Obama releases the "Torture Memos"

[INDY500]

it demonstrates that we're serious about not torturing, that we don't allow people to torture in our name, and that we punish those who do.

it keeps the sadists out, and it keeps the adults in.

sadism:

2 a: delight in cruelty b: excessive cruelty

Is sadism the next word to be redefined by the Left?

Who in their right mind thinks our waterboarding of detainees was anything other than a policy decision (undertaken after legal counsel and with congressional review mind you) done only with the BEST OF INTENTIONS of preventing another 9/11 type attack from occurring and not out of retribution, punishment or ruthless brutality.

Really? Who but the bug-eyed Bush-haters thinks otherwise?

A retro-inquisition serves only two purposes. It satiates the Moveon crowd that helped elect the president while distracting everyone else from the insane fiscal policy we are about to embark on.

 

[trevster2k]

no. what matters is that we adhere to the rule of law even when it's hard to do so. why stop at waterboarding? let's chop off fingers, toes, testicles. if it "works," we should do it.

Shit yeah, why not kidnap their family members and kill their children in front of them. If they don't talk after you kill the first kid, start poppin' em off one by one, those people always have big families. By the time you reach the youngest one, they're sure to talk. Then kill their neighbours and destroy their villages, (well, some of that has already been done but not in the name of torture)

Sarcasm. I know Irvine is only making a point too.

The ignorance of the right in trying to defend this abhorrent behaviour is utterly disgusting. I could barely put up with the bigotry and obtuse thinking of conservatives (neocons, Republican base, Fox news...) in the past but to defend this? You are inhuman to defend torture of any kind under any circumstances if you consider yourself or your country to be moral and just. Basically, their position seems to be let the United States of America stay in the gutter with countries like WWII Japan, the Soviet Union, various republics which torture for hire and Vietnam of the sixties. All those countries' torturers would make the same arguments being made by the torture cheerleaders, it was done to protect the country and gain strategic information. America, a kinder and gentler torturer, who does it only because it has too.

If America fails to address this correctly, whatever moral authority which was claimed by past governments (which frankly I don't think any country has anyway) is dead and gone. All the talk of liberty, freedom and truth dies unless people are prosecuted, and it never happens again.

 

[Irvine511]

Well, obviously not everyone is convinced that what the Bush administration did in regards to interigation techniques was illegal.

you're right. those people tend to be members of the Bush administration.

This decision to go to war had already been made and approved by congress and supported by a majority of the US public. It was already the policy of the United States to remove Saddam from power, prior to Bush being elected President in 2000.

so why torture people in order to prove these links? why fabricate the WMD intelligence?

their actions belie your statements.

The Presidents first priority is to protect the nation.

and he must do so under the law. he can change the law

Again, what do you think of what Abraham Lincoln said below?

Lincoln faced a radically different world than Bush did even in September of 2001, and more importantly, in 2003 and 2005. what's more, in March 1863 Congress passed the Habeas Corpus Act.

so the historical parallel exists only under the very, very loose heading of "Sometimes Presidents Do Crazy Things." and most historians view Lincolns suspension of some civil liberties at a time when Americans were killing each other as a blemish on his otherwise highly successful presidency.

it's absurd to view legalizing torture as the same thing as freeing the slaves. that's the type of twisted thinking exemplified in these memos.

 

[Irvine511]

sadism:

2 a: delight in cruelty b: excessive cruelty

Is sadism the next word to be redefined by the Left?

Who in their right mind thinks our waterboarding of detainees was anything other than a policy decision (undertaken after legal counsel and with congressional review mind you) done only with the BEST OF INTENTIONS of preventing another 9/11 type attack from occurring and not out of retribution, punishment or ruthless brutality.

who has to conduct the waterboarding? we've heard about the psychological impact of torture on the torturers, so when it becomes policy, that's when you look around for the sadists who will carry out the policy.

