• papajack said on Apr 24, 2009....

  Torture is inhumane and illegal!

• crybabylu said on Apr 24, 2009....

  Papa Jack----Thank you for your comment.  I appreciate it!

• Hegemone said on Apr 24, 2009....

  Yeah, I'm not fully read on the issue at hand, but I'm sticking with these thoughts ... torture is wrong if the person has a soul, if they don't,( if they're one of those void beings cookie cuttered out just to bring carnage) it won't matter what you do to them.  It's also wrong to change a whole nation's stance on an issue without really check to see how they feel, sometimes the few don't know a damn thing about what the many are thinking.

• crybabylu said on Apr 24, 2009....

  Thanks, Hegemone.

• stopmediabias said on Apr 24, 2009....

  CB- A challenge if you are serious.  Prove to me that anyone was tortured.  Find one single documented case of torture in the last 9 years that proves the Bush adminstration or its underlings tortured anyone as a matter of policy or non-policy(acting on their own).   

  Find anyone that was convicted or much less charged with torturing someone as part of a policy of the Bush administration or acting on their own.

  PBS-Frontline took the torture debate and dissected it.  Everything is there, the timelines, the implications, all the investigations, everything.  Go and see if you can find a reasonable substantiated case of torture.

  http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/torture/

  Go ahead, I challenge you.

  And moral warm and fuzzy talk, this is the real world and there are never absolutes.  Even the most braindead bleed-heart Liberal if it really came down to torture or 1,000's of corpses they are going to say "ya torture that fucker, twice if you have too."

  A quote from the PBS site from a Professor and expert on the Middle East.

  "First is that, in my opinion, to deny the use of preventive interrogational torture in such circumstances may be as cold hearted and immoral as it is to permit torture in the first place. It is cold hearted because, in true catastrophic cases, the failure to use preventive interrogational torture will result in the death of innocent people. Upholding the rights of the suspect will negate the rights, including the very fundamental right to life, of innocent victims."

• crybabylu said on Apr 24, 2009....

  waterboarding is torture!

• travelr712 said on Apr 24, 2009....

  again smb, you miss the entire point. but i'll say first that even the expert you quoted called it torture. you, as the bush administration, are trying to make the argument 'it's ok to torture in these cases'. but the overlying point is that bush stood before the world and proclaimed that they did not torture, when they did. whether or not it is justified is not the question. it is illegal, and so his entire administration is guilty of an illegal act while he was in charge, and he lied about it.
   
  you put the issue well cry :-)

• curmudgeon said on Apr 24, 2009....

  That America behaved "morally" regarding enemies in our custody if not for Bush is misleading at best.
   
  Please investigate the CIA's Phoenix Program during the Vietnam years.
  Look into the renditions to ally countries who carried out our dirty work that occurred during the Clinton Years. If anyone thinks that Obama will not resurrect this program, they are naive. Moreover, look into the activities of the School of the Americas, which taught a great many Latin American dictators the fine arts of interrogation, among other things.
  
  Americans who believe that we somehow occupied any moral high ground in the 20th Century are deluded indeed. This has nothing to do with right or wrong. Nor does this have anything to do with polishing our tarnished history. This
  dog and pony show has all the earmarks of a partisan lynching, to which I can only say - what goes around comes around.
  
  Obama has violated international law by killing innocent Pakistani civilians with Predator missile strikes.
  
  Let him hand himself over to the Hague without delay.
  

• travelr712 said on Apr 24, 2009....

  there was no violation of law in this act, and it was against talaban militants who cross the borders into afghanastan. i'm surprised at you curm, i'd think you would be behind this since it was talaban that was killed.

• Cussane said on Apr 24, 2009....

  I never cease to be amazed at the general public, torture in one form or another has been going on either by american's or with the consent/direction of american government for years, from operation paperclip where we brought nazi's into the USA to work on the space program who designed the V1 & V2 rockets using slave labour, to the phoenix program, to the central american death squads to plan columbia and now Gitmo. if you want to slam Bush, then slam all the rest as well, they were just better at keeping it a secret.
   
  America has not held any moral highground for the last 100 years, why start now, i bet you dollars to dognuts that Obama will follow the rest....time will tell
   
  Cussane

• stopmediabias said on Apr 24, 2009....

  CB-Holy cow that was a brilliant retort!

  Trav-It is not my intention to justify any form of torture, my whole position is actual torture by definition has to rise to the level of extreme pain and suffering.  What we did to these detainees was not extreme, did not cause extreme pain, and did not cause extreme suffering.  Past convictions of waterboarding did fall under this definition.

