Posted on 11/11/2005 9:07:04 AM PST by SirLinksalot
When torture is the only option ...
DAVID GELERNTER
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN's proposed legislation incorporating into U.S. law the Geneva Convention ban on mistreating prisoners. The bill, which bans cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment, passed the Senate 90 to 9. To say it's got momentum is putting it mildly.
But President Bush says he will veto the bill unless the CIA is exempted. Vice President Cheney has led the administration's campaign for the exemption. It's a hard sell; pro-torture politicians are scarce around Washington.
But of course you don't have to be "pro-torture" to oppose the McCain amendment. That naive misunderstanding summarizes the threat posed by this good-hearted, wrong-headed legislation. Those who oppose the amendment don't think the CIA should be permitted to use torture or other rough interrogation techniques. What they think is that sometimes the CIA should be required to squeeze the truth out of prisoners. Not because the CIA wants to torture people, but because it may be the only option we've got.
McCain's amendment is a trap for the lazy minded. Whenever a position seems so obvious that you don't even have to stop and think — stop and think.
SNIP
Michael Levin published an article challenging the popular view that the U.S. must never engage in torture. "Someday soon," he concluded, "a terrorist will threaten tens of thousands of lives, and torture will be the only way to save them."
Suppose a nuclear bomb is primed to detonate somewhere in Manhattan, Levin wrote, and we've captured a terrorist who knows where the bomb is. He won't talk. By forbidding torture, you inflict death on many thousands of innocents and endless suffering on the families of those who died at a terrorist's whim — and who might have lived had government done its ugly duty.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
You haven't posted any "Facts", just your own perverted opinion.
Well, isn't that kinda how it is with liberals? You dispute their claims, arguing facts and figures and that, and they ignore what you say, and comeback with some other comment that is devoid of fact and laced with supposition and unsubstantiated premises" Like "nailing jello to a wall" or stacking marbles in a corner, it's just as hard having a factual debate with a liberal. It's all just accusations and one liners. Like I like to say "don't talk facts to me, I'm a democrat!!! I don't need to stinking facts!!!" 8)
I agree with most of your comments. It strikes me that this is a bogus argument. Torture is not legal now. Trying to pass laws making it a crime is, first of all, a propaganda device churning up a lot of really bad soundbites.
Just the image of Americans arguing in public about torture plants the seed that we are already guilty of it, when in fact torture is illegal now, and soldiers guilty of it are already punished.
A couple of years back it was, in fact, Alan Dershowitz who was arguing in favor of torture, he and a few other left-liberal commentators. The catch is that no one in the military is arguing that torture should be legal. This is, in a way, similar to the argument for the draft, which was proposed as a poison pill by anti-war Democrats looking for an issue.
This is a similar poison-pill argument, an effort to maneuver pro-war people into defending "torture" when the issue is keeping soldiers under military discipline (and not harassed by civilian courts during war) and the issue is keeping classified intel and intel operations safe from exposure by anti-war lawyers.
What the present argument is about is opening the door for public civilian trials which will place intel operations under civilian court control. It will be used as a hammer by anti-war lawyers to obstruct the war, it will be used to hamstring the war leadership, it will be used as a means of blowing intel operations by exposing them to criminal investigations that may, in the end, turn up nothing, but meanwhile the op is exposed.
"Torture" is only window dressing for an attempt to make soldiers and intel agents vulnerable to prosecution in a civilian court.
The person being tortured will tell you anything he thinks will stop the pain.
Right on. It gets down to definitions. To a pusillanimous liberal slapping a person in the face would be torture. I'd like to ask Hillary Clinton a simple question. Would you authorize pulling a fingernail off a would be terrorist if it would save the lives of everyone in New York? As a loony liberal lemming of the licentious left she'd have to examine the metaphysical subleties of the question for about a week before arriving at a conclusion. Has McCain gone mad?
Tell me you are certain that this wouldn't work half the time. If you have an individual, a terrorist, that you KNOW has credible intelligence, but has refused to divulge it, and you play a tape in the next room of a "prisoner" (an actor) screaming and talking in the prisoners language, giving up information and names that the real prisoner knows is real information, hearing the voice beg for mercy, and then the screaming stops, replaced by sobbing, and a door opens and closes next door.
Then, another door opens and closes, and the process repeats, only the second "prisoner" (taped actor) doesn't talk, spouts some obscenities, and the real prisoner then promptly hears a gunshot, a "thud" on the floor, a voice telling someone to clean up the mess, then silence, and a door opening and closing again.
Then the door to the real prisoners room opens and rolled in on a tray is various apparently bloody tools, battery with cables, blades, needles, and other similar items, in addition to a gun which still smells of gun powder, all brought in by several large very intimidating looking men, with "blood" (fake) on their clothing, one of them mumbling something to the effect of "we've got this one, and seven more, and not a lot of time to jack around, so lets get to it", something like that in a language the prisoner would understand.