INDY, you won't trust your government to give you health care, you're going to trust them to torture people? WITH THE BEST OF INTENTIONS? wtf kind of thinking is that? need we talk about the road to hell?

some of the many, many reasons why torture is illegal has nothing to do with the actual techniques themselves. it's because you cannot torture WITH THE BEST OF INTENTIONS.

Really? Who but the bug-eyed Bush-haters thinks otherwise?

A retro-inquisition serves only two purposes. It satiates the Moveon crowd that helped elect the president while distracting everyone else from the insane fiscal policy we are about to embark on.

and that's all anything is really about to you. get your digs in at the "liberals" who are ruining your fun. it's positively McCarthyite.

 

[Irvine511]

President: Honey! Look, I have psychic powers!
Wife: Ok, where's the proof?
President: YOU DON'T HAVE ANY PROOF I DON'T THEREFORE YOU MUST BELIEVE ME
Wife: Security!

i have a rock that keeps away all the tigers.

 

[Irvine511]

Shit yeah, why not kidnap their family members and kill their children in front of them. If they don't talk after you kill the first kid, start poppin' em off one by one, those people always have big families. By the time you reach the youngest one, they're sure to talk. Then kill their neighbours and destroy their villages, (well, some of that has already been done but not in the name of torture)

there was discussion as to whether or not it would be torture to tell a detainee that if he didn't cough up some juicy info -- a plot to bomb an LA building? a link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda? -- then they would tell said detainee that they were going to send men to his house who would kidnap his son and crush the boy's testicles.

this wouldn't actually happen, but the threat was used.

torture?

 

[Strongbow]

Citing a real-life ticking bomb situation sometime in the last 8 years would literally be the first thing out of Dick Cheney's mouth to justify torture. Every arrested crackpot in Florida who dreamed about dismantling the Brooklyn Bridge with blowtorches has been paraded as a Great Victory in the War on Terror. ...So why can't anyone name a time here? Such sudden modesty!

There is information that is still classified that has not been made public. Without that information, you can't claim that it worked or did not work.

President: Honey! Look, I have psychic powers!
Wife: Ok, where's the proof?
President: YOU DON'T HAVE ANY PROOF I DON'T THEREFORE YOU MUST BELIEVE ME
Wife: Security!

No one in the President's circle makes a claim without backing it up with information. In a meeting about whether to act or not act, members of the Presidents team don't claim that because they are on the negative side of the argument that they don't have to make a case for their position.

This is not debate class at your local High School.

 

[Strongbow]

so why torture people in order to prove these links? why fabricate the WMD intelligence?

their actions belie your statements.

If you understand how the US government works, you would know that the Bush administration had all the authority it needed to go to war after the congressional authorization on October 13, 2002. What the administration did or did not do after that date in regards to WMD intelligence or interigating certain individuals is irrelevant to that fact. There was not going to be another vote on whether or not to go to war in the US congress after that point.

Lincoln faced a radically different world than Bush did even in September of 2001, and more importantly, in 2003 and 2005. what's more, in March 1863 Congress passed the Habeas Corpus Act.

Yes, it was a time where it was NOT possible to wipe out cities or countries within seconds. Bush did not have that luxury.

so the historical parallel exists only under the very, very loose heading of "Sometimes Presidents Do Crazy Things." and most historians view Lincolns suspension of some civil liberties at a time when Americans were killing each other as a blemish on his otherwise highly successful presidency

Some historians view it that way, some.

Lincolns view here:

"measures otherwise unconstitutional might become lawful by becoming indispensable to the preservation of the Constitution through the preservation of the nation"

Abraham Lincoln

was also similar to views that President Andrew Jackson had.

it's absurd to view legalizing torture as the same thing as freeing the slaves. that's the type of twisted thinking exemplified in these memos.

Thats NOT the camparison.

 

[mobvok]

There is information that is still classified that has not been made public. Without that information, you can't claim that it worked or did not work.

No one in the President's circle makes a claim without backing it up with information. In a meeting about whether to act or not act, members of the Presidents team don't claim that because they are on the negative side of the argument that they don't have to make a case for their position.

