Posted on 09/21/2006 12:10:42 AM PDT by MNJohnnie
Really? You're kidding, right?
No, he really was a POW.
Not if you are NUTS!!!!! And a NORTH VIETNAMESE ace to boot.
What's the matter? Don't you like "straight talk" from a maverick ex-POW?
I've always attacked McCain's dismal politics. I'll never attack or debate over who served what and what they did during a war.
I know, I was just being sarcastic.
But he really was.
I'll never attack or debate over who served what and what they did during a war.
Even if they gave up classified information like the coward did?
It always comes down to the fact of the hypertrophy of journalism. Journalism was expected to be influential, but two developments were not and could not have been anticipated by the founders:Jefferson was quite familiar with tendentiousness in journalism, but that was a matter of political competition - now and since memory of man scarcely runeth to the contrary, "objective journalism" exists to propagandize on one side and "conservative talk radio" and conservative bloggers are the only counterweight to it. And we are up against not merely half truths but staged photo ops and even fauxtography.
- the coalescence of journalism into a single leftist political party, which politicians join for expediency, and
- instantaneous worldwide communication.
And if you dissent from that creed or think it silly, then you simply aren't an American.
You will notice the creed does not read, "all men being equally breakable by torture, the torturers shall run everything by breaking whoever they please, and justice is for patsies". Which is the actual creed of our enemies, and the one you are defending in this thread.
You will notice that all the ways in which America departed from that ideal or fell short of it, have been reduced to ashes, liberally paid for in blood, to be sure. If you are really trying to defend torture as "all-american" on the grounds that slaves were tortured so why shouldn't we, then it is time to refight the civil war and burn your house to the ground, too.
"You're quite facile at consigning me to hell"
Actually you elect that yourself. I say torturers are damned - because they are - you nominate yourself as one of them. You could just as easily renounce it, so who is consigning whom again? Also, I'm the one showing concern about the souls of those doing it, you are the one maintaining that sullying souls is worth it to defend others (who neither need, asked for, nor want such services and vigorously reject them).
"using vulgar/coarse sexual terms ( which are against posting rules"
LOL. You condone torture but can't stand harsh language on an internet chat board - what a flaming pansy of a bully! I was in fact being entirely clinical about the actual course of deviance and perversion systematic practice of torture always and everywhere occasions, and cited actual well established cases of it. You may find the description in Arendt, and will find it is not even her characterization but first person confession.
Does it bother you that male human beings exist who achieve sexual arosal by torturing other human beings? Do you deny the fact? (Clinically perfectly well known). Do you deny that perverted sadism exists, and that many men are susceptible to it?
Burke in one place discusses the danger of excusing murder and rapine on the pretext of public benefit, that soon enough public benefit will become merely the pretext, and murder and rapine the end. The same happens with torture. First men torture out of misguided expediency on the tortured, then they torture out of policy for its effects on others, to create fear and accumulate political power, pass through a stage of torturing in hot blood for revenge, and they end by torturing for pure pleasure, even if it harms them in every other respect.
That is the mere history of the subject. You can nominate yourself for any stage of the proceedings, I don't care where along it you yourself fall. I've no doubt whatever where it tends or ends. Perhaps with you strapped to a board being sawn in pieces by an Iranian agent. Whatever. What fiends do to one another is of no moral consequence, only men not already damned have souls to save.
"what we have and have NOT done to prisoners"
If you review my comments, you will find them entirely free of the slightest allegation. I respond to what others publically defend, showing that it is indefensible. They advocate or confess as the case may be, by calling for practice X or defending practice Y. I never force them to do either. I explain things that are forbidden by moral decency, and others act offended and then strike attitudes about how righteous they are. Um, a righteous man would not see the comments as in any way directed at himself, would agree entirely, say "sure, can't have any of that, it never happens and is not needed". That is conspicuously not your own response, or that of the other blood thirsty fantasists who have been regaling these boards with their fantasies of torture, while the matter has been debated in congress.
I am 40 years old, a veteran, a republican, a conservative, a straussian, a founding member of vast right wing conspiracies, a platonist and a heretic of no particular affiliation. And you are a useful idiot convert of Ahmadinejad helping to lose this war, as well as a fiend, who deserves not the slightest particle of responsibility or power.
