Cheney is saying they should release the CIA memos to show waterboarding works

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/8009571.stm


Has this man absolutely not one iota of understanding of ethics or indeed empathy. I'm guessing the part of the brain the rest of us have for this is, in Cheney, some sort of black wizened lump that resembles a walnut left to bake in an oven for 3 days.

Isn't it kind of obvious that torture is not somehow okay if it gets results.

What a tool.

hey db,

you don't think torture is every justified? what if it was shown to get accurate information?

No I don't think torture is ever justified. Watching movies covering this, yep, I'll cheer on Dirty Harry as he tortures the psycho that kidnapped the young girl in order to save the girl's life, but in reality....no.


I believe accepting institutionalised torture (ie an elected government is doing it) is the fastest way for a society to go straight down the pan morally, ethically or any other way. We should be on guard, unless we wake up one morning fearing a knock on the door from someone in a uniform, or we find a dictator in charge.


For similar reasons, I think animal cruelty should also be guarded against as an institutional thing.


We accept brutality against others, even animals, we are brutalising ourselves in a terrible way, imo.

And of course you can make utilitarian arguments about certain cases where torture is justified - ie if we torture 2 guys, one is innocent, one is guilty for 3 days, and we save 1000 people, is it justified?


Sometimes, you need to draw a line in the sand and say 'Enough. No further.' America, the UK, and many other European countries have lead the way in setting that line in the last 100-150 years, but letting the line move is massively retrogressive, in my opinion. Seriously, no other issue other than global destruction by pollution bothers me more in terms of big-picture news/politics.

Well torture will never go away, simply cause it is effective. Worse than accepting it is covering it up.

Horse****.

At least to the second part.

There have been countless studies and loads of anecdotal evidence that indicates the net effect of torture, without even taking the ethical concerns into account, is far more harmful, resulting in (sometimes) dangerously misleading information. The only ones in the intelligence community who actually endorse state sanctioned and systemic toorture are mid- to high- level, largely incompetent functionaries who care only about results to report to their superiors, regardless of whether those results are correct or not.

Neither is acceptable, in my opinion. Framing it in such ridiculous and necessary binary extremes is precisely the kind of propagandic sleight of hand Cheney (who, make no mistake, is a greasy, chicken****, pinstriped bastard of the most despotic stripe, one who deserves that special place in hell where demons with corkscrew dicks eternally give him the old rectal in-out while Michael Bolton plays ceaselessly in the background)) has been using. Most people didn't buy it them, and they aren't now.

Edit: Sorry to harsh the thread buzz. Some things just piss me off. State sanctioned torture is one of 'em. Maybe we need a seperate thread.

Maybe we do.

I find the casual acceptance of torture in a civilised world way worse than the wars that have happened during the last 8 years.

Agree. I don't know if it's a conscious acceptance as much as a mass denial, which may be what number7 was trying to say. It's still a tacit acceptance, and damn disturbing.

Sure it´s effective. Studies about torture is the real horse****.
Secondly, how it harms people does not make it any less effective either.
I am not talking about if torture is a good thing or not, but as long as people can benefit from it, they will do it.

Ofcourse not, but it doesnt change the fact that I find the hidden torture worse than the controled one. I´ll bet the hidden one is also more effective.

Once again, 7, you think if you yammer loud enough it makes it true. But, despite your feeble attempts at sly wordsmanship, it is not a "sure" thing.

Read this, to scratch the surface.

Then this. Second passage, on torture's effectiveness.

Then this.

Then this.

Hundreds of experienced intelligence operatives and interrogation specialists have made the same claim, that torture is not effective. Yet you sit up there on your ice patch, confident that your mind is far more capable of determining such than those who have experience in said matters, or have spent extensive time and effort studying them?

The difference between balls and ignorance is wafer thin. I'll give you credit for both.

I am awaiting any evidence, other than personal resonance, that backs up your claim to torture's effectiveness on any sort of workable scale. And, please, any serious assessment that the studies (that claim torture's ineffectiveness) are horse**** is welcome.

A "playground bet", one made from floundering bluster, is worthless. Otherwise, I'd be glad to take that wager.

You really have no idea what the hell you're talking about. I'll chalk it up to denial rather than pig-ignorance, although both are probably contributory. You are speaking only from personal inclination and, more than likely, a cowboy mentality that you can only affect in your wildest fantasies.

Keep dreaming while the rest of us deal with reality.

I don't think it's acceptable, even if it works.

