Gore.

when i am president, Yoo, Cheney, Addington, Bush, Gonzales, Bradley, Rumsfeld, Wolflesswits, and everybody else involved in the promulgation of these measures will be detained as material witnesses without recourse to legal counsel and subjected to these procedures until a full record can be established as to how our country came to this. Then they will be shipped to the Hauge for further processing, their assets seized under and returned tot he Treasury where they belong, and then the measure will be permanently banned and legal punishments for violating the bans upheld.

He gives me the sense that he really could be a game changer if he were elected president. —Kevin Drum

This is only true, of course, if we get rid of half of Congress and outlaw corporate lobbying. Right. Monkeys, my butt, fly out of.

Obama's been watching the polls. Gotta clarify - make bigger distinctions.

I guess that's OK. At least this stuff gets said.

what SnarkyShark said.

I like Obama too. The problem is our system doesn't allow game changers in, especially if they are honest about it. Status quo and lip service is what wins the day.

in case you didn't notice, it infuriates and saddens me that these jerks have destroyed the moral integrity of our nation, as well as the rule of law, as well as our national security. Torture is about the sadistic exercise of power, not about reliable intelligence collection. If these guys thought they might take a hooded ride some day into a legal black hole some day instead of multimillion dollar immunity retirements, maybe they would have thought twice about trashing the country and the world. Two cheers for Obama mumbling, but no one is talking real accountability. Maybe if they thought they weren't above the law the deterrence magic they apply to mere mortals might have had some traction on them. Render them to the Hague, I say. Redeem out country.

Aye, What snarkyshark said.

Obama is unrealistic in this kind of talk. I am no torture loving person but even John McCain the ultimate person people should take advice from knows there needs to be some harsh interrogations and methods that are not mainstream for getting information quickly. To state that there will be no secrecy to anything is foolish.

Putting some tight limits on the policies and defining the methods of interrogations for our military is necessary but a ban to it all is just plain naive.

Sen. Obama is a perfectly decent and utterly conventional liberal Democrat, so it's no surprise that Kevin likes him. Why wouldn't he?

Kevin: You require Obama to be a "game changer." But I don't think you require or expect that of Hillary, whom you seem to like ("I'm pretty sympathetic toward Hillary Clinton's candidacy."). Is this fair? Double standard or no?

Gore/Obama '08

Hi MG,
Obviously harsh interrogation tactics are indicated in extremely limited circumstances. It's just the permissive culture of sadism is unleashed in a big way and we have to be very confining in order to re-establish the rule of law, moral sanity, and military/contractor discipline. The runaway use of these tactics is hurting us in every sense. I think the standard ought to be this stuff is illegal. If you do it, you do it for a reason, that has to be justified in a legal review. You do it, and you know you are going to be investigated, and either justified or not. The burden should be that torture should require the moral courage to break the law out of extreme necessity, not expected and excused routine behavior. What fucking country is this? Man, we suck.

Obama is unrealistic in this kind of talk. I am no torture loving person but even John McCain the ultimate person people should take advice from knows Posted by: MG

John McCain is pathetic, snivling, fucking weasel that happens to have been running for president for about 8-years now. Precisely because he was tortured, and allegedly never gave anything other than name, rank and service number, he should know that it isn't a reliable or worthwhile method of extracting information.

If McCain gained any heightened moral fortitude from his experiences in a NVA prison camp, he was apparently required to surrender it when he entered politics, with the very last shred of it turning to dust when he support Bush in 2004, the same man whose "brain" instigated one of the most disgusting dirty tricks campaign against him during the 2000 election.

Water-boarding and hitting people with rubber hoses are not "harsh interrogation methods." They are cowardly forms of physical torture. No torture ever!

he really could be a game changer if he were elected president. I only wish he gave me that sense all the time, not just some of the time.

Name one that does give you this sense all the time.

Trypticon: Hi MG,
Obviously harsh interrogation tactics are indicated in extremely limited circumstances.

Let me stop you right there. How would you like to be falsely accused of something which fits into those "extremely limited circumstances"?

Kevin:

May I suggest you go see him speak sometime? This is part of his stump speech, or at least it was when I saw him about a month ago at Santa Barbara City College, on the way to Oprah's.

Yeah, justice might look a little different when you're the one on the box, with the electrodes attached.

Maybe you know something? How are we going to find out?