You are so right on target, I worked closely with a guy for 8 years. Saw him daily and had wide ranging discussions with him. I knew he had been in the Army because he had snakeater tats but we never discussed it. Saw him five years after we no longer worked together at a seminar. Over too many drinks he told me that story of how he got a Purple Heart, Silver Star and DFC in one battle. He saved about 15 guys asses and got severely wounded himself. I asked him why after all these years he was telling me this. He had just found out he had cancer and not long to live and wanted to tell me the story of the guys he was with and how magnificent they were.
I have also met several MOH recipients in my life. Not one spoke about his exploits they all talked about their band of brothers. From Audie Murphy, Desmond Doss, Pappy Boyington and Jimmy Doolittle they all were humble about the men they served with.
I will never be embarrassed/ashamed by what I have posted to you on this thread; however, once you manage to pry your lips off McQueeg's old, tired arse, perhaps you will finally be able, through the drool, to one day blubber out, amongst the heavy drool, that you are the one who needed to look at the facts and not the tortured McCainiac propaganda.
TRUTH, JUSTICE, AND THE AMERICAN WAY...............your posts read like the opening of an old SUPERMAN comic; but make far less sense.
Haley Barbour.
Who died and made you the grand high whatever, who gets to decide who is a "real" American and who isn't; not to mention who is going to hell or not?
Quoting an Englishman, who wrote fiction, isn't exactly all that helpful to your benighted rantings.
Oh yeah...."all men are created equal", except for Negros and women sure don't count either.
Ummmmmmmmmmmmmm....battlefield combatants, sans uniform, who are caught fighting AMERICANS, in foreign lands AREN'T AMERICANS and aren't covered by the Geneva Convention.
BTW, I am defending THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA and what his military has told him works. You aren't, which makes YOU the UNAMERICAN, here.
What "fell to ashes"?
Since when are YOU GOD? If torturers are all damned and I have never committed torture upon another person, than I am not "damned". And since you appear to think that anything and EVERYTHING is TORTURE, including playing loud rock music ( which, BTW, was used on Noriaga, successfully ), then there are a LOT of torturers all over the world....and I'm talking about civilians, who need to turn down their car radios!
Yes, I am well aware that some men and even some women, gain sexual gratification from torture/being tortured; they are both clinically deranged mental states. Sadists enjoy inflicting bodily and mental harm on others; masochists ( something you are a case study of ) enjoy being tortured and abused. I fall into neither category; however, I knew about this subject ( from school; not personal experience ) long before you were even a gleam in your father's eye!
You like to call other people names and impugn their character, when in fact, it is you who are the exemplar of the very things you hurl at others. That is called PROJECTION and you really should seek help for all of your mental problems.
There is absolutely NO evidence at all, that those Americans who have deprived battlefield combatants and higher ups of sleep, kept them in a room that is about 40 degrees, or water boarded them, deriving sexual stimulation and gratification from doing so. OTOH, the more you talk about it, the more convinced that YOU are the one who has this sexual perversion yourself.
You aren't married, I bet.
Sweetums, I am a FOUDING member of the VRWC and was one, long BEFORE you were even born.
I am sure our pro terrorist posters who support McCrazy and his pro-terrorist stand will love to see this:
Report: Video Posted of U.S. Soldiers' Bodies Being Burned
You mean besides Jesus Christ?
Every American citizen is his own sovereign judge of American policy and what is right for it, and every man is judge of morality. It is called being free, look it up.
"not to mention who is going to hell"
Does it bother you to admit that all unrepentent torturers are damnable? It is perfectly obvious and sound theology. I for one still have a scruple or two about requiring our servicemen and agents to damn themselves. I realize pay has gone up recently and pensions are more livable, but really, it is a lot to ask and the food is still terrible.
Now pretend conservatives object to considering Edmund Burke, who founded the political philosophy. The new maxim is "anything that gets in the way of torturing my enemies I can dismiss". The declaration can also be laughed off with scorn as a piece of hypocrasy. OK, if we laugh that off as hypocrasy, I'd be within my rights to enslave you. More, it would be just, your own cynicism recoiling on your own head.
Nobody said they were Americans, and nobody said they are covered by the Geneva convention as a matter of existing obligation under that treaty, to which they are not a party. But plenty say we ought to treat them in the manner described in that treaty, as a matter of policy and our own moral conduct. We are freely deciding how we should treat them, and the answer is, as human beings, ergo we morally may not torture them. Because we freely choose not to be torturers. Because being a torturer is being fit to feed worms, and we aspire to something better. We simply disdain to use such means.