FWIW, IMHO, This subject really needs it's own thread

LOL yeah fine, do your thing.

I am arguing why it will always be there. And it is due to its effectiveness (from the point of view of the molester). Thinking we can make it go away is naive, it is like saying that if all the guns where gone people couldnt shoot eachother and they harm alot more than they help people. You can ban guns as much as you like but the bad guys will still use them.

Well you can read and eat all the words you want, do you really think it changes anything?

I wish more people could control their emotions aswell ass you.

A bet is always good. I can collect in 20 years unless ofcourse that torture is no longer existing which should be the case with all the informations on the internet for everyone to see how it is not effective.

Being cynical is not the same as denial or ignorance. You seem to be living the dreamworld where these things can change, hey I mean we might be lucky that some laws can be changed, but that is pretty much as far as we are gonna get.

I never talked about pros being higher than cons or supporting torture but you obv feel alot better arguing with me if you can turn me into a monster at the same time.
Even if we could prove that a certain amount of succes (one-sided view) from torture was less likely than same amount of failure, and everyone knew it, torture would still live well. When people don´t torture out of rationality, they do it out of desperation or hatred.

Not realising this is ignorant.

I'd like to see the same posts of outrage for every beheading.

But you were arguing it would be here because it was effective (which is wrong), not due to some kind of flaw in the human condition (which may or may not be true). You were arguing from an assumed point that has been weighed in against, by those qualified to do so, time and time again.

Also, we're talking about state sponsored torture, here, a different animal entirely than a singular and misguided perspective of an individual or even a small group.

Can't find anything of note to back up your position, huh?

And now, in your omniscient way, you know what my emotional state is. And in an answer that made no sense whatsoever in response to the statement it was answering. I realize there is a language barrier at play here, so normally I cut you some slack. But now you're just rambling on nonsensically, and I don't think it's merely a linguistic stumble.

Sure. Because zealots always believe the truth when confronted with it.

You keep having to backtrack and tell "what you were arguing about". Why don't you get it right the first time? No one, NO ONE, was saying that torture did not exist or will go away. On an individual level or micro-tribal level, it can be rationalized by it's practitioners. But this is a different issue entirely.

Please point out where I implied any of this, at all. To say I live in a dreamworld because you are trying to pin on me a position I neither proclaimed nor discussed is ridiculous. It is only tangential to the debate at hand, and has never been endorsed by myself or anyone else who agrees with my positions on sanctioned torture. Yet you keep hugging this point as if it is the fulcrum of the discussion at hand. Your childlike lack of comprehension is almost endearing.

Oh. So by not having the position you are assigning me, I am ignorant. Okay. Got it.

Once again, state sponsored torture is not endorsed out of "desperation or hatred", even if that plays a part in it's execution. Torture as you are framing it is an individual act, and therefore, due to ethical concerns as well as a lack of effectiveness, should not be a state sponsored activity. No one has yet tried to put forth the idea that by ridding our country of it's legal usage of torture would single-handedly cure the flaws of the human condition. It may not even stop certain functionaries from practicing it. But it will hold them accountable, and put a stop to what can be stopped by doing so.

Would you also like to see posts of outrage for any state sponsored execution, regardless of the process used?

The thing is, it supposedly doesn't anyway. The biggest case the administration had for it working, supposedly the guy gave them nothing but bum leads and information that was common knowledge.

Cheney is playing the meta-game now of trying to make the Democrats unfit for the next presidency. Any act of terror that comes along is going to be met with a unified Republican front of "I told you so!" and "See, this is what happens!"

Cheney is campaigning for Jeb or Sarah in 2012 or 2016 now. He's helping to set up the storyline for the Republican opposition.

First time I have ever laughed at that image.

Me too. It makes me feel how close the abyss is, and that we truly lost the war on terrorism and more besides.

So you're saying beheading has a lot of supporters and has been U.S. policy for the last 8 years?

Because if so, then I'm with you!

sweet...the torture discussion got started...can one of the mods separate it? i would really like to read kudzus links, but don't want them to get lost in this thread...

this is one of those things that i don't know enough about to really have an opinion...but some people that i tend to agree with support the use of torture in some rare cases (Sam Harris) so its something i should look into...

hang on...moving torture posts from other thread......................................blah blah blah blah

if you don't like the title tell me what you want it to be

i disagree. i think if it is effective it should be used but never discussed.

thanks katy...

Just to make things clear - when you say 'effective', do you mean effective at getting an answer or effective at getting the truth?