danarhea

In an article in this week's issue of Vanity Fair, the trail of torture is followed, right up to the White House memos which issued orders to do it. While the Bush administration claims that torture was an affair that pretty much trickled up, documents have now been released which prove that it was trickle down, and originated within the Cabinet of President Bush.

If we become like the enemy, then we are no better than they are.

Article is here.

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Jack Kevorkian for President's Physician: 2012

WI Crippler

We have a very long way to go before we ever become like our enemy. A very long way.

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"What Jesus fails to appreciate is that it's the meek who are the problem."- Reg

danarhea

Oh, that's right. We only "torture a little", so we are better than they are. Right?

Lightdemon

I think it was 2006 when the ACLU (or at least I think it was them) who wanted to bring Rumsfeld and Gonzalez et al to international court in Germany. Janice Karpinski (SP?) spoke of a memo that authorized the use of a number of torture techniques and was signed and annotated by Rumsfeld.

Perhaps this new evidence will close the case.

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Republicans are thieves too,
Where's my liberty?
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WI Crippler

Not at all. But if you need little catchphrases to simplify the situation for your argument, by all means believe as you wish.

dclxvinoise

I don't think anyone is trying to justify torture here. It is just kind of a stretch to say that we are even close to the level that our enemies are at. However, the fact that we torture at all only takes us down that path and it is a slippery slope. Unfortunately, there are people in this country who are far too willing to give up many of the core values that make us a great country in the name of a fighting a war on terrorism.

WI Crippler

Thanks. I don't necessarily agree with the idea of torture, but I don't like the implication that we are becoming our enemy. There are alot of factors that we have to evaluate and take into consideration in combat. And most of those are self imposed as well, so as to minimize civilian casualties. Our technologies developed are created to minimize civilian casualties, and uneccessary infrastructure damage. Our enemies seem only to care about the ends justifying their means, and nothing else is taken into consideration. We spend alot of effort and money to go out of our way to minimize problems and are critical of our own faults/incidents. And we do this on our own.

We are better than them.

cascadian

From the OP link.
I'm presuming that IV tube was the one he was being force fed with.

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danarhea

We ARE better than them, but we should be MUCH better than them. Instead we have been violating not only the Geneva Convention on torture, but also the anti torture convention that was signed by President Reagan in 1984. If this were one of our ideological enemies, we would be pushing for war crimes charges against them. This is a GOOD reason not to be breaking these conventions ourselves. It makes us look like hypocrites to the rest of the world. We are supposed to be the LEADER, where it comes to moral values.

phrank

So its ok to kill the enemy in the field of battle, but to torture them to save American lives is bad? There have been over 4,000 Americans who have given up their lives so that we can all debate if torture is ok or not. I wonder if we could have saved some of them had we NOT worried about being so soft hearted? Let's see, pour water over their head and make them think that they're drowning just to save some American lives. Me, I'd do it in a heart beat.

Remember, they cut off our heads and no one said a damn thing. We pour water on them and it's shame on us???