Senate approves torture for terrorists - Page 2 - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

dksuddeth · 09-29-2006, 10:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

A civilian shooting at you or ploting to kill you is no longer a civilian by default

does that make him a terrorist?

Infinite_Loser · 09-29-2006, 10:15 AM

What exactly does torture solve, except to give the terrorists more reason to hate and attack the United States?

roachboy · 09-29-2006, 10:17 AM

o that's easy dc: you define "in the act of plotting" arbitrarily. then you arrest the person an throw them into on or another of the fine penal establishments that this administration has authorized in the context of its war on due process. once that person lands in whatever corner of the legal black hole, because there is no rights of habeas corpus, there is no need to bring charges. so this person, whose motives you have assigned suspicion to up front, without requirements of proof, can rot.
that is because the Law is drawn to the Guilty.
Suspicion=proof.
q.e.d.

o yeah, and a nice quote from cowboy george that i take out of context because i just like it:

Quote:

"History," he said, "tells us that logic is false."

and because it seems germaine here.

because it would probably be better to be left to rot without being charged than it would be to become the object of torture--which of course in the main produces whatever the torturers want to hear because the objective is to get the torture to stop---and after that, if you are really unfortunate, you might get to face on of those nice kangaroo courts that operate outside of any judicial review process.

yay american democracy george w. bush style.

host · 09-29-2006, 10:36 AM

Has it been mentioned that two of the "heroes", John McCain and Arlen Specter, "stood up to the pretzeldent", and then voted for this fascist abortion of the consititution, anyway....as did that "stalwart" democrat, Jay Rockefeller?

Quote:

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001637.php
Court Challenge to New Detainee Law May Come In "Days"
By Justin Rood - September 29, 2006, 1:02 PM

With President Bush poised to sign the White House-backed detainee treatment bill into law, groups are promising to challenge it in court "in days."

“I don’t think there’s a snowball’s chance in ‘H’ that this will be found constitutional,” Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, <a href="http://www.cq.com/display.do?dockey=/cqonline/prod/data/docs/html/news/109/news109-000002381617.html@allnews&metapub=CQ-NEWS&binderName=cq-today-binder&seqNum=4">told</a> Congressional Quarterly (sub. req.). CCR represents a number of Guantanamo prisoners.

Strangely, some senators who voted for the bill weren't convinced of its constitutionality. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), who voted for the bill even after his amendment to preserve certain rights for detainees was defeated, called the proposal "patently unconstitutional on its face," The Washington Post <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/28/AR2006092800824.html">reported</a>. When CQ asked Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who negotiated with the White House to win minor concessions on the legislation, if the bill was constitutional, he responded "I think so."

How many of our troops suffered avoidable deaths in Iraq and in Afghanistan?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...092900368.html

Ustwo · 09-29-2006, 10:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

does that make him a terrorist?

It would make you a commando at best, a terrorist at worst (see Iraq) and would be punishable by death by the Geneva convention.

dksuddeth · 09-29-2006, 11:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

It would make you a commando at best, a terrorist at worst (see Iraq) and would be punishable by death by the Geneva convention.

so we take criminals, call them terrorists, deny them due process, then execute them. I don't have a problem executing criminals, but do we really feel like deleting the rest of the 5th amendment?

Willravel · 09-29-2006, 11:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

and let him rewrite the constitution. great choice.

I think you have my point confused with a conservative point. Don't forget, I'm so liberal I think the government could be behind 9/11. When I said the right choice, that meant that anyone or anything but Bush. I would have voted for a buring pile of crap before voting for Bush, becuase at least I know that the burning pile of crap will have the common sense, loyalty, and dignity not to wire tap my phones or take away my civil liberties.

dksuddeth, just because I disagree with you on guns does not make me a conservative. I'd like to see the current administration behind bars right after they make a formal apology to everyone they've wronged.

roachboy · 09-29-2006, 11:40 AM

the point of my earlier post about the algerian war addressed the ustwo approach---the manly man approach--the mode of attempting to suppress horizontally organized movements through the use of torture--was not only ineffective in itself, but the political consequences of its usage so far outstripped any possible benefit that you would think its would be avoided by any sane government. that the bush administration would prefer not to think about precedents for their actions--and algeria is a far better aalogy for the idiocy of the ongoing "war on terror" than is vietnam--is not surprising, given the administration's cavalier relation with reality, with telling the truth, with transparency, etc etc etc.

ustwo's posts here indicate that he prefers to pretend that a state is like a private individual--which is consistent with the bush people's legal philosophy in its emphasis on the overwhelming prerogatives of the Leader in a state of exception and the usage of the state of exception to suppress or dismiss democratic processes like the rule of law--the problem with this position is--quite simply--that it is insane if it is actually applied in the world that other people know about.
that this analogy would have any purchase seems to me an example of the kind of shabby thinking that conservative ideology seems to rely upon to operate at all.

so while you are fantasizing about whacking and dismembering people that you would take to be "terrorists" without any rational standard for proof or even a recognition that such a standard might be helpful, ustwo, i will consider believing in some god long enough to thank whatever that may be that you have no power.
anywhere.

pig · 09-29-2006, 11:53 AM

i'll let y'all continue to slug it out. i have to say that while i've been fairly a-political, in practice, for most of my life - the current trends are starting to get me active. That people would let fear drive them to such positions...it is simply antithetical to everything I always believed America stood for. That I can stand for. One of the most intriguing, powerful ideas that I've always perceived in the founding stances of our nation is the position that a great society must constantly sew the seeds of revolution within its population. The government isn't supposed to be allowed to become complacent, lest it be brought down. The current positions, to solidify the power of the state over the citizen, are completely contrary to this. It just makes me sad.

dksuddeth · 09-29-2006, 12:07 PM

it's rumored that somewhere in this bill is an amendment that pardons anyone in the administration for war crimes. Anyone familiar with that?

sapiens · 09-29-2006, 12:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

it's rumored that somewhere in this bill is an amendment that pardons anyone in the administration for war crimes. Anyone familiar with that?

