Democrats versus Republicans

[sailaway21]

Originally Posted by sck5

And on waterboarding:

60 years ago we prosecuted and executed for war crimes people who used waterboarding. It is a disgrace to the good name of the USA that we are associated in any way with it. It used to be the case that the good will of the people you were supposedly trying to liberate was considered a military asset. Even apart from that, this is a disgrace on a purely human level.

And the fact that they admitted to three means only that there were AT LEAST three. One thing we know about this issue is that they think it is OK to lie and cover up.

I dont know why ALL republicans arent outraged. Your candidate for President certainly is or at least he was before he started to try to pander to the Republican base. But even so, I have no doubt that Mr. McCain, if he gets in, will put an immediate stop to this and not make excuses. But it shouldnt take actually being tortured to know what the right side of this argument is.

You didn't take the cake with this one, sck5. You blew the freakin' cake up!

Let's get this straight: You intend to indict GW Bush specifically because he allowed 3 high-value/high-risk enemy agressors to be water-boarded and the analogy you choose to draw is one with a genocidal maniac who, after he gassed Six Million Jews Alone, threw their naked bodies into ditches and burnt them? And then you come up with ONE (1) possible homicide via torture at Abu Ghraib, about which there remains considerable doubt.

Do you write for The New Republic when you're not here?

[sailaway21]

sck5,
Let's try another round of logical thinking here.

Obama's campaign headquarters in Houston has a silk-screen of Che hanging in the reception room. What can we draw from that?
1. The person who hung it is a fan of Che.
2. That person's immediate supervisor, while perhaps not a Che fan, certainly does not object to Che.
3. The campaign manager might qualify as either of the two above, but was guilty of worse.
4. The campaign manager either tolerated the potrait because no one of "impotance" was going to see it, or he didn't care who saw it and what they thought of it.
5. Or the campaign manager thought it stuck just the right cord with the type of people being sought for recruits.

You cannot have it both way's. The campaign manager was either for it or tolerated it. What impression does that give you of either his beliefs or his managerial skills? And what does that tell you about Obama's judgement; of acts and of people? When the 3rd Mate runs the ship aground, they don't hang the 3rd Mate for the act. They hang the Master for allowing the 3rd Mate to run the ship aground.

You come home to find your wife in bed with the entire infield of the Boston Red Sox. She respond's, "It's an illusion. Who are you going to believe? Me, or your own lyin' eyes?".

Even if this was actually the act of some pseudo-serious intellectual staffer, what does it tell you about the rest of the organization? Or the canidate.

[sailaway21]

And I'll have to agree with some other posters, when I say, the only time we hear about morality from the Looney Left is when they're portraying some Republican as immoral, or they're complaining that there is no such thing as morality. Yet, you're convicting us of moral-relativism?

That's rich, really rich.

[camaraderie]

You want torture???
" A partial-birth abortion is performed in the second or third trimester and entails inducing a breech delivery with forceps, delivering the legs, arms, and torso only, puncturing the back of the skull with a scissors or trochar, inserting a suction catheter into the skull, sucking out the contents of the skull so as to collapse it and completing the delivery by removing the collapsed skull.

Now the US Congress passed the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act (H.R. 760, S. 3) by a wide margin in October 2003 and it was signed into law by President Bush in November. Within hours of becoming law, judges in New York City, San Francisco, and Lincoln Nebraska blocked it from taking force.
4-5000 of these torture/murders are performed every year.
Fix THAT torture caused by DEMOCRATIC judges before you start making noises over a little waterboarding. If they put THOSE pictures on the front page of the NY Times...the Abu Gahraib polaroids would look like Disneyland.

[sailaway21]

In my opinion, real torturers torture each and every prisoner regardless of value, kind of like our current enemy, who sends journalist's head's home in a box. By all lights, these men were picked not only for their knowledge about future threats but for the immediacy of the threat.

[RAGNAR]

Originally Posted by sck5

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)

First, with all top brass needing initiation via grad work, these men are already compromised -- less than most of us, but compromised.

Second, there is absolutely no reason why we can't bring these regimes to their knees militarily, then set terms for rebuilding -- it's worked consistently in the past.

Third, what makes you think people in that part of the world are incapable of seeing the obvious? Torturing these animals spares these people an ever-escalating response from us. Further, it brings animals to justice. Don't project the Left's racism and patronizing presumptions on everyone.

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.

You mean as you continuously misunderstand what you're reading. Torturing under specific circumstances is a calid option for all free nations. If Americans ever act like these people, they should be tortured.

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.

