Up until now I thought Nance was a normal person. This last paragraph puts him in Moonbat Land IMO. One of Conyer's Moonbats I suspect.
Posted on 11/09/2007 6:14:39 AM PST by RDTF
Actually, I know plenty about it, and what I know reinforces my beliefs. It does not hinder them.
There seems to be at least four lines of argument here.
1. It's torture so ipso facto illegal and therefore we musn't do it. Implying of course that if it was legal we could/should do it.
2. It don't work (Nances argument). And of course if that's true then he's right. Why would anyone want to do something that does'nt work?
3. Waterboarding is or is not torture.
4. Waterboarding is immoral regardless of it's effectiveness or legality.
I come down on number 2.
If Nance is correct then it's not effective and we shouldn't do it.
But what are we to make of those in the FBI/CIA and Pentagon who said it has been "extremely effective". And "we got a boat load of good Intel". Paraphrasing.
This is starting to smell like a Conyers setup.
I have changed my mind about this and agree with you.
Information forced under extreme duress is simply unreliable.
Trickery, psychological methods and truth serum is more effective anyway.
Such tactics are beneath us.
Up until now I thought Nance was a normal person. This last paragraph puts him in Moonbat Land IMO. One of Conyer's Moonbats I suspect.
Great, please let me know whenever you chosing to fly on an airliner with heroin-abusing pilots. If you don’t mind, I catch the next flight.
:~)
I was done with your position two posts ago. I guess I’m just too subtle.
If you read the definition of torture (US Code) posted at least twice on this thread you will find that chemically-aided questioning is explicitely defined as torture. Now I know that we use "stress positions" and a certain amount of "sleep deprivation" to induce compliance. Using chemicals as a short-cut seems to be out-of-bounds.
I wonder how he sleeps as night. If he truly believes this is torture how can he subject US airmen & Spec Ops to this treatment? I think his 'outrage' is about 99% politically motivated and 100% synthetic.
If he were to resign from the US military I might be willing to take his position seriously.
You aren't the only one.
On it's own, it may seem that way. But the information can lead us to where to look and who to watch. It can be confirmed by other sources so that it is more reliable, and it can be used to get information from other sources.
Trickery, psychological methods and truth serum is more effective anyway.
But none of those methods by themselves is reliable without corroboration from other sources. We have to use all available techniques together to get information from the enemy. Sleep and light deprivation, extreme temperatures, loud noises and other standard, approved methods, to weaken the resolve of the enemy. And if necessary, even waterboarding.
Such tactics are beneath us.
We are walking a fine line between protecting our citizens and honoring the ideas we committed to in the Geneva Conventions. So people are going to disagree whether or not we're crossing that line. But give President Bush credit. He's chosen to make the decision himself and take the responsibility for his actions, unlike President Clinton, who permitted renditioning, which permitted other countries to torture people for us.
“Can I waterboard the perp to find out where it is?”
Forget it, he’s a Libertarian. He thinks we deserve pain for “meddling in foreign affairs”.
In 2011 President Hillary declares the uber-hate site the FreeRepublic a terrorist organization. The FBI arrests PLMerite and waterboards him in search of his cache of hidden explosives. Well, he doesn’t really have any but someone thinks he might so it’s safer to waterboard him just to be sure.
After all. It isn’t torture.
We have been VERY successful thus far. Enemies of this country were cheering at the Democrat control of congress and they will be cheering if a Dem gets into the White House.
This debate makes our country appear weak and divided. I pray we are not the former and am afraid we are the later.
After all, it isn't torture.
I think it should be acknowledged it is torture and that on certain select subjects that we believe to have critical and/or lots of intelligence, that we will use this on them.
That's sensible approach. I think we should make a blanket statement that we do not use torture on: (1) Subjects in a criminal investigation, or (2) uniformed enemy combatants. However, what makes this war unique is that almost none of our adversaries fall into either of those categories. They are non-uniformed combatants engaged in planning and carrying out acts of war. As a result they have put themselves outside both the protections reserved for those suspected of criminal activities, and the protections reserved for soldiers engaged in combat.
Yup. Non-uniform enemy combatants are not covered under the Geneva Convention protections as are any regular military troops. Terrorists do not get protections that regular military folks get. Neither do spies.
Keep in mind if a foreign soldier takes off his uniform to fight covertly, he is a spy and does not get the same protection as a uniformed soldier that is captured. This is clear in the Geneva Conventions. Spies can be hung or shot. Men deliberately out of uniform fighting can be hung or shot as spies.
We have killed German spies in WW2 that were caught on shore of the US, dropped off by subs. No uniforms, they were spies. We have killed internal spies. George Washington himself hanged an accomplice of Benedict Arnold without even a military trial.
Pound sand!
Pound sand!
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