Torture memos

[dar512]

Originally Posted by glatt

I thought this was interesting. According to a recent poll, the more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists.

Well I must be the oddball then. I do not support torture. I said so when this first came out and I have written my congressman with my opinion. In general I support humane treatment of prisoners because it is the ethical path and because I want humane treatment for our men and women if they are captured.

Over and above that I can't see how anyone can approve torture for people who have been convicted of no crime.

As for the poll, I never doubted that I was a:

[tw]

Originally Posted by glatt

I thought this was interesting. According to a recent poll, the more often Americans go to church, the more likely they are to support the torture of suspected terrorists.

I had a friend who worked in boiler rooms. Telephone scams. He loved the most religious. They would most often believe anything he told them; were so easy to close a deal.

When I watch people religiously watching World Wrestling, I wonder what they believe.

[sugarpop]

Originally Posted by DanaC

Just as an aside though; it's wrong to say torture isn't effective...look how many witches we managed to root out in the middle-ages.

How many of those people do you think were actually witches? Which is another argument that it doesn't work. People were ratting out anyone and everyone just to make it stop.

[DanaC]

Originally Posted by sugarpop

How many of those people do you think were actually witches? Which is another argument that it doesn't work. People were ratting out anyone and everyone just to make it stop.

*blink* well, obviously m'dear, that was my point :P

In answer to your question I think none of them were 'witches'.

[sugarpop]

Originally Posted by DanaC

*blink* well, obviously m'dear, that was my point :P

In answer to your question I think none of them were 'witches'.

After I reread it, I kinda got that.

I think some of them probably were for sure, but the majority definitely not. I imagine the number of people who were actual witches was probably pretty low.

[classicman]

The analysis is based on a Pew Research Center survey of 742 American adults conducted April 14-21. It did not include analysis of groups other than white evangelicals, white non-Hispanic Catholics, white mainline Protestants, and the religiously unaffiliated, because the sample size was too small.

I wonder if the timing of this poll had any impact on the outcome. I wonder if they did a similar poll back in 2001 or 2005 or... just to see a trend.

[classicman]

I went looking for polls on torture. Incredibly, it's nearly impossible to find any polls. The only recent poll was in December by ABC News/Washington Post Poll. Amazingly, neither ABC nor the Pentagon Post published the results, as far as I can tell:

"Just your best guess, do you think the U.S. government as a matter of policy is or is not using torture as part of the U.S. campaign against terrorism?"

Torture Using Not Using Unsure
12/15-18/05 56% 39% 5%
5/20-23/04 51% 43% 6%

"Would you regard the use of torture against people suspected of involvement in terrorism as an acceptable or unacceptable part of the U.S. campaign against terrorism?"

--------------Acceptable Unacceptable Depends
12/15-18/05--------32%------ 64%----- 3%

So what do we learn from this data?

Despite Bush's repeated lies that "the U.S. does not torture," Americans aren't fools. In 5/04, a 51%-43% majority believed the U.S. was torturing prisoners; by 12/05, that majority increased to 56%-39%. Now that Bush has admitted we use "alternative methods" to interrogate prisoners - which everyone else calls torture - that majority should be trending towards 100%-0%.

And how do Americans feel about our use of torture? By 2:1 (64%-32%), Americans consider torture of terrorism suspects to be unacceptable.

Link
I'm not sure of the validity of this, but it is rather damning.

[TheMercenary]

An interesting bit about the history of torture by the Brits in WW2 on NPR today.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...ryId=103728934

[tw]

Originally Posted by classicman

No I won't. I'm done with this discussion for now. As tw pointed out my opinions are irrelevant since they disagree with his.

Opinions exist when one first has facts. Because Pat Robertson says so, that is a fact?

But you lie (again) about what I said. What you call opinions is propaganda. Repeating what a political machine tells you to believe. Jill even asked you to back up your cheap shot with facts. You cannot do that. Limbaugh does not tell you why; only tells you what to believe.

So you lie about what I state? Opinions are nothing more than propaganda when hateful O'Reilly preachings are mindlessly echoed. Why do you repeatedly forget what I really said? Opinions require supporting facts.

Extremists must and will routinely lie even about torture. It was promoted by those who know; but forgot to learn how interrogation works. Then lie again to scapegoat enlisted men once they realized in pictures what torture really looks like. Soldiers must be sacrified for a political agenda.

Somehow enlisted men accidently used torture methods approved at the highest levels of government? Another lie promoted in 2004 and 2005 to blame enlisted men for torture. Who needs so much protection as to lie?

These are honest men - who accidently got it wrong even about Saddam's WMDs? Who accidently sent 4000 American soldiers to death? Lying is routine: demonstrated when Jill challenged you to support your accusations with facts.

But again, the common factor repeated. Extermist political agendas justify constant lying and posting cheap shot accusations.