I heard something on NPR about that this morning - I believe it was a provision that offers immunity to any non-military personnel who committed war crimes (as defined by the current bill) going back several years. I don't think that it was specific to the administration.

roachboy · 09-29-2006, 12:27 PM

this didn't take long.
i am curious about the effects of a decade or so of routinized vilification of the courts--and by extension of the legal system they are charged with administering--in conservativeland and the extent to which this appalling legislation (a) plays into it and (b) presupposes it as a kind of ideological logic so that (c) the inevitable (i would hope) rejection by the supreme court of this as unconstitutional will be coded in conservativeland as an example of "activist judges" undermining the Supreme Power of the Leader in a state of exception.

it is sometimes difficult not to become paraonoid.

anyway:

Quote:

Gonzales Cautions Judges on Interfering

By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN
The Associated Press
Friday, September 29, 2006; 12:18 PM

WASHINGTON -- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is defending President Bush's anti-terrorism tactics in multiple court battles, said Friday that federal judges should not substitute their personal views for the president's judgments in wartime.

He said the Constitution makes the president commander in chief and the Supreme Court has long recognized the president's pre-eminent role in foreign affairs. "The Constitution, by contrast, provides the courts with relatively few tools to superintend military and foreign policy decisions, especially during wartime," the attorney general told a conference on the judiciary at Georgetown University Law Center.

"Judges must resist the temptation to supplement those tools based on their own personal views about the wisdom of the policies under review," Gonzales said.

And he said the independence of federal judges, who are appointed for life, "has never meant, and should never mean, that judges or their decisions should be immune" from public criticism.

"Respectfully, when courts issue decisions that overturn long-standing traditions or policies without proper support in text or precedent, they cannot _ and should not _ be shielded from criticism," Gonzales said. "A proper sense of judicial humility requires judges to keep in mind the institutional limitations of the judiciary and the duties expressly assigned by the Constitution to the more politically accountable branches."

His audience included legal scholars and judges, including Justice Clarence Thomas, one of the Bush administration's most reliable supporters on the Supreme Court.

The attorney general did not refer to any specific case or decision but only to wartime, military and foreign affairs cases in general.

Gonzales has sent Justice Department lawyers into federal courts from coast to coast defending Bush's detention of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, his plans to try some of them before military tribunals and his use of the National Security Agency to wiretap Americans without court warrants when they communicate with suspected terrorists abroad.

Over administration objections, the Supreme Court ordered that detainees could challenge aspects of their imprisonment in federal courts and overturned Bush's plans for military tribunals, forcing Bush to ask Congress to approve a new version of the panels.

A handful of federal district judges either ordered an end to the warrantless wiretapping or agreed to hear court challenges to it. Opponents of the plan argue the NSA program violates the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act's requirement that the government get a warrant from a court that meets in secret before wiretapping Americans to gain intelligence information.

The administration contends that despite the statute's language, the president has inherent authority from the Constitution to order such eavesdropping without court permission. Justice lawyers also have argued that the challenges to the NSA program should be thrown out of court because trials would expose state secrets. Most of the judges' rulings and proceedings have been stayed pending appeal.

Gonzales also said he thought more states should move away from having judges stand in partisan elections to keep their seats. Gonzales himself as a Texas Supreme Court justice "had to raise enough money to run print ads and place television spots around the state in order to retain my seat."

In such contested elections, "most of the contributions come from lawyers and law firms, many of whom have had, or will have, cases before the court," Gonzales said. "The appearance of a conflict of interest is difficult to dismiss."

He noted favorably that some states have adopted other ways of picking judges, including merit selection and appointment with simple up-or-down retention elections rather than contested campaigns. With polls showing many voters think judges can be swayed by campaign contributions, Gonzales said, "If Americans come to believe that judges are simply politicians, or their decisions can be purchased for a price, state judicial systems will be undermined."

source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...900511_pf.html

as for the protecting of americans from prosecution for war crimes in connectino with iraq, the case has been made for doing so by the former lead prosecutor at nuremberg:

Quote:

Could Bush Be Prosecuted for War Crimes?

By Jan Frel, AlterNet. Posted July 10, 2006.

A Nuremberg chief prosecutor says there is a case for trying Bush for the 'supreme crime against humanity, an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation.'

----
The extent to which American exceptionalism is embedded in the national psyche is awesome to behold.

While the United States is a country like any other, its citizens no more special than any others on the planet, Americans still react with surprise at the suggestion that their country could be held responsible for something as heinous as a war crime.

From the massacre of more than 100,000 people in the Philippines to the first nuclear attack ever at Hiroshima to the unprovoked invasion of Baghdad, U.S.-sponsored violence doesn't feel as wrong and worthy of prosecution in internationally sanctioned criminal courts as the gory, bload-soaked atrocities of Congo, Darfur, Rwanda, and most certainly not the Nazis -- most certainly not. Howard Zinn recently described this as our "inability to think outside the boundaries of nationalism. We are penned in by the arrogant idea that this country is the center of the universe, exceptionally virtuous, admirable, superior."

Most Americans firmly believe there is nothing the United States or its political leadership could possibly do that could equate to the crimes of Hitler's Third Reich. The Nazis are our "gold standard of evil," as author John Dolan once put it.

But the truth is that we can, and we have -- most recently and significantly in Iraq. Perhaps no person on the planet is better equipped to identify and describe our crimes in Iraq than Benjamin Ferenccz, a former chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials who successfully convicted 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating death squads that killed more than one million people in the famous Einsatzgruppen Case. Ferencz, now 87, has gone on to become a founding father of the basis behind international law regarding war crimes, and his essays and legal work drawing from the Nuremberg trials and later the commission that established the International Criminal Court remain a lasting influence in that realm.

Ferencz's biggest contribution to the war crimes field is his assertion that an unprovoked or "aggressive" war is the highest crime against mankind. It was the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 that made possible the horrors of Abu Ghraib, the destruction of Fallouja and Ramadi, the tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths, civilian massacres like Haditha, and on and on. Ferencz believes that a "prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation."

Interviewed from his home in New York, Ferencz laid out a simple summary of the case:

"The United Nations charter has a provision which was agreed to by the United States formulated by the United States in fact, after World War II. Its says that from now on, no nation can use armed force without the permission of the U.N. Security Council. They can use force in connection with self-defense, but a country can't use force in anticipation of self-defense. Regarding Iraq, the last Security Council resolution essentially said, 'Look, send the weapons inspectors out to Iraq, have them come back and tell us what they've found -- then we'll figure out what we're going to do. The U.S. was impatient, and decided to invade Iraq -- which was all pre-arranged of course. So, the United States went to war, in violation of the charter."

