[BigV]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

The essence of my irritation with tw is that I want the war won, and tw broadly implies, though he will never say it aloud because the whole board would turn on him, that he does not.

Since you're the only one to come to that conclusion, it is clear to me that the essence of your irritation is, like many of your complaints, self inflicted. You're irritated because you infer tw "does not want the war won". It's your problem, not tw's, whether you take ownership of it or not.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

When you are fighting an insurgency, intel on the insurgency is as vital as oxygen.

Agreed.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

This gives the intel collectors a LOT of latitude.

Understatement of the year. It may give them "latitude", but there is overwhelming evidence that the fruit of this "latitude" is rarely genuine, useful "intel". Dude, torture produces noise, pain and more enemies by virtue of the very bad publicity, not intel, certainly not enough to outweigh the costs.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Since I, for one, and very likely you for another, don't want to get ambushed in my bed,

Typical melodrama, exaggeration and fearmongering. And by the way, stop putting words in my mouth. I especially don't like you presuming to speak for me. This statement of yours and the next one taken together imply "torture is necessary to prevent a bedtime ambush". Have I summarized your thoughts correctly? I think I have and I think they're bullshit.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

I don't have much problem with our self-made, self-declared enemies getting leaned on, tortured, and squeezed dry, for their sins.

Time out. Stop. This is wrong. You wrongly presume that all subjected to torture were enemies to begin with, a false assumption. A false assumption made more dangerous by the fact that any torture victims that were not enemies to begin with would certainly become enemies afterward. But although this enemy-generating policy is troubling and self destructive enough, it is dwarfed in comparison by the enemy-generating buzz our attitude toward torture inflames. It's like putting out the fire with gasoline.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

A certain kind of violent and virulent anti-Americanism must be ruthlessly opposed, broken, discredited, ruined, and practiced only by dead people. It must be read as licence for Americans to come and kill you in your backyard. For too many decades my nation has been the longsuffering target of every damned idiot with a bomb and a grudge, and I was heartily sick of it in 1975. Imagine how savage I get about it thirty years on. We've been too easy on those who would assail us, when they could be making far better lives -- at least through being wealthy enough to buy options -- emulating us instead. I deride the whole bomb-and-grudge crowd as a pack of idiots, and idiots never have good causes.

blah blah blah... You refuse to see that you can not (sorry, the right words here are pretty short), repeat, can not toture our enemies into extinction. Think of the legend of the hydra. Each head you neutralize with torture spawns 2 or 10 or 100 new heads. You persist in willfully ignoring this fact. Too bad for us and them.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Your claim that my view is "chickenshit" is an extraordinary claim made without supporting evidence. You'll have to come up with it, and it had better be suitably impressive.

By way of answering, allow me to paraphrase, if you will:

Why should I need some conferred authority to remark that your view is chickenshit, when we all have the evidence of your posts? Of all the CellarDwellars, are you not the most immoveably wrongheaded that torture is in any way, shape or form, useful, never mind "Pro-American"?

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Why should I need some conferred authority to remark that tw is the first and foremost of the complainers when we all have the evidence of his posts? Of all the CellarDwellars, does he not complain the hardest? You get the impression the guy doesn't believe Republican Presidents exist, or something. You certainly come away with the impression that Republican foreign policy leads to defeats for the kind of people tw likes -- communists and suchlike fascists. (I don't see much practical difference between these varieties of dictatorship. Both are reprehensible. Unfreedom in general is reprehensible, and our foes are all about unfreedom -- for such as we anyway.) So, he utters the most disgraceful hogwash. The man's a leftist and a mental mess. Being a crank isn't good if you want to be taken seriously -- the guy's understanding of recent history is beyond mistaken and into the bizarre.

Whatever, tw can be king of the complainers if you want. It was overreaching for a humor point on my part. You dislike tw more than you dislike me, fine, whatever. But I stand shoulder to shoulder with tw in opposition to you on this score.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

If you're going to say our policy is all wrong front to back, it behooves you to come up with a credible alternative, one that actually is better, and one that advances our interests while you're at it. Tw is ducking this kind of responsibility, and I don't think you, BigV, should help him duck it.

Look, identifying a problem is the necessary first step in solving it. tw's remarks, my remarks, and countless other's remarks here in the cellar and among a large and increasing majority in our nation are doing just that, identifying a problem. This step is enjoying some success, at last, despite the McCarthy-esque claims that such voices speak aid and comfort to the enemy. The next step is acknowledging that problem. This step has not yet been achieved, while those in power, or jointly in power, continue to believe as you do. Until that time, we cannot progress beyond "HEY!! This is WRONG!!!" If you don't see it as wrong, if you continue to believe you're right, it's pointless to talk about another way of doing things. Horse, cart, load...identify, acknowledge, solve. You're stuck on #2.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Oh, and one last note: don't use short words. Use the right words, regardless of brevity or of sesquipedalianism. Assume I have the sophistication and vocabulary of a William F. Buckley, and act on that assumption. Where we (excluding tw and one or two others who aren't putting a dog in the fight) differ is not in mental powers, but in worldview. Don't misplace your priorities: our foes represent unfreedom, and the last war we lost to the unfreedom-creeps meant two separate, unconscionable massacres: North Vietnam committed genocide against "enemies of the state" in 1959 and again in 1975. In 1975-79 that also generated a million refugees from a shitheaded social philosophy and its murderousness, and not much less than that in 1959. My point is that our enemies do not have a legitimate grievance or point of view; therefore I show them a hard face. They are not to be allowed to oppress us or anyone else. If they insist on it, they must insist from the gibbet -- to the carrion crows.

--continued later.