This is not debate class at your local High School.

Unfortunately for you, graduating high school is actually pretty important because it teaches you principles about how the (sorry) "real world" works. Pro tip: it's spelled "interrogation", not "interigation". Knowledge of the relevant words go a long way in helping you assert that critical BULLY PULPIT during an INTERNET DEBATE.

Advisor: We need to invade China. I have no idea if there's a good reason for it, I will merely present half-assed allusions to unknown information, and I don't know if there are alternative strategies that accomplish our ends without violating international treaties we've signed. Nevertheless, this must be done.

President: You've presented a compelling argument.

Advisor B: Wait a minute! He's never even made a case for doing it!

President: Then it's quite clear each side has a valid and perfectly equal claim to the truth.

And so forth. I possess two wings and can fly. The proof isn't classified, but you'll just have to come to where I live and find out for yourself. But until you do that, remember, you have no proof I am not actually a Bird-Man, terror of the skies and U2 fan.

Your quotes I picked out are directly related to the positive argument that ticking time bomb scenarios existed, and tried to plead some mushy middle ground that gosh we just can't know. Nevermind that the immediate crisis argument is put down by the memo's careful, months long consideration of what it'd take to torture Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others. This denies that justification for American torture.

No, what we do know are not absolutes but probabilities, not only do these memos reduce the probability of that ludicrous and mythical "good cause" to virtually nil.....if Cheney had a "bulletproof" argument like a ticking time bomb to keep his administration from war crimes, to persuade the public that criminal investigations are unnecessary, what is the probability he'd ignore that? Just stay modest, and never bring it up? You can bank on that increasingly smaller, infinitesimal chance that Bush officials somehow really did things right, or acknowledge the increasingly obvious fact that it's just simple apologizing for war criminals.

 

[Irvine511]

There is information that is still classified that has not been made public. Without that information, you can't claim that it worked or did not work.

and, likewise, you cannot say that the techniques "worked" -- which, again, is irrelevant to the actual issue at hand -- until you point to specific, actionable intelligence that would have been unattainable otherwise.

No one in the President's circle makes a claim without backing it up with information. In a meeting about whether to act or not act, members of the Presidents team don't claim that because they are on the negative side of the argument that they don't have to make a case for their position.

This is not debate class at your local High School.

when you seek to change the law, you don't change it and then say, "tell me why i shouldn't have changed the law." you must present a compelling reason to change it in the first place.

the comfort exhibited in here with unchecked executive power is breathtaking. i suppose a dictatorship would be a heckuva lot easier.

 

[Irvine511]

Thats NOT the camparison.

you made the comparison. seems there wasn't one to begin with.

 

[Irvine511]

Nevermind that the immediate crisis argument is put down by the memo's careful, months long consideration of what it'd take to torture Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others. This denies that justification for American torture.

No, what we do know are not absolutes but probabilities, not only do these memos reduce the probability of that ludicrous and mythical "good cause" to virtually nil.....if Cheney had a "bulletproof" argument like a ticking time bomb to keep his administration from war crimes, to persuade the public that criminal investigations are unnecessary, what is the probability he'd ignore that? Just stay modest, and never bring it up? You can bank on that increasingly smaller, infinitesimal chance that Bush officials somehow really did things right, or acknowledge the increasingly obvious fact that it's just simple apologizing for war criminals.

for me, this pretty much concludes the discussion. well said.

 

[mobvok]

and, likewise, you cannot say that the techniques "worked" -- which, again, is irrelevant to the actual issue at hand -- until you point to specific, actionable intelligence that would have been unattainable otherwise.

a word like "likewise" doesn't strike me as doing justice to torture's history. Obviously it's not some recent American invention to interrogate Bad People, it has a rather long and storied history of drawing out false confessions....er, excuse me, information that the interrogator had complete confidence was locked up in their subject's brains. Civilized, decent societies survive without it. There's an awfully deep hole for any advocates of torture to climb out of to argue that a systemic torture program is actually just a necessary little tweak on the American dream.

sorry, just a bugaboo I wanted to emphasize.