It's that simple. Ferencz called the invasion a "clear breach of law," and dismissed the Bush administration's legal defense that previous U.N. Security Council resolutions dating back to the first Gulf War justified an invasion in 2003. Ferencz notes that the first Bush president believed that the United States didn't have a U.N. mandate to go into Iraq and take out Saddam Hussein; that authorization was simply to eject Hussein from Kuwait. Ferencz asked, "So how do we get authorization more than a decade later to finish the job? The arguments made to defend this are not persuasive."

Writing for the United Kingdom's Guardian, shortly before the 2003 invasion, international law expert Mark Littman echoed Ferencz: "The threatened war against Iraq will be a breach of the United Nations Charter and hence of international law unless it is authorized by a new and unambiguous resolution of the Security Council. The Charter is clear. No such war is permitted unless it is in self-defense or authorized by the Security Council."

Challenges to the legality of this war can also be found at the ground level. First Lt. Ehren Watada, the first U.S. commissioned officer to refuse to serve in Iraq, cites the rules of the U.N. Charter as a principle reason for his dissent.

Ferencz isn't using the invasion of Iraq as a convenient prop to exercise his longstanding American hatred: he has a decades-old paper trail of calls for every suspect of war crimes to be brought to international justice. When the United States captured Saddam Hussein in December 2003, Ferencz wrote that Hussein's offenses included "the supreme international crime of aggression, to a wide variety of crimes against humanity, and a long list of atrocities condemned by both international and national laws."

Ferencz isn't the first to make the suggestion that the United States has committed state-sponsored war crimes against another nation -- not only have leading war critics made this argument, but so had legal experts in the British government before the 2003 invasion. In a short essay in 2005, Ferencz lays out the inner deliberations of British and American officials as the preparations for the war were made:

U.K. military leaders had been calling for clear assurances that the war was legal under international law. They were very mindful that the treaty creating a new International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague had entered into force on July 1, 2002, with full support of the British government. Gen. Sir Mike Jackson, chief of the defense staff, was quoted as saying "I spent a good deal of time recently in the Balkans making sure Milosevic was put behind bars. I have no intention of ending up in the next cell to him in The Hague."

Ferencz quotes the British deputy legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry who, in the lead-up to the invasion, quit abruptly and wrote in her resignation letter: "I regret that I cannot agree that it is lawful to use force against Iraq without a second Security Council resolution ? [A]n unlawful use of force on such a scale amounts to the crime of aggression; nor can I agree with such action in circumstances that are so detrimental to the international order and the rule of law."

While the United Kingdom is a signatory of the ICC, and therefore under jurisdiction of that court, the United States is not, thanks to a Republican majority in Congress that has "attacks on America's sovereignty" and "manipulation by the United Nations" in its pantheon of knee-jerk neuroses. Ferencz concedes that even though Britain and its leadership could be prosecuted, the international legal climate isn't at a place where justice is blind enough to try it -- or as Ferencz put it, humanity isn't yet "civilized enough to prevent this type of illegal behavior." And Ferencz said that while he believes the United States is guilty of war crimes, "the international community is not sufficiently organized to prosecute such a case. ? There is no court at the moment that is competent to try that crime."

As Ferencz said, the world is still a long way away from establishing norms that put all nations under the rule of law, but the battle to do so is a worthy one: "There's no such thing as a war without atrocities, but war-making is the biggest atrocity of all."

The suggestion that the Bush administration's conduct in the "war on terror" amounts to a string of war crimes and human rights abuses is gaining credence in even the most ossified establishment circles of Washington. Justice Anthony Kennedy's opinion in the recent Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ruling by the Supreme Court suggests that Bush's attempt to ignore the Geneva Conventions in his approved treatment of terror suspects may leave him open to prosecution for war crimes. As Sidney Blumenthal points out, the court rejected Bush's attempt to ignore Common Article 3, which bans "cruel treatment and torture [and] outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."

And since Congress enacted the Geneva Conventions, making them the law of the United States, any violations that Bush or any other American commits "are considered 'war crimes' punishable as federal offenses," as Justice Kennedy wrote.

George W. Bush in the dock facing a charge of war crimes? That's well beyond the scope of possibility ? or is it?

Jan Frel is an AlterNet staff writer.

source: http://www.alternet.org/story/38604/

Infinite_Loser · 09-29-2006, 12:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Infinite_Loser

What exactly does torture solve, except to give the terrorists more reason to hate and attack the United States?

I guess my question wasn't important enough to be answerd

roachboy · 09-29-2006, 12:38 PM

i addressed it a few times above.
most directly in the context of stuff about the algerian war.
a short answer: torture does nothing to advance the stated rationale--but it does provide opposition with an extra level of moral critique of american actions under george w bush (as if more was needed) and by extension will increase rather than decrease problems the states faces internationally at that level--and the political damage to the united states and its institutions that will result from the official embrace of torture, the rewriting of the geneva conventions, the affirmation of a system of kangaroo courts, the revoking of habeas corpus, the expansion of the definition of "terrorist" in a way that makes it easier for american citizens to find themselves sucked into the black hole at the center of bush world--all this will create enormous political damage for all of us.

there is nothing good that can come of this legislation.
its primary function appears to be as a buttress for republican political prospects in november.

i would personally hope that every last one of the legislators who voted for the appalling piece of shit bill will find themselves without a job in the legislative branch at the next possible opportunity.

Ustwo · 09-29-2006, 12:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

so we take criminals, call them terrorists, deny them due process, then execute them. I don't have a problem executing criminals, but do we really feel like deleting the rest of the 5th amendment?

We changed due process, they have due process, and as a bonus we get to smack them around too. I do not see a need to grant non-uniformed enemy combatants 5th amendment rights. Apparently neither do a sizable majority of US senators. So as of now this IS the due process

I have no fear of this being misused because if the government is so bent on torturing the innocent for whatever reason then the law is moot. Law is an abstract, power is what counts, and the law is meaningless if the power ignores it. The fact that this was asked for shows the power still respects the law.

