wanda sykes should be offensive to most anybody, regardless of political disposition. and wishing harm on anyone should also be off-limits, again: to both sides. cheney creeps me out and bush always seemed to have a sort of strategic fecklessness, but they're still folks with families and blahblahblah.
but i have to admit a certain guilty pleasure in the bickering between kentucky's republican leaders. apparently mitch mcconnell (r-ky) refuses to support jim bunning (r-ky) and bunning is lashing out against mcconnell's record in his leadership role in the party. let the snarkiness ensue!
Steven, being a native Kentuckian I find the bickering to be most entertaining. Of course, you and I both know that Jim Bunning is certifiably crazy so even if you don't like McConnell (and I don't), he's right in not supporting Bunning if he wants the Republicans to remain viable in Kentucky. Of course, Bunning won't go away so it's just adding to the drama. It's really amazing.
Wanda Sykes doesn't offend me, she's a comedian, it's her job to say things the rest of us don't have the balls to say. I happen to agree with the gist of her observation re: Limbaugh being a hate propagandist akin to a terrorist, but of course, speaking about that on this thread is likely to get me called a bunch of names. The last time I mentioned this opinion on Facebook, in fact, I got called a bunch of unprintable names and then told by someone that they "wished I would die".... this all came from one of Rush's "Dittoheads", which I thought was appropriate. Hate propaganda seems to be a self-perpetuating beast, doesn't it?
But I digress. Obama rocked the house on Saturday night and Wanda was funny. I doubt he had any influence over the decision to invite her, though. He has a lot of jobs but planning that dinner is not one of them...
I find the whole KY-Sen thing hilarious as well, especially given that Bunning is from my hometown and that my dad helped both McConnell and Bunning get elected to their first terms in office. I doubt he'd touch either of them with a barge pole nowadays.
"The last time I mentioned this opinion on Facebook, in fact, I got called a bunch of unprintable names and then told by someone that they "wished I would die".... this all came from one of Rush's "Dittoheads", which I thought was appropriate. Hate propaganda seems to be a self-perpetuating beast, doesn't it?"
That is a hasty and very broad-brush generalization on your part, and a set-up of the type of self-fulfilling prophecy that really continues a kind of "hate-propoganda" of it's own. All your own, in this case.
You are free to post all that stuff, WonderK -- up to you -- I'm just getting past the point where I can get on board with the "amusement" and "entertainment" you say you're taking from it.
"From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this though: Despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden, there's a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death."
-David Feherty CBS golf Analyst
So Im just gonna jump right on ahead of this thing, cause yknow its coming.
The goofy comment above is dumb, but not really that objectionable to me. Its kind of like, stick to talking about the fuckin golf dude.
The 20th hijacker line wasnt the funniest of the night, but the kidney failure one was pretty fucking funny.
I think though we would all agree theres a world of difference between in-jest 'I hope he dies' and even 'so and so would kill so and so' and actually advocating causing harm toward others.
Hey and non-sequitur pet peeve of the day!
Im fucking sick of hearing about "heros". Astronauts arent fucking heros. Theyre fixing a fucking telescope. Michael Phelps and Captain Philips arent goddamn heros. Theyre just fucking people. Just because youre a gutless media sycophant worm doesnt mean everybody else is some angelic savior of humanity for having fucking jobs.
Unbelievable! Why, that's a complement in my world....
I hadn't read what the golf dude said yet. It's just weird though, isn't it? Kind of douchey and generally unnecessary. Do service people even know/care who Nancy Pelosi is? Besides what has she done to them?
The Stephen Colbert monologue at the Correspondents' Dinner definitely wins as the best comedy routine of the past several years....
That's the best description of Dick Cheney's behavior over the past few months that I've heard yet! Thanks, Poczatek! (PS. What happened to your post count, anyway? Get booted, then resurrected? Just curious.)
