At one point during these posts I pointed out how we used snipers to shoot alleged pirates. I found it interesting that our Navy was portrayed as heroic when the evidence that the men shot was circumstantial. There are no calls for investigation going on, there are no questioned being asked, there is no moral outrage, there was no calls for giving the alleged pirates their day in court, and Obama's moral compass was not questioned for giving the o.k. for what could be considered murder.

We disagree. What I think is crazy is an inconsistent morality code. It is easy to be a pacifist when one's 'brother' is willing to fight for one's right to be a pacifist. I have a problem reconciling that kind of morality. I have a problem with people who will eat veal, and protest killing baby seals. People who have crocodile skin man bags, but protest drilling for oil in Alaska. People who are outraged when a man in a third world country kills a tiger to protect his livestock and are 50 pounds over weight from eating burgers at fast food joints.

---------- Post added at 04:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:13 PM ----------

I think the Obama Justice Department lacks conviction. Those who supported Obama deserve better. And some of us who did not support Obama would love to see this played out in a court of law or for them to shut up.

Which is why you're writing this from a bunker in eastern Europe after having tortured someone one while knowing full well that you most likely wouldn't get the information you were after.

The pirates weren't disarmed and in captivity when they were shot so I don't see how it's relevant to a debate about torture.
Not on this we don't. You can't shoot someone in the back of the head when we've got him in captivity. Not even Alberto Gonzales could get you out of a murder charge for that one. You're trying to make waterboarding sound better by comparing it to executing someone by shooting him in the back of the head. Don't be silly.
PSST... LQQK... If we've prosecuted someone for doing something that we considered torture in the past, that is now torture. Remember? No inconsistency whatsoever. Total consistency.

I repeat. I would not "torture" anyone unless I had supporting evidence that they actually had the information I was seeking. and generally 'foot soldiers' are not the people who would have high level strategic information, they tend to only know what their task is, and I agree "torture" would be of no value.

---------- Post added at 05:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:39 PM ----------

Of course, I understand why you don't see the relevance. I doubt I can make it clear, but it is o.k. to shoot people in the head in a criminal matter when there are clear alternatives and the evidence is not 100% certain that the alleged people are who or what we think they are, but is not o.k. to use enhance interrogation techniques against high level known and confessed terrorists/enemy combatants in a declared war. Like I said, given you not seeing the relevance and me seeing the relevance - if I was the guy in the field and you my commander-in-chief, I would make your life easier by asking the enemy to talk or walk.

He would not be shot while in captivity.

It's not "okay" to shoot people in the head, but occasionally it's unfortunately necessary. The men shot were armed and were putting Americans at undeniable mortal risk. Moreover, shooting those men was clearly the best way to end the situation. Torture on the other hand isn't the best way to extract information. If I'm wrong and shooting those people wasn't the best way to save innocent lives, then they made a mistake.

well you're willing to discuss things over tea or some other nicety with Muslim Middle Eastern enemy combatants but Black Somali (possibly Muslim) pirates, it's okay for them to get a bullet in the head?

You're going to equate unarmed, captured detainees with armed men that are holding hostages? What planet do you live on? It's fascinating how far people can stray from reality when ideology comes into play.

no, i'm looking at the line of where harm is okay and not okay in the will book.

instead of being captured they should have been shot, that would have been a-okay in the willravel book.

Your words not mine, and are you still saying you don't get it?

---------- Post added at 07:12 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:10 PM ----------

What happened to negotiation? Many of these pirate matters got resolved without bloodshed. What about diplomacy, working with other governments to minimize piracy? Why was it o.k. to pull the trigger so fast?

ace--what exactly is the point that you imagine yourself to be making with this?
the rationale behind conventions that ban torture and other war crimes have to do with two basic problems:

a) inflicting excessive pain
b) placing limits around the collective psychosis of war.

the first should be obvious even to you.
you could say that war is about pain what about people who are wounded. and i'd maybe entertain this question did i not think that from the outset you were arguing in bad faith. you want to play this silly manly man gordon liddy-style hairsplitting game because you imagine that in so doing you can generate problems of boundary and in the process exculpate yourself for having supported the bush people and the bush people for yourself. this doesn't interest me, so there's no reason to play the game with you.

the second is easier---the boundary is law-governed state as over against the space of collective psychosis that is the battlefield. the boundary is the deliberate inflicting of pain on a defenseless prisoner as over against the chaos of battle.