Law itself is meaningless. This is something I find sort of sad in seeing how people react. People cling to the law as if the law itself gives them power, but in fact the law only applies if the powers that be accept them. I don't think there has ever been a legal revolution, a legal coup, or a legal war. Likewise there has never been an illegal revolution, coup or war if that side won.

If the US becomes a dictatorship at some point in its history (and I'm sorry to tell you but its not, nor will it be in 2 more years) it will first be illegal, and then it will be legal. It will then be illegal to oppose the dictatorship.

If you oppose the use of torture on terrorist suspects and prisoners then just state that. To frame it around the law is pointless and silly, trying to turn it into a legal matter is a large part of the problem with the 90's in terms of intelligence gathering.

I support the use of this mild torture on terrorist suspects, a majority of senators do as well, including a good number of democrats, and I will assume a majority of the american people (though of course you could frame that question in a lot of ways in a survey).

In 2008 a democrat will be elected unless the DNC is run by a retard (debatable), George Bush will go hang out at his ranch, and all this hand wringing and fear mongering will be past us.

dksuddeth · 09-29-2006, 12:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

We changed due process, they have due process, and as a bonus we get to smack them around too. I do not see a need to grant non-uniformed enemy combatants 5th amendment rights. Apparently neither do a sizable majority of US senators. So as of now this IS the due process

I have no fear of this being misused because if the government is so bent on torturing the innocent for whatever reason then the law is moot. Law is an abstract, power is what counts, and the law is meaningless if the power ignores it. The fact that this was asked for shows the power still respects the law.

Law itself is meaningless. This is something I find sort of sad in seeing how people react. People cling to the law as if the law itself gives them power, but in fact the law only applies if the powers that be accept them. I don't think there has ever been a legal revolution, a legal coup, or a legal war. Likewise there has never been an illegal revolution, coup or war if that side won.

If the US becomes a dictatorship at some point in its history (and I'm sorry to tell you but its not, nor will it be in 2 more years) it will first be illegal, and then it will be legal. It will then be illegal to oppose the dictatorship.

If you oppose the use of torture on terrorist suspects and prisoners then just state that. To frame it around the law is pointless and silly, trying to turn it into a legal matter is a large part of the problem with the 90's in terms of intelligence gathering.

I support the use of this mild torture on terrorist suspects, a majority of senators do as well, including a good number of democrats, and I will assume a majority of the american people (though of course you could frame that question in a lot of ways in a survey).

In 2008 a democrat will be elected unless the DNC is run by a retard (debatable), George Bush will go hang out at his ranch, and all this hand wringing and fear mongering will be past us.

everything you've posted here sums up nicely as 'the constitution is what the majority makes it at that time'. never been happier to be an american by god.

Ustwo · 09-29-2006, 01:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

everything you've posted here sums up nicely as 'the constitution is what the majority makes it at that time'. never been happier to be an american by god.

Not quite but close. The law frequently will 'win' over the majority such as in the SCOTUS abortion decision because the power still respects the law. In other cases such as with the Cherokee in Georgia, the SCOTUS was ignored by the power and the law was meaningless.

dksuddeth · 09-29-2006, 01:54 PM

and people wonder why I question authority like I do.

Ch'i · 09-29-2006, 02:30 PM

Ustwo has managed to skip over almost every post debunking his original argument. Either that, or he doesn't have a rebuttal. I take it you concede Ustwo?

cyrnel · 09-29-2006, 02:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Infinite_Loser

I guess my question wasn't important enough to be answerd

I took this to be more of a law aimed at protecting the powers that be from what seems innevitable legal recourse when their terms are up. The law makes what they've previously done in the camps and abroad legal retroactively, protecting them from US prosecution.

I'm not so sure it means anything for anti-terrorism going forward. The practices don't seem to have achieved much to this point. The only bonus is that we'll now look like a country condoning the behavior and the international agreements will have to reflect our legal shenanigans. (in the open or otherwise)

dksuddeth · 09-29-2006, 02:41 PM

not sure how the pardoning thing is going to work through the courts though, since a treaty has precedence over a law, and you can't change a multiple nation treaty by creating a new law in your own house.

cyrnel · 09-29-2006, 03:05 PM

It can be spun as our law vs them. Our law in their pocket creates another level of confusion and automatic us vs them nationalism when it's spun to the press and masses. At least that's the tendency I've noticed. It's their best legal bulwark given what's already happened.

Anyway, it was a slam dunk. Those who wanted it needed it to pass before a shift of control. Those who didn't necessarily want it couldn't cause a stink for fear they'd sabotage the shift with a distracting and noisy battle. Now it'll be buried as an old, possibly ill-advised pre-election issue while the new crowd try to move their agendas.

Time to go fishing or something. Gak.

Ustwo · 09-29-2006, 03:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ch'i

Ustwo has managed to skip over almost every post debunking his original argument. Either that, or he doesn't have a rebuttal. I take it you concede Ustwo?

Didn't read them.

This might shock you but with a job like I have, I tend to focus on one responder at a time, I don't have the desire to respond to every liberal with too much time on their hands and by skipping the usual suspects who post multiple cut and paste articles or who can't figure out where the caps key is, I'm don't feel a need to respond. I'm not even sure what could have been 'debunked'.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dksuddeth

and people wonder why I question authority like I do.

And you should. The difference is I trust the current authority. This is also why I am not for any sort of gun control. People who think the law has power in itself are the ones surprised when the revolution comes and fail to see how fragile society can be.

Ch'i · 09-29-2006, 03:49 PM

Quote:

This might shock you but with a job like I have, I tend to focus on one responder at a time, I don't have the desire to respond to every liberal with too much time on their hands and by skipping the usual suspects who post multiple cut and paste articles or who can't figure out where the caps key is, I'm don't feel a need to respond. I'm not even sure what could have been 'debunked'.

You'll notice hardly any of the posts I was reffering to have any links, articles, or excessive length...wait, nevermind; you didn't read them. I am only shocked that you would see a limitation that hinders your ability to carry out a meaningful debate, and accept it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Those who have made up their mind won't be swayed, they have accepted the limited data as 'truth' and its like trying to tell someone their religion is wrong.

Sounds vaguely familiar.
How hypocritical to accuse others of not listening, while you, yourself, do not take the time to even read a post as big as this one.