 

[Irvine511]

a word like "likewise" doesn't strike me as doing justice to torture's history. Obviously it's not some recent American invention to interrogate Bad People, it has a rather long and storied history of drawing out false confessions....er, excuse me, information that the interrogator had complete confidence was locked up in their subject's brains. Civilized, decent societies survive without it. There's an awfully deep hole for any advocates of torture to climb out of to argue that a systemic torture program is actually just a necessary little tweak on the American dream.

sorry, just a bugaboo I wanted to emphasize.

weren't you listening? Americans torture with honor and good intentions.

that changes everything.

 

[INDY500]

Ike should have gone after FDR officials involved in the internment of Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor. Nixon should have tried those involved with the Bay of Pigs. Carter should have prosecuted Nixon for Cambodia and Ford for pardoning Nixon. Reagan should have taken Carter to court just for being Jimmy Carter. On and on.

Peaceful transfer of power is so overrated in a democracy.

 

[Irvine511]

Ike should have gone after FDR officials involved in the internment of Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor. Nixon should have tried those involved with the Bay of Pigs. Carter should have prosecuted Nixon for Cambodia and Ford for pardoning Nixon. Reagan should have taken Carter to court just for being Jimmy Carter. On and on.

Peaceful transfer of power is so overrated in a democracy.

i'm sorry America is more complicated than you want it to be.

 

[BVS]

 

[Irvine511]

and let's just highlight, again, what Ronald Reagan -- the Jesus of contemporary conservatism -- signed in 1984:

Article 1.
1. For the purposes of this Convention, torture means 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, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
2. This article is without prejudice to any international instrument or national legislation which does or may contain provisions of wider application.

Article 2.
1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.
2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

it's all very obvious *why* the Bushies wanted to torture, and it had nothing to do with any ticking time bomb scenario. in fact, it's rather horrible.

it is on-the-record that KSM was waterbaorded 83 times in March of 2003. it obviously wasn't to disrupt a plot. the bomb would have gone off somewhere between the 33rd and the 37th waterboard. no, the only reason you waterboard someone 83 times is if you were trying to get a false confession about the false link between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda.

that's the motivation here. they needed to justify their war. and they were happy to torture people -- very, very bad people -- in order to get their lies to go along with their other WMD lies.

 

[INDY500]

After a quick glance, here's a few other Signatories of the Convention Against Torture:

Afghanistan

Cuba (I'm trying not to laugh)

Somalia (piracy is ok I guess)

Sri Lanka

Sudan (not to worry, George Clooney and Brad Pitt have been dispatched)

Rwanda (genocide ok as well)

Saudi Arabia (honor killings, no big deal)

Russian Federation

Egypt

Yemen

CHINA !! (what's a little organ harvesting of political prisoners)

Let's not forget, this is the same U.N. that has elected China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Egypt, Cuba plus Pakistan to it's Human Rights Council. You know, the one that replaced it's discredited predecessor, the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

GWB rightly boycotted membership in the HRC because of it's repeated criticism of Israel and refusal to cite glaring rights abuses in the Sudan, Russia, Syria, Iran, China and elsewhere.

And he correctly didn't let a discredited international treaty weaken our national defense.

 

[Irvine511]

After a quick glance, here's a few other Signatories of the Convention Against Torture:

Afghanistan

Cuba (I'm trying not to laugh)

Somalia (piracy is ok I guess)

Sri Lanka

Sudan (not to worry, George Clooney and Brad Pitt have been dispatched)

Rwanda (genocide ok as well)

Saudi Arabia (honor killings, no big deal)

Russian Federation

Egypt

Yemen

CHINA !! (what's a little organ harvesting of political prisoners)

Let's not forget, this is the same U.N. that has elected China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Egypt, Cuba plus Pakistan to it's Human Rights Council. You know, the one that replaced it's discredited predecessor, the U.N. Human Rights Commission.