The real prisoner has already been strapped to an uncomfortable chair, given minimal amounts of food and water, little sleep, and alternating heat and cold, barking dogs brought in to circle him periodically, while loud music or white noise blares in the room, giving them no indication of the passage of time with no windows for several days, and then you come in the room with all those items on tables, and he hears the same voice as the other two times start asking the same questions. A person not trained in resisting that kind of treatment will tell you what they want to know more often than not. And you haven't had to lay a finger on them, and you haven't done anything that has harmed them permanently.
And since we're talking about terrorists who plant road side bombs, blow up busses, and kill unarmed men woman and children, don't tell me about the scares that treatment has done to them psychologically. Anyone that does those kinds of things in the name of "allah" is already scarred WAY beyond what the treatment I have outlined could POSSIBLY do to them. Please read all that I have said here and tell me that you are so sure this and similar techniques do not and would not work, and then tell me how they can POSSIBLY be defined as "torture" in the same category as the muslims beheading our troops, and any civilians who are on our side, even other muslims. Come on.
Because they end up stealing it from friends and relatives
>>>Based on the info leaked from the Senate, it appears all three are true.<<<
How do you propose we protect ourself from suicidal maniacs?
For someone with absolutely no factual information or evidence to back up your claims, you sure do act as though you know a lot. But that's what I expect from liberals. Lots of threatening talk and nothing to back it up. Like the "Bush lied" mantra, in the face of 1.8 TONS of enriched yellow cake uranium removed from Iraq last year, reported by the Pentegon last week, which was NEVER CATELOGED by the U.N. inspectors prior to 2003 when the war started. What's your explaination for that?
>>>Well, isn't that kinda how it is with liberals?<<<
That is true, but it is always difficult to believe anyone could think that way.
Excellent post. And frankly, the things that I have outlines are not by any reasonable person, defined as "torture", and as you said, there is no physical, photographic, first hand, or documented evidence that ANY American military personnel or intelligence personnel have tortured any islamic terrorist captives. Yet they're accused of it. And at the same time, there is physical, photographic, first hand, and documented evidence that joe wilson is a liar, and that 1.8 tons of enriched yellow cake uranium several hundred tons of other uraniumwas removed from Iraq last year, and was not tagged by the u.n. in the years prior, but the democrats totally ignore all that evidence, and go on with their "Bush lied" talking point, with no evidence to back it up, while they made all the same comments Bush did three years ago, and had all the same intelligence he did, hours or days after he had it. It's all so patently two faced and hypocritical.
He doesn't. Because in his world, terrorism only started after Bush was inaugurated President on January 20th, 2001, and it was our fault even though we weren't in Iraq or Afghanistan a the time, and 9-11 happened because they knew we were going to go into Afghanistan and Iraq in two years, so the terrorsts were really just prempting us. That's the warped liberal frame of mind. All America's fault, and lets just make huggie pie kissy face patty cakes with the raping murdering islamic terrorists. I bet he'd sing a different tune if someone he knew died on 9-11, unless he's like cindy sheehan who's radical activist agenda even trumps her own sons death, using it to justify her actions, even though he disagreed with her and supported the war in Iraq. This is the kind of person this guy seems like. Unreasonable, irrational, and disconnected from reality, because "Bush" did it all. 8)
I know what you mean. I've stopped caring what they think though. They're fringe, they're a minority, and next November, more conservatives will be voted in office, and democrats will continue making excuses. The only democrats that win anymore are the few who really are reasonable moderates, and those liberals who campaign as conservative or moderate to win, then legislate as liberals. Other than the pelosis and kennedys and kerrys and rangles and jackson lees who are in flaming liberal districts and states that represent such a tiny minority of American thought they can say whatever they want, and run as a liberal and it not matter. A conservative running as a conservative wins on the national level. A liberal running as a liberal never wins on a national level. kerry and gore tried desperately to run as moderates, but their records proved them to be liberals. clinton ran as a moderate even though he was and is a liberal. dukakis and mondale were shown to be liberals, and on and on and on. It's a given now a days that any democrat running nationally MUST run as a moderate and NEVER admit they're liberal. democrat must lie to be elected. Republicans run on what they believe. The elections speak for themselves. That's the difference.
Exactly right. Couldn't be more correct. 8) YOU are living in reality.
Helloooo??? Liberal Propaganda Master 1888??? I'm waiting. 8)
Anyone who condones, enables or conceals torture or secret prisons should face prison. If someone dies during the torture or in a secret prison they should face the death penalty. If a jury of their peers finds that they acted in self defense, i.e. the ticking bomb scenario then they should go free. But there is no conceivable defense for a secret prison. They already have Guantanamo. What is so secret that Guantanamo isn't sufficiently secret?
The only conceivable answer is that they want a place where the torturers won't have to face a jury of their peers for their actions. Maybe you're comfortable with it but I'm damned sure not. We're not talking about a slippery slope here we're talking jumping off a cliff.
Waiting for us at the bottom of the cliff is the end of America as we know it.
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