Paradise Lost · 09-29-2006, 04:25 PM

It's not only nice of Ustwo to demean 'liberals,' whomever they might be, by assuming not only their political affiliation based on something that has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with morals, and, also, assume that somehow those who do the research and make sound arguments and who spend the time to make this debate something that at leasts trys to be rational and containing substance seem like they have no job and somehow below him. Or, even better, that if liberals are the only ones doing research (it's fairly well implied) that conservatives don't have the time to go about such silly nonsense to make whatever garbled opinions they have be accepted as true, they just are, and if you disagree, you have to be a liberal.

Charlatan · 09-29-2006, 04:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Didn't read them.

This might shock you but with a job like I have, I tend to focus on one responder at a time, I don't have the desire to respond to every liberal with too much time on their hands and by skipping the usual suspects who post multiple cut and paste articles or who can't figure out where the caps key is, I'm don't feel a need to respond. I'm not even sure what could have been 'debunked'..

So you are not here for debate and your original post was just a troll?

This is essentially what you are saying here.

Willravel · 09-29-2006, 04:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Didn't read them.

This might shock you but with a job like I have, I tend to focus on one responder at a time, I don't have the desire to respond to every liberal with too much time on their hands and by skipping the usual suspects who post multiple cut and paste articles or who can't figure out where the caps key is, I'm don't feel a need to respond. I'm not even sure what could have been 'debunked'.

You'd know about how your arguments have been torn apart for sure if you bothered to show everyone here the respect they show you and actually read all the posts. This is easily the fourth time I've rendered torture useless in Politics.

TORTURE IS AN UNRELIABLE WAY TO EXTRACT INFORMATION. I HAVE A DEGREE IN PSYCHOLOGY TO BACK THAT UP, ALONG WITH THE CONCENSUS OF EVERY PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PSYCHIATRIC ORGANIZATION IN THE COUNTRY.

Try skipping that. What is odd to me is that you are mighty selective in what you respond to, leading me to believe that you only respond to things that don't rip your argument apart. Coincedence? I don't belive in them.

dc_dux · 09-29-2006, 08:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

This might shock you but with a job like I have, I tend to focus on one responder at a time, I don't have the desire to respond to every liberal with too much time on their hands... and by skipping the usual suspects who post multiple cut and paste articles or who can't figure out where the caps key is, I'm don't feel a need to respond. I'm not even sure what could have been 'debunked'....

Reminds me of a Rumsfeld quote:

"If I know the answer I'll tell you the answer, and if I don't, I'll just respond, cleverly."

Just not as clever.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

.......I trust the current authority

Reminds me of another Rumsfeld quote:

"Needless to say, the President is correct. Whatever it was he said."

roachboy · 09-30-2006, 09:13 AM

and so the story of ustwo comes to a close.
it was not an interesting story, but it was one.
now the credits run.

o look there was no script.

the credits end, the television is switched off.

Ustwo · 09-30-2006, 09:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

You'd know about how your arguments have been torn apart for sure if you bothered to show everyone here the respect they show you and actually read all the posts. This is easily the fourth time I've rendered torture useless in Politics.

TORTURE IS AN UNRELIABLE WAY TO EXTRACT INFORMATION. I HAVE A DEGREE IN PSYCHOLOGY TO BACK THAT UP, ALONG WITH THE CONCENSUS OF EVERY PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PSYCHIATRIC ORGANIZATION IN THE COUNTRY.

Try skipping that. What is odd to me is that you are mighty selective in what you respond to, leading me to believe that you only respond to things that don't rip your argument apart. Coincedence? I don't belive in them.

Yea well thats your opinion, I have mine, though mine doesn't have cool red letters. You can also find people who think you shouldn't spank your child, and I don't agree with them either, just like you can find psychologists who think violent behavior is due to low self esteem. I'm willing to go with the opinion of all of human history over some psychobabble.

Personally I'd hope they use a case by case basis. Some people will crack easily under torture, others will respond better to kindness, I would hope we have our own interrogation experts deciding whats the best method with each individual.

Willravel · 09-30-2006, 09:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Yea well thats your opinion, I have mine, though mine doesn't have cool red letters. You can also find people who think you shouldn't spank your child, and I don't agree with them either, just like you can find psychologists who think violent behavior is due to low self esteem. I'm willing to go with the opinion of all of human history over some psychobabble.

Personally I'd hope they use a case by case basis. Some people will crack easily under torture, others will respond better to kindness, I would hope we have our own interrogation experts deciding whats the best method with each individual.

You're not talking about something that is in debate. This is not a 50/50 decision. 99.999% of psychologist and psychiatrists agree, and the other .001% work for the Bush administration. There has been a consensus. If all the Mathmaticians all came together and said "1 + 1 = 2", that's pretty much what we're talking about. Anyone who's actually been tortured or has tortured can tell you the same thing. It's completly unreliable, and it's done to instill fear not to extract information. My uncle happened to be a POW. He can explain it a lot better than I can. To suggest that a dentist knows more about torture than a POW is right up there with most of the other things you say. Kinda nuts, and really conceited. You can easily dismiss one of the more basic aspects of understanding the human mind, not unlike Tom Cruise telling Matt Lower that people that psychiatry* is a pseudoscience, and that taking vitamins can easily clear up postpartum depression, but for the rest of us hundreds of years of research and development in creating psychology as a science trumps your personal experience.

How do you feel about Brooke Shields?

Edit: I wouldn't assume to argue with you over matters dental. You have the schooling, and the experience that clearly and completly trumps my own. I have a degree from a well respected school in psychology. My mother has her doctorate. I am active in the psychological community. While I've never tortured anyone, I do understand the mechanics behind it quite well. If that's not enough for you, that's fine. There is plenty of evidence to back me up. There are people who are the most respected experts in the area of the human mind that agree with me. There are books and papers and textbooks that agree with me. Do all of these things really amount to nothing in your mind? Is this just another thing to skip over?

