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"By your logic, do I presume correctly that you would approve of us torturing and beheading our enemies, since that's what they do to us?"
Uh no. That would be allowing them to define what is OK for us to do. But you can count on it that if we sink to the level of torture then that fact will be cited in defense of them doing it too. None of it is excusable in my book, but more than that I think it is counterproductive to national security and our military effort. General Petraeus would be the first to say (and has said) that we arent going to win by military means. That means we need a political settlement which is harder to achieve when nobody trusts us and all are afraid of us. (not that we are there yet, but will be if we keep at it)
As I understood the real difference between the two positions (and ignoring what may be semantic arguments about what may or may not be torture) is that on the one hand there are those who think torture is OK if it saves American lives due to uncovering info that would otherwise not be uncovered. On the other hand there are those (like me) who think that far more American lives are lost through creating a situation where millions of people hate us so much they want to kill us than can possibly be saved even if the people on the other side are right and there is some sort of Jack Bauer thing going on. All of this completely ignores the moral repugnance that used to be a foundation of US policy back when we considered torture to be illegal.
But there are no Jack Bauer's out there. Look at those pictures of guys on leashes and smiling assholes posing with dead bodies to see that for yourself. So far as anyone has said (and they would have given all the criticism) nobody is seconds away from blowing up L.A. There isnt anybody out there who wouldnt want to save LA if it ever came to that but life isnt TV.
So we all want to save lives (our guys first). We are just disagreeing about how best to do that. You havent convinced me yet nor have you convinced the military. So we will have to agree to disagree. I will be happy to because whoever wins in the election, now that McCain is the Repub candidate, there will be an end to this disgraceful policy. We just have to wait another few months.
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