OK, I’ve HAD It With Freepers Going Queer for Torture.

Self | 22 Oct. 01 | Grut

[Grut]

What in God’s name is wrong with all you people who suddenly think using torture to extract information from Arab detainees isn’t just OK, but kinda neat? Don’t you understand that our government is no less prone to occupying every niche available to it today than it was on September 10th? Give them the go-ahead on this and how long do you think it’ll be before YOUR goolies are hooked up to the electrodes? Hint: how long did it take to find out RICO isn’t just for Italians anymore?

This crap about Arabs aren’t citizens so the Constitution doesn’t protect them: their rights come from their being human, not from the Constitution. So do ours. If you really think citizenship affects what rights you have then you have just renounced the whole idea of natural law.

Even legally, there is nothing that I can think of in the Constitution that allows the government to act toward non-citizens much differently than it acts towards citizens except for relatively minor matters like residency and voting rights: certainly, there is nothing which lets it torture them. And remember, the government has only the powers the Constitution explicitly gives it.

OK...OK...(deep breath) I know everybody wants blood and anybody’s will do, but this immediate human response is flat wrong. We are not barbarians, which doesn’t mean we don’t have our barbaric impulses. But it is wrong to give in to them and cut off Achmed’s nose to spite Hassan’s face. Achmed is responsible for Achmed; Hassan for Hassan; is that so hard to understand?

Now, I have posted replies to other articles saying these things; more often than not, the responses (especially from those who should drink less and start later) have called my masculinity into question or suggested my indifference to American deaths. So far as the latter is concerned, more than a million Americans have died in the last 200 years to preserve the Constitution and it seems to me that queer-for-torture Freepers are the ones who are indifferent to their deaths. As for my masculinity - arrggh! forget it, it’s too childish a taunt to respond to.

Someone is bound to ask: if my wife were at grave risk, and I could eliminate that risk by torturing someone, would I? Damn right I would. But I would do it knowing that I would be charged, and tried, and very likely convicted for my actions. There is all the difference in the world between that and the sort of free pass so many Freepers suddenly seem inclined to give the federal government.

[LoneRangerMassachusetts]

These fanatical Arab Muslim rats are soldiers operating behind enemy (us) lines out of uniform. Tradition has it they have no rights and can be executed. I don't see any fundamental problem with Americans keeping their civil rights and LIVES while extracting necessary information out of these B*?tards. Get real. Our lives and the lives of our children depend upon us adapting to this new virulent and vicious form of warfare. Give these rats no shelter from the pain and suffering they wish upon us.

[muawiyah]

The way it's been used is there any serious difference between RICO and torture?

If not, why should the government restrict its punitive efforts to holiness preachers while letting terrorists off the hook?

[Equality 7-2521]

Ah, so the detainees in question have all been convicted of conspiracy. If that's true, then I agree that torture is reasonable--assuming that the torture is neither cruel nor unusual which is a difficult condition for torture to comply with. I hesitate to give blank checks to torture anyone who is merely claimed to be a suspect, however.

I would agree with the poster and challenge anyone to give a legal basis either Constitutional or case law that supports the rather absurd conjecture that rights apply only for Americans.

[Uncle Meat]

The only differences between them and "Muslim fanatics" are geography and language. Stop torturing me,you're making me laugh so hard my sides are splitting.

[El Gato]

Scenario: threat of nuclear bomb on US city. Possible co-conspirator in custody and won't talk. Tomorrow is the BIG day. Whay would you do?

Torture is one of the least effective means of getting information, especially from zealots like the truely guilty in this case are. The innocent will tell you whatever they think you want to hear, the guilty will feed you bad information.

I'm not familiar with the effectiveness and/or safety of so called "truth serums". I do now that I jabber away like crazy as I'm coming out of anethesia, but don't know that I'd say anything I didn't want to say, just things that I might normally not say to total stangers.

[ValerieUSA]

Oh. I couldn't figure out what the headline meant, so I made the mistake of clicking on this IDIOTIC RANT by a doo-doo head. I'm sorry.

[Aedammair]

Remember Madame DeFarge and her ilk with their mini guillotines (sp?) in the front row of public decapitations? You are absolutely right; ignorant peasants. At least the French peasants were and had been starving for years; their glee not much, but a little easier to reconcile. And they also killed their enemies themselves, not by WWF proxy.

[FlyVet]

Depends on your definition of torture. What's wrong with a little sleep deprivation and/or sodium pentathol? How about letting them loose in the general population of a maximum-security prison, with their motives known to the convicts? Now THAT'S what I call TORTURE. And yet, many inmates suffer it regularly, especially those who aren't big and strong enough to fend off you-know-what.

[goodieD]

Yeah and the left says that by merely striking back at the terrorists we have reduced ourselves to barbarians...it's all a matter of opinion. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

[Texaggie79]

You will only hear what you want to hear.

Ok, say I want to hear where a certain person is. Perhaps they lie, so I torture them worse when I discover it is not true. Eventually they will get the idea.

[Texaggie79]

Torture is not forbidden as a punishment for a crime, regardless of what the Supreme Court says.

The SCOTUS is not my source. The CONSTITUTION is. 8th Amendment.

[Smogger]

They do not deserve human rights since they are not human

Hmmm... sub human you say, eh?

All of this the ends justifies the means bs.. makes me sick. Screw having the moral high ground then, huh? Will just devolve like the friggin Taliban then. Get down on their level.

Torture is immoral and just plain wrong period under any circumstances. Sh!t man. We are the good guys..

[Texaggie79]

Or tell them you will bury their bodies in pork lard if they don't tell. :-)

[Psycho_Bunny]

You seem to think your opinion is more enlightened than the rest of ours.

More credence would have been given to your thoughts, had they not been in the form of a screed.

[poweqi]

this is really about you getting your feelings hurt on another thread Which thread? I want to read it.

[Texaggie79]

that the torture is neither cruel nor unusual which is a difficult condition for torture to comply with.

Only if it were a punishment. That is all the 8th applies to.

[FreedomIsSimple]

All I can say is, Amen. Most likely, the ones who are for torture are also for the War on Drugs (but that's a whole different thread).

They call themselves conservatives, but they're just statist scum like the liberals.

[Grut]

BTW, exactly where and what are my goolies????

"Goolies" is a word gifted to us by the ineffable Terry Pratchett; it means, approximately, a volume of space bounded by a left leg, a right leg, a hammer and an anvil.