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Fox military analyst says torture worked on McCain: 'They call him Songbird John'

AlbqOwl said:
Again he was not name calling. He was reciting a now historical reference of the 2008 campaign and the POWs who protested McCain in 1992, all well documented.

Was it tasteless and unnecessary? Yes. Just as some of those POWs and Democrats back then were tasteless and used cruel characterizations of Senator McCain for political advantage. Was Charles Payne who hosted that particular show correct in issuing a public apology to Senator McCain and his family when it happened on his show? Yes. Is it a big freaking deal? No. Any more than it is when President Trump occasionally misspeaks or President Obama occasionally misspoke or anybody else does that.

I wish to hell that we would return to a time that anybody could occasionally say something that deserves an eye roll or maybe a quick retort and that's it. Making federal cases out of these really insignificant things does us no service and is damaging to us as a people.

It comes down to who among us has never made a thoughtless or unkind statement about somebody that we probably wouldn't have done if we had had more time to think about it? It's like who is without sin and should cast the first stone?
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He wasn't. The "they" is hopelessly vague, and if the general was quoting the people from 2008, he was quoting nutjob assholes. He had no reason to do it except to childishly malign McCain with an offensive nickname.

If someone on here calls you a derogatory name, and I repeat it with "they call AlbgOwl a _____" then I might avoid points from the mods but I can promise you you'll take it as a personal attack on you and you'd be CORRECT because there is no reason for me to repeat a slur about you except to insult you, deliberately. This is completely obvious. If you can't see that much there's no point continuing.

BTW, you again blamed the name calling on Democrats. That's actually false or it at least included Republicans because as I pointed out the flyer was distributed in the runup to the GOP primary. There is no reason for Democrats to attack McCain in January. So your bias is showing clearly with every post here.

I'll just finish with what ends this kind of discussion is people admitting what happened, and moving on. So why are you defending the general? He deliberately attacked McCain with that slur. It's obvious. All you have to say is "of course" and we move on, but you're making terrible justifications for it. That's what's kind of interesting and mystifying. What happened to people clearly condemning bad conduct?
 
HowardBThiname said:
After reading your crybaby post I got a sudden urge of pride for my country.

Go USA!

Ah - -that felt good.
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Ever notice that some posters here are dispised by Conservatives and Liberals alike, nothing like a outsider attack to bring Americans together.
 
JasperL said:
He wasn't. The "they" is hopelessly vague, and if the general was quoting the people from 2008, he was quoting nutjob assholes. He had no reason to do it except to childishly malign McCain with an offensive nickname.

If someone on here calls you a derogatory name, and I repeat it with "they call AlbgOwl a _____" then I might avoid points from the mods but I can promise you you'll take it as a personal attack on you and you'd be CORRECT because there is no reason for me to repeat a slur about you except to insult you, deliberately. This is completely obvious. If you can't see that much there's no point continuing.

BTW, you again blamed the name calling on Democrats. That's actually false or it at least included Republicans because as I pointed out the flyer was distributed in the runup to the GOP primary. There is no reason for Democrats to attack McCain in January. So your bias is showing clearly with every post here.

I'll just finish with what ends this kind of discussion is people admitting what happened, and moving on. So why are you defending the general? He deliberately attacked McCain with that slur. It's obvious. All you have to say is "of course" and we move on, but you're making terrible justifications for it. That's what's kind of interesting and mystifying. What happened to people clearly condemning bad conduct?
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Well if you aren't going to allow the proper context and deny the historical record, I'll just wish you a pleasant afternoon.
 
HowardBThiname said:
If someone kidnapped your child who needed medication to survive longer than a few hours -- and you caught the kidnapper, but he refused to tell you where your child was -- would you torture him in an attempt to save your child's life? Or would you just try to reason with him as the clock ran out?

