Torture/Waterboarding: Discussion/Debate Thread

[INDY500]

On Sept 11, 2001, 4 American jetliners were hijacked and purposely crashed resulting in the death of all on board.

At the least that is murder plain and simple.

However, one of those jets, United Flight 93, was hijacked for a second time and taken down in a field solely to prevent the further loss of life that would have occurred had the jet been allowed to crash into a building in a major U.S. city. Did those "passengers" allow themselves to 'become the monster"?

Doesn't it matter that even though the result, intentionally crashing the plane and killing innocent airline passengers, was the very same -- the motive was completely different? Doesn't that matter? Isn't OK to sometimes do a bad thing to prevent a much worse thing?

Waterboarding a handful of key suspects is never acceptable, even if the motive is to possibly identify additional terrorists or gain actionable intelligence to prevent another mass murder? It simply can't be justified, right?

Then good luck with this.
Only one country has actually used atomic weapons to instantly kill several hundred thousand people, the majority being women and children.

[ntalwar]

Originally posted by diamond


For citizens of our country

How about Padilla?

Originally posted by diamond


This is why you can argue that modern liberalism is a mental disorder.

db

And neoconservatism is dictatorship.

[INDY500]

Originally posted by maycocksean



I don't recall him making any exceptions in the turn the other cheek rule; I don't recall him expressing his toleration for violence against the bad guys.


Apologies to those who are not Christians on the thread--this is not addressed to you.

Our greatest soldier in World War I, Sergeant Alvin York, found justification. Read of his doubts and deeds.

[Irvine511]

Originally posted by INDY500
On Sept 11, 2001, 4 American jetliners were hijacked and purposely crashed resulting in the death of all on board.

At the least that is murder plain and simple.

However, one of those jets, United Flight 93, was hijacked for a second time and taken down in a field solely to prevent the further loss of life that would have occurred had the jet been allowed to crash into a building in a major U.S. city. Did those "passengers" allow themselves to 'become the monster"?

you should go back and do some research to find out what actually happened. the passengers didn't fly the plane into the ground. the attempted an insurrection, and the hijackers themselves flew the plane into the ground. were the passengers able to wrest control of the plane from the hijackers, you can rest assured that they would ahve attempted some sort of landing or averted the crash that killed them all.

unless, of course, you want to propose that the plane was shot out of the sky by the US military.






[q]Waterboarding a handful of key suspects is never acceptable, even if the motive is to possibly identify additional terrorists or gain actionable intelligence to prevent another mass murder? It simply can't be justified, right?[/q]


nope.

Only one country has actually used atomic weapons to instantly kill several hundred thousand people, the majority being women and children.

the argument being that a full-scale invasion of the nation of Japan would have resulted in 800,000 American deaths and well over a million Japanese deaths. could you imagine a street-to-street, house-to-house battle in the streets of Tokyo?

i'm not saying i don't think that these were the only two options -- there was certainly a political motivation behind dropping the bomb, and many will say that Japan would have surrendered if given more time -- but of these two options, surely it actually was kinder to drop the bomb than invade Japan?

[Diemen]

I can't believe the contortions some people will go through to justify both their religion and torture.

If you think Jesus would be ok with torturing, with giving the enemy a taste of its own medicine, then you've completely missed the point. Either that or your belief in God is a temporary thing that you can turn off when you get upset or when someone does something wrong.

[INDY500]

Originally posted by Irvine511
[B]

unless, of course, you want to propose that the plane was shot out of the sky by the US military.

Would the order to do that, shoot down a commercial airliner (murder those civilians) to stop an attack on the Capitol or White House, been justified?

I think so and that's my point. What's a handful of waterboard cases against blowing an American jet out of the sky on the moral outrage scale? Or launching a missile at a suspected terror house in Iraq knowing innocent people could be killed or injured. Or killing 200,000 Japanese to save many times more lives?

[Irvine511]

Originally posted by INDY500



Would the order to do that, shoot down a commercial airliner (murder those civilians) to stop an attack on the Capitol or White House, been justified?

I think so and that's my point. What's a handful of waterboard cases against blowing an American jet out of the sky on the moral outrage scale? Or launching a missile at a suspected terror house in Iraq knowing innocent people could be killed or injured. Or killing 200,000 Japanese to save many times more lives?

you're doing the STING thing -- thinking all things are the same.

blowing a hijacked airliner out of the sky when it is known that it is heading for a civilian target is quite different from the President deliberately increasing his own power to expand the rules of what is and what isn't an acceptable method of interrogation. this is a policy, it is an actual program of interrogation, and it is applicable in more than just worst-case scenarios.

as John McCain has said, "Life is not "24"." it's not. there isn't going to be an airplane of civilians heading towards a tower and if we only had the power to waterboard someone, then we could somehow avert the airplane. there isn't going to be a ticking bomb in a building and we'll only find out where it is before it goes off if we waterboard someone.

life doesn't work this way. these are not the situations we ever face. and you're still ignoring the fact that torture does not work. people will say anything to get you to stop torturing them. so what happens? you spend countless resources checking out tips that you *wanted* to be true, rather than the ones that were true.

haven't we learned the lesson from Iraq? you get bad intelligence precisely when you try to make your information-gathering fit a prescribed course of action. intelligence is not supposed to support a policy, policy is supposed to be designed around intelligence. when you torture, you get the information you've already decided you want to get because the man will tell you what you want to hear in order to get you to stop.

so what happens? you get the Soviet Union. the good people leave, and the sadists take over, and false confessions are deliberately extracted.