GWB rightly boycotted membership in the HRC because of it's repeated criticism of Israel and refusal to cite glaring rights abuses in the Sudan, Russia, Syria, Iran, China and elsewhere.

And he correctly didn't let a discredited international treaty weaken our national defense.

what is your point here? Reagan's an idiot for signing it?

i'm glad you've stopped debating whether or not these "techniques" are torture or not. you've conceded that, yes, they are torture. so at least we're in agreement of what the law clearly stated.

 

[INDY500]

what is your point here? Reagan's an idiot for signing it?

i'm glad you've stopped debating whether or not these "techniques" are torture or not. you've conceded that, yes, they are torture. so at least we're in agreement of what the law clearly stated.

No we aren't, "torture" being more complicated than you want it to be.

 

[mobvok]

Once more, with feeling

No we aren't, "torture" being more complicated than you want it to be.

Article VI of the US Constitution makes treaties we enter into "the supreme law of the land". There is no "but these other countries are screwing around!" provision.

The UN Convention Against Torture, which we ratified in 1994, defines torture thus:

Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person

It goes on to state in Article 2:

No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political in stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

No, it is shockingly simple. A waterboard is one of the two devices highlighted at the Tuol Sleng prison in Cambodia that now services as a memorial to the Khmer Rouge's torture regime.

The government insists that it does not torture, yet it uses methods that it calls torture when practiced by other governments. In Jordan, for example, the State Department observes that “the most frequently alleged methods of torture are sleep deprivation, beatings, and extended solitary confinement.” In State Department reports on other countries, sleep deprivation, waterboarding, forced standing, hypothermia, blindfolding, and deprivation of food and water are specifically referred to as torture.

The Mississippi Supreme Court in 1926 overturned the murder conviction of a black man because his confession was induced as follows:

that they had the appellant down upon the floor, tied, and were administering the water cure[waterboarding], a specie of torture well known to the bench and bar of the country.

There is a virtually undisputed record of these methods being recognized as torture. Until George Bush got into trouble for this, then suddenly his defenders realized it was all very complicated and relative.

 

[Irvine511]

No we aren't, "torture" being more complicated than you want it to be.

no, it's very clear. we have laws.

if you want to change the law, there are ways of doing that as well.

and if you're wondering, i think Pelosi is looking like she has blood/water on her hands as well. we'll see how that develops.

 

[Irvine511]

No, it is shockingly simple. A waterboard is one of the two devices highlighted at the Tuol Sleng prison in Cambodia that now services as a memorial to the Khmer Rouge's torture regime.

a visual aid:

 

[INDY500]

no, it's very clear. we have laws.

if you want to change the law, there are ways of doing that as well.

I'll just bite my tongue at that one.

and if you're wondering, i think Pelosi is looking like she has blood/water on her hands as well. we'll see how that develops.

As I've said, you can't take this issue out of the post 9/11 context.

 

[BVS]

All this pre 9/11 post 9/11 talk...

the truth is, the law didn't change post 9/11 your mentality may have changed but the law didn't. This isn't difficult.

 

[Irvine511]

I'll just bite my tongue at that one.

no, please explain.

As I've said, you can't take this issue out of the post 9/11 context.

the treaties and the law make clear that context doesn't matter. there are rules and there are standards, and since we impeached a president over the so-called rule of law -- perjury over blowjobs in a civil trial! -- does it not seem at all crazy to follow the rules of law in regards to torture.

besides, we know torture doesn't work. if you're so concerned about getting good intelligence, why would we employ tactics historically renowned for their ability to produce false confessions? but then again, these people think it's more important to discharge gay people from the military than it is to have linguists fluent in Arabic and Farsi.

seems like a waste of resources. unless, of course, you want someone to make a false confession about, say, a link between A.Q. and S.H., so that you can then take that false confession and turn it into a justification for policy. that's what totalitarian regimes have done through history. they decide on a reality, and then they torture out the information that will support that reality.