  Plus if it was torture why did it work?

   

• D6fer said on Apr 24, 2009....

  so let me get this straight cbl......you think we should become like the third world and the Obama administration should prosecute the Bush admin? Is that what we want to become? .....so if anyone who becomes President disagrees with the previous administration, then they can just change or make up new laws and then prosecute the past admin.....that is ridiculous. 

• crybabylu said on Apr 24, 2009....

  D6---waterboarding is torture.  torture is illegal!

• Cussane said on Apr 24, 2009....

  I am shocked, torture, where, when, who my god hang the bastards from the highest yardarm, starting with .....lets see Truman- Operation paperclip Kennedy/ Johnston- Phoneix Project Reagan- Contras/ El Salvador death squads Bush/ Clinton/ Bush Jr- Plan Columbia Obama- Plan Columbia oh yes lets not forget Carter, Ford, Clinton, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush Jr and Obama for the school of americas Holy shit people every nation uses interagation methods that the general public find distasteful, ask a brit if they care when an IRA suspect is abused, a spanaird if a basque suspect is abused etc etc etc, for the USA to suddenly find some moral objection (btw how come the USA never stopped NORAID when they were shipping weapons to the IRA) is laughable, but i dirgress, if you want to go after people for these "crimes" then go after them all, then we will hear nothing but outrage from the dem's when we go after Jimmy and Billy and Rush will have a coranary when we go after the memorry of RR and Bush Snr. seems they want thier cake and eat it to Cussane

• kelly said on Apr 24, 2009....

  "Plus if it was torture why did it work?"
  
  
  It didn't.  We now know that we were getting good info from Zubaydah until they started torturing him.
  
  
  I think it's priceless that the morally bankrupt fellows such as smb, d6, et. al. resort to saying "well, everyone else has done it."  What kind of sixth grade logic is that?  Creating a civilized future cannot be left to such individuals as these.  

• stopmediabias said on Apr 25, 2009....

  Kelly-even though bloc's source is contradicted by several different credible sources and it doesn't matter because even if it is true what about Kalid Sheik Mohammed?  He was waterboarded and it lead to a shutdown of the 2nd wave attack.

  "I think it's priceless that the morally bankrupt fellows such as smb, d6, et. al. resort to saying "well, everyone else has done it."  What kind of sixth grade logic is that?  Creating a civilized future cannot be left to such individuals as these. " 
   

  Please indulge me in pointing out where I have made a point that is even close to that.  I don't believe anyone was tortured and you guys seem to be having a hard time proving it.  This whole debate started based on that memo and you haven't read it, I'd say that makes you quite morally bankrupt when you are saying your own people have committed atrocities when the real information says otherwise. 

   

• dyingman said on Apr 25, 2009....

  Even the most braindead bleed-heart Liberal if it really came down to torture or 1,000's of corpses they are going to say "ya torture that fucker, twice if you have too."
  
  WWJD?  He's was one liberal who might surprise you.
  
  Getting a little less liberal than that:
  "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure."  - Thomas Jefferson.
  
  The American population has fallen under the spell of the Roves and Cheneys of the world that this blood only comes from trained soldiers.
  Sometimes the blood comes from you and me.  Flight 93 supplied the first patriots to die taking down tyrants.
  
  I will take my chances as one of the thousands to die in order to live in a nation that does not torture people. 
  
  *DM
  

• stopmediabias said on Apr 25, 2009....

  "I will take my chances as one of the thousands to die in order to live in a nation that does not torture people."

  Ok, what about 10,000?  What about 100 babies? (Don't answer that)  What about 100 children?  What about 5,000 dead and 70,000 injured?  Even Bill Clinton agreed certain extreme situations require extreme actions.  We were lucky and didn't have to torture anyone, but as rare as it may seem it could happen. 

  Jesus was about as Liberal as Glenn Beck. 

• crybabylu said on Apr 25, 2009....

  Jesus is liberal!

• crybabylu said on Apr 25, 2009....

  I just told my husband what I wrote and he said the word liberal means different things to different people.  I wasn't referring to the political term liberal, such as conservative vs liberal.

• travelr712 said on Apr 25, 2009....

  ok smb, if waterboarding is not against at least american law, why did they have to do it in other countries? if it is a legal means to extract information from dangerous criminals, why did they not spare great expense and the inevitable question of taking it out of the country, and just do it here?

• stopmediabias said on Apr 25, 2009....

  CB-I'll bet Jesus would be all for a woman's right to choose.