Just Wonder-ing? Dick Cheney? You peole are obsessed - same people, same crap...sad - see you in a year - and I bet you're still having the same stupid conversations about the evil republican party! LOL Take care.
maybe you aren't aware that half the people that trampled your rights in the previous administration started doing the exact same thing under the nixon administration? so yeah, i'd say there is a touch of sinister underhandedness w/ the repubs, though i'm sure the dems to some degree are just as guilty. they just would rather screw the rich than the 98%-ers
Whoa, Keith Olbermann defended Limbaugh against the Wanda Sykes comment. I'm going to have to retract what I said about him or else I'll feel like a total commie, LOL.
Limbaugh made a really interesting comment about Dick Cheney on his show apparently - since I read it but don't listen, I'm paraphrasing..... he said that, regarding his comments on torture, maybe "Cheney's not looking for political gain, not trying to make money, maybe he just loves his country." I actually believe this is true. I just happen to think he's dead wrong.
Obsessed when they were in office, still obsessed after they've left. Cheney? Are you serious? Still talking about dick Cheney in an Architecture-Related website?
waterboarding terrorists, people picked up on the battle field and in covert ops is not torture. Its dumping water on someone to simulate drowning, and they are not citizens of the United States. I really dont understand the aversion to waterboarding in the aftermath of 9-11. If our military had a way to coerce people to talk they had a reasonable suspicion without hurting them - Id say thats pretty brilliant. We are probably the only nation on earth who stops at waterboarding. Most others would go much much further.
Why is this debate on this thread so rooted in media celebs? Wonder K is your point to try and bring out the worst of the right wing media posts? All that does is deteriorate the discussion into a flame war of quotes.
Yeah, according to evilP's logic, we could pick up any random French guy (just because he's not American), accuse him of anti-American activities, and waterboard the shit out of him. (I guess due process doesn't apply to swarthy, bearded foreigners?)
Hey, as El Rushbo said, it's all just a big fraternity prank, right? Until someone gets killed. Or the historical reputation of the United States as a great country goes down the crapper.
I'd like to personally thank Dick Cheney for wrecking everything that Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, et al. created. Right after I thanked him, I'd punch him in his crooked nose.
Farwest - dont be so dramatic. People were picked up with "reasonable" suspicion. They are not subject to due process under our law just as the British invaders of the war of 1812 were not Jefferson's time either. I agree at some point they need to be tried in some form of court but it wont be ours.
Speaking of Eisenhower - in his time we just let the CIA assassinate people and make it look like an accident and no one ever knew - is that what you'd rather go back to so you can pretend the boogieman doesn't exist?
Again the leaps from reality to sensationalism is amazing around here.
EP, it is because we signed this thing called the Geneva Convention.
If you do not understand that then I have no sympathy is some breaks into your home and rapes your children to death in front of you with your eyes taped open and bound to an ever-increasing-in-temperature radiator. Hopefully, while your being scaled to death, someone will slice open your wife's abdomen... pull out her uterus and dump a bucket of acid into her viscera.
Anyone who doesn't respect the Geneva Convention doesn't deserve respect, justice or humanity.
Not to be terrifying or extreme but this is why we have this whole standard because people use to do this sort of thing.
No one's being dramatic. These are deadly serious issues. 420 apparently innocent men were taken 10,000 miles from their homes, tortured by the American government (YOUR government) for a number of years, then released without charge.
Dramatic? I think the very serious problem here is that you have no sense of the historical importance of the acts your country committed in your name.
Or you may simply not care. That's your right. But please allow the rest of us to actually care what our country does in our name. Thanks.
Again, by evilP's logic any swarthy non-American is fair game for waterboarding the shit out of. Simply because he's not American, "just as the British invaders of the war of 1812 blah blah blah." Semantics doesn't change the fact that it was wrong, and torture.
If that person was a "soldier" and there was no Geneva Convention, you'd be committing an act of treason by stopping an occupying force. My point was there isn't much difference between guro-styled brutality, torture and serial killing if it isn't defined.
