Old and wise

If our Government sanctions torture, then we have no complaint when others torture us.

__________________
Old and wise

We have met the enemy and he is us. (Pogo)
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook. (William James)

Napoleon's Nightingale

There is a deeper issue here. For years the Pentagon, CIA, and the executive branch have been operating above the law by building torture prisons on foreign soil. The Congress found out and now they're recognizing it as the unconstitutional, unethical, illegal, and shameful practice that it is. We cannot allow anyone in the government to operate above the law and Congress will finally put a stop to it.

Binary_Digit

I can't believe how many people believe tortured information can save lives. Pathetic!

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"Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. Frankly, I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing.” -Dwight D. Eisenhower

Hoot

Regardless of the possible ramifications of McCain's bill, I support McCain in his efforts to outlaw torture.

The United States is supposed to be above this sort of thing. The United States is supposed to be the beacon of freedom and equal rights.

For the White House to say the U.S. does not commit torture, and then ask for a provision allowing them to torture, is the utmost in hypocrisy.

Stu Ghatze

For the LAST time, ..WHO WANTS TO DEFINE WHAT REAL TORTURE IS????

Liberals use this word VERY LOOSELY; & THAT IS THE ISSUE!

Big difference between aggressive interrogation, ..& TORTURE!!



Prisoners are well fed, get Korans distributed to them, are permitted to exercise their muslim prayers. ..& some even get to choose their own preferred diet, ..IT IS NO LIE!

Even air-conditioning is piped into the prisons.

God Amighty cannot you liberals CEASE WITH THIS TORTURE BULLCRAP?


I would LOVE TO SEE the MEDIA SHOW ALL THE GRISLY PHOTOS THAT SADAAM HAS STORED FOR HIS PERSONAL ENTERTAINMENT OF HIS PRISONS, & WOULD LOVE THE REAL WORLD TO SEE FOR THEMSELVES WHAT CONSTITUTES "REAL TORTURE"!

Better yet....lets have the media show the prisons in CUBA, ..you know, Fidel's Cuba. That nice friendly grandfatherly man that the media loves to cozy up to for interviews.

The media will not go there because too many of our saintly liberals find Castro charming, ..& by golly Fidel never tortured anybody, ..so he would say, & the naive' media would believe. (thousands were tortured, & thousands WERE EXECUTED in Cuba; but since progressive socialism is so close, & dear to the liberals own hearts, ...it would not be nice to expose Fidel as ever being a practitioner of "REAL TORTURE"!

Remember the score now, ..if it has anything to do with America, ..& can be twisted into whatever THEY want something to look like, ..the media, & opportunistic liberal democrats will do it!

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"Resist institutionalized american liberalism"!

Old and wise

Are you on the War Department's payroll?

JustMyPOV

I'm going to put this as plainly as possible. If you torture someone for information, the only thing you get is exactly what the victim of said torture thinks you want to hear. When you're being tortured, the only thing that you're thinking of is the easiest way to make it stop. That is why Senator McCain's bill makes sense, and that's why 90% of the Senate voted for this bill.

I do agree however, that there should be a clearer definition of torture. Using psychological means to interrogate a prisoner should definitely be allowed, but physical torture should not be.

If we can't hold ourselves to a higher standard than the terrorists we're at war with, what is the point of fighting?

KCConservative

Leaving the short and humorous quips aside, how about answering his question. What is torture and what is aggressive interrogation? Where is the line? Who defines it?

Binary_Digit

HOW ABOUT THE UNITED STATES CODE??????

"(1) “torture” means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control;
(2) “severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from—
(A) the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering;
(B) the administration or application, or threatened administration or application, of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality;
(C) the threat of imminent death; or
(D) the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering, or the administration or application of mind-altering substances or other procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or personality" - United States Code TITLE 18, PART I, CHAPTER 113C, Para. 2340

OR HOW ABOUT THE UNITED NATIONS??????????

"For the purposes of this Convention, torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions." - UN Convention Against Torture (UNCAT)

I can't believe how many people still think tortured information can save lives. Pathetic!

Binary_Digit

"The use of torture has been criticized not only on humanitarian and moral grounds, but on the grounds that evidence extracted by torture tends to be extremely unreliable and that the use of torture corrupts institutions which tolerate it."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture#Use_of_torture

"Willie J. Rowell, who served for thirty-six years as a C.I.D. agent, told me that the use of force or humiliation with prisoners is invariably counterproductive. “They’ll tell you what you want to hear, truth or no truth,” Rowell said. “ ‘You can flog me until I tell you what I know you want me to say.’ You don’t get righteous information.”"

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040510fa_fact

"Craig Murray, the former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, told me that “the U.S. accepts quite a lot of intelligence from the Uzbeks” that has been extracted from suspects who have been tortured. This information was, he said, “largely rubbish.”"

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050214fa_fact6

""Anybody with real combat experience understands that torture is counterproductive," says F. Andy Messing, a retired major in the U.S. Special Forces and a conservative leader with the ear of the president. "It is a downhill slope if you engage in it. Everyplace it has been used that I have studied — the French were big for it in Algeria — it comes back and bites you." And, it seems, keeps biting."

http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm/i...id/253614.html

"The various rationalizations for torture do not bear close scrutiny. Intelligence specialists concede that the information acquired by torture cannot be considered reliable."

http://www.informationclearinghouse....ticle10410.htm

"Meet, for example, retired Air Force Col. John Rothrock, who, as a young captain, headed a combat interrogation team in Vietnam. More than once he was faced with a ticking time-bomb scenario: a captured Vietcong guerrilla who knew of plans to kill Americans. What was done in such cases was "not nice," he says. "But we did not physically abuse them." Rothrock used psychology, the shock of capture and of the unexpected. Once, he let a prisoner see a wounded comrade die. Yet -- as he remembers saying to the "desperate and honorable officers" who wanted him to move faster -- "if I take a Bunsen burner to the guy's genitals, he's going to tell you just about anything," which would be pointless. Rothrock, who is no squishy liberal, says that he doesn't know "any professional intelligence officers of my generation who would think this is a good idea.""

"Or listen to Army Col. Stuart Herrington, a military intelligence specialist who conducted interrogations in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq during Desert Storm, and who was sent by the Pentagon in 2003 -- long before Abu Ghraib -- to assess interrogations in Iraq. Aside from its immorality and its illegality, says Herrington, torture is simply "not a good way to get information." In his experience, nine out of 10 people can be persuaded to talk with no "stress methods" at all, let alone cruel and unusual ones. Asked whether that would be true of religiously motivated fanatics, he says that the "batting average" might be lower: "perhaps six out of ten." And if you beat up the remaining four? "They'll just tell you anything to get you to stop.""

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2005Jan11.html