*TY, Smooth

smooth · 09-30-2006, 10:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by willravel

You're not talking about something that is in debate. This is not a 50/50 decision. 99.999% of psychologist and psychiatrists agree, and the other .001% work for the Bush administration. There has been a consensus. If all the Mathmaticians all came together and said "1 + 1 = 2", that's pretty much what we're talking about. Anyone who's actually been tortured or has tortured can tell you the same thing. It's completly unreliable, and it's done to instill fear not to extract information. My uncle happened to be a POW. He can explain it a lot better than I can. To suggest that a dentist knows more about torture than a POW is right up there with most of the other things you say. Kinda nuts, and really conceited. You can easily dismiss one of the more basic aspects of understanding the human mind, not unlike Tom Cruise telling Matt Lower that people that psychology is a pseudoscience, and that taking vitamins can easily clear up postpartum depression, but for the rest of us hundreds of years of research and development in creating psychology as a science trumps your personal experience.

How do you feel about Brooke Shields?

I didn't watch the interview, but my understanding was that he was railing primarily against psychiatry, which would make sense given the context. Searching around gives me various results, some attributing his statement to psychology and others psychiatry. It's not surprising that laypeople would confuse the two, but there are lots of people that benefit from mental health professionals without the MD doping their kids up on ritalin.

Willravel · 09-30-2006, 10:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by smooth

I didn't watch the interview, but my understanding was that he was railing primarily against psychiatry, which would make sense given the context. Searching around gives me various results, some attributing his statement to psychology and others psychiatry. It's not surprising that laypeople would confuse the two, but there are lots of people that benefit from mental health professionals without the MD doping their kids up on ritalin.

Ustwo seems to be rallied against both. Tom Cruise has attacked different groups, psychology and psychiatry, in different interviews. In the Lower interview it was psychiatry. The problem was that he didn't just say "Ritilin is used too much", he said that the whole science is wrong. This, of course, is based on his massive experience and knowledge of psychiatry that comes with making mediocre movies and following the pesudo-religon of scientology.

pan6467 · 09-30-2006, 10:33 AM

All torture does is increase the hatred against you, increase the effort to destroy you and try to instill fear, which in the long run it doesn't.

You're going to torture suicide fighters that have pledged to die anyway in the name of their beliefs? Doesn't make sense to me.

I don't understand how we went from a nation that believed and fought for human rights, dignity and justice to using Naziesque techniques and being what we supposedly hated and fought against.

We say, "we'll go this far because our leaders tell us we need to." But do we truly even see what the whole bill states and how it was written?

And even if we do allow our leaders to only "go this far"..... what happened to the Neo-con cry of never back down against your principles?

Throughout history it hasn't been the most fearsome that has won wars.... it has been those with the best belief in what they were fighting for. It has been those that believed and stayed truest to their causes.

By backing down from being a "nation that believed and fought for human rights, dignity and justice" and lowering our standards our beliefs to suit what we need (even though we do not believe in what we do) we have already lost the battle and the war, because if we do not lose this one militaristically, we've lost within ourselves what we once knew and believed to be right. We have become the enemy and sooner or later we will lose the war.

dc_dux · 09-30-2006, 11:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Personally I'd hope they use a case by case basis. Some people will crack easily under torture, others will respond better to kindness, I would hope we have our own interrogation experts deciding whats the best method with each individual.

And if an innocent person is tortured to the point of permanent physical or psychological damage because the "experts" were wrong, thats ok?

Ch'i · 09-30-2006, 01:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dc_dux

And if an innocent person is tortured to the point of permanent physical or psychological damage because the "experts" were wrong, thats ok?

Torturer- "oops"

roachboy · 09-30-2006, 03:57 PM

i am not a fan of andrew sullivan in general, but on this he has been consistent and correct.

Quote:

Torture by any other name is just as vile
Andrew Sullivan

Last week America?s political classes found themselves forced by the Supreme Court to confront the issue of whether the United States has legally authorised the torture of terror suspects in its prisons.

That has been the issue for five years now, ever since the Bush administration unilaterally evaded the Geneva conventions and, on the president?s executive authority, tortured several Al-Qaeda suspects in CIA custody.

It blew up when the Abu Ghraib photographs emerged, showing that torture and abuse had spread like a cancer through the ranks of the military, with hundreds of documented cases in every field of combat.

It was almost halted last December by the McCain Amendment, which the president subsequently declined to enforce. It came to a climax last week in a confusing blizzard of legislative verbiage. Both sides are still fighting over what exactly the Senate-Bush deal meant, which means that ?the programme? will apparently continue.

Of course, the narrative I have just used is disputed by the president. He stated very recently: ?I want to be absolutely clear with our people, and the world: the United States does not torture. It?s against our laws, and it?s against our values. I have not authorised it ? and I will not authorise it.?

So we are reduced to fighting over a word, ?torture?. President George W Bush?s preferred terminology is ?alternative interrogation techniques? or ?coercive interrogation? or ?harsh interrogation methods?, or simply, amazingly, his comment last Thursday that a policy of waterboarding detainees is merely a policy to ?question? them.

Suddenly I am reminded of George Orwell. One essay of his, Politics and the English Language, still stands out over the decades as a rebuke to all those who deploy language to muffle meaning. One passage is particularly apposite:

?A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one?s real and one?s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ?keeping out of politics?. All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.?

It is time to concede that in America right now the atmosphere is bad. Here is Bush defining torture in a speech he gave in June 2003: ?The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control.?

So what is ?severe physical or mental pain or suffering?? The president does not apparently believe that strapping someone to a board, tipping them upside down and pouring water repeatedly over Cellophane wrapped over their face is severe suffering.

The CIA confirms that most suspects cannot last much more than 30 seconds of the drowning sensation. But no marks are left. So that is not ?torture?.

We are then informed that almost all the ?coercive interrogation techniques? used by the Bush administration are not torture. One is called ?long time standing?. Basically, it entails forcing a prisoner to stay standing indefinitely, by prodding him if he tries to rest, or shackling his wrists to a bolt in a low ceiling or a railing.

At first the detainees in CIA custody were required to be so restrained for a maximum of four hours without any rest. Then a memo from Donald Rumsfeld , the defence secretary, came down the chain of command: ?I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours??

Why indeed? It certainly sounds mild enough.

But here is a description of what it actually means in uncorrupted English: ?There is the method of simply compelling a prisoner to stand there. This can be arranged so that the accused stands only while being interrogated ? because that, too, exhausts and breaks a person down.

?It can be set up in another way ? so that the prisoner sits down during interrogation but is forced to stand up between interrogations. (A watch is set over him, and the guards see to it that he doesn?t lean against the wall, and if he goes to sleep and falls over he is given a kick and straightened up.) Sometimes even one day of standing is enough to deprive a person of all his strength and to force him to testify to anything at all.?

