<p>Kluge, any members of my clan in the military know that if they are captured in Iraq/Afghanistan, they will have holes drilled into their heads, their eyes gouged out, their genitals cut off, they might even be skinned alive. They won’t be allowed to opt out. Do you get it yet? You “guarantee” me what? And you’re afraid to give our little baby training to people who would and have done these things to our soldiers and operatives? Don’t you ever again tell anyone here that they’ve been “punked.”</p>
<p>Yeah, I get it. You want us to be more like the bad guys. I don’t. Do you get that?</p>
<p>I see now that you edited after I responded. I recognize your blood lust. I recognize that you feel that the evil of some on the other side justifies evil on our side. But you don’t have anyone who’s been subjected to what was called “water torture” in WWII saying it was OK. Torture is torture. The line between “interrogation” and “retribution” can be a tough one to draw. From your post, it’s one that is beyond your skills right now. That’s the problem.</p>
<p>No, I think that the U.S. military training technique of waterboarding, as presented in the OP, is far preferable to the medieval torture perpetrated by the terrorists. You don’t seem to get that.</p>
<p>driver:
Waterboarding is clearly outlawed by treaties to which the U.S. is signatory. Are you proposing that we withdraw from the International Convention on Torture?</p>
<p>Not to mention that pesky problem that we may be waterboarding men who have no more guilt than to have been born Arab, since so many of the Gitmo prisoners are as guilty of terrorism than you or I.</p>
<p>But without the rights of habeus corpus, they can’t contest their guilt, or prove their innocence, and will be subjected to waterboarding and other torture, nonetheless.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I assume that you also consider the fire bombing of Dresden, the fire bombing of Japan, and the nuclear bombing of Japan as inexcusable war crimes - that Truman and the entire chain of command down to the door gunners on the Enola Gay should have been hung after WWII.</p>
<p>It’s not a matter of “liking” torture, or wanting to become “more like” this very insidious enemy. I don’t think it’s clearly or even vaguely understood the nature of the enemy we face. </p>
<p>The blind spot the general population may have - because the NY Times and their ilk cheerfully, irresponsibly choose to engage in selective reporting - combined with the fact that the U.S., as well as the allied global intelligence community tend to not broadcast their finer work - is all of the successes, as well as the targeted accumulation of information that happens, and the information that arrives in theator long before waterboarded, or any other means of torture engages. </p>
<p>Simply put, no one here has all the facts, or even “some” of the facts, in terms of the chain of events that begin with collection of intelligence material for defense, analysis, communication to the theator of operations, and eventual detention of a suspected terrorist. But it’s commonly understood by even the most cerebrally absent that this is an enemy very seriously determined to kill us - period. And they’re not even slightly interested in having a nice chat about it, over a cup of hot tea. </p>
<p>The intention of these groups and cells is that the next 9/11 isn’t a matter of “if”, but “when”. And “tomorrow” would suit them just fine.</p>
<p>so you want to spare some guy getting water splashed on his face till he gets scared at the expense of innocent americans dying. You people are pretty sick</p>
<p>Unfortunately, war isn’t pretty, and isn’t executed in nice, clean, gentlemanly ways. It’s ugly, nasty, dangerous and difficult, for ALL combatants, regardless of affiliation. </p>
<p>Military intelligence is the most illusive intel of all; the stuff doesn’t arrive on a combatant’s door step, all neatly packaged in plastic and laid out in user-friendly format like the NY Times. Even if a strategist goes to sleep at night knowing all of the accurate, pertinent facts to his or her mission, half of those facts will be obsolete eight hours later when s/he wakes up; and half of what remains will be useless.</p>
<p>Has it come down to this? That we all need to aspire to is to not be as brutal as the terrorists and then we can do anything we want?</p>
<p>
This is a twisted interpretation of what several people on this thread have said. I didn’t read anything which suggested it was okay for the US to do whatever it wants for any reason. I see thoughtful, careful opinions expressing support for the difficult problem of obtaining strategic information in fighting a war. The last time I checked, we are not the ones cutting off heads and/or other body parts, torturing women and children and killing off entire ethnic groups. I do believe we have the right to try to protect the American people from the dangers of terrorism, and your type of liberal response is one reason why I think that this country is in incredible danger if Democrats are ever in charge.</p>
<p>This link was posted on another thread <a href=“http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2006-10-29-1.html[/url]”>http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2006-10-29-1.html</a>
Amen!</p>
<p>With all due respect, SJ, I don’t think the safety of Americans is of paramount importance to those in this administration.</p>
<p>There are reasons aplenty for war, but safety and security are not among the top few.</p>
