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Originally Posted by aceventura3
If I am one of your field CIA agents and your are President, and I report that I have obtained information of an impending attack that could kill innocent people from a captured terrorist using enhanced questioning techniques that you consider torture what are you going to do?
Do you have the DOJ bring charges against me?
Do you act on the information?
I know it is pretty easy to simply say that you won't engage in hypothetical situations, if you do or don't respond, my point is that your position lacks moral clarity.
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Yes on both. I'm not going to ignore information obtained but at the same time you have to send a message that that sort of behavior will not be tolerated. The acceptance of torture assumes that information cannot be obtained by any other means. I've never said that torture cannot extract useful information, it is just a line in the sand I don't think we should cross. There are other methods that have proven to be more useful for obtaining information.
You still didn't answer the question of whether you would think it is acceptable for our enemies to torture our soldiers or other kidnapped civilians.
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You can not be a pacifist or have those tendencies and be a defender of life and freedom. I think you have to be willing to fight, you have to be willing to do things that are unpleasant (even if it is killing alleged pirates without the benefit of a hearing or trial based on the judgment of your people in the field). I think you want it both ways, you want to pretend that you can defend life and freedom and think it can be done in a kind and gentle manner or what Obama calls our moral compass.
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Ignoring the wharrgarbl in your post I still think you are being intentionally obtuse regarding the pirate situation. It was an active hostage situation.
And yes it has been done without torture for decades. It was the Bush Administration that changed the rules because they weren't getting the answers they wanted. Then they were so spineless when Abu Ghraib happened they immediately threw them under the bus because they thought they could make them look like a few loose cannons. Now that their own asses are on the line their tune has changed drastically. It suddenly went from a few isolated cases to 'enhanced interrogation methods.' When nobody bought that they tried trivializing the torture methods. "Oh look at me I'm slapping myself in the face and that's torture". Obviously that hasn't worked either so now Darth Cheney is all "You can’t handle the truth."
The whole situation proves once again that Bush and Cheney are miserable cowards.