The problem is that this country has it explicitly written in the constitution, explicitly agreed to it internationally, has explicitly stated when starting wars with offending countries over the matter and used it explicitly as a reasoning for entering conflict that there should never, ever be torture nor should any person be forced to experience any torture physical or mental that is cruel or unusual.
Kicking the shit out of someone is one thing. Kicking the shit out of someone over and over again is another thing. Controlled drowning is quite another thing.
It makes us hypocrites and unfortunately creates a culture of violence that breeds more violence. Kids who are beaten grow up to beat their own kids.
waterboarding terrorists, people picked up on the battle field and in covert ops is not torture. Its dumping water on someone to simulate drowning, and they are not citizens of the United States.
the quote is "dont be so dramatic. People were picked up with "reasonable" suspicion. They are not subject to due process under our law just as the British invaders of the war of 1812 were not Jefferson's time either. I agree at some point they need to be tried in some form of court but it wont be ours."
From Wikepedia:
'During the course of the war, both the Americans and British launched invasions of each other's territory, all of which were unsuccessful or gained only temporary success. At the end of the war, the British held parts of Maine and some outposts in the sparsely populated West while the Americans held Canadian territory near Detroit, but these occupied territories were restored at the end of the war....'
it takes two to tango, including the u.s. increasing moving westward into territory it didn't posess and the brits supporting indian raiding parties and blockades.
The torture issue is not one any of us here can argue the merits of. No matter how much I might believe its ineffective, i cant be sure.
And no matter how much evil, pocz or kurt might claim that it works like a dream, they cant be sure.
The point is that there are many documents from incredibly well informed and experienced intelligence agents and military leaders who say there is really NO EVIDENCE that 'enhanced interrogation' methods elicit any more information than could be obtained through conventional means. And there are those, like Dick Cheney, who will fight for the rest of his life in defense of the methods he feels are right.
Since that question is virtually unknowable... since we will never know if torture actually works, what other grounds of arguing this issue are we left with beyond the moral and ethical?
Is torture right? take the politics out, take the condescension out, take ulterior motives out. Is torture right?
maybe it's just me but when you go waltzing in and illegally invading a country and actually make it worse off than when you invaded it... i'm sure the locals aren't going to shower you with love and adoration.
pocz,
several hundred captives died under our watch. so their lives weren't spared...
but torture works, right? just ask ibn al-shaykh al-libi
Many prisoners died in American military custody in the Iraq war. Look at the comprehensive set of photos that Slate published from Abu Ghraib.
The larger point, for me, is that torture (however you define it) destroys Americanism as a concept.
It's one thing for a CIA officer to decide in a particular case to torture a prisoner when there's a known ticking bomb, and then suffer the consequences of his actions.
It's a far different thing for Dick Cheney to devise a systematic policy of torture practiced and espoused by the US government. This is what is really being discussed. The last Republican administration legalized and made torture a mandatory component of our foreign-policy strategy.
Not to split hairs, holz, but I've heard from Muslim friends of mine who have visited Iraq that at least the southern parts of the country are now relatively healthy, with lots of new infrastructure and airports etc.
I'm not defending our invasion under false pretenses. Just saying that I've heard from civilians who have visited certain parts of Iraq that it's much better than when Saddam was in power. At least for Shia.
"maybe it's just me but when you go waltzing in and illegally invading a country and actually make it worse off than when you invaded it... i'm sure the locals aren't going to shower you with love and adoration"
I'd argue its better off and has a better future than when we liberated (not invaded) them, since none of their muslim brothers were up to the task. Oh wait, we dont like muslims so that cant be the reason we would go there right? Hmmm, it must have been a sinister evil plot by greedy Americans to spend 750 billion dollars blowing shit up. Your head needs to exit your ass son.
Whether or not water boarding is torture is completely irrelevant. though according to the UN... torture is...
"any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession"
so, simulating drowning does not cause mental suffering, gotcha. Pocz, you keep making the old testament style arguments...