[classicman]

tw - you are an asshole - plain and simple - I need not write 1500 words why, it is plainly obvious. Not once have I ever quoted nor brought up Limbaugh, O'Reilly or Fox news into a discussion, I do not listen to nor watch them. You, however, must spend a great deal of time doing just that as you seem to know exactly what they say and think.

Being ridiculed and attacked because my opinions are different than yours shows what a pathetic, worthless piece of shit you really are. When asked repeatedly by several other posters to support your baseless attacks on other posters, you did not, you could not. To delve as low as you routinely do (calling another posters wife a "gonorrhea dripping whore") shows EXACTLY what kind of person you are.

I do not lie. I am an honest person. Both statements you cannot make.

[DanaC]

How exterminating the savage and the brutal diminishes us in any moral dimension quite escapes me, Jill.

Amazing. Truly amazing.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Mere horse sense. Dead folks have one tough time actually doing any evil. That's a good thing.

(Must remember: application of horse sense passes for amazing with Dana. How well the Left is served.)

Meanwhile, Ann Coulter could hardly contain her mirth at it all in her recent column: April 29 . . . We do that on first dates.

[Jill]

Originally Posted by classicman

No I won't. I'm done with this discussion for now. As tw pointed out my opinions are irrelevant since they disagree with his.

I'm not really interested in what tw thinks of your opinion. Since I'm the one engaging you in this discussion, it should only matter that I don't think your opinions are irrelevant.

What I believe is that you've formulated your opinions based on erroneous information that you have relied upon as being factual. It is my hope that pointing you to the sources from which I've formed my opinion, you might come to a different conclusion than the one you currently have.

Originally Posted by tw

Lying is routine: demonstrated when Jill challenged you to support your accusations with facts.

tw, much as I appreciate your support, you have (probably unintentionally) misrepresented my response to classicman. He didn't make any "accusations", he said that there were cites here that contradicted the ones I provided. So I went back to look for them. What I found did not seem to support his contention, so I asked him to point me to what I might have missed.

Then I took those cites I thought he might have intended as countering mine, read them thoroughly and pointed out what I consider to be unreliable and contradictory accounts. It is now incumbent upon him to consider my assessment of those cites and either acknowledge that they don't, after all, support the argument he was making, or counter my assessment of them. He's not likely to do either when the peanut gallery is shouting 'LIAR' from the bleachers.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

How exterminating the savage and the brutal diminishes us in any moral dimension quite escapes me, Jill. Performing damage control is simply sensible.

In some circumstances it very well might be. What my cites support, is that in the case of torturing people we've rounded up and imprisoned, it is not sensible in any way to torture them.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

We won against Germany, Italy, and Japan by showing the hard visage of war and outfighting them -- outcontending them in the field they themselves chose. Did this turn us into fascists of any description? It did not.

You conflate two entirely different sets of circumstances and attempt to draw parallels that don't exist. I have no problem "outfighting" the enemy on the battlefield. Especially since I'm a Jew, you can be damn sure I have no complaints about beating the crap out of Hitler in the war he started.

And I sure as hell have no sympathy for terrorists, either. But what I have attempted to show you, is that the methods our government and its agents used against them while they were in our care, custody and control, does not produce the results you claim it does.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

As Hannity puts it, "Let not your heart be troubled" on that score. Countervailing violence is defensible violence, and I for one defend it, and I think I can overwhelm all your arguments against it. Don't mistake the distasteful for the unnecessary. Remember it is distasteful to be murdered.

No, I'm afraid you'll never overwhelm any of my arguments against it, though you're certainly free to try.

I do not mistake the distasteful for the unnecessary. There are many necessary aspects of war that I find distasteful, yet fully support. Torture is not one of them. It is not only distasteful, but it is, in point of fact, unnecessary. That I believe I have proven with my cited evidence; torture does not produce reliable results. The FBI, who knew more about Al Qaida than anyone in the world, obtained that information by non-violent interrogation methods long before the CIA and outside agents stepped in and took over with their "enhanced" interrogation methods.

The kind of abuse inflicted upon our prisoners is not the kind that produces good intelligence, but the kind that produces more terrorists.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

I am happy to agree their ability to actually damage us is small in the grand scheme of things. Nonetheless, that does not mean they should be allowed to damage. They are the transgressors thereby.

On that we completely agree.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Their transgressions must be kept bootless and fruitless, that they may cease to transgress. Or become too dead to manage a transgression. This is what those who are clear on the matter want.

If those methods actually provided the result of keeping them bootless and fruitless, you might have an argument to make in its favor. As it doesn't, the only thing I've been able to glean from your points is that you just want revenge. You simply like the idea of beating the crap out of these guys, tough luck if it kills them. Somehow that makes you feel bigger, better, stronger. The reality is that it does only diminish us.

[Undertoad]

The question is still relevant, just take out the bug in the box bit.

[Undertoad]

Well no maybe not. Anyway, it's still a decision to be made.