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Posted on 05/04/2011 8:52:21 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
The torture apologists are at it again, trying to perpetuate the unholy untruth that “interrogation of high-value targets” (torture) helped “give us victory” and thus yet again try to insinuate that it is justified. It doesn’t work, it didn’t help us one wit in getting bin Laden, and it is never justified. We cannot let torture apologists get any traction again on this corrupt myth.
But they are trying. Liz Cheney and others at the Keep America Safe Foundation got out a quick statement following President Obama’s announcement of the successful operation against Osama bin Laden. The balance of their argument is that this “victory” was due in larger part to our “intelligence services who, through their interrogation of high-value detainees, developed the information that apparently led us to bin Laden.” President Obama’s leadership in this daring effort against terrorism isn’t even mentioned.
How quickly they come back out of the woodwork, the torture apologists. Jane Mayer, the author of The Dark Side: How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals has said, “It may have taken nearly a decade to find and kill Osama bin Laden, but it took less than twenty-four hours for torture apologists to claim credit for his downfall,” citing the Keep American Safe Foundation statement.
Much has been made of ”getting the courier’s name” from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), for example, said earlier this week that we obtained information “about the courier…obtained that information through waterboarding…vital information which directly led us to bin Laden.” In fact, as experts have noted, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed did not reveal the courier’s name that led the U.S. to bin Laden under torture. He gave up those names many months later under standard interrogation.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
WaPo - nuff said.
One need not read a single word further.
Exactly. Opponents say "the subject will say anything to avoid torture". "Anything" includes the truth.
Never ask questions whose answers cannot be verified, and let the subject know that bad things will happen if he lies to us.
I really do not care if torture “works” or not. It is gravely immoral in all circumstances. Its use and portrayal as acceptable virtually guarantees the long term danger that it will be used against American military personnel and eventually even civilians. I am not kidding myself that the Constitution is any more than a polite fiction these days, but I am sentimental about it all the same.
You are quite correct. The notion that “torture doesn’t work” flies in the face of thousands of years of human experience.
There are limitations to its efficacy, but that’s true of any other possible interrogation methods. Most critically, confessions of wrongdoing by a torture victim are not reliable. People, understandably, will say anything they think the torturer wants to hear to make it stop.
This argument is a non-starter for the anti-torture group. They would be much better served by sticking with “we shouldn’t do torture” because it’s “always wrong.” An argument I find more than a little convincing.
Although since the vast majority of them are moral relativists, this would seem to create an inherent contradiction in their position. But such never seems to bother them.
Bingo.
In the real world that is is torture. In the bubble world of the mass media torture is throwing a murderous Jihadist in a cell with A/C set to maximum cold. Water boarding is not real torture because no extremities are chopped off nor teeth knocked.
Is hell immoral?
She’s a real wanker, that’s for sure.
Kalid was water-boarded - an “enhanced interrogation technique” - and was no doubt physically able to play a tennis match later that afternoon.
And getting information from someone after they “broke” via water-boarding - IS getting information from them via water-boarding - even if the actual info is given days later.
Apparently he needed to tell them the name WHILE inverted and having water poured over his face for it to have been a result of water-boarding - in the mind of this confused deluded ignorant liberal writer for the Washington Pravda.
Show her a thistle and she will wank it. ;)
LOL! I did not read the article, my comment was about her last name....try saying out loud, ha ha. Sorry but if it were me, I’d have to keep the maiden name.
That’s an interesting question. Someone I admire once said that hell is the experience of God’s love for those who have rejected it. So hell is certainly a state of justice. I am less certain that it could be called moral. You might have to explain what you mean.
Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. She writes a weekly column for the Washington Post “On Faith”
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Anyone who works for George Soros and John Podesta please spare me the lecture.
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Conservative tribalism behind anti-government anger
I argue in the Washington Post today that behind the ‘cut the deficit’ rhetoric is a regressive ideology that wants to return us to competing tribes rather than one people.
By Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite
April 6th, 2011
Frankly, I'd like to try it if she'll just hold still and cooperate.
What constitutes it? Most of what’s being derided as “torture” is little different than frat hazing.
Was killing OBL immoral? If so, then lesser acts cannot be “in all circumstances”.
Leech! Lampreys are shark parasites. Pilot fish and the remora are close, they are commensal species. Parasites are species that benefit from another animal while causing harm. Commensalists benefit from another organism while causing it no harm (pilot fish and remoras snatch little bites of food while the shark is feeding). So she’s either a parasite or a commensal species. You be the judge.
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I also stopped reading past the headline and the writer’s name. You just can’t make this stuff up.
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