Waterboarding

[StrongInTheArm]

Just to clarify ...

So are you saying the state torturing one innocent person is a criminal act that should be punished?

[John Scott]

Originally Posted by StrongInTheArm

Just to clarify ...

So are you saying the state torturing one innocent person is a criminal act that should be punished?

Would you like that typed and notarized?

[StrongInTheArm]

Seems you want to be non-committal all of a sudden

[John Scott]

Originally Posted by StrongInTheArm

Seems you want to be non-committal all of a sudden

Having something typed and notarized is "non-committal"? Perhaps you don't know the meaning of "notarized"?

[StrongInTheArm]

A simple yes to post 21 would have sufficed.

I wanted to be sure of your position before asking you something else. If you had answered yes, then I would have been interested to hear your view of who should be prosecuted for the crime, the person doing the torture or the person giving the orders, or both? Of course it would have also been interesting to know how far up the line of command you think the crime goes?

But you were deliberately vague with your answers. I wonder why

[Zap]

@John: You misinterpret pretty much anything I say. Sometimes I think you do it on purpose and then other times I honestly believe that you have no clue about something I said or why I said it.
I ask questions sometimes to try to get you to follow a path of logic to a conclusion. Inevitably, you either arrive at some illogical conclusion or think that was my position for some reason. For example, I asked you how it was logical to be bullying your opponents. You "misinterpreted" that to mean that I was saying it was logical and then went on to unnecessarily try to educate me on what logic is. I was trying to get you to realize that your bullying was not at all logical but the lesson was sadly lost on you.
Some would call this dishonest debate.

Or how about when you asked me if I was going to pay for restaurants that went out of business when no-smoking laws went into practice. Rather than label you as a socialist for presenting this socialist idea, I gave you some credit and tailored a response based on the point you were getting at.
See how that works?

You totally glossed over my rendition comment. You are against rendition but in favour of torture? I find that strange.

[thegamerslink]

Zap...you are the one completely rigid in the idea of excepting no one else's point of view other than your own. Anyone that offers a different take on what the topic is other than the one that you have embedded they are bullying and illogical. I fail to understand that unless you happen to be in my kids generation maybe. Seems a majority of that generation seems to thing everyone owes them everything and they don't have to be accountable for anything........

At any rate to cover the water boarding issue, why do we define it as torture? Do they become injured? Do they become maimed or have long lasting detrimental effects? If you hang someone by their wrists for days, then take a car battery with cables and wet sponges attached using electricity to get you to talk....or cutting 3-5 layers of skin off at a time from the lower left or right side of your back where it's super sensitive. Cutting off body parts such as toes and fingers a joint at a time, taking clamps and attaching them to their nipples and adjusting them tighter as you ask the questions, breaking random bones by repeated physical beatings. Taking the broken bones be them a nose, fingers, toes, hand, arm, leg whatever and moving the broken bones back and forth causing the bones to scrape together repeatedly after each question with the inappropriate answer.

I'm not going to go through every possible thing that is real torture. But something such as not letting someone sleep for a day or 2 or water boarding that causes no real damage other than the imaginative impression of drowning. Those to me are not devices of torture but simple extreme persuasive tactics. And your life has been saved more than once by using these types of tactics. Yes yours, as well as mine and everyone else's here, if we stop the terrorist attack on one place, who's to say that you aren't in the same area when it's planned, and at the same time, if because you want to not be forceful in any way we don't find out anything is happening and a few places start to get hit, do you not think that the successful attempts will not spread and change the entire world as we know it not to mention sooner rather than later make it to where it is that you are apparently feeling so safe?

[Zap]

Originally Posted by thegamerslink

Zap...you are the one completely rigid in the idea of excepting no one else's point of view other than your own. Anyone that offers a different take on what the topic is other than the one that you have embedded they are bullying and illogical.

You are only saying this because I've disagreed with a few of the things you've said in the past but your statement is bullshit.
The only person I've mentioned bullying is John and that is because John quite often uses the tactic instead of or in addition to points that he would make.
I can (and do) accept viewpoints other than my own and I do it without calling them a bully. Count yourself among that group.
Unless, of course, you can link me to a post where I called you a bully?

Didn't think so.

