argument. By your argument, what the Vietnamese did to our POWs during the Vietnam War was justified because POWs should have information of intelligence value. If that's not how you feel about it, then you are being a hypocrite that believes in torture only when it suits his needs.STAGE 2 said:
Then explain that to Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi, Americans that were declared enemy combatants and were denied their rights. If the SCOTUS hadn't stepped in, they would have been held indefinitely with no trial. So much for your Constitutional rights if you are named as an enemy combatant.
I noticed you didn't have anything to say about the article I posted and instead attacked my arguments. Well, the article is one of my arguments, so let's hear what you have to say about it.
I do not really care about the lives of combatants not honoring rules of war ie:uniforms for one. As for the waterboarding... CRY ME A FREAKIN' RIVER... The horror house at church street station in orlando was scarier that a forced drink of water. And they would not end it for a snivelin crybaby. How hard is it to swallow water than inhale thru the mouth not the nose? Before anyone asks... no I have not been subjected to it but have fallen thru the ice and ended up watchin thru it as my sister made her way to shore to reach under and help me out. I was terrified but not injured. I was most concerned at the suffering my stupid move would cause my momma. Now what I do not care for is sying that a killer has no human rights. INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY IN A COURT OF LAW... until then they are to be considered as innocent as the wind driven snow...
Brent
P.S. I see this thread lockin up in short time.
Brent
P.S. I see this thread lockin up in short time.
Exactly. When something ceases to be a threat you stop. Last time I checked, Al quaeda hasn't ceased to be a threat. Therefore we should press on until such time they are either all killed or surrender.
More fallacious arguments. You refuse to talk about this issue accurately because it doesn't fit your mold. There are hundreds of people in our custody. Three have been waterboarded. We cater to their prayer schedule, their diet, and their other sensitivities. In many cases, their living conditions are better at gitmo than where they were previously at. "Mercilessly" doens't even come close to what these prisoners experience.
This is so full of baloney I don't know where to begin. But lets start with the fact that our servicemen are, well real servicemen. Terrorists are criminals. One falls under specific rules for treatment of POW's. The other doesn't. Difference number one. Difference number two is that the vietnamese didn't torture primarily for information. They did so because they were sadists. Read an account of what happened to McCain and others at in hanoi. The torture continued long after these men broke.
Finally, difference number three is that we don't paint our walls green for a reason. We don't break bones, or hang people for days on end or play with car batteries or any of the other creative little things the NVA did to our troops. Like i said before, something which doesn't cause physical injury/pain isn't torture. Everything the NVA did doesn't come close to meeting this definition.
So to sum it up, no there isn't any hypocrisy here, even with your distortions of what I've said.
I dont need to explain anything. Padilla is a perfect example of the system working. Within 2 weeks of this AL QUEADA OPERATIVE being detained his case started working its way through the system. However Padilla wasn't waterboarded, or anything close to it.
The same applies to Hamdi. He wasn't waterboarded either. And while I fully agree that every american citizen should get his day in court once detained, if you and I are going to be honest here, if homeboy wasn't fighting against US forces in northern afghanistan (whcih constitutes treason) there would have been no deal.
So while its way outside the scope of this discussion, the only two errors that our government has made have been with a convicted al quaeda operative and someone who was fighting with the taliban. Hardly what I'd call egregious abuses. And since the court DID rule on this, what little gray area there was is no longer. Therefore what I said still stands. Our rights as american citizens are even stronger because of these two cases than they were before.
The author of the article isn't here, you are. You're the one with expertise in this matter. Therefore I expect more from you than defering to some lengthy article. If you have a pertinent point to make thats covered, then present it to me.
Preposterous.
The question is simply this: does the end by definition justify the means? Everything in the Bill of Rights is opposed to this mindset, and if you are opposed to it, then you are simply in intellectual league with every third-world thug strongman.
The whole point of the US Bill of Rights is that certain principles outweigh the expediency of the moment. The greatest threat to the American way of life is NOT terrorism, it is our government doing whatever it wants in the name of self-defense, whether it is to foreigners or US citizens.
Absolutely. The end (saving lives, be it american or those abroad) overwhelmingly justifies the means (seconds of discomfort for a criminal who has no qualms about killing innocents).
Except the bill of rights doesn't apply to these people.
See above. The bill of rights does not apply to foreign terrorists captured on foreign soil. And again, these arguments about the government "doing whatever it wants" have no basis in fact whatsoever. Its just a poor appeal to the fears of folks.