What wimp wrote that? Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who documented ?long time standing? as a method used by the Soviet Union in the gulag.

?Sleep deprivation? also sounds mild enough to avoid the moniker of ?torture?. Here is one account of such an alternative questioning method, in which a prisoner ?is wearied to death, his legs are unsteady, and he has one sole desire to sleep, to sleep just a little, not to get up, to lie, to rest, to forget . . . Anyone who has experienced the desire knows that not even hunger or thirst are comparable with it?.

Again, which whiny liberal wrote those words?

The answer is Menachem Begin, former Israeli prime minister and a former terrorist himself. He is also describing the methods used by the Soviets in Siberia, where they imprisoned him in 1939.

We know that one prisoner in Guantanamo Bay was forced to go without sleep for 48 of 55 consecutive days and nights.

He was also manacled naked to a chair in a cell that was air-conditioned to around 50F and had cold water poured on him repeatedly, until hypothermia set in. Doctors treated him when he neared permanent physical damage.

According to the president of the United States, this is not ?severe mental or physical pain or suffering?. This is an ?alternative interrogation method?. This is not torture. it is ?the programme?.

And so Latin words fall upon the West?s moral high ground ?like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details?.

If only George Orwell were still alive. If only all of this weren?t actually true.

source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...371815,00.html

Ch'i · 09-30-2006, 05:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ustwo

Yea well thats your opinion, I have mine, though mine doesn't have cool red letters. You can also find people who think you shouldn't spank your child, and I don't agree with them either, just like you can find psychologists who think violent behavior is due to low self esteem. I'm willing to go with the opinion of all of human history over some psychobabble.

Some people just can't admit being wrong.

Willravel · 09-30-2006, 05:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by roachboy

a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear

it make you sick.

-kamu brathwaite

Isn't it spelled Kamau?

ratbastid · 09-30-2006, 05:53 PM

I've been away from the computer for 48 hours, in case anyone has wondered at my silence on this issue. Had a great time riding roller coasters. And now I'm home to TFP's politics board, which is a roller coaster of its own.

This whole thing (not the thread, the issue) is so painfully myopic as to be laughable. To those who are in favor of this constitutional-crisis-in-the-making: your boys are only in power for two more years, at which point it'll be somebody else, and if it keeps going the way it's currently going, it'll be somebody you won't like much. Would YOU like THEM to have the legal authority to pick up anybody they deem to be "against America" without warrant or probable cause and take them away to torture? Or will you be screaming dictatorship if they have that kind of power?

Second: this whole thing (not the issue, the thread) points to PRECISELY what's wrong in American political discourse. USTWO: YOU CAN'T START A THREAD AND THEN PROUDLY IGNORE THE RESPONSES WITHOUT HAVING POSTED A TROLL. You had no intention of having a discussion here. I suspect you were mainly interested in cutting off a very likely (and unassailable) liberal point. There's no basis for discussion here. There's no point. I'm right on the edge of giving up on Tilted Politics--why the hell should I bother when there's no expectation that ANYTHING I say will even be read?

Will's learned assertion about torture is as valid as your learned assertion about global warming. My opinion on global warning has actually been swayed by what you had to say about it, and largely because of your credentials in the matter. I recommend you open your mind and pay some attention to someone who might--shocking though it may seem--actually know something you don't, politically inconvenient though it may be to you.

I don't know what I hope to cause with the preceeding paragraph. He's way too busy filling cavities (isn't that convenient?) to actually engage in the conversation he started.

09-29-2006, 10:15 AM	#42 (permalink)
Infinite_Loser Junkie Location: Lake Mary, FL	What exactly does torture solve, except to give the terrorists more reason to hate and attack the United States? __________________ I believe in equality; Everyone is equally inferior to me.

09-29-2006, 11:40 AM	#48 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	the point of my earlier post about the algerian war addressed the ustwo approach---the manly man approach--the mode of attempting to suppress horizontally organized movements through the use of torture--was not only ineffective in itself, but the political consequences of its usage so far outstripped any possible benefit that you would think its would be avoided by any sane government. that the bush administration would prefer not to think about precedents for their actions--and algeria is a far better aalogy for the idiocy of the ongoing "war on terror" than is vietnam--is not surprising, given the administration's cavalier relation with reality, with telling the truth, with transparency, etc etc etc. ustwo's posts here indicate that he prefers to pretend that a state is like a private individual--which is consistent with the bush people's legal philosophy in its emphasis on the overwhelming prerogatives of the Leader in a state of exception and the usage of the state of exception to suppress or dismiss democratic processes like the rule of law--the problem with this position is--quite simply--that it is insane if it is actually applied in the world that other people know about. that this analogy would have any purchase seems to me an example of the kind of shabby thinking that conservative ideology seems to rely upon to operate at all. so while you are fantasizing about whacking and dismembering people that you would take to be "terrorists" without any rational standard for proof or even a recognition that such a standard might be helpful, ustwo, i will consider believing in some god long enough to thank whatever that may be that you have no power. anywhere. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 09-29-2006 at 11:42 AM..

09-29-2006, 11:53 AM	#49 (permalink)
pig pigglet pigglet Location: Locash	i'll let y'all continue to slug it out. i have to say that while i've been fairly a-political, in practice, for most of my life - the current trends are starting to get me active. That people would let fear drive them to such positions...it is simply antithetical to everything I always believed America stood for. That I can stand for. One of the most intriguing, powerful ideas that I've always perceived in the founding stances of our nation is the position that a great society must constantly sew the seeds of revolution within its population. The government isn't supposed to be allowed to become complacent, lest it be brought down. The current positions, to solidify the power of the state over the citizen, are completely contrary to this. It just makes me sad. __________________ You don't love me, you just love my piggy style

09-29-2006, 12:07 PM	#50 (permalink)
dksuddeth Junkie Location: bedford, tx	it's rumored that somewhere in this bill is an amendment that pardons anyone in the administration for war crimes. Anyone familiar with that? __________________ "no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

