Quote: Captain Sammitch said: And once again, the alleged 'victims' of alleged 'torture' are not citizens of the U.S. or of its close allies, thus I am still mystified as to why we should care.
How disappointing that your sense of morality is based upon the place of issue of a passport.
How disappointing that you resort to pretentious displays of pseudo-moral outrage, rather than making a lucid point.
As a condescending liberal once said to me:
Go for the ball, not the man.
Don't attack Sammitch with name calling and assumptions about his person or judgement. Instead make a factual counter-argument to disprove what he said (if you can).
Quote: First Amongst Daves said:
Quote: G-man said: As for "torture," it is simply perverse to conflate the amputations and electrocutions Saddam once inflicted at Abu Ghraib with the lesser abuses committed by rogue American soldiers there, much less with any authorized U.S. interrogation techniques.
No one has yet come up with any evidence that anyone in the U.S. military or government has officially sanctioned anything close to "torture." The "stress positions" that have been allowed (such as wearing a hood, exposure to heat and cold, and the rarely authorized "waterboarding," which induces a feeling of suffocation) are all psychological techniques designed to break a detainee.
"Break a detainee"? "Exposure to heat and cold"? Efforts to convince someone they are drowning? This is all acceptable to a government?
I'm quite proud to be a Westerner. We have our own views on primacy of the individual over the state and such which other people don't get, but its our fundamental sense of humanity which I like. Strip that out of government, and you're left with the People's Republic of China.
The techniques of interrogation the U.S. uses on al Qaida prisoners are those permitted by the Geneva Convention.
Which include exposure to heat, cold, sleep deprivation, and psychological techniques.
Not "torture".
Not "atrocities".
Simply methods specified by the Geneva Convention.
As G-man made clear above, any military personnel who go beyond the Geneva Convention methods face court martial and punishment.
And while the methods of interrogation used are within the parameters of the Geneva Convention (i.e., universally agreed upon permissible methods of humane interrogation) it is not logical to fully disclose what those methods are, so Al Qaida detainees can be prepared for whatever we throw at them.
Quote: magicjay38 said:
Quote: the G-man said:
Quote: "Break a detainee"? "Exposure to heat and cold"? Efforts to convince someone they are drowning? This is all acceptable to a government?
Sounds like a typical fraternity initiation
Just when I think you couldn't make a bigger ass of yourself, you always prove me wrong. Thanks for the consistency, G-man!
Quote: Chant said: I'm not sure, but I do think that was a joke. Maybe not an appropriate joke, but a joke nonetheless.
But even then, there's a big difference between frat initiations and actual torture
G-man was referring to what many conservative and Republican voices have said:
That within the bounds of the Geneva Convention accepted methods of interrogation, that what Al Qaida deteinees are exposed to falls short of what U.S. Marine recruits have to endure during basic training, or on the field of battle.
Sleep deprivation, and exposure to heat, cold and psychological harassment are also things endured during fraternity hazing.
I heard Rush Limbaugh make this comparison first. And no doubt others as well, after Limbaugh's initial remark. The remark was clearly intended with some humor.
Liberals who bemoan discrimination, intolerance, restraint of Constitutional freedoms, and promotion of hatred toward various abberant minorities, have absolutely no problem with discriminating against, being intolerant of, restricting Constitutional freedoms of, and directing hate-filled scapegoat rhetoric against conservatives.
EXACTLY what they accuse Republicans/conservatives of doing, is EXACTLY what liberals/Democrats do themselves, to those who oppose their beliefs.