"Well they kill our troops so we can torture theres!"
if you truly believe that's appropriate, im not sure there's even any reason to discuss it as our views are polar opposites. But if you believe that the United States SHOULD hold itself to a higher standard, a much higher standard, than our enemies; i dont see why you would even be willing to blur the line between what is, and what is not torture.
Again, why even mess with it? If we cant be sure that torturing people yield better results than NOT torturing people, why risk further sullying of our already battered reputation?
And why play semantic games with such a crucial issue. My thinking is this, and you feel free to refute what you dont agree with.
As i said before, you can never say that torture works. You can never even say that enhanced interrogation works. It is never a certainty, and there is no proof that it does.
If we can not be sure of its results, and we accept that our international reputation as a 'force of good' is critical, why are we even risking its further degradation?
The Implosion of the Republican Party (hang on while I get some popcorn...)
wanda sykes should be offensive to most anybody, regardless of political disposition. and wishing harm on anyone should also be off-limits, again: to both sides. cheney creeps me out and bush always seemed to have a sort of strategic fecklessness, but they're still folks with families and blahblahblah.
but i have to admit a certain guilty pleasure in the bickering between kentucky's republican leaders. apparently mitch mcconnell (r-ky) refuses to support jim bunning (r-ky) and bunning is lashing out against mcconnell's record in his leadership role in the party. let the snarkiness ensue!
I don't get it. Why should Wanda Sykes be considered offensive to most anybody?
Steven, being a native Kentuckian I find the bickering to be most entertaining. Of course, you and I both know that Jim Bunning is certifiably crazy so even if you don't like McConnell (and I don't), he's right in not supporting Bunning if he wants the Republicans to remain viable in Kentucky. Of course, Bunning won't go away so it's just adding to the drama. It's really amazing.
Wanda Sykes doesn't offend me, she's a comedian, it's her job to say things the rest of us don't have the balls to say. I happen to agree with the gist of her observation re: Limbaugh being a hate propagandist akin to a terrorist, but of course, speaking about that on this thread is likely to get me called a bunch of names. The last time I mentioned this opinion on Facebook, in fact, I got called a bunch of unprintable names and then told by someone that they "wished I would die".... this all came from one of Rush's "Dittoheads", which I thought was appropriate. Hate propaganda seems to be a self-perpetuating beast, doesn't it?
But I digress. Obama rocked the house on Saturday night and Wanda was funny. I doubt he had any influence over the decision to invite her, though. He has a lot of jobs but planning that dinner is not one of them...
I find the whole KY-Sen thing hilarious as well, especially given that Bunning is from my hometown and that my dad helped both McConnell and Bunning get elected to their first terms in office. I doubt he'd touch either of them with a barge pole nowadays.
Im pretty sure its the correspondents association that hires the comedian each year. The president is there at their invitation.
I thought it was pretty fucking funny. I mean lets be real, the harder edge routines are really the only ones worth having. Remember Colbert 06'?
I think if anything she just seemed abit nervous up there, eh?
"The last time I mentioned this opinion on Facebook, in fact, I got called a bunch of unprintable names and then told by someone that they "wished I would die".... this all came from one of Rush's "Dittoheads", which I thought was appropriate. Hate propaganda seems to be a self-perpetuating beast, doesn't it?"
That is a hasty and very broad-brush generalization on your part, and a set-up of the type of self-fulfilling prophecy that really continues a kind of "hate-propoganda" of it's own. All your own, in this case.
You are free to post all that stuff, WonderK -- up to you -- I'm just getting past the point where I can get on board with the "amusement" and "entertainment" you say you're taking from it.
Wonderk wrote:
"...re: Limbaugh being a hate propagandist akin to a terrorist.."
Unbelievable.
"From my own experience visiting the troops in the Middle East, I can tell you this though: Despite how the conflict has been portrayed by our glorious media, if you gave any U.S. soldier a gun with two bullets in it, and he found himself in an elevator with Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Osama bin Laden, there's a good chance that Nancy Pelosi would get shot twice, and Harry Reid and bin Laden would be strangled to death."