IZinterrogator
New member
No, but KSM has. He ceased to be a threat when he was pulled from his hiding place in Pakistan. And he was still waterboarded. Enemy combatants cease to be combatants when they are captured, just like pilots are considered noncombatants when they eject from their aircraft. They no longer pose a combatant threat.
No, they were allowed to appeal before their case hit the Supreme Court to avoid a SCOTUS ruling unfavorable to the administration. Therefore, your rights are the same as they were before these two were declared enemy combatants, and they could apply to you.
I'm through with this. I should have followed through on my New Year's Resolution not to post in L&P. But in closing, I offer the following:
The United Nations Convention Against Torture has this to say about torture.
Looks like you and your fellow waterboarding advocates are on some really shaky ground there.
Then I submit you fail to understand how to win a war. This doesn't end because we captured KSM, or Hamdi, or any of the other individual people. You stop when the threat is over. The thread is al quaeda.
And I really wish you'd stop making comparisons to the rules governing the status and treatment of military personnel. They have no application here.
Thats simply incorrect.
Would this be the same UN that allows Sudan, China, Vietnam, Syria and Lybia to sit on the Human rights commission? Hmmmm, the shaking suddenly stopped.
And to address the issue of 'severe' mental anguish, I submit to you that the fact that reporters are lining up to "experience" waterboarding and are no worse off than before and the fact that its part of our militarys training sort of removes it from the type of mental anguish that would rise to the level of torture.
I don't think Id be making the argument that people who freely kill themselves in the name of religion in a loud and grotesque manner, or at the very least are willing to do so, are going to be bothered by a little bit of water.
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Actually, you just made my point. You don't understand that the Bill of Rights is an articulation of a belief in rights that ALL people have, even if they are not always recognized. There are underlying principles at play. You show no underlying principles, except what gets you the result you desire. That is the morality of the dictator, which is to say, no true morality at all. Anyone can appeal to the type of justification that you offer, and terrorists and genocidal dictators frequently do.
No I do understand. I understand that the bill of rights stems from principles that are universal. However I also understand that once you reduce things to writing then you don't get to pick and choose things floating around in the ether. You abide by whats there, and what is there doesn't apply to terrorists.
Right
I'll give you a clue into my principles and my morality. My principles say that people who murder innocents deserve no quarter. My principles say that the atrocities that islamic radicals have committed remove them from the protections of any "human rights" that may be floating around.
However, most importantly, my principles say that even though these wastes of space are deserving of the most heinous forms of torture and even though I would personally volunteer to see that they recieved such treatment, we as a nation aren't going to resort to this.
You can compare me to a petty dictator if you like, or throw out any other absurdities that make you feel better. The bottom line is that there is no moral comparison to waterboarding people that we know have vital time sensitive information and any acts of any dictator or any other oppressive regime.
I'd bet my entire life savings that John Mccain and his buddies would all prefer the treatment at gitmo to what they recieved in hanoi. Reporters wouldn't volunteer to "try out" one of Saddams special rooms to see whether it was 'really that bad'. The NVA didn't have doctors standing by to give medical treatment and Uday wasn't looking for information.
There may be several reasons why we may not win this conflict, but if there was one major reason that we lose it is going to be because of this ridiculous hue and cry about abuses and violations and fears that don't exist. Three men out of hundreds have been waterboarded. Thats it. They weren't picked out of a hat or dunked for enjoyment. They were specifically chosen because of their involvement and knowledge.
You see thats the big kicker. Everybody and their brother, no matter how soft or how liberal always loves to give the "ticking time bomb" caveat. Well thats not how things work in the real world. There are no evil masterminds that give notes letting authorities know that things are about to happen. In reality there is no ticking time bomb. The closest thing to it is exactly what happened to KSM. He was dunked and the information from that was used to prevent several ongoing attacks.
So the question that people need to ask themselves is do we want the information that will save lives or not. I know which one I prefer.
That is a ridiculous statement. The history of wars won and lost have nothing to do with any minor tactical consideration like that. And if you are referring to the 'war on terrorism', that is just a rhetorical device anyway. We win the cultural conflict with Islamic extremism by turning minds - by showing the people why our ideas are better, like we did in the 'Cold War'. You don't do that by becoming known for torture.
And the fact that you relish the idea of committing torture says it all.
And that interrogation took how long again? I understand if you're justifiably proud of the interrogation skills of the FBI, but don't mistake a seven month debriefing and the strategic intelligence it developed with the tactical intelligence that a man like KSM and his interrogation provided. Two different situations, two different interrogation methods, two different needs, two different levels of scrutiny after the fact.TwoXForr said:
There is nothing minor about the lives saved by waterboarding KSM. Nothing.
