Re: CIA Confirms: Waterboarding 9/11 Mastermind Led to Info that Aborted 9/11-Style A
Why is murder an option? :shock:
Ethereal's point was, seemingly, the end's justify the means.
As such, I want to see how far that logic goes with him. Torture of inmates that are assumed to have information is okay if it prevents a single terrorist attack for him. Does that apply to deporting an entire religious group? Imprisoning them? Executing them? Where is the line when the ends no longer justify the means to him. That's why its there.
In regards to TD, I don't know exactly. My post was not advocating one way or another. My questions were not advocating one way or another. ANY one of those questions could be used to decide that Full Out traditional torture was okay or not, that this current crop of intensive interrogation/mild torture is okay or not, that intense interrogation is okay or not, and that even imprisonment and questioning is okay or not. NONE of my questions were indicating that the answer was "yes" or "no" either way. It was only stating that, once you accept that Torture CAN produce legitimate results but doesn't ALWAYS produce it and that it DOES create some POTENTIAL negatives, those questions are generally what one must ask themselves to come to a conclusion if its okay.
To people like Ethereal, his posts makes me think even going so far as to go to traditional torture of breaking bones, bamboo shoots, and other things are perfectly okay if it prevents a terrorist attack. Others seems to think that the answers lead them to believe that the damage it does to our moral standing and out integrity as a nation is not worth the small chance in their mind of getting legitimate information that is actionable.
Some people seem to have a similar view as the famous movie character Col. Jessup, that the military should be left alone from the general populous because they have to do dirty and disgusting and dishonorable things in the name of security and trying to hold them to some kind of morality standard is dangerous to this country. Others believe that if our military doesn't embody the things we are supposedly fighting for and instead embodies some of the things we're fighting against then we have no moral standing to say our way is right and as such we must defend ourselves from you and spread our views to your people.
In regards to alternatives to things like waterboarding and others, numerous military and intelligence officials have came out and stated after the fact that there are legitimate non-psychological torture ways of still extracting information from people. But frankly, I'm not educated on the subject enough EITHER WAY to truly make a call on that one and I'd imagine, frankly, that FEW people on this site have HONESTLY researched BOTH SIDES enough to answer that in anything but a biased one sided way. However I've heard enough in passing from various sources for me to believe that our intelligence community if given the challenge could find legitimate ways to still extract information without going to some of the lengths we currently go to. That's not to say I have a distinct problem with the vast majority of what we do, but simply speaking to the possibility for alternatives.