[Irvine511]

Originally posted by Diemen
I can't believe the contortions some people will go through to justify both their religion and torture.

If you think Jesus would be ok with torturing, with giving the enemy a taste of its own medicine, then you've completely missed the point. Either that or your belief in God is a temporary thing that you can turn off when you get upset or when someone does something wrong.

and for all their wailing about moral relativism, they're suprisingly relativist about torture.

premarital sex is never okay, but torture is sometimes?

i'd rather my 16 year old be having sex than waterboarding anybody.

[INDY500]

Originally posted by Diemen
I can't believe the contortions some people will go through to justify both their religion and torture.

If you think Jesus would be ok with torturing, with giving the enemy a taste of its own medicine, then you've completely missed the point. Either that or your belief in God is a temporary thing that you can turn off when you get upset or when someone does something wrong.

What happened to the separation of church and state? Why is GWB said to be "imposing his religion on Americans over abortion and Gay marriage" and then taken to task for not "imposing his religion" when it comes to national defense. Regardles of what some of our more fanatic posters may think, Bush does not rule over a theocracy. He may spend hours at night on his knees seeking guidance and asking forgiveness for some of his actions, but his highest duty remains to protect the citizens of the United States.

To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven...A time of war, And a time of peace (Ecclesiastes 3:1,8)

[martha]

Originally posted by INDY500


To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven...A time of war, And a time of peace (Ecclesiastes 3:1,8)

Gymnastics to justify.
Who would Jesus waterboard?

[2861U2]

Originally posted by Diemen
Either that or your belief in God is a temporary thing that you can turn off when you get upset or when someone does something wrong.

As for myself, that is certainly not the case. I don't ever "turn off" my faith. Maycocksean said something I liked a few pages ago, saying that this might just be an area where my beliefs don't square. And if that's the case, I certainly need to work on it.

Nobody's perfect. I'm sure there isn't a person in here who doesn't struggle with squaring their various beliefs, and it's even harder for people of faith who want to live by the Bible.

[2861U2]

Originally posted by martha


Who would Jesus waterboard?

Exactly. That's completely unfathomable. Just like how God would never destroy cities or wipe out the human race with a flood.



Wait a second...

[Irvine511]

Originally posted by INDY500

To everything there is a season, A time for every purpose under heaven...A time of war, And a time of peace (Ecclesiastes 3:1,8)

when is it time to torture?

while i of course believe that GWB is beholden to people who would indeed wish to have a theocratic Christian order in the United States, i do think the president himself cares too much, insofar as that might be complicated to understand.

you see, torture is a sign of laziness. and this president is nothing if not lazy. it's the quick and easy path, it's the half-assed way to get some information that may or may not be true. it's just like with Iraq. instead of spending the time and building an actual case against Saddam, this president (and Cheney, and Rummy, and even Colin Powell) decided that WMDs would be the quickest, easiest way to get their policy enacted, and so they went about manipulating intelligence.

quick and easy. and lazy. to ruinous ends.

my objection to torture has NOTHING to do with religion, and i don't think anyone's arguing that, because Christians are against torture, then the US government should be against torture. i think they are pointing out the inconsistencies between self-proclaimed Christians in here, and their embrace of torture.

[martha]

Originally posted by 2861U2


Exactly. That's completely unfathomable. Just like how God would never destroy cities or wipe out the human race with a flood.



Wait a second...

You didn't answer my question.

[Irvine511]

Originally posted by 2861U2


Exactly. That's completely unfathomable. Just like how God would never destroy cities or wipe out the human race with a flood.



Wait a second...

protect me from this "God" you speak of.

this genocidal maniac is obviously not worth anything but fear, certainly not respect or love.

[U2democrat]

Would it be better to have a seperate waterboarding/torture thread? That way the actual discussion of the race doesn't get lost in here.

[martha]

Originally posted by 2861U2


Exactly. That's completely unfathomable. Just like how God would never destroy cities or wipe out the human race with a flood.

So now you're God? Or GWB is? Or the generals are?

Clarify, please. Who doing the torture, or condoning it, is God?

[anitram]

Originally posted by U2democrat
Would it be better to have a seperate waterboarding/torture thread? That way the actual discussion of the race doesn't get lost in here.

Yes, PLEASE!

[Diemen]

Originally posted by 2861U2


Exactly. That's completely unfathomable. Just like how God would never destroy cities or wipe out the human race with a flood.



Wait a second...

So let me get this straight. You're saying that you think Jesus would be ok with torturing our enemies?

[sulawesigirl4]

Originally posted by U2democrat
Would it be better to have a seperate waterboarding/torture thread? That way the actual discussion of the race doesn't get lost in here.

Yes.

I don't really feel like going through the entire thread and separating it out post by post. But I can if it's needed. If people want to keep discussing the torture issue, I'd suggest starting a new thread.

Back to the presidential race...