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Does defense justify torture?

Does defense justify torture?


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Amnesty International wants Bush prosecuted for his roll in waterboarding. One of the defenses of Bush I have come across is that torture is when used to defend innocent lives. I will admit, it is an interesting question for me to explore.

What is your opinion?

The question is too broad, and unconditional. No doubt you phrased it like that on purpose, typical for a liberal.
 
One of my biggest obstacles is that I have trouble finding a universal standard. We prosecuted the Japanese for waterboarding in WW2 for example and if (big if, but lets go with it for the sake of argument) we had lost in Iraq or Afghanistan, would they have the right to prosecute us?

They did way more than waterboarding.
 
This is such a stupid conversation. It's merely an exercise in philosophy. People are either so eager to smear America's face in the mud, that they are willing to stand next to the enemy, or they are so caught up in the exaggerations and lies that they feel that they have to defend an untruth. America's "great torture machine" of the 21st century comes down to a few individuals. Not the hundreds of thousands in Algeria by the French (of which no official [military or civilian] has ever been held accountable), not the millions of Europeans by the Germans, and not the hundreds of thousands of Africans by European colonizers, but a few individual religious extremists that can be named. Let's look at a few facts.....

- On 20 July 2007, U.S. President George W. Bush signed an executive order banning torture during interrogation of terror suspects.

- On 14 September 2007, ABC News reported that sometime in 2006 CIA Director Michael Hayden asked for and received permission from the Bush administration to ban the use of waterboarding in CIA interrogations, although a CIA spokesperson declined to discuss interrogation techniques, which he or she said "have been and continue to be lawful." The sources of this information were current and former CIA officials. ABC reported that waterboarding had been authorized by a 2002 Presidential finding.[130] On 5 November 2007, The Wall Street Journal reported that its "sources confirm... that the CIA has only used this interrogation method against three terrorist detainees and not since 2003.

- Both houses of the United States Congress approved a bill by February 2008 that would ban waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, the Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008.

- President Barack Obama banned the use of waterboarding and several other interrogation methods in January 2009.

- Waterboarding - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The "great torture machine" of the evil American empire comes down to a few waterboarded individuals and a mess of debate and exaggeration. Here are their names...

1) Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
2) Abu Zubayda
3) Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri

You are all free to look these angels of Islam up for yourselves. So where is this mass of Muslim victim so many critics imagine exists? Who are they? The rumor is that secret torture camps across Europe exists and that all GITMO captives are being "tortured." Surely there should be more than just the delicious rumors and drama. The exaggerations are so pathetic and so impractical that it is amazing that so many American people have offerred to lobotimize their own brains to tow the Democratic and Global Leftist lines. The rumor mill got so bad that we have behaved as if we should self-flaggilate if any Muslim captive had to ever smell our troop's bacon in the morning. Does it matter that it is mostly BS? Of course not. Our enemy only cares to produce the argument of our own stupid people to "prove" our evil and their mission's legitimacy. Way to go dumb asses. Applause, applause, applause. If it went towards damaging the hated Bush administration, Americans were all about the BS. And the rest of the global Left care only to smear America as always. Anybody notice how absolutely quiet the Democratic Party has become in regards to GITMO or the torture subject since President Obama took the throne? Of course not. After the Democratic Party whipped the masses into a partisan frenzy for their purposes, they left them to their confusions and radicalisms.

We can all argue over what is right in a perfect world, but what have we actually done in the world we live in? All of the world can do as it pleases, without ramification, but the moment America proves less than perfect and crosses a line by a centimeter the world demands satisfaction? We are victims of our own moral pedestal. We are expected to be perfect by the global masses and since we are not, we are criticized for it. When does the international organizations begin condemning the truly guilty for torture? For genocide. For ethnic cleansing? Or for the political and social oppressions throughout the world? I wonder how the international organizations would react to America if it refused to build Mosques in New York, or stripped women of their scarves in public places, or demanded a certain group of people out of the country. But for three (for the sake of argument, let's go ahead and assume an unproven dozen more) waterboarded terrorists post 9/11 America gets to be worse than Germans and Frenchmen who proudly engineerd true torture from Algeria to Europe and politicial and social persecution towards Muslims. And certainly it supposed to make us worse than the ethnic persecutions, cleansings, and genocides throughout the Arab Middle East. What a pathetic hypocritical world.

The debate alone implies truth to the exaggerations and unsubstantiated facts. It allows for others to cling to the assumptions and the falshoods. It allows others to get away with their use of it to legitmize their behaviors. And it unjustly smears an America that deserves better from the pieces of ****s that breath protected free air.
 
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Would it be effective to torture the children of captives?

I think that I would break much more quickly if it was a question of my child being tortured than me being tortured.

So, let's torture the children of terrorists and terrorist suspects.
It works. Back in the eighties, a KGB agent was taken by a clan of gangsters in Lebanon. The next morning, the clan leader found a box in front of his door. Opening the box, he recognized the ear of a favorite nephew. The KGB agent was released before noon.
 