Of course what you just wrote completely doesn't address what I said. People here are alleging that we are abusing the detainees. That we are being "merciless" in our treatment. Yet when we get to the facts, this turns out to be patently false.
Then I submit you don't have any understanding of the conflict or the people involved in it. I don't care whether you call it a war, a skirmish, an exercise or whatever. The truth is that we are fighing people who want to kill us. These folks are beyond "convincing". We cant change their hearts and minds because people who teach 7 year olds to become suicide bombers don't have any. So the choice is very simple. Either we get them or they will get us.
Just like I relish shooting a murderer on the spot, but still believe in his right as american citizens to a fair trial.
See - this is another thing you just don't get. You don't KNOW who did it. You are torturing someone to find out that information. You might well be torturing innocent people.
It is like police using torture to get a confession. It is illegal for two reasons, neither of which you understand:
1. torture is in itself immoral.
2. you are only justified in torturing someone if they are guilty, yet you can't know their guilt until you get a confession. See the paradox?
If you really were willing to stand behind your words, you would let us torture you to see if we could get you to confess. I bet you would confess to being a terrorist yourself after a while.
Fallacy after fallacy after fallacy. The people who we have waterboarded are known terrorists. Period. There is no doubt about this.
The information we have recieved as a result of said waterboarding has saved lives. Period. There is no doubt about this.
Again, this crap about us waterboarding anyone and everyone in the hopes of finding something is just that... crap.
Actually, its illegal because the constitution prohibits it, nothing more.
Morality is relative. Even still I don't think there are many who would argue an eye for an eye isn't moral. After all its only fair for people to recieve what they have wrought. Of course, this debate is exactly why we don't have "morals" we have laws.
There is no paradox. Guilt has nothing to do with waterboarding. Information does. We have only waterboarded people who we knew to have information. But if you're so stuck on guilt, we have only waterboarded people who we were absolutely certian to be guilty. Therefore your concern is unfounded.
You simply refuse to understand what is going on here. I dont care about confessions. They are totally useless because if someone is worth waterboarding THEIR GUILT IS ALREADY KNOWN. They are there because we need information, not because we want them to confess.
Well, you still are unable to address the inherent imorality of torture - and, yes, most of us feel that eye for eye is, in fact, immoral. At least, the Judeo-Christian morality firlly rejects it. If you want to return to Hammurabi's code, you feel free to take motality back a few millenia.
If the only justification you need is to save women and children, then you are justified in arresting anybody - after all you never know when you might miss a terrorist. The logic is preposterous, and the long-term political cost for US power is incalculable.
That you would accept that at face value is simply confounding. Who determined their guilt? How was that information determined? The same group that arrested Osama Hussein Nasr and Khaled al-Masri and was sure they were terrorists? You have too much faith in your govenment. One of the reasons the 4th Amendment exists is because unchecked power leads to corruption. I personally have less faith that unchecked power to detain and torture will not lead to a lot of false positives. I might add that I am not alone in this concern.
If the only justification you need is to save women and children, then you are justified in arresting anybody - after all you never know when you might miss a terrorist. The logic is preposterous, and the long-term political cost for US power is incalculable.
I already addressed it, you just didn't like my answer. Morality is relative. Ask 10 different people and you'll get 10 difference answers. Thats why we have codified law, to eliminate the relativity. At any rate, the fact that you are arguing morality tells me that you don't have much else.
Hardly. Cheating on your wife got you a death sentence. Not exactly an eye for an eye if you ask me. Rapists were executed, as were murderers. Thieves lost appendages. However biblically speaking all these things were "moral". Some people today would agree with this and some wouldn't. Why, becuase everyone's morality is different.
However this issue isn't about morality, its about winning a war. They two share little, if nothing, in common.
I don't need to take anything at face value. You keep making this strawman that there was some doubt as to who these men were and what they did. There wasn't. Of course you don't want to argue the facts, because you wouldn't have any valid objections. So instead you keep presenting these theoretical situations that aren't reality.
No I don't have too much faith in my government. However there is a time to be stringent and a time to be pragmatic. When dealing with foreign terrorists in foreign nations I'm not going to bitch and moan if there is some slack in the reins because thats the way things get done.
How the government treats american citizens is an entirely different matter all together.
Back to this argument again are we. The 4th amendment has no bearing here so quit citing it. As far as your false positives, there are none according to the interrogators. Each time waterboarding was used it resulted in actionable intelligence. Yet another case where your objection fails in the face of the facts.
Another fallacy. At least you're consistent.