You know me, I have this thing with hypotheticals and analogies. When my mind is not fully occupied, I just start thinking about what-if and silly little comparisons. I have been doing since childhood. Today, I do even when I am walking down the street - what would I do if someone put a gun in my back and asked for my wallet? What would I do if I saw that happening to the elderly woman in front of me? Just one of my many idiosyncrasies. But then I don't do drugs, smoke, or drink.

No it is not clear. For example my pain tolerances are very different from my spouses. In some things she tolerates more or less pain than I can. Our threshold of what we would consider "torture" are different. So, when Bush tried to get clearly defined parameters for enhance interrogation techinques, I think that was a good thing and I think it was the moral thing to do, rather than leaving the issue to chance and being vague.

ace---this is a ridiculous line of argumentation.

maybe if you want to have an actual discussion we can start over using a viable definition of the term. if you want to take this one on, do the research. otherwise, just read it. if you want to talk about it, then fine. but this mode of operation you've been indulging is a waste of time

Torture (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

Regardless, you're still not torturing people, which means that you're advocating torture, all the while conveniently allowing other people to do it for you. I'm just saying... inconsistent morality code and all that.

Of course it is. Thanks for sharing your wisdom with me.

i offered you a viable definition of torture, ace darling.
you took the easy way out.
what a shock.

Because of all the mental "what-if" gymnastics I do, I know exactly what I am comfortable doing and what I am not comfortable doing. I would not be comfortable waterboarding someone. But, there are other enhanced interrogation techniques that I would be comfortable doing against a high value terrorist prisoner when I believed innocent lives were in danger and the prisoner had information needed to save innocent lives.

---------- Post added at 07:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:53 PM ----------

Your definition is viable. However, I illustrated why I thought it was vague. However, I did use an analogy comparing "torture" to the pain tolerances of me and my spouse, sorry about that, but you know me.

ace---go to the link and read the page that outlines something approaching a definition.
if you want to continue this.
of course, there are other things in the world to be done, and i am going to amuse myself doing some of those things.
i'll check back in later.
do let me know.
your move.

That's just it, though, the pirates were a danger at the moment the marines were there. The people in Gitmo? That's different. If they were holding guns to the heads of hostages, they would have been shot. Ask anyone involved in the GWOT. Ask the numerous vets on TFP. The people in Gitmo were not in the same situation as the pirates, and you know it. Are you honestly not seeing a difference or are you feigning incomprehension?
You sure like to put words in other people's mouths.


Ace, I think something should be clarified: I'm not particularly familiar with the Somali Pirate situation. I kinda avoided the story on the news because the media was clearly exaggerating parts of it and were ignoring other parts. I don't know if I agree with the shooting of the pirates, though if I understand the situation correctly had they not taken the shots the hostage or hostages would have undoubtedly died. If that's not the case, I disagree with the shootings. While I will never kill for any reason, I do understand common ethics about killing; it's a last resort to save innocent lives. If the shooting was not a last resort, then I disagree with them. If it was a last resort, if the people that have the most experience and expertise determined that negotiations would not work, then I understand why they had to do what they did.

If you found out that waterboarding was just the beginning, would you change your tune?
UK government suppressed evidence on Binyam Mohamed torture because MI6 helped his interrogators - Telegraph

Even if you can't really wrap your head around waterboarding being torture, what do you make of slicing a man's testicles with a scalpel? Could that be explained away as simply a harsh interrogation technique, or has this perhaps cross the indistinguishable line between not torture and torture?

If you found out that the US torturing gave our enemies permission to torture us would you change your tune?

Balkinization

I wonder how soon until they start slicing open testicles? You know, frat-boy type stuff.

I've seen a lot of debate about waterboarding lately, and while I haven't been involved in this conversation I thought I would share an account I came across of someone claiming to waterboard themselves. I say claimed, because of course it cannot be verified, though after reading it, I believe he tried it.

I waterboard! - Straight Dope Message Board

He gives a detailed account of trying all three versions of waterboarding, of which I didn't even know about prior to reading this. Regardless of if you believe him or not, I think its worth the read.

P.s. Sorry if this was somewhere in this thread, I only had time to read a page and a half.

Sounds like the guy came to the same conclusion as both the experts and amateurs like me that tried it for ourselves. It's torture.

We all know the Taliban doesn't waterboard their prisoners. They just go straight to beheadings.