What say you?
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If we have the person in custody, he can be charged with any wrong doing on top of kidnapping. So no.
 
cabse5 said:
Torture has been proven to provide results in some instances. I support torture when circumstances are dire for the country.

For example, SheWolf, do you support the torture foisted upon the President that is Russia gate?
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Torture has led to people admitting their witches and werewolves.
 
PIPEWRENCH said:
Sorry but governments support torture because it works. Torture has been used to gain information for 10's of thousands of year not because it doesn't work. All governments and militaries acknowledge that anyone captured and tortured will tell all. That is the primary reason for only people with a need to know are given secret information. The real problem is what is torture and what is acceptable interrogation. That line varies from country to country and changes as we evolve and change what is acceptable.
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Again, people have admitted to being werewolves and witches under torture. Do you think they are telling the truth? And during WWII many resistance fighters swore to either die fighting as soldiers or die by cyanide pills. Nazis still tortured a lot of other people to get info, many times they weren't actual resistance fights or had very little knowledge of the fighters. Torture just leads to thinking it's ok to torture to extract any little bit of info. It's ridiculous
 
SheWolf said:
Torture has led to people admitting their witches and werewolves.
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Torture for verifiable information is different than for confession of guilt. If someone is tortured for information that can be verified, they will give.
 
AlbqOwl said:
Well if you aren't going to allow the proper context and deny the historical record, I'll just wish you a pleasant afternoon.
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The 'historical record' is irrelevant. There was no need to refer to the historical record where REPUBLICANS used that slur, and use the so vague as to reference no one, "they." followed by "Songbird John" which is a deliberate attempt to malign his conduct as a POW.

McInerney made a choice to use a childish, insulting nickname for McCain, who happens to be at home dying of cancer, and was called out for being an asshole. That's the correct response. Fox News and nearly everyone else got it right this time.
 
ecofarm said:
Torture for verifiable information is different than for confession of guilt. If someone is tortured for information that can be verified, they will give.
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There are some things that the ‘public’ doesn’t need to know.
 
ecofarm said:
Torture for verifiable information is different than for confession of guilt. If someone is tortured for information that can be verified, they will give.
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They might, so will prisoners interrogated using other means - at least that's what professional interrogators said repeatedly when this issue was last in the news. In short what those guys said was other interrogation methods work better, and that when knowledge of the torture gets out, which it always does, it served as an excellent recruiting tool for the terrorists.

Whether those guys were right or wrong, what you still must do is point out that the choice is never, "torture OR get no good information" - that's just not true. The guys we have doing interrogations are great at their job and get information without needing to torture. And you also have to consider the downside of the world and the country of knowing we have a government sanctioned torture program. We can debate the costs, but not that there are serious downsides.
 
JasperL said:
They might, so will prisoners interrogated using other means - at least that's what professional interrogators said repeatedly when this issue was last in the news. In short what those guys said was other interrogation methods work better, and that when knowledge of the torture gets out, which it always does, it served as an excellent recruiting tool for the terrorists.

Whether those guys were right or wrong, what you still must do is point out that the choice is never, "torture OR get no good information" - that's just not true. The guys we have doing interrogations are great at their job and get information without needing to torture. And you also have to consider the downside of the world and the country of knowing we have a government sanctioned torture program. We can debate the costs, but not that there are serious downsides.
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There were time constraints. Civilized interrogation for such valuable information would presumably require more time.

I don't support torture and I'm glad it's off the table, but I'll wait for the full story before condemning the past.
 
Fledermaus said:
The truth is every has a breaking point. The "Songbird John" bit is unnecessary and in extreme poor taste.
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People will eventually say whatever they think you want to hear to make the pain stop. That is not what any sane person would call “reliable intelligence” much less “working”.
 
ecofarm said:
There were time constraints. Civilized interrogation for such valuable information would presumably require more time.
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But you're guessing on that. How long would a "civilized interrogation" take. We waterboarded KSM for about a month? Remember how we broke up that ring of black Muslims that KSM told us were going to do a string of terrorist attacks on gas stations? Yeah, after the torture ended he admitted that was made up garbage he told to make the torturers happy.... That's the risk.

