Reclaiming America’s Soul

Watermarx said:
How could you have known that though AssHat?

You, in your evil consequentialist logic, would've said "Oh wait, this is hopeless, let's blast a cannon in her to get the rest out." Rather than going down the moral path and finding the right thing to do. That's b/c you're evil.
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But you justify your morality based on the outcome, still.

Because i believe in consequences does not mean my first reaction to a stressful situation is murder.

You're a particularly dumb cunt today.
 
Socrtease said:
Do you really think that these tactics have ONLY been used on bona fide Terrorists? Do you really believe that every person the CIA and the military took into custody was guilty of something? People get taken into custody by accident all the time. If our country used any of these tactics on a SINGLE innocent, then it shames us. I'm sure it is ok with you though, ok that a few good people get used as grist to grind up the bad guys.
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You worry about a little colatteral damage when OUR safety is at stake?

;)
 
Southern Man said:
The fact that valuable information was obtained proves that the CIA didn't aggressively interrogate the wrong men. They trusted our volunteer soldiers, and were rewarded with honesty and integrity.
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And we have to believe the CIA about valuable information being obtained by torture the CIA performed or sanctioned?

Of course they would say it did not work if it did not?

Who da tool?
 
Socrtease said:
They waterboarded Osama bin Laden's right hand man 182 times and he didn't give up his boss. You are right, super effective. Sorry to doubt the procedure.
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A technique doesn't have to be 100% to be effective. Consider medical treatments. Or research.
 
uscitizen said:
And we have to believe the CIA about valuable information being obtained by torture the CIA performed or sanctioned?

...
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What you are suggesting is a conspiracy with hundreds of players. How else were attacks thwarted and locations discovered?
 
Southern Man said:
A technique doesn't have to be 100% to be effective. Consider medical treatments. Or research.
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I knew this would be your response which is why I led with the fact he DIDN'T give up his boss. You know what else he did? He falsely confessed to murdering Daniel Pearl. To get his torture to stop he LIED about murdering Daniel Pearl. Again, I apologize for criticizing the ever so successful "enhanced interrogation" techniques which are so NOT torture than people lie about shit to get this NON torture to stop.
 
Watermarx said:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/opinion/24krugman.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

Reclaiming America’s Soul


And there are indeed immense challenges out there: an economic crisis, a health care crisis, an environmental crisis. Isn’t revisiting the abuses of the last eight years, no matter how bad they were, a luxury we can’t afford?

No, it isn’t, because America is more than a collection of policies. We are, or at least we used to be, a nation of moral ideals. In the past, our government has sometimes done an imperfect job of upholding those ideals. But never before have our leaders so utterly betrayed everything our nation stands for. “This government does not torture people,” declared former President Bush, but it did, and all the world knows it.

And the only way we can regain our moral compass, not just for the sake of our position in the world, but for the sake of our own national conscience, is to investigate how that happened, and, if necessary, to prosecute those responsible.

What about the argument that investigating the Bush administration’s abuses will impede efforts to deal with the crises of today? Even if that were true — even if truth and justice came at a high price — that would arguably be a price we must pay: laws aren’t supposed to be enforced only when convenient. But is there any real reason to believe that the nation would pay a high price for accountability?

For example, would investigating the crimes of the Bush era really divert time and energy needed elsewhere? Let’s be concrete: whose time and energy are we talking about?

Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, wouldn’t be called away from his efforts to rescue the economy. Peter Orszag, the budget director, wouldn’t be called away from his efforts to reform health care. Steven Chu, the energy secretary, wouldn’t be called away from his efforts to limit climate change. Even the president needn’t, and indeed shouldn’t, be involved. All he would have to do is let the Justice Department do its job — which he’s supposed to do in any case — and not get in the way of any Congressional investigations.

I don’t know about you, but I think America is capable of uncovering the truth and enforcing the law even while it goes about its other business.

Still, you might argue — and many do — that revisiting the abuses of the Bush years would undermine the political consensus the president needs to pursue his agenda.

But the answer to that is, what political consensus? There are still, alas, a significant number of people in our political life who stand on the side of the torturers. But these are the same people who have been relentless in their efforts to block President Obama’s attempt to deal with our economic crisis and will be equally relentless in their opposition when he endeavors to deal with health care and climate change. The president cannot lose their good will, because they never offered any.

That said, there are a lot of people in Washington who weren’t allied with the torturers but would nonetheless rather not revisit what happened in the Bush years.

Some of them probably just don’t want an ugly scene; my guess is that the president, who clearly prefers visions of uplift to confrontation, is in that group. But the ugliness is already there, and pretending it isn’t won’t make it go away.

Others, I suspect, would rather not revisit those years because they don’t want to be reminded of their own sins of omission.

For the fact is that officials in the Bush administration instituted torture as a policy, misled the nation into a war they wanted to fight and, probably, tortured people in the attempt to extract “confessions” that would justify that war. And during the march to war, most of the political and media establishment looked the other way.

It’s hard, then, not to be cynical when some of the people who should have spoken out against what was happening, but didn’t, now declare that we should forget the whole era — for the sake of the country, of course.

Sorry, but what we really should do for the sake of the country is have investigations both of torture and of the march to war. These investigations should, where appropriate, be followed by prosecutions — not out of vindictiveness, but because this is a nation of laws.

We need to do this for the sake of our future. For this isn’t about looking backward, it’s about looking forward — because it’s about reclaiming America’s soul.
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Krugman's really phoning it in these days.
 
Socrtease said:
I knew this would be your response which is why I led with the fact he DIDN'T give up his boss. You know what else he did? He falsely confessed to murdering Daniel Pearl. To get his torture to stop he LIED about murdering Daniel Pearl. Again, I apologize for criticizing the ever so successful "enhanced interrogation" techniques which are so NOT torture than people lie about shit to get this NON torture to stop.
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So the methods are not 100% effective. Again, lots of things are not, yet are used routinely.
 
Southern Man said:
A little irony there.:)

No, but in this case the methods used yielded significant data unlikely to be had elsewhere.
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on the typing:
so I have motor skill problems.
You make fun of crippled people too? Not a suprise.

On the content of your reply:
link please.
And a picture of your arse will not do.
 
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