<p>If some of you do not understand the difference between knowing you are in the hands of your own side and are going to survive, versus being in the hand of your enemies and thinking you will not survive, then no one will be able to explain it to you.</p>
<p>Even if you had the slightest interest in honestly listening, which you do not appear to have.</p>
<p>Dont u understand that this waterboarding is being done to keep YOU alive. This is a war, why cant you get this through your head. WE ARE IN A WAR. Rules change in war, especially when are enemy does not wear uniforms, and mingles with the population. We have an enemy that looks just like you and me, that watches the same movies we do, but the only differences is that they will blow you up the first chance they get. To be honest I dont care about your lives, but I do care about my own, and I know that when soldiers are fighting to keep you and me safe, they should be able to dunk people in water to get the inofrmation they need that will keep them safe and that will keep me safe. If it wasnt for waterboarding how many more dead would there be? Perhaps, god forbid, Driver’s family members may have been killed because you are a liberal apologists for murderers</p>
<p>Dont u understand that this waterboarding is being done to keep YOU alive. This is a war, why cant you get this through your head. WE ARE IN A WAR. Rules change in war, especially when are enemy does not wear uniforms, and mingles with the population. We have an enemy that looks just like you and me, that watches the same movies we do, but the only differences is that they will blow you up the first chance they get. To be honest I dont care about your lives, but I do care about my own, and I know that when soldiers are fighting to keep you and me safe, they should be able to dunk people in water to get the inofrmation they need that will keep them safe and that will keep me safe. If it wasnt for waterboarding how many more dead would there be? Perhaps, god forbid, Driver’s family members may have been killed because you are a liberal apologists for murderers</p>
<p>The case against torture isn’t just a matter of humanitarian squeamishness or one-world legalism. There’s a utilitarian case against torture, too. It doesn’t produce reliable information. (It certainly produces some reliable information, but also a whole lot of unreliable information, so that once you “break” a subject it can take weeks, months, or years to figure out if you’ve gotten anything of value, and what that was.) It doesn’t produce long-term cooperation (which is what we desperately needed in Iraq and Afghanistan, where our information base started at close to zero). It makes new enemies (especially when people are tortured by mistake, which is pretty unavoidable if you have a torture-first mentality). It exposes American troops to more mistreatment than would otherwise be the case (not a question of no torture of Americans vs. torture of Americans, but of some vs. more). It demoralizes the torturers.</p>
<p>Torture is great if you’re Jack Bauer, and you almost never make a mistake, and you apply just the right almost-inhumane scariness for three minutes and get that one piece of information you need to save the world in the next half hour. In the real world, it’s far from certain that the benefits outweigh the costs.</p>
<p>There are a lot of security forces that have relied extensively on torture in this century. If you look at their track records, it’s hard to conclude that they got anything positive in the long run out of it. And that’s what Iraq, Afghanistan, or the “War Against Terror” is – a very, very long run.</p>
<p>“I do believe we have the right to try to protect the American people from the dangers of terrorism”</p>
<p>It’s not a right, it is a duty. </p>
<p>"The last time I checked, we are not the ones cutting off heads and/or other body parts, torturing women and children and killing off entire ethnic groups. "</p>
<p>I never said we did. But must we settle for “torture light” in order to defend out country? It’s one thing if there truly are no other effective alternatives. Do we beleive there are not?</p>
<p>SJMom, in repsonse to
you wrote
I have a simple question. If the first thing you wrote was true, why did you write the last part? It sure sounds like a justification for doing things we might otherwise consider immoral - because the other guys do even worse things.</p>
<p>The other problem with the “list the bad things the other guys do” justification for lowering our own moral standards argument is that it works both ways. Considering that the list of things we are pretty sure American soldiers have done in Iraq includes gang-raping and murdering a 14 year old girl, and killing her family, what would that justify the other guys doing to us?</p>
<p>Where do you get this nonsense that torture usually produces unreliable information. As far as I know its saved my laugh, your life, the lives of our soldier. “It doesn’t produce long-term cooperation” With who? Their mothers? What does that even mean? “It makes new enemies” Thats the dumbest thing ive ever heard First, the people we are interrogating are already are enemies and 2nd we have to worry about the enemies that fly planes into our buildings and chop heads off rather than ****ing off those same people.</p>
<p>Darius Rejali -an expert on torture and its effectiveness- is also a Reed prof-
[How torture begets more torture](<a href=“How torture begets more torture.”>http://www.slate.com/id/2152268/</a>)</p>