I don't support torture and I'm glad it's off the table, but I'll wait for the full story before condemning the past.
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But the problem is it might not be off the table with Gina Haspel at FBI and Trump in the WH. They are both pretty big advocates of torture.
 
JasperL said:
But you're guessing on that. How long would a "civilized interrogation" take. We waterboarded KSM for about a month? Remember how we broke up that ring of black Muslims that KSM told us were going to do a string of terrorist attacks on gas stations? Yeah, after the torture ended he admitted that was made up garbage he told to make the torturers happy.... That's the risk.
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Fake info is not a risk, it's part of the process. As the information is verifiable, any lie is discovered and punished. The important thing is knowing what one is looking for. If it's blind fishing, then I'm totally against it. But if it's, "give me the combination" or "give me a name", torture will work. People stop lying after once or twice.

But the problem is it might not be off the table with Gina Haspel at FBI and Trump in the WH. They are both pretty big advocates of torture.
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She's made it clear. We have oversight.
 
HowardBThiname said:
That's been debunked, but leave it to you to continue to push a false narrative. :roll:
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I love how you always have no evidence, Howard, but still you make a pretense that the US is not a war criminal/terrorist "nation".
 
ecofarm said:
Fake info is not a risk, it's part of the process. As the information is verifiable, any lie is discovered and punished. The important thing is knowing what one is looking for. If it's blind fishing, then I'm totally against it. But if it's, "give me the combination" or "give me a name", torture will work. People stop lying after once or twice.



She's made it clear. We have oversight.
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The stunning hypocrites who hung others for what the US is the world's leader in, torture and everything else evil. And of course, the rank propaganda to fool the sheeple.
 
camlok said:
The stunning hypocrites who hung others for what the US is the world's leader in, torture and everything else evil. And of course, the rank propaganda to fool the sheeple.
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Context entirely eludes you.
 
HowardBThiname said:
After reading your crybaby post I got a sudden urge[sic] of pride for my country.

Go USA!

Ah - -that felt good.
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Yeah, that should be about the biggest "urge" of pride any rational human being should feel about their war criminal/terrorist nation.
 
Sam_Troy said:
At least their citizens and not all illegals who need to be deported, including the DACA dreamer criminals.
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Many of these "citizens" are war criminals and terrorists and many are supporters of war criminals and terrorists which makes them just about as bad.
 
Ikari said:
...Who referred to him as "Song Bird John"? And they do realize that there is quite a lot of research that demonstrates that torture doesn't work, yes?
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That depends on what you mean by "work". If you want to define Enhanced Interrogation as "torture", for example, you're going to run against the problem that the Enhanced Interrogation program produced incredible intelligence. KSM at one point actually said it made things easier, because under Islamic Law, they're only required to hold out until they can't anymore, and then they are free to talk without worry ( :shrug: ).

Under Torture (actual torture) McCain first gave false information. Then they found out. Then he was continually tortured and eventually gave true information. The vast majority of men do. There were a couple who remained completely defiant; but the one example I can think of, died for it.

With regard to the current war on terror, well, there was a former torture victim and US military veteran in 2005 who wrote:

What do we do if we capture a terrorist who we have sound reasons to believe possesses specific knowledge of an imminent terrorist attack?

In such an urgent and rare instance, an interrogator might well try extreme measures to extract information that could save lives. Should he do so, and thereby save an American city or prevent another 9/11, authorities and the public would surely take this into account when judging his actions and recognize the extremely dire situation which he confronted. But I don’t believe this scenario requires us to write into law an exception to our treaty and moral obligations that would permit cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment.​

That veteran, of course, was John McCain.



I've seen torture work. Believe me, the ****tiest thing about torture is that it can work. :(
 
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