I can respect your point of view, most of the time. But I really do have to take exception to your "Big Bad Democrats are causing the recession" theory. I must admit, I have no respect for that particular viewpoint. But I respect most of your other points, even if I don't agree with them. I even can respect the fact that you truly believe yourself to be impartial where American politics are concerned, regardless of the heavy Republican slant of most of your posts. You even went so far as to claim yourself more "independant" than Republican. Fine. If you say so...

Your point would have been better served if you had left out the first paragraph of your post. While I disagree that waterboarding is not a form a torture, I can respect your opinion. It is torture of the mind at the very least.
(Take note as I refute your point without attacking you)
Saying that waterboarding is not torture because there are no physical effects completely discounts the mental effect it has on the person being tortured. Would you want American citizens in captivity elsewhere to undergo waterboarding? Would you be OK with it being performed on you?

While I disagree with John's stance on it, at least he understands that it is torture. Just because there is "no damage" doesn't mean that it's not "real torture". It is.

I'm a little surprised at both if you. You both argue so strongly in favour of rights, including your right to smoke in restaurants, but here we have people being tortured (and denied rights) and you both are in favour of it. Innocent people do get tortured.
I guess you're both really only concerned with your own rights.

[thegamerslink]

You are only saying this because I've disagreed with a few of the things you've said in the past but your statement is bullshit.

I wasn't saying that because of you're disagreement of my statements in the past. You have a habit of not allowing any form of logic or reason persuade anything you are thinking or feeling on a subject. As for bullying I wasn't saying anything about you calling me a bully for not agreeing with you, I just didn't think John's common tactic of discussion was bullying but I do sometimes see him get frustrated with you in the midst of discussion for the above mentioned reasons.

I can respect your point of view, most of the time. But I really do have to take exception to your "Big Bad Democrats are causing the recession" theory.

As for the Dems causing the recession.....I wasn't implying that the Dem's were the sole reason for us having a recession. What I was asking, and implying, and I might add I'm not the only one as many economists and stock market types have repeatedly talked on the news stating the very same thing, is does not the Democrats trying to make the economic outlook as bleak as possible, news agencies in their attempts to help the Democrat Nominee's spreading that word, and Dem's in general trying to use economic panic as a means to attack the current administration was decreasing the over all confidence of the market and the consumer causing the effects of an economic slow down or recession to become more severe and more impactfull faster.

Saying that waterboarding is not torture because there are no physical effects completely discounts the mental effect it has on the person being tortured. Would you want American citizens in captivity elsewhere to undergo waterboarding? Would you be OK with it being performed on you?

Ok, how do I put this? Firstly waterboarding is immediate mental stress, it has very little lasting, if any lasting mental effects. As whether I would want other American citizens or myself waterboarded. Given the option then yes waterboarding would be my choice compared to other methods that have always been used and are still being used against Americans in other places especially the Middle East. As for innocent people being tortured, that happens to Americans all the time, and has throughout our military history.
When a country i.e. The United States has a manual of excepted Standard Operation Procedures. It minimizes the possibility of innocents being treated as those that are not. As with any system unfortunately there is 1 or a few that will be innocent and thought other wise. As for the treatment of those that are beyond doubt not innocent...why should we put them up in a hotel feed them steak and treat them like family? I'll tell you this, our foreign prisoners get treated better than our domestic prisoners do, they get treated better than our homeless do...so what more do you want? The people in Gitmo and other places for the most part are people that are a known threat to the U.S. and many of those that have been released have simply been captured or killed after they were released doing the exact same thing they were imprisoned for in the first place. So why should we release those that pose a threat in a time of war? And as an addition if you stop for just a second and think, a lot of these folks are from the deserts etc, from the Middle East and are living far better than they ever have in their lives at Gitmo or other places.

I'm a little surprised at both if you. You both argue so strongly in favour of rights, including your right to smoke in restaurants, but here we have people being tortured (and denied rights) and you both are in favour of it. Innocent people do get tortured.
I guess you're both really only concerned with your own rights.