"I am defending THE PRESIDENT"
Actually, you are advocating torture and defending it as expedient. He mostly isn't, and has asked the congress to issue clarified rules of conduct in the matter. They are doing so, and they are clearly saying "don't use torture", and are right to say it.
"and what his military has told him works."
Some may have told him torture works, but as grand strategy it is way above their pay grade, and as morality it is higher still. Grand strategy is for the entire government to decide, including the congress. And morality is for the citizenry as a whole to decide. Torture famously worked so well in Algeria that after a million dead, two coups and a revolution in France, the French lost and left. Because the political divisions sparked by the torture policy ripped France apart and made any continued hawkish policy in Algeria politically impossible.
When your country is stepping off a cliff, it is your duty to warn it not to.
"What "fell to ashes"?
Atlanta. Dixie. Everything built on the idea that slavery and torture were expedient. All the cynics who scorned the principles of the declaration as meaningless idealistic twaddle and rhetoric - they are dead and buried, the worms ate them, and everything they tried in their foolish faith in the expediency of cruelty produced only division, death and destruction.
"Since when are YOU GOD?"
I was deified last Tuesday in a small ceremony to which only close friends were invited. No, actually, I have a commission to decide all moral questions for myself and to use all the political power I may possess in service of right as I am given light to see it. The issuing authority is a little higher than the caretaker executive of one modern state. When did you decide the president is a pharaoh?
"If torturers are all damned and I have never committed torture upon another person, than I am not "damned"."
That is almost a dictionary definition of non sequitor. You might be damned for some future murder or your present (hypothetical) avarice for all I know. That torturers are damned does not imply anyone who is not a torturer is not. Also, the defender of a wrong is as guilty as the committer of that wrong - in their heart they have committed the act themselves. One might charitably make some allowance for knowing not what they do - which many stand in dire need of.
"EVERYTHING is TORTURE"
If your intention is to inflict sufficient violent suffering on another human being to eradicate his will and replace it with your own, then that is torture. And which particular poker you use or which particular nerve endings your bang on is as irrelevant as whether the stake burners used oak or pine.
"I am well aware that some men and even some women, gain sexual gratification from torture"
Good, now reason. This being the case, policy and authority has to guard against encouraging such deviance. It has to remove the occasion for it, and it has to be suspicious of the motives of anyone advocating such practices. It has to avoid trusting those trained in such a school, some of whom will inevitably like it, develop a taste for it, and seek other occasions to gratify that sick desire. When entrusting men with full power over other human beings, it must ensure that power is used for the purposes for which it was granted, and not other hopelessly indefensible ones. Otherwise it will pollute its own justice and majesty with the lowest vices in human nature, and make itself justly hated.
Which is easy to do. You forbid torture, renounce it as a policy, and punish those who engage in it. Precisely what previous laws did, and our representatives are trying to ensure is still observed.
"There is absolutely NO evidence at all, that those Americans who have (tortured others) deriving sexual stimulation and gratification from doing so."
Absolutely no evidence at all, huh? Nobody took pictures of themselves or their girlfriends leading prisoners around on leashes and sent them to their boyfriends or other girlfriends, then. Right. And nobody was court martialed over it, either. Not hypothetical, already in the headlines. Minor stuff to be sure, because caught in time by basically decent people. Who, note well, did not try to defend it, but instead punished it.
I do not know how you interpret Christianity but it seems you have a few things mixed up. First, while Jesus did die and come back from the dead for our sins, he never left you in charge of anything. Second, do you remember the parable of the man who goes out looking for labor. No matter what time of the day he hired them, they all received the same pay. Moral - you can come to Christ anytime during your lifetime. Third, the prodigal son parable. Moral - you can always come back to the father and be forgiven. Fourth - it is not up to you who goes to hell or not. You presume too much. Fifth - what you consider torture and I consider interrogative techniques has panned out. We have stopped attacks and we have saved people. That is a fact! Finally, the military is not that bad and the food is actually pretty good. You make it sound once someone joins the military, they are damned. That is probably big news to the all the chaplins in the service. You sound like one of those Phelps people!
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