<p>Read the below as one imagines a band softly playing: “God Bless America.”</p>
<p>From MSNBC:
"WASHINGTON - Dick Cheney, US vice-president, has endorsed the use of “water boarding” for terror suspects and confirmed that the controversial interrogation technique was used on Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the senior al-Qaeda operative now being held at Guant</p>
<p>Just remember David Pearl. This is cupcake treatment.</p>
<p>I read this with the thought of the number of times that a solo trumpet playing Taps or a bagpipe band playing Amazing Grace did not have to play because the information that we got from KSM was used to disrupt plots that would have killed innocent lives. I shed no tears for the fact that for a minute or two KSM may have been very uncomfortable … knowing that because of him there are thousands of widows and orphans right now.</p>
<p>I read this with the fear that a Democratic administration would prove themselves to be as soft on terrorists as they claim that they want to be and that we will one day not get the critical information that will be needed to save an entire city.</p>
<p>We simply can’t kill or torture all the terrorists…it’s a really interesting plan from our man Cheney, but it has, and will continue to backfire.</p>
<p>Torture doesn’t guarantee that the info that’s obtained is true. What torture, however, does guarantee is that the world will see that we don’t stand by our own principles.</p>
<p>We don’t “torture” our own soldiers. Waterboarding is SOP. Training. You can’t win wars if you’re a wuss, NSM.</p>
<p>Can’t win this war, even if we torture them all to death.</p>
<p>Reality bites.</p>
<p>I think we should just be nice to those terrorists, it’s not their fault that they want to kill us, they’re just a product of their environment.</p>
<p>What’s the worst they could do, kill a few thousand innocent Americans? </p>
<p>Maybe you’re willing to risk American lives out of sympathy for these sociopaths, but as long as we are placing specific limitations upon who can be tortured, I don’t see a problem with obtaining valuable information used to save our troops by any means necessary.</p>
<p>Sorry, Daniel Pearl.</p>
<p>This is a war where the enemy will do WHATEVER it takes. All the talk aout our principles is very noble and all, but it’s also the very weakness that is being taken advantage of by our enemies. </p>
<p>Didn’t UBL call America a “paper tiger” after the Mogadishu fiasco in the early nineties? Personally, I don’t feel like proving the SOB right. </p>
<p>Sympathy for terrorists will get us all killed.</p>
<p>I simply don’t think that torture is the way to end terrorism. I think that by torturing people, we simply give more people reason to hate us, and we create more martyrs and that leads to more terrorism. </p>
<p>Our constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. What we do when we torture suspected terrorists or anyone else is to say that we don’t believe in our own stated values. Why should countries want to become democratic when we’re doing some of the same things that dictators do?</p>
<p>And, as someone said, we can’t torture all of the terrorists.</p>
<p>As Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Martin Luther King, Jr
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; Only love can do that.”</p>
<p>We have already proven that our actions are creating more terrorists, not fewer.</p>
<p>At some point, conservatives will realize that we are fanning the flames, not putting them out. And this is becoming one very hot fire.</p>
<p>No they won’t.</p>
<p>Explain to me how this result of the torture somehow helped our country. According to this MSNBC story, the opposite is the result.</p>
<p>"But only now is a picture emerging of how the interrogation policy developed, and the battle that law enforcement agents waged, inside Guantanamo and in the offices of the Pentagon, against harsh treatment of al-Qahtani and other detainees by military intelligence interrogators.</p>
<p>In interviews with MSNBC.com the first time they have spoken publicly former senior law enforcement agents described their attempts to stop the abusive interrogations. The agents of the Pentagon’s Criminal Investigation Task Force, working to build legal cases against suspected terrorists, said they objected to coercive tactics used by a separate team of intelligence interrogators soon after Guantanamo’s prison camp opened in early 2002. They ultimately carried their battle up to the office of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who approved the more aggressive techniques to be used on al-Qahtani and others.</p>
<p>Although they believed the abusive techniques were probably illegal, the Pentagon cops said their objection was practical. </p>
<pre><code>[Note this part about what senior law enforcement think.]
</code></pre>
<p>They argued that abusive interrogations were not likely to produce truthful information, either for preventing more al-Qaida attacks or prosecuting terrorists.</p>
<p>And they described their disappointment when military prosecutors told them not to worry about making a criminal case against al-Qahtani, the suspected “20th hijacker” of Sept. 11, because what had been done to him would prevent him from ever being put on trial."</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15361462/[/url]”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15361462/</a></p>
<p>“Didn’t UBL call America a “paper tiger” after the Mogadishu fiasco in the early nineties? Personally, I don’t feel like proving the SOB right.”</p>
<p>Oh, we’ve already proved the Bush Administration is a bunch of paper tigers. They’ve systematically ignored their own generals about the need for troops on the ground in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and maintained a six-year policy of appeasement toward North Korea. Bred thousands of terrorists where none existed previously. Meanwhile, the Israelis gave up on torture as a source of information decades ago, as the information consistently didn’t pan out. Good for terrorizing a population, though.</p>
<p>Stay the course.</p>
<p>
This is the biggest risk in our country right now, in my opinion. </p>
<p>NSM, I don’t worry about torture creating more terrorists – they are responding to the fundamentalist clerics who are urging annihilation of western ideals. As far as the constitution is concerned, it doesn’t apply to terrorists.</p>
<p>Doesn’t anyone watch “24” – just ask yourselves, “What would Jack Bauer do?”</p>
<p>there wasa young man in afghanistan, he was a baker, he was tortured in guantonemo, he was finally released, he was innocent, but it took a year to get anyone to look at his case, he was finally sent home, and he is a broken man, and his friends are all very angry and NOW distrust America</p>
<p>How do we know they are :terrorists:, because they are in jail? how come few have been tried, how come many have finally been found to have doen nothing wrong, but still are jailed…</p>
<p>Guess some people believe guilty forever and not deserving of any defense because someone said they were, yeah</p>
<p>Why the trust of foreign inteligence, ie Pakistan, when it comes to terrorists, especially when we PAY them to turn people over</p>
<p>Please, how much of our constitution are people wiling to give up?</p>
<p>Our founding fathers would be disgraced at recent events</p>
<p>Sounds like our mantra right now is not “what would Jack Bauer do?” but “what would a terrorist do?” Nice role models.</p>
<p>News Flash: Most of these people hate us whether we’re fighting them or not. </p>
<p>Has any one here ever seen “Obsession - what the War on Terror is really about?” It’s a real eye-opener and quite frightening.</p>
<p>You’re probably right, Kluge. </p>
<p>Hope does spring eternal though.</p>