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Originally Posted by aceventura3
There have been some who have said information has been obtained using enhance interrogation techniques, or what you may consider torture,
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Who?
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
there has been a request by Chaney to release documents showing that valuable information was obtained, but you have not reconciled this discrepancy and your position.
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Sounds like you have nothing but theoretical evidence. Which is more reliable, actual evidence or theoretical evidence? Fortunately, Chaney has a spotless record on the truth....
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
Your logic is flawed. To illustrate, at one point 'experts' were certain that the sun revolved around the earth.
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By that horrible logic you should never trust anyone for any reason, regardless of their credentials. Because, you know, people have been wrong in the past. I was even wrong once, so I must always be wrong.
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
My statement was based on people who have said it has worked.
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Can you name these people without naming an administration official?
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
I think Obama's administration should release all the information related to the question. I acknowledge that I may be wrong, but you seem to be certain that your position is correct and is an absolute certainty.
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You can't really play that game with this topic, the "I have an open mind, but you're close-minded" thing only works when we're accepting the same information. You're not accepting my evidence for some reason. Are you Dick Cheney?
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
I also find it ironic that for example we celebrate snipers killing alleged pirates in a criminal matter not a declared war without asking question but we have grave concerns about known terrorist fighting as our enemy in a declared war being questioned using enhanced techniques. I don't get how people on the left reconcile these kinds of issues.
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We're not in a declared war, ace. Not even close. The last war the US declared was WWII. We have a AUMF in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we're not fighting Iraq or Afghanistan, we're not even fighting an organization; we're fighting certain people that cannot be defined beyond "militant". They have no organized structure to speak of, are fighting for myriad reasons, and span the religious, political, and even social spectrum. Stop thinking in absolutist terms and the world will become a lot more clear.
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
This can lead us into a different direction, but I will simply say it is not unusual for a teacher to teach conventional wisdom or fundamentally sound principles and then have someone with the ability to turn conventional wisdom upside down or use methods and get superior results using fundamentally unsound principles. I think the nature of getting information from people is more of an art rather than a science.
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After maybe high school, all of my teachers had to have a working knowledge of the subject they taught. Especially when the classes started to become more specialized.
Still, the man is a general. I'd venture a guess that most generals know quite a lot of shit about war.
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
When does waterboarding become torture?
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When it's done.
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
Is that threshold the same for every human?
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According to the men who have actually waterboarded people, the threshdold is between maybe 5 and 15 seconds. That's a very, very small window.
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
What is meant by terms like "extreme" or "severe"?
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I've already covered this. Maybe we should try something different for this particular question, because I agree that it's an important question. I'm sure you have your own subjective definition of torture. I'm fairly sure that things repeated beatings with fists (something we did) or ramming a detainee's head into a steel plate repeatedly until he was bleeding profusely (something we did) would probably be a lot less controversial than waterboarding. Do you consider repeated beatings with fists or ramming a detainee's head into a steel plate until he bleeds torture? What do you consider torture and why?
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
I have not questioned their qualification, I have questioned how they know what they claim to know.
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They know because of direct and repeated experience. We've actually heard from the torturers, the men that torture, that this doesn't work. Jack Cloonan is a former FBI interrogator that tortured suspected members of al Qaeda. Here's a video where he uses his direct expertise based on real experience to pass along what he learned:
Please bear in mind that this man has attempted to use torture on several occasions and has found that it doesn't work on those occasions when he himself actually used torture. I don't know if I can make this any more clear.
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Originally Posted by aceventura3
If your experts have engaged in torturing people like you claimed above, why don't you want them put in jail for those crimes? There is a logical flaw, that I can not reconcile in my mind so I am asking for clarification. You have been tap dancing around that basic issue.
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I want them in jail, but first I want them to testify that torture doesn't work in front of the whole world so that the aceventuras out there no longer have any possible argument left to excuse torture.