-David Feherty CBS golf Analyst
poczatek,
thanks for posting that. i think it just reinforces the point that a lot of the more progressive people here are making.
So Im just gonna jump right on ahead of this thing, cause yknow its coming.
The goofy comment above is dumb, but not really that objectionable to me. Its kind of like, stick to talking about the fuckin golf dude.
The 20th hijacker line wasnt the funniest of the night, but the kidney failure one was pretty fucking funny.
I think though we would all agree theres a world of difference between in-jest 'I hope he dies' and even 'so and so would kill so and so' and actually advocating causing harm toward others.
Hey and non-sequitur pet peeve of the day!
Im fucking sick of hearing about "heros". Astronauts arent fucking heros. Theyre fixing a fucking telescope. Michael Phelps and Captain Philips arent goddamn heros. Theyre just fucking people. Just because youre a gutless media sycophant worm doesnt mean everybody else is some angelic savior of humanity for having fucking jobs.
you're my hero, oe !!
AAHRG! Fuck you!
Alright. Theres too much love in here.
Ronald reagan was a KKK grand dragon! And he invented crack!
Hows that?
Unbelievable! Why, that's a complement in my world....
I hadn't read what the golf dude said yet. It's just weird though, isn't it? Kind of douchey and generally unnecessary. Do service people even know/care who Nancy Pelosi is? Besides what has she done to them?
The Stephen Colbert monologue at the Correspondents' Dinner definitely wins as the best comedy routine of the past several years....
It's funny how you can leave a pile of crap on the ground, and when you come back to it, there's a bunch of flies buzzing around it.
That's the best description of Dick Cheney's behavior over the past few months that I've heard yet! Thanks, Poczatek! (PS. What happened to your post count, anyway? Get booted, then resurrected? Just curious.)
Because why not fan the flames with a Christopher Hitchens quote....
Just Wonder-ing? Dick Cheney? You peole are obsessed - same people, same crap...sad - see you in a year - and I bet you're still having the same stupid conversations about the evil republican party! LOL Take care.
pocz,
maybe you aren't aware that half the people that trampled your rights in the previous administration started doing the exact same thing under the nixon administration? so yeah, i'd say there is a touch of sinister underhandedness w/ the repubs, though i'm sure the dems to some degree are just as guilty. they just would rather screw the rich than the 98%-ers
Whoa, Keith Olbermann defended Limbaugh against the Wanda Sykes comment. I'm going to have to retract what I said about him or else I'll feel like a total commie, LOL.
Limbaugh made a really interesting comment about Dick Cheney on his show apparently - since I read it but don't listen, I'm paraphrasing..... he said that, regarding his comments on torture, maybe "Cheney's not looking for political gain, not trying to make money, maybe he just loves his country." I actually believe this is true. I just happen to think he's dead wrong.
Obsessed when they were in office, still obsessed after they've left. Cheney? Are you serious? Still talking about dick Cheney in an Architecture-Related website?
waterboarding terrorists, people picked up on the battle field and in covert ops is not torture. Its dumping water on someone to simulate drowning, and they are not citizens of the United States. I really dont understand the aversion to waterboarding in the aftermath of 9-11. If our military had a way to coerce people to talk they had a reasonable suspicion without hurting them - Id say thats pretty brilliant. We are probably the only nation on earth who stops at waterboarding. Most others would go much much further.
Why is this debate on this thread so rooted in media celebs? Wonder K is your point to try and bring out the worst of the right wing media posts? All that does is deteriorate the discussion into a flame war of quotes.
Yeah, according to evilP's logic, we could pick up any random French guy (just because he's not American), accuse him of anti-American activities, and waterboard the shit out of him. (I guess due process doesn't apply to swarthy, bearded foreigners?)
Hey, as El Rushbo said, it's all just a big fraternity prank, right? Until someone gets killed. Or the historical reputation of the United States as a great country goes down the crapper.