Right now people don't want a game-changer--in spite of the rhetoric we hear from time to time. That's why an establishment candidate like Hillary Clinton is the pick of the opposition party.

If people's attitudes shift, then Obama (or even Edwards, for that matter) will have a chance.

"Kevin: You require Obama to be a "game changer." But I don't think you require or expect that of Hillary, whom you seem to like ("I'm pretty sympathetic toward Hillary Clinton's candidacy."). Is this fair? Double standard or no?"

I don't know if it's "fair" or not, but "game changer" is Obama's brand.
"Safe & experienced" is Hillary's.

Me, I think this game desperately needs changing. Obama'd be a damn good start.

Agreed. Perfectly said, Kevin.

When the one you love's in love with someone else...

"Precisely because [Senator McCain] was tortured, and allegedly never gave anything other than name, rank and service number, he should know that it isn't a reliable or worthwhile method of extracting information..."

I won't say anything against Senator McCain personally. The man is a hero. Period.

But it is simply not true that he never gave anything but name, rank and serial # -- as he told us all himself, on pages 243-4 of his memoirs: after he refused early release, he was beaten for a particularly long time (McCain provides few details), and then as he put it: "I gave up."

He signed a confession, including that he had bombed a school (which required more beating to negotiate), and then spent the worst two weeks of his life.

This would seem to make Jeff's point, but I can't bring myself to give any credit to somebody who could call John McCain pathetic or snivelling. The man can't comb his own hair.

BTW, the fellow prisoner whom McCain admired most was Lance Sijan, who was tortured to death before McCain was captured. Sijan never gave up anything -- and died for it: RIP.

McCain tells the story about Tom Kirk, a fellow POW, who explained to him how it worked: "You will be living with another guy, and you go over there and you're tortured and you come back... [and he asks] 'what'd you tell them?'"

Kirk went on: "You've got to face this guy; you're going to have to tell him the truth... to keep the faith so that I knew that when I stood up at the bar with somebody after the war that, by God, I could look him in the eye and say, "We hacked it.'"

It's impressive to me that McCain does not hide that he broke under torture and signed a confession; that he does not name others who did the same, only says "Many guys broke at one time or another."

If he gets that far, it'd make for a helluva question in a Presidential debate "Senator, you signed a false confession under torture as a POW, how can you justify its use for American interrogators..." -- and I hope the moderator has the sense to stay the hell out of the way if McCain and a Democratic nominee argue it out.

Against torture and secret government? Why how controversial! Talk about staking out a controversial and brave position. Marching to the beat of your own drummer. A real maverick. Someone alert the media.

If you want to take a controversial stand talk about getting your Justice Dept. to prosecute these monsters when you get to be president. Otherwise not worth much.

I think your right about the need to severely curtail using torture and make it usable in only extreme and JUSTIFIED cases. Again, I do not advocate J.McCain as a candidate but his and other veteren's comments in this area I do respect. They lived this and have the experience to talk intelligently (obviously this is a general statement to their experiences vs mine) about this area - while I sit in my nice air-conditioning arm chair quarterbacking these issues.

There needs to be smart interrogation methods and some need to address the extremes. It could handcuff (pun intended) anyone by baning everything and not having a legitimate & justified policy in place....to not have this creates the under ground and secretive policies that get put in place - sadly this is true.

Here is the deal. Torture or whatever euphimism you want to use, is not a reliable means of obtaining intelligence. The victim will say anything to make it stop including making crap up. That assumes that the person you are harshly interrogating knows anything of use in the first place. It all may make for exciting entertainment, but in a practical sense it is virtually worthless and it precludes techniques which are effective. More importantly, in the view of the world it is illegal and immoral. So when the fence sitters are deciding whether the U.S. is the good guy or just another thug on the world stage how do you think torture fits into the equation? The same analysis applies to the rule of law. As a country we gain very little if anything of value by disregarding the rule of law or by concluding that rule of law does not apply to people who someone in the government thinks is a bad guy, but we lose whatever stature we might otherwise have had in the world. Are there worse bad guys in the world then us? Of course, but since when did we try to win friends and influence people by pointing out that we might be an awful country, but we are not as bad as Stalin's Russia, or Pol Pot's Cambodia or Amin's Uganda? I opposed the war in Iraq, I think we should have gotten out a long time ago, I am furious that the Democrats do not have the spine to just say "no" to Dumbya, but at least there are counter arguments. Dumbya has never been made to even defend the torture and violations of the rule of law--all he has done is say we are trying to protect you from terrorists and everyone from Congress, to the Courts to most Americans have just gone along. Kevin is right that Obama is way too timid, but I fear that most Americans are such cowards that we are doomed.

