Waterboarding is torture, and semantic assertions otherwise are preposterous.
Merely stating a conclusion isn't a valid argument. I could just as easily say waterboarding isn't torture and semantic assertious otherwise are preposterous.
Waterboarding is torture, and semantic assertions otherwise are preposterous.
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:You aren't going to sit there and have a long and involved discussion about the rights of man and Montesquieu and Locke with the guy breaking into your house to kill you and your family. Quite the contrary, you're going to be pissed, your going to take every advantage you can get and you're going to kill the bastard. Why? Because he decided to waive his right to life.
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.Quote:
I think it would only become a matter of time before the government turned these tactics against us on the argument of the necessity of maintaining national security.
Completely fallacious. Americans have specifically enumerated constitutional rights. There is absolutely no way that waterboarding would ever be permissible.
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.
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.
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.
Preposterous.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.
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.
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.Last time I checked, Al quaeda hasn't ceased to be a 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.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 United Nations Convention Against Torture has this to say about torture.Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 [White House]
8:58 PM ET
Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, as included in the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, 2006 and agreed to by the US House and Senate and signed by President Bush, December 30, 2005 [incorporating the McCain Amendment and the Graham-Levin Amendment on detainees]. Full text from THOMAS:
TITLE X--MATTERS RELATING TO DETAINEES
SEC. 1001. SHORT TITLE.
This title may be cited as the `Detainee Treatment Act of 2005'.
SEC. 1002. UNIFORM STANDARDS FOR THE INTERROGATION OF PERSONS UNDER THE DETENTION OF THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE.
(a) In General- No person in the custody or under the effective control of the Department of Defense or under detention in a Department of Defense facility shall be subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation not authorized by and listed in the United States Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation.
(b) Applicability- Subsection (a) shall not apply with respect to any person in the custody or under the effective control of the Department of Defense pursuant to a criminal law or immigration law of the United States.
(c) Construction- Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect the rights under the United States Constitution of any person in the custody or under the physical jurisdiction of the United States.
SEC. 1003. PROHIBITION ON CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT OF PERSONS UNDER CUSTODY OR CONTROL OF THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT.
(a) In General- No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.
(b) Construction- Nothing in this section shall be construed to impose any geographical limitation on the applicability of the prohibition against cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment under this section.
(c) Limitation on Supersedure- The provisions of this section shall not be superseded, except by a provision of law enacted after the date of the enactment of this Act which specifically repeals, modifies, or supersedes the provisions of this section.
(d) Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment Defined- In this section, the term `cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment' means the cruel, unusual, and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as defined in the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment done at New York, December 10, 1984.
Looks like you and your fellow waterboarding advocates are on some really shaky ground there.Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
– Convention Against Torture, Article 1.1
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.
The United Nations Convention Against Torture has this to say about torture.
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.See above. The bill of rights does not apply to foreign terrorists captured on foreign soil.
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.
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.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.
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:Do a little research on the interogation of Saddam Hussein by the US, it was not done by any harsh methodology at all just total control of his enviroment and talking.
That is a ridiculous statement. The history of wars won and lost have nothing to do with any minor tactical consideration like that.
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.
I very much doubt other supporters of waterboarding have the courage to do the same.
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.I'll make you a deal. If I ever fly a plane into a building, set an IED that kills our troops, or kill innocent people becasue they are of a different religion, then you can waterboard me all night long.
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.
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 someone is worth waterboarding THEIR GUILT IS ALREADY KNOWN
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.
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.