  Trav-I don't have a clue as to where this was done and never said it wasn't against American law.  This is not about right or wrong or good or bad, it about using the tools we need to use to protect our people without crossing the line into torture.  

  But really the main question here is why release these memos?  Presenting the truth is all well and good but at the expense of important interrogation methods that worked?  And of course leave out other memos that spell out in detail how effective these interrogation methods were.

• kelly said on Apr 25, 2009....

  "He was waterboarded and it lead to a shutdown of the 2nd wave attack."
  
  
  Oh, really?  Ha!  OK, I'll bite.  How do you know that?  You can make stuff up all day but it's still not true.  I will grant, however, that the Republican distortion machine is running at full throttle.

• travelr712 said on Apr 25, 2009....

  well of course it's about right or wrong, good or bad smb. if it wasn't, then what the terrorists are doing would be ignored. america is a nation of laws, it's what keeps us from becoming a country like lyberia. those at the highest levels of government are even moreso required to abide by those laws. it is the foundation of our society. there is no difference under that law between clinton lying to a congressional investigation and bush saying that america does not use torture to extract information. they are both illegal under american law. if we allow our government to circumvent those laws, we allow our country to be distroyed from within.

• stopmediabias said on Apr 26, 2009....

  Kelly-The memos that President Obama released, this is where this information is coming from.  I wrote a post about them, the actual memos are linked on the first comment post.  These attacks were suppose to happen in bloc's home state.

  http://www.soulcast.com/post/show/208163/Will-bloc-Retract-His-Torture-Logic%3F

  Travel-Very well said, (still not buying it that any laws were broken)  My comment about right or wrong or good or bad was referring to the fact there are a lot of bad and wrong things we have to do.  Do our men and woman in the military like doing enhanced interrogations?  I think wars are beyond right and wrong and good and bad.  Saving millions of people maybe the right thing to do but killing hundreds of thousands to accomplish this is still wrong.

• travelr712 said on Apr 26, 2009....

  well there's something i agree with you totally on smb!

• curmudgeon said on Apr 27, 2009....

  Is there any such thing as a "right war" in which non-combatants are killed?
  
  No. But it's not a question or right anymore - it's doing wrong in the face of that which is far worse.
  

• javadewd said on Apr 27, 2009....

  So will I get blocked on this post, too, for saying that it beats getting your head chopped off by our enemies that have a law of their own that they defend vehemently?
  
  

• Cussane said on Apr 27, 2009....

  Ok, look at it this way, after ww2 we hung nazi's (except for those brought to the usa under operation paperclip) for toturing POW's, they had lawyer's who told them it was ok, we sued the iranian government when they tortured us citizens so what makes it ok for us but not them????, second, under the 3rd UN Convention which we signed torture is illegal, it is also illegal under the UCMJ, members of the armed forces have an obligation not to obey a illegal order even if it is from the comander in chief, that is drilled in right from basic onwards, remember we hung people for "just following orders" third torture is ineffective, give me a black and decker power drill and cheney's kneecap and i will have him telling me he is osama within 30 minutes lastly, if it is effective like some people claim, how come osama and most of the leadership is still free Cussane

• stopmediabias said on Apr 27, 2009....

  Ok Cussane let me repeat to you what I posed to CB earlier:
   
  "CB- A challenge if you are serious.  Prove to me that anyone was tortured.  Find one single documented case of torture in the last 9 years that proves the Bush adminstration or its underlings tortured anyone as a matter of policy or non-policy(acting on their own)."   
   
  We all know torture is bad and wrong and illegal, that isn't the question.  I don't believe anything the Bush administration did rose to the level of torture and the memos posted above substaniate part of my position. 

• javadewd said on Apr 27, 2009....

  I don't see any Islamic Jihadists being tried for beheading reporters... Oh, wait, those aren't "military" by the UN Convention definitions... Those are "civilians," guns or no guns, rocket launchers or no rocket launchers... We're responsible for killing "civilians," yeah, that's the ticket... It makes the US look that much more repulsing, even though these "civilians," or ultra-right-wing extremists (A Jihadist is nothing more than an "ultra-conservative," yeah, that's the ticket...) who want to kill us by any means necessary, be it with a gun or a sword or their bare hands... They don't care.
  
  I still think showering them with pig's blood would have been deemed "torture," but it would have probably got the job done without all this bullshit. I'm sure if any of you had a family member directly affected by 9/11 or any terrorist attack, you wouldn't be so quick to say, "oh, boo hoo, we're mistreating the people who want us dead."
  
  

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