I'd like to personally thank Dick Cheney for wrecking everything that Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, et al. created. Right after I thanked him, I'd punch him in his crooked nose.
Dick [Cheney] Derangement Syndrome 5 months out of office.....
Farwest - dont be so dramatic. People were picked up with "reasonable" suspicion. They are not subject to due process under our law just as the British invaders of the war of 1812 were not Jefferson's time either. I agree at some point they need to be tried in some form of court but it wont be ours.
Speaking of Eisenhower - in his time we just let the CIA assassinate people and make it look like an accident and no one ever knew - is that what you'd rather go back to so you can pretend the boogieman doesn't exist?
Again the leaps from reality to sensationalism is amazing around here.
EP, it is because we signed this thing called the Geneva Convention.
If you do not understand that then I have no sympathy is some breaks into your home and rapes your children to death in front of you with your eyes taped open and bound to an ever-increasing-in-temperature radiator. Hopefully, while your being scaled to death, someone will slice open your wife's abdomen... pull out her uterus and dump a bucket of acid into her viscera.
Anyone who doesn't respect the Geneva Convention doesn't deserve respect, justice or humanity.
Not to be terrifying or extreme but this is why we have this whole standard because people use to do this sort of thing.
If someone broke into your home and raped your children would you abide by the Geneva convention rules in dealing with them?
Oh man, I can totally hear 4chan fapping from here after that description.
No one's being dramatic. These are deadly serious issues. 420 apparently innocent men were taken 10,000 miles from their homes, tortured by the American government (YOUR government) for a number of years, then released without charge.
Dramatic? I think the very serious problem here is that you have no sense of the historical importance of the acts your country committed in your name.
Or you may simply not care. That's your right. But please allow the rest of us to actually care what our country does in our name. Thanks.
Again, by evilP's logic any swarthy non-American is fair game for waterboarding the shit out of. Simply because he's not American, "just as the British invaders of the war of 1812 blah blah blah." Semantics doesn't change the fact that it was wrong, and torture.
ep,
i'm guessing if someone broke into your home and is raping your children, you've already been taken care of.
If that person was a "soldier" and there was no Geneva Convention, you'd be committing an act of treason by stopping an occupying force. My point was there isn't much difference between guro-styled brutality, torture and serial killing if it isn't defined.
The problem is that this country has it explicitly written in the constitution, explicitly agreed to it internationally, has explicitly stated when starting wars with offending countries over the matter and used it explicitly as a reasoning for entering conflict that there should never, ever be torture nor should any person be forced to experience any torture physical or mental that is cruel or unusual.
Kicking the shit out of someone is one thing. Kicking the shit out of someone over and over again is another thing. Controlled drowning is quite another thing.
It makes us hypocrites and unfortunately creates a culture of violence that breeds more violence. Kids who are beaten grow up to beat their own kids.
Which one of the released without charge prisoners at Guantanamo raped your (or anyone's) children, EvilP?
"Again, by evilP's logic any swarthy non-American is fair game for waterboarding the shit out of. Simply because he's not American,"
No - again "reasonable" cause on a battlefield or insurgent city. You don't learn do you? You just keep trying to paint me with that racist brush
Speaks for itself. Not due process.
the quote is "dont be so dramatic. People were picked up with "reasonable" suspicion. They are not subject to due process under our law just as the British invaders of the war of 1812 were not Jefferson's time either. I agree at some point they need to be tried in some form of court but it wont be ours."
BWAHAHAH... BRITISH INVADERS?
1812? THAT'S GREAT!!!!
Dude, we invaded Canada. Invaded!
We were the hostile front.
From Wikepedia:
'During the course of the war, both the Americans and British launched invasions of each other's territory, all of which were unsuccessful or gained only temporary success. At the end of the war, the British held parts of Maine and some outposts in the sparsely populated West while the Americans held Canadian territory near Detroit, but these occupied territories were restored at the end of the war....'