well, I'm basically with JeffII, no torture ever. And I would add that all torture should be illegal. I also am not naive enough to think it will never happen because it is illegal, but it will place a high bar on it actually happening. Someone would have to say to themselves, "I'm willing to loose my career and go to prison because I'm so damned convinced I can get this guy to talk by breaking the law, and I can save x." If it happens it should be investigated and prosecuted. If they guy averted the ticking time bomb scenario, that should be taken into account.

Sad thing is, in thinking about the guy who died next to McCain, is that it is my understanding that more guys have died in American custody in Iraq than Americans died in Vietnamese custody. I might be wrong on that, but that is my memory.

What the hell does that say about us?

I'm all about accountability and prosecuting the architects of this policy.

I know, will never happen...

Some have become convinced, like MG, we need "harsh interrogation techniques", AKA torture. However, its use will destroy our intelligence and security capabilities. As told by Vladimir Bukovsky who is intimately familiar with this history:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/17/AR2005121700018.html
I believe it would help if people stopped thinking that this represents only a moral issue (although, or course, it is), and also stopped believing that true sophisticates believed in its use.

I won't say anything against Senator McCain personally. The man is a hero. Period.

No he's not. He's a survivor. That doesn't make him a hero.

But it is simply not true that he never gave anything but name, rank and serial # -- as he told us all himself, on pages 243-4 of his memoirs: after he refused early release, he was beaten for a particularly long time (McCain provides few details), and then as he put it: "I gave up."

Not only are you stupid, but you have poor taste in reading material.

He signed a confession, including that he had bombed a school (which required more beating to negotiate), and then spent the worst two weeks of his life.

My, my. Signing a confession and giving up such vital information that he "bombed a school" - just how many American soldiers lives were compromised because of this militarily sensitive revelation (something I'm sure he knew he did with great certainty from 5,000' up)? Just shameful.

This would seem to make Jeff's point, but I can't bring myself to give any credit to somebody who could call John McCain pathetic or snivelling.

Nope. Not snivling or pathetic either one, contrary to all the evidence provided by the last eight years of his political "career," and career politician he is.

Again I direct your attention to the 2000 and 2004 presidential races. Maybe I've got it all wrong. Maybe McCain gets off on abuse. Perhaps that explains him being a whipping boy for Shrub all these years.

The man can't comb his own hair.

The man doesn't really have any hair that needs combing.

BTW, the fellow prisoner whom McCain admired most was Lance Sijan, who was tortured to death before McCain was captured. Sijan never gave up anything . . .

Nice that McCain chose to honor his memory by capitulating on the torture issue for a couple of chickenhawks like Shrub and Cheney.

If he gets that far, it'd make for a helluva question in a Presidential debate "Senator, you signed a false confession under torture as a POW, how can you justify its use for American interrogators..." . . .Posted by: theAmericanist

No. The legitimate question is and always has been, You've been tortured, why would you inflict that on anyone else who was, in his mind, "just doing his duty"?

Nice try.

Next.

I want a game changer to become president. Maybe Obama is that person, but has he really done anything game changing during his career? From what I can tell, he plays the game very well. That is why I have my doubts. Being against state sponsored torture and reacting to today's news quickly does not a game changer make.

Obama said as president he would not work in secret and would stop the US from this behavior. A game changer would say when he is president he would fully investigate, publicize, prosecute and punish those who have engaged in this behavior as agents of the USA. A game changer would say he is going to show the American people the crimes committed in their name and ensure they never happened again.

How is Obama going to stand up to these deplorable acts unless he prosecutes the people who are doing them? He did not say.

JeffII: John McCain is pathetic, snivling, fucking weasel ...

theAmericanist: The man is a hero. Period.

These are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Would you both settle for "pathetic, snivelling, hero"?

Weasels need heroes, too!

Obama's attractiveness notwithstanding, do you guys really think that he will be a serious contender in 2008 general election? As for myself, I smell a disaster of McGovernian magnitude if he is the Democrat nominee. Of course, not because of lack of qualifications, but for extra-curricular reasons.