09-29-2006, 12:38 PM	#54 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i addressed it a few times above. most directly in the context of stuff about the algerian war. a short answer: torture does nothing to advance the stated rationale--but it does provide opposition with an extra level of moral critique of american actions under george w bush (as if more was needed) and by extension will increase rather than decrease problems the states faces internationally at that level--and the political damage to the united states and its institutions that will result from the official embrace of torture, the rewriting of the geneva conventions, the affirmation of a system of kangaroo courts, the revoking of habeas corpus, the expansion of the definition of "terrorist" in a way that makes it easier for american citizens to find themselves sucked into the black hole at the center of bush world--all this will create enormous political damage for all of us. there is nothing good that can come of this legislation. its primary function appears to be as a buttress for republican political prospects in november. i would personally hope that every last one of the legislators who voted for the appalling piece of shit bill will find themselves without a job in the legislative branch at the next possible opportunity. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

09-29-2006, 01:54 PM	#58 (permalink)
dksuddeth Junkie Location: bedford, tx	and people wonder why I question authority like I do. __________________ "no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

09-29-2006, 02:30 PM	#59 (permalink)
Ch'i Artist of Life	Ustwo has managed to skip over almost every post debunking his original argument. Either that, or he doesn't have a rebuttal. I take it you concede Ustwo?

09-29-2006, 02:41 PM	#61 (permalink)
dksuddeth Junkie Location: bedford, tx	not sure how the pardoning thing is going to work through the courts though, since a treaty has precedence over a law, and you can't change a multiple nation treaty by creating a new law in your own house. __________________ "no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything. You cannot conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

09-29-2006, 03:05 PM	#62 (permalink)
cyrnel Adequate Location: In my angry-dome.	It can be spun as our law vs them. Our law in their pocket creates another level of confusion and automatic us vs them nationalism when it's spun to the press and masses. At least that's the tendency I've noticed. It's their best legal bulwark given what's already happened. Anyway, it was a slam dunk. Those who wanted it needed it to pass before a shift of control. Those who didn't necessarily want it couldn't cause a stink for fear they'd sabotage the shift with a distracting and noisy battle. Now it'll be buried as an old, possibly ill-advised pre-election issue while the new crowd try to move their agendas. Time to go fishing or something. Gak. __________________ There are a vast number of people who are uninformed and heavily propagandized, but fundamentally decent. The propaganda that inundates them is effective when unchallenged, but much of it goes only skin deep. If they can be brought to raise questions and apply their decent instincts and basic intelligence, many people quickly escape the confines of the doctrinal system and are willing to do something to help others who are really suffering and oppressed." -Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media, p. 195

09-29-2006, 04:25 PM	#65 (permalink)
Paradise Lost "Afternoon everybody." "NORM!" Location: Poland, Ohio // Clarion University of PA.	It's not only nice of Ustwo to demean 'liberals,' whomever they might be, by assuming not only their political affiliation based on something that has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with morals, and, also, assume that somehow those who do the research and make sound arguments and who spend the time to make this debate something that at leasts trys to be rational and containing substance seem like they have no job and somehow below him. Or, even better, that if liberals are the only ones doing research (it's fairly well implied) that conservatives don't have the time to go about such silly nonsense to make whatever garbled opinions they have be accepted as true, they just are, and if you disagree, you have to be a liberal. __________________ "Marino could do it."

09-30-2006, 09:13 AM	#69 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	and so the story of ustwo comes to a close. it was not an interesting story, but it was one. now the credits run. o look there was no script. the credits end, the television is switched off. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite

09-30-2006, 10:33 AM	#74 (permalink)
pan6467 Lennonite Priest Location: Mansfield, Ohio USA	All torture does is increase the hatred against you, increase the effort to destroy you and try to instill fear, which in the long run it doesn't. You're going to torture suicide fighters that have pledged to die anyway in the name of their beliefs? Doesn't make sense to me. I don't understand how we went from a nation that believed and fought for human rights, dignity and justice to using Naziesque techniques and being what we supposedly hated and fought against. We say, "we'll go this far because our leaders tell us we need to." But do we truly even see what the whole bill states and how it was written? And even if we do allow our leaders to only "go this far"..... what happened to the Neo-con cry of never back down against your principles? Throughout history it hasn't been the most fearsome that has won wars.... it has been those with the best belief in what they were fighting for. It has been those that believed and stayed truest to their causes. By backing down from being a "nation that believed and fought for human rights, dignity and justice" and lowering our standards our beliefs to suit what we need (even though we do not believe in what we do) we have already lost the battle and the war, because if we do not lose this one militaristically, we've lost within ourselves what we once knew and believed to be right. We have become the enemy and sooner or later we will lose the war. __________________ I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?" Last edited by pan6467; 09-30-2006 at 10:56 AM..

09-30-2006, 05:53 PM	#80 (permalink)
ratbastid Darth Papa Location: Yonder	I've been away from the computer for 48 hours, in case anyone has wondered at my silence on this issue. Had a great time riding roller coasters. And now I'm home to TFP's politics board, which is a roller coaster of its own. This whole thing (not the thread, the issue) is so painfully myopic as to be laughable. To those who are in favor of this constitutional-crisis-in-the-making: your boys are only in power for two more years, at which point it'll be somebody else, and if it keeps going the way it's currently going, it'll be somebody you won't like much. Would YOU like THEM to have the legal authority to pick up anybody they deem to be "against America" without warrant or probable cause and take them away to torture? Or will you be screaming dictatorship if they have that kind of power? Second: this whole thing (not the issue, the thread) points to PRECISELY what's wrong in American political discourse. USTWO: YOU CAN'T START A THREAD AND THEN PROUDLY IGNORE THE RESPONSES WITHOUT HAVING POSTED A TROLL. You had no intention of having a discussion here. I suspect you were mainly interested in cutting off a very likely (and unassailable) liberal point. There's no basis for discussion here. There's no point. I'm right on the edge of giving up on Tilted Politics--why the hell should I bother when there's no expectation that ANYTHING I say will even be read? Will's learned assertion about torture is as valid as your learned assertion about global warming. My opinion on global warning has actually been swayed by what you had to say about it, and largely because of your credentials in the matter. I recommend you open your mind and pay some attention to someone who might--shocking though it may seem--actually know something you don't, politically inconvenient though it may be to you. I don't know what I hope to cause with the preceeding paragraph. He's way too busy filling cavities (isn't that convenient?) to actually engage in the conversation he started.