As stated above, when you follow an S.O.P. you minimize the possibility of innocent people being imprisoned lowering still the possibility of them reaching a state like water boarding. If you strike against a country in a state of war, especially an enemy as hideous as the one we face now that targets the citizens, the weak, and the meek rather than having the courage to go strictly after military targets. How can you even consider the thought of giving them any rights other than those given to prisoners of war? That's just beyond my understanding, you do something wrong you give up rights, that's pretty simple and is a reason for people to not do things wrong. Now don't take it out of context, wrong is attempting to kill 10's, 100's, or 1000's of innocent people in this case, not shoplifting a pack of gum from a convenience store. There has to be a line drawn to turning the other cheek. And unending compassion, I'm not these peoples father, I am a fellow citizen of a country they are attempting to destroy not to mention the son, brother, cousin, grandson, husband and father of family that they are trying to kill. They have rights, they have the rights of a prisoner of war, those are the only rights they should get and in some cases may even be to many. But they should have rights in any case so the Military rights of Prisoners of War are the ones they deserve. They are not citizens of the United States and are either proven or suspected enemies of the state so they have no rights as those given by the state to it's citizens, nor does a soldier expect to get the rights of the citizens of an opposing force, we go in knowing that if captured we get treated as a prisoner of a hostile force, that is what we are trained for and are told to expect. So in all actuality I've answered 2 or 3 or your questions because what we get trained for and told to expect is actually more severe than we give those we capture.

[John Scott]

Originally Posted by StrongInTheArm

A simple yes to post 21 would have sufficed.

Previous posts in the thread make my position crystal clear.

Originally Posted by StrongInTheArm

If you had answered yes, then I would have been interested to hear your view of who should be prosecuted for the crime, the person doing the torture or the person giving the orders, or both?

All parties knowingly involved in the crime. Isn't that how the criminal justice system works?

Originally Posted by StrongInTheArm

Of course it would have also been interesting to know how far up the line of command you think the crime goes?

All parties knowingly involved in the crime. Isn't that how the criminal justice system works?

Originally Posted by StrongInTheArm

But you were deliberately vague with your answers. I wonder why

Vague? Not at all.

[StrongInTheArm]

Say yes or no to the question in post 21 and I'll accept you are not being vague

Baring in mind the crime was committed by the state, who do you think should prosecute, judge and punish the criminals?

And what should the punishment be for a head of state convicted of such a crime?

[John Scott]

Originally Posted by StrongInTheArm

Say yes or no to the question in post 21 and I'll accept you are not being vague

Offering a typed and notarized answer was vague?

Originally Posted by StrongInTheArm

Baring in mind the crime was committed by the state, who do you think should prosecute, judge and punish the criminals?

I know this may be hard for your collectivist mind to grasp, but "states" do not commit crimes. People do. Like the LA police who were convicted of civil rights violations, we do not judge a state - we judge the people who commit the crime.

Originally Posted by StrongInTheArm

And what should the punishment be for a head of state convicted of such a crime?

Punishments are hard to determine without. Sometimes people commit murder and go to prison for six month, while a tax evader can go to prison for five years or more.

And simply being head of state doesn't make one responsible. The My Lai massacres weren't order by the president, so it would be absurd to hold the president responsible.

[StrongInTheArm]

(Am I a collectivist, now what the hells that )

I suspect you know what I'm getting at. Would you agree with me that the President of the United States is NOW aware that torture is carried out by those working for him?

Is the President not responsible for the continued use of torture if he has not ordered that the use of torture be discontinued?

And if one innocent individual is tortured by US personnel, should the President not be prosecuted for the crime as well?

[John Scott]

Would you agree with me that the President of the United States is NOW aware that torture is carried out by those working for him?

Who said that innocent people are being tortured?

If you want to make a case for criminal prosecution of the president, why fabricate myths about innocent people being tortured when you can make a very real case for criminal disregard of civil rights in the form of Gitmo?

[Zap]

Originally Posted by John Scott

Who said that innocent people are being tortured?

The truth is that we don't know for sure if they are or aren't because this type of "work" is typically not carried out in public. (Wonder why, if it's so noble?)

But, what evidence does anyone have that would support the idea that us humans are any better at spotting potential terrorists than we are at spotting criminals? Innocent people are sent to jail all the time. What makes the jails used for torture any better? Or more accurate? There's no compelling reason to believe that they are able to achieve a 100% accuracy rate when their conterparts on every level (federal, state and local) fail to do so regularly. At least criminals have the benefit of a trial before going to prison. These people don't even get that.