Actually, the idea that we as a nation should mindlessly proceed in either direction simply shows how alienated the extremes of both left and right have become from reality.
Who said the procession was mindless - on either side?
 
Not at all. Some of us have values that remain steadfast. When your values and ethics fluctuate with the wind, then your values, ethics and integrity are not very strong.

:sigh: again. how many children are you willing to kill through inaction? if you had to tell a white lie in order to save a childs' life, would you do it? if you had to break the law by speeding an injured person to the hospital in order to save their life, would you do it? but aren't you violating your integrity, your values? do you not believe in rule of law, in honesty?


let us say that you are patrolling down a street to the local souq (this happened) and you see a blue bongo truck accelerate on a side-lane towards the patrol. now, reporting indicates that a blue bongo truck is going to be used in a suicide attack against coalition forces, and accelerating towards a patrol is not only against what everyone knows to be the rules, it's the first sign of an attack. you wave your flag, put off a pop-up; the guy keeps coming at you, even speeding up. now you can see that it's an old guy, and he seems to be arguing with a younger male in the front seat. so, it looks like an old guy driving a truck full of stuff to market, but it also looks like a VBIED getting ready to take out yourself, your patrol, and all the civilians in the market that you're in. all you can do to stop him at this point is to shoot him. but you don't know if he's a civilian, or a suicide bomber intent on producing mass-casualties. yeah, he seems to have his son in the seat, but AQI also had a habit of using kids as shields for that exact reason; they knew we tended not to suspect people with kids.

so, do you shoot, and definitely kill a possibly innocent man? or do you not shoot, and possibly allow an attack that will definitely kill lots of innocent people?


in the kind of war that we are in, we are blessed to have some blacks and whites (AQI tortures children as an intimidation tactic; they are evil and all deserve to die); but the vast majority of decisions in warfare are made in shades of grey, because you simply lack total information.


end of story; we shot. everyone else in the squad zeroed in on the shot and fired as well. the truck stopped before it got within a kill radius of the people in the market. turned out the guy was just old and deaf; we blew a 60 year old man to pieces in front of his family, his son and wife's upper bodies were literally covered in pieces of him. right decision? wrong decision? :shrug: who knows. it was the decision.
 
I do not love mere existence enough to permit someone else to sell my humanity up the river in exchange for my life.
Whwn posed with two choises that violate the categorical imperative, one must make the choice that causes the least harm.
 
:sigh: again. how many children are you willing to kill through inaction? [..]

Secular humanists and atheists like to make consequentialist arguments like these. I find it nonsensical. If an action is morally wrong, then it is morally wrong, period, it doesn't matter how much utility an immoral action has, it simply must not be done.
 
Who said the procession was mindless - on either side?
You:
Yes -- that ANY consideration is given to the idea that we should NOT turture someone to stop a catastiphic attack on the US does indeed indeed indicate that we, as a nation, have fallen.
Reading is fundamental.

You may now commence the usual dissembling and equivocating. :roll:
 
The problem with letting the government torture is that well, you're letting the government torture. For all the bitching I hear about the government being incompetent when dealing with welfare, healthcare, guns, crime, drugs etc. I can't help but wonder why somebody would allow a body they feel is incompetent deal with something like torture. People don't think the federal government should handle marriage but they are willing to entrust it with torture?
 
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The problem with letting the government torture is that well, you're letting the government torture. For all the bitching I hear about the government being incompetent when dealing with welfare, healthcare, guns, crime, drugs etc. I can't help but wonder why somebody would allow a body they feel is incompetent deal with something like torture. People don't think the federal government should handle marriage but they are willing to entrust it with torture?

Torture has always been illegal (or frowned upon) in the U.S. and it has been publicly banned for the sake of the PC 'tards by the last and present President. What is the point of the argument?
 
Torture has always been illegal (or frowned upon) in the U.S. and it has been publicly banned for the sake of the PC 'tards by the last and present President. What is the point of the argument?

So you think it is being a "'tard" to have a sense of morals that does not allow for torture?
 
This thread was badly flawed from the outset, mostly because it began on such equivocal terms. So, some people here are talking about waterboarding. Some people here are talking about thumbscrews, branding irons, and strapping people to metal bedframes and running a current through it. Some people are talking about "defense" as in any minor situation, whereas others are referring to extreme situations of imminent danger to many people.

And no one's making it clear what they mean.

So, now, we've got "you want the government to TORTURRRRE!!!!" obviously implying that the people they're aiming the comment at wouldn't mind any average Joe plucked from the street hanging from shackles with electrodes attached to their testicles, for no reason other than to get mundane information or even just for sadistic pleasure. I'm absolutely certain NO ONE is arguing that, or anything remotely close to it.
 
If an action is morally wrong, then it is morally wrong, period, it doesn't matter how much utility an immoral action has, it simply must not be done.