To hell with what people who can't differentiate between law enforcement and preemptive defense on the one side, and torturing for the sake of torture, or to intimidate, etc.

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.

Again, you're dropping context like the average religious dogmatist has to for his limited, rationalist, arbitrary belief system to stand.

So we all want to save lives (our guys first). We are just disagreeing about how best to do that.

That "just" doesn't absolve your side of the 101-level need to be rational versus dogmatic. (You may be doing this innocently, but this equivocation of motives is an age old way of slipping poisonous ideas by.)

You havent convinced me yet nor have you convinced the military.

It's becoming ever-more clear that talking to you isn't going to get you to rethink anything.

As for the military:

1) You can't know what they think.

2) In other contexts you might argue that we can never know what they're doing.

3) This nation's military doesn't act or get educated outside the culture of the day. (This is just another reference to authority dodge.)

4) The political realities of the day are such that the military is not in a position to execute such an approach -- even if it's the right approach.

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.

Don't count your chickens, brother...

If someone perceived as weak is elected and we're attacked, there's no telling what pragmatists like the three remaining candidates might do to look tough/efficacious/ on it.

[cardiacpaul]

I soooo miss a good-old al-j'zeera televised beheading.

Come talk to me when these heathen bastards quit stoning and imprisoning women that were raped, when they stop chopping of the hands of convicted burglers, and chopping off the heads of anyone that doesn't believe that Islam is the way to go.
Until then, yes, the end does justify the means.
Deal with it. I'll sleep at night knowing there are good men and women doing what they have to do to put a stop to these animals that are trying to kill us.

How many of our Moms and Dads shed too many tears when Truman made that decision to drop a couple of smokers onto Japan? While it was terrible, they understood that it more than likely saved lives. not just American lives, but HUMANS.

The letter delivered to the Japanese said something to the effect of "If y'all don't quit, we're going to drop you to your knees."

The Powers At Be over there must have thought we were kidding. Kind of like the Arab world does now.
It was all fun and games to the Japanese... Until the second one hit. Then, well, maybe we should rethink all this world domination stuff.

[chucklesR]

Torture is trying to race fire and smoke down 105 floors.
Torture is trying to get a last cell phone call out to your loved ones - and not getting a connection before you choke to death, or have to jump.
Torture is charging a cockpit loaded with terrorist knowing that even if you win the best you can do is crash into the ground and die somewhere.

Torture is three weeks of living in your own feces and urine waiting to be beheaded on national T.V. because you volunteered to serve your country in order to get out of the ghetto you grew up in - and wound up serving MRE's in Iraq before getting caught by a band of ragheads while out on patrol.

Torture is being raped repeatedly after being captured, then beheaded with a frigging pocket knife by a 10 year old (yeah, happened, vid's on utube).

The reason the military is opposed to torture is because it is policy, when fighting a civilized nation that adheres to the Geneva Convention it makes sense, you don't torture me, I don't torture you.
Doesn't apply when they break the rules. Abu Grahib was chicken feed compared to what goes on daily around the world. Folks need to grow up and realize it's a violent, very nasty world out there full of people that will chew you up and spit you out and not even burp.

Torture the bastards for every bit of information they have and if they die in the process it saves time in court and jail.

[sck5]

Sway

On the original comment about Che- There IS one more possibility. The people who put it up (or the supervisor who saw it and left it up) were clueless morons who have no idea who Che was, what he looked like, or what he represented. People who are old enough (me, you) recognize that picture instantly and know exactly what it stands for. Younger people, shockingly enough, may well not. We have no idea about any of this, but I will bet the rent that picture isnt there any more now that the idiots have been clued in.

And on torture, as I said above, we arent going to agree. Many of the comments above criticize me for comparing the US to other regimes that have used the same methods. If you are telling me that the regimes are not comparable well then I have to agree, but I would say it is a slippery slope from excusing torture to where those guys eventually got to. We may think we are good enough not to slip down it but I think it is far better not to even get on it.

My point is that the act itself is evil and there is no excusing it even if you have what you consider good motives. I dont care WHO we are or WHAT the motives are, this is not something we should be doing. Period. Doing it not only invites comparisons with regimes you dont like, it endangers the lives of our people. And in my opinion, it likely causes more American deaths than it saves.

I dont believe that we should stoop to whatever some asshole elsewhere in the world does. But they will surely use what we do as an excuse for their own behavior.

[sck5]

Chuckles

Who could argue with what you said? My solution, however, is different. Rather than torturing them in a cell somewhere, I want to hoist the flag send in the Marines and blow their heads off. Its more honest and its the American way.