It takes a re-educated liberal to believe that we were the aggressor in the War of 1812. Is this what they are teaching nowadys?
it takes two to tango, including the u.s. increasing moving westward into territory it didn't posess and the brits supporting indian raiding parties and blockades.
The torture issue is not one any of us here can argue the merits of. No matter how much I might believe its ineffective, i cant be sure.
And no matter how much evil, pocz or kurt might claim that it works like a dream, they cant be sure.
The point is that there are many documents from incredibly well informed and experienced intelligence agents and military leaders who say there is really NO EVIDENCE that 'enhanced interrogation' methods elicit any more information than could be obtained through conventional means. And there are those, like Dick Cheney, who will fight for the rest of his life in defense of the methods he feels are right.
Since that question is virtually unknowable... since we will never know if torture actually works, what other grounds of arguing this issue are we left with beyond the moral and ethical?
Is torture right? take the politics out, take the condescension out, take ulterior motives out. Is torture right?
First Lletdown we have to agree waterboarding is infact torture
If it was Holy Water, it'd be torture....
Their lives were spared, unlike what happens to our Soldiers when captured.
maybe it's just me but when you go waltzing in and illegally invading a country and actually make it worse off than when you invaded it... i'm sure the locals aren't going to shower you with love and adoration.
pocz,
several hundred captives died under our watch. so their lives weren't spared...
but torture works, right? just ask ibn al-shaykh al-libi
Many prisoners died in American military custody in the Iraq war. Look at the comprehensive set of photos that Slate published from Abu Ghraib.
The larger point, for me, is that torture (however you define it) destroys Americanism as a concept.
It's one thing for a CIA officer to decide in a particular case to torture a prisoner when there's a known ticking bomb, and then suffer the consequences of his actions.
It's a far different thing for Dick Cheney to devise a systematic policy of torture practiced and espoused by the US government. This is what is really being discussed. The last Republican administration legalized and made torture a mandatory component of our foreign-policy strategy.
Sorry, Salon, not Slate.
This happened in a military prison in Iraq
Not to split hairs, holz, but I've heard from Muslim friends of mine who have visited Iraq that at least the southern parts of the country are now relatively healthy, with lots of new infrastructure and airports etc.
I'm not defending our invasion under false pretenses. Just saying that I've heard from civilians who have visited certain parts of Iraq that it's much better than when Saddam was in power. At least for Shia.
"maybe it's just me but when you go waltzing in and illegally invading a country and actually make it worse off than when you invaded it... i'm sure the locals aren't going to shower you with love and adoration"
I'd argue its better off and has a better future than when we liberated (not invaded) them, since none of their muslim brothers were up to the task. Oh wait, we dont like muslims so that cant be the reason we would go there right? Hmmm, it must have been a sinister evil plot by greedy Americans to spend 750 billion dollars blowing shit up. Your head needs to exit your ass son.
Whether or not water boarding is torture is completely irrelevant. though according to the UN... torture is...
"any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession"
so, simulating drowning does not cause mental suffering, gotcha. Pocz, you keep making the old testament style arguments...
"Well they kill our troops so we can torture theres!"
if you truly believe that's appropriate, im not sure there's even any reason to discuss it as our views are polar opposites. But if you believe that the United States SHOULD hold itself to a higher standard, a much higher standard, than our enemies; i dont see why you would even be willing to blur the line between what is, and what is not torture.
Define "severe"
Worse than a splinter but less painful than having your arm cut off?
Again, why even mess with it? If we cant be sure that torturing people yield better results than NOT torturing people, why risk further sullying of our already battered reputation?
And why play semantic games with such a crucial issue. My thinking is this, and you feel free to refute what you dont agree with.
As i said before, you can never say that torture works. You can never even say that enhanced interrogation works. It is never a certainty, and there is no proof that it does.
If we can not be sure of its results, and we accept that our international reputation as a 'force of good' is critical, why are we even risking its further degradation?
Block this user
Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?
Archinect
This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.