Is it morally wrong to hold someone against their will? Is it morally wrong to shoot someone? Yes. However, each thing is called for under certain circumstances. It's not relative morality, it is balancing rights against each other. It is common-place. If you think that rights cannot be balanced against each other, you are being irrational. No right is absolute. Values are not changing with circumstance. The circumstance changes and the SAME values require various actions, all the time.

I value the right to free assembly, but I realize we must compromise this right for those in prison.

I value the right to life, but I will shoot someone to prevent a murder, rape, etc.

I still value liberty and life... but these things are not and never will be absolute.

Simple example: stealing is always wrong? What if you are in occupied France WWII and your family is starving... steal from the Nazis? Is that wrong? No.

Stop with your absolutes. The only thing I can thnk of that is always wrong is rape. I would have a very hard time justifying that to stop a catastropic event, even if it could somehow avoid the catastrophy; however, torture - no problem.
 
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So you think it is being a "'tard" to have a sense of morals that does not allow for torture?

If torture was the fact, then morals would have something to do with this. I think it is being a 'tard to gripe as if torture is our national policy. It caters to the exaggerations of our hypocritical critics while feeding a political party's game. The same political party that has nothing to say about GITMO anymore or a fabricated sense of harshness.
 
Torture has always been illegal (or frowned upon) in the U.S. and it has been publicly banned for the sake of the PC 'tards by the last and present President. What is the point of the argument?

I don't know what the point of your argument is but here is what the point of mine is. Letting a government torture opens the door for it to torture anyone. It's accepting that the government has power to physically assault a person if it feels justified enough to. See the use of the word 'feels'? Yeah. That's not a power I'm willing to let the government have.
 
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And no one's making it clear what they mean.

This is because the critics of government (Bush) are largely left embarrassed after their tirade. What started out as a legitmite awareness has snow balled into extremism that is willing to argue the point as if torture has been the law of the land. This is why everybody evades the fact that only three exceptional cases have been legitimately substantiated. This is why they evade the fact that Bush issued orders to ban waterboarding in 2007. And this is why they choose to simply argue the idea of torture while implying that they are crusading over a fascist evil American empire.

They may as well bitch about whether or not America should be nuking China.
 
Whwn posed with two choises that violate the categorical imperative, one must make the choice that causes the least harm.

I agree.

Mere survival makes us no better than the beasts of the wild.

I'd much prefer to die a human than live as an animal.
 
I don't know what the point of your argument is but here is what the point of mine is. Letting a government torture opens the door for it to torture anyone. It's accepting that the government has power to physically assault a person if it feels justified enough to. See the use of the word 'feels'? Yeah. That's not a power I'm willing to let the government have.

Well, the government doesn't torture. The problem with this philosophical exercise is that it leaves the impression that America is torturing. Especially since the entire world added their own bit of exaggeration to the subject of waterboarding. If you ask about 95 percent of our critics, "Who was waterboarded?", you will get just a simple explanation on how America shouldn't torture. It's pathetic. And where are the great complaints about GITMO since President Obama was elected? Right now, we have 60+ Yemenese set free by the courts, but Obama has retained them anyway. They can't go back to Yemen and no other nation wants them. So they sit in GITMO as free men. Where's the great complaint for equal and human rights by the Global Left now?

It was always BS. And arguing about it like this merely legitimizes the untruth.
 
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The "great torture machine" of the evil American empire comes down to a few waterboarded individuals and a mess of debate and exaggeration. Here are their names...

1) Khalid Shaikh Mohammed
2) Abu Zubayda
3) Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri

I do not, for a picosecond, believe that these are the only individuals our government has tortured, and that's not even getting into the people we've handed over to be tortured by someone else.

Nevertheless, a numerical argument is asinine.

One person tortured is one too many.
 
I do not, for a picosecond, believe that these are the only individuals our government has tortured, and that's not even getting into the people we've handed over to be tortured by someone else.

Nevertheless, a numerical argument is asinine.

One person tortured is one too many.

Such over-the-top absolutism is asinine. You're saying you'd choose death -- or the death of a loved one -- over making a morally suspect choice in every single instance.

Sorry; no one's that rigid. No one.
 
You:
Reading is fundamental.
You may now commence the usual dissembling and equivocating
That's not a n example of mindlessness, as the conclusion was reached directly thru reason.
:shrug:
 
So, now, we've got "you want the government to TORTURRRRE!!!!" obviously implying that the people they're aiming the comment at wouldn't mind any average Joe plucked from the street hanging from shackles with electrodes attached to their testicles, for no reason other than to get mundane information or even just for sadistic pleasure. I'm absolutely certain NO ONE is arguing that, or anything remotely close to it.
I think the issue is better served by asking "is there a circumstance where you'd accept torturing someone for the sake of national security?"
One this is established, the question then becomes "under what circumstances?"
No rational person supports torture for the fun of it; no rational person can oppose it if it will save millions of lives.
 
I don't know what the point of your argument is but here is what the point of mine is. Letting a government torture opens the door for it to torture anyone.
Hmm. Dont you, as a rule, oppose the slippery slope argument?
Or is that just when it is convenient?
 
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