 

[AliEnvy]

I think this sums it up nicely.

The Wrong Torture Question

by David Swanson
April 29, 2009


When Americans get "ethical" these days they ponder the great moral mysteries, like "Is public health coverage fair to insurance companies?" or "If we increase the military budget but reduce one section of it, can the whole world still be safe?" or "Would you still oppose torture if it worked?"

Let me suggest a few reasons why I think that last question is the wrong one.

First, torture DID work. It forced false agreement with war lies, helping to launch a long-desired illegal war. And it persuaded many Americans that some very scary and very foreign people were out to get them, people so scary that they had to be tortured in order to talk with them, people whose every false utterance, aimed at stopping the pain, instead generated color-coded horror warnings.

Second, torture has boosted recruitment for anti-U.S. organizations tremendously, horribly damaged the United States' image, stripped U.S. diplomats of the power to address human rights abuses abroad, as well as stripping U.S. citizens of a clear moral right to protest being tortured, and set an example that has spread far and wide. Torture has brutalized participants and witnesses, and we are all witnesses, and it has destroyed lives both through torture to the point of death and through torture to the point of unbearable life.

Third, if you're going to violate particular laws and treaties, you can either repeal them and leave all the other ones intact, or you can simply proceed criminally, thereby assaulting the whole structure of law, leaving everyone in doubt whether ANY laws will be enforced against important people. Our government has taken the latter approach and redefined crimes as "policy differences," which is why torture is ongoing and no criminal penalty will deter its future expansion or the commission of other crimes of whatever sort by high officials.

Fourth, if torture had produced life-saving information, we would have long since heard that fact shouted from every television studio. In fact, we did hear such claims made. They just all turned out to be fictional. In the latest claim of this sort, torture supposedly produced information on the planned bombing of a building in Los Angeles, and this information was transported back in time to the moment at which investigators had already discovered that proposal and laughed heartily at the then-debunked claim that a serious plot had ever developed. The fact that Dick Cheney is pushing this nonsense on us is not actually a compelling reason to believe it unquestioningly.

Fifth, if torture ever produced life-saving information it would be through sheer luck and not intention. Nobody tortures with that intention, because expert interrogators believe other methods are more effective than torture. And if that lucky day ever came, there would be no basis on which to surmise that other methods would not have been at least as effective as the torture was. So, even if a real ticking time bomb situation could be created, there would be no reason to believe torture to be the best tool. And if you could magically design a situation in which, by definition, torture was the ethical choice, you still would not have created a situation in which ignoring the crime of torture would do less damage than pardoning the torturers.

So, do ends justify means? Is torture just plain wrong even in those cases when it would save more lives than it cost? These are intensely ignorant questions. Ends must always be made to justify any means, but the ends must be understood in their entirety. If one result of an action is damage to the rule of law or exacerbation of international hatred or promotion of senseless fear, that must be part of the calculation. Of course torture would not be wrong in a situation in which, all things considered, it did more good than harm; but that situation cannot be found. Whether you claim to simply adhere to a blanket rule, or you consider all the consequences of your actions, you arrive at the same conclusion: torture must be abolished.

But so must the debate over whether torture must be abolished. Torture is illegal. Our laws must be enforced. Torture's recent prominent use by the United States came about in an attempt to promote a far worse crime than torture, the crime of aggressive war. We should not be asking ourselves whether torture was an acceptable means toward that end. We should be asking ourselves how we can best rid the world of wars of aggression.

 

[Irvine511]

i wonder ... if it "worked," should we rape detainees?

again, we're not talking about any ticking time bomb scenario. the memos make that clear that said scenario wasn't at all a consideration when they were formulating policy.

so the question is: should we rape men like KSM if it works?

there won't be any "permanent" damage, at least in a physical sense. it's not like we're chopping off fingers or testicles or stretching someone on the rack.

what do we think?

 

[anitram]

no, please explain.

This is about gays marrying goats, Irvine.