They do behead, but that's hardly the only thing they do.

Oh yeah I forgot, they also do stonings as well.

Okay. Apples and Oranges. The Taliban isn't trying to extract intelligence from anyone with beheadings and stonings, they're executing those they've decided are anti-Taliban. Not comparable at all.

i didn't think that the taliban were the Enemy. i thought al-qaeda was.
go figure.

Well they weren't in the beginning.

After 9/11, when we determined that Bin Laden and his al Qaeda group (a small group of radicals and some financial backers we later named al Qaeda, actually) was responsible for 9/11, we found out they'd organized and trained in Afghanistan, and we worried that might happen again. We were also really, really pissed that Afghanistan was not only allowing such training to go on, but that they were still holding Bin Laden and refused to hand him over.

Had the Taliban not been so short-sighted and handed over Bin Laden, the Taliban today would be relatively small. The problem is that we took great offense when they refused to hand over Bin Laden, and we started bombing them. A lot. We killed a lot of Taliban, but a lot more civilians. If you know anything about terrorist organizations in the Middle East (or anywhere, really), killing civilians tends to increase recruitment numbers. Like it has in Lebanon with Hezbollah and in Palestine with Hamas.

The increasing numbers of Taliban made it harder to locate Bin Laden. We invaded, but found resistance from the growing Taliban and other "insurgents". Eventually they went from simply being people in our way to being "the trrrists" even though they had nothing to do with 9/11.

So now we're facing a much stronger, widespread, and larger Taliban which has used that control very wisely to take root in Pakistan. We're still looking for Bin Laden, but now we've settled into the role as "liberators" again, this time for Afghanistan, trying to fix the mess we made.

and at this point, capturing/killing Bin Laden will be nothing but a symbolic gesture 8 years too late. It will change absolutely nothing (for the positive) and may just fuel the fire of Taliban supporters.

no. it doesn't change anything.

By my understanding of your position, it would only matter if it were you, personally, that was being tortured by the Taliban as a direct consequence of the US torturing Afghans and Iraqis. Because then it wouldn't be something you see as somehow disconnected from yourself.

actually no... my position will not change. I have a belief and it will not waver or compromise.

it is part of the whole and the game of life within the context of war.

Remember, I do have a family member tortured by the "water cure" and beheaded for his role in assisting the Americans and insurgents against the Japanese in occupying Manila.

I also have another family member incarcerated by Ferdinand Marcos for 9 years for not printing pro-Marcos propaganda insisting, that he'd shut down the printing presses first. He was then incarcerated.

Why is it that you have a "belief" instead of an "opinion" on this?

It stems from the convictions and stances of family members. This topic has been discussed within the family as it impacted the family directly. It's beyond opinion because we as a family had to deal with it. There are stories both in print and orally about how and what happened and how individuals feel about this. I'll express it as an opinion in conversation, but pressed, I will divulge it's personal nature and it is more belief than opinion.

Opinions change, beliefs don't.

No, opinions *can* be changed, and that's important to remember. With new information or clarification of old information, the truth can shift. If you'r are ignoring or not accepting new information or a clearer view of old information, your belief turns into doctrine and you end up being wrong a lot. Opinions are more fluid and are capable of changing with the situation in order to be correct based on the best available information.

I have a very strong belief in how and why people are tortured. I'm fine with torture within the context of war, the belief has not changed.

really? how many opinions of yours have changed from discussions here at TFP? I know many of mine that have and am the first to point them out, but my beliefs? I know zero.

Sorry for the confusion, but we're not at war with anyone. We've not been at war since long before either of us were born. We have Authorization for Use of Military Force. There is no context of war. We, the US, are absolutely, positively not at war.

And I change beliefs as soon as I get new information. Off the top of my head, I changed my views on 9/11, vaccines, Barack Obama, Israel and Palestine, China, and the drug war. But none of that is important because we're not talking about my positions changing.

really? you mean to say they are just playing hide and seek? OLLY OLLY OXEN FREE!!!!

or freeze tag??? not IT!

Oh I didn't realize the stakes were so low.

I don't care how anyone including you lawyers it out to the legalese. It's war. Otherwise, it's enhanced interrogations.

We have Authorization for Use of Military Force. There is no context of war. We, the US, are absolutely, positively not at war. We've not been at war since WWII. It's not "legalese", it's basic English. We're not at war, this isn't a time of war, and the "context of war" doesn't apply.