McCain is a heroic bomber of children, who was punished inhumanely for his war crimes, and who has since become a pathetic, snivelling weasel who advocates for more war crimes.

Obviously harsh interrogation tactics are indicated in extremely limited circumstances.

What the fuck is obvious about that?

Or, to put it another way, when would you think it OK for the police to torture your parents if they suspected them of a crime?

theAmericanist, what, precisely , was the point of your rant? To call McCain anything other than politically cowardly over the last 7 years simply flies in the face of reality.

theAmericanist: The man is a hero. Period.

Hey, Randy "Duke" Cunningham was also a Viet Nam fighter pilot war hero, and yet he's also a pathetic, snivelling weasel and a corrupt crook, to boot. The fact that someone may be brave in battle says nothing about his other moral failings decades after.

a disaster of McGovernian magnitude ... for extra-curricular reasons.

I think I need this spelled out. You lost me.

Perfect. That should be McCain's obit.

Talk about staking out a controversial and brave position.

a disaster of McGovernian magnitude ... for extra-curricular reasons.

I was going to say "cue the Obama bashers", but I see that I am way too late for that.

a disaster of McGovernian magnitude ... for extra-curricular reasons.

I think I need this spelled out. You lost me.

Let me try.

a) his last name sounds like Osama
b) his middle name is Hussein
c) in spite of the discussion in some quarters of "is he black enough" in the great American heartland he still qualifies as a n***er.

It's a sad fucking commentary on our great nation. But it's true.

I think I need this spelled out. You lost me.

His opponents will start a whispering campaign that Obama secretly fathered a child with a black woman....

I should add that it has nothing to do with his actual qualifications or lack thereof. I don't want to be lumped in with the Obama-bashers, even by accident.

I wish people would stop conflating the "heartland" with the "south".

If Sen. Obama receives the Democratic nomination, I would have an easier time voting for him than for Sen. Clinton. That's probably McGovern enough for the rest of the electorate to vote for a fascist bigot instead. Woe is our nation.

Disputo: I don't want to pick a fight with you, but fill up a car with your black friends and drive through Nebraska sometime. Or even (much to my shame) parts of rural Pennsylvania or Massachusetts.

That Nebraska comment really hurts, thersites. Because it's true.

Blast away Distupo. I have contempt for any ego tripper who can throw this election to the Republicans and their supporters who base their support on silly emotions and don't know the people of this country outside their own narrow world.

Man, Jeff is a piece of work. He stated "because [Senator McCain] was tortured, and allegedly never gave anything other than name, rank and service number...", then he says that cuz I actually read the guy's book (I've also had the honor of meeting him a couple times), that's just a sign of "poor taste in reading material."

Evidently this guy has something against folks who know what they're talking about -- explains a lot, I suppose.

A guy with more class than Jeff would have apologized for having mis-stated the Senator's war record, and a guy with more brains than Jeff obviously has would have noted more nimbly that the truth actually supports what he is trying to con us into thinking is his point.

But it's not -- as his posts make clear. Jeff has no principles worth having. So, for the ephemeral record:

First, McCain's book is damned good, and it reveals a lot about the guy. For one thing, he makes no bones about Mark Salter being his co-author, which is a nice contrast to others whose books are ghosted and who try to hide it.

Second, McCain's service was pretty hairy -- he survived I think FOUR plane crashes on active duty, including one where he ejected from out of a fire on the Forrestal that killed a number of people. His heroism is pretty thoroughly documented, and it's not just his time as a POW. Basically, just getting back into a jet after the first time you've crashed strikes me as pretty goddam brave -- and he flew combat missions, after. A lot of 'em.

His defiance of his captors saved lives in the camp. 'Nuff said.

Third, his book is funny. I dunno how much of this is Salter and how much McCain, but his description of being captured is simply priceless: "I landed in the middle of the lake, in the middle of the city, in the middle of the day. An escape attempt would have been challenging."

When I had a political column many years ago, I wrote about how intense experiences like that reveal character. The example I used was Bob Kerrey, who objected to the way the nurses weighed everything that went into his body, and everything that came out. So he snitched jelly beans from another patient and hid them in his used bedpans - I said that I could trust a guy like that making Supreme Court nominations.

Fourth, sneering at folks who have been wounded, much less tortured, in the service of our country is just wrong. For Jeff to scoff that McCain doesn't have much hair to comb, well -- you know why he can't comb his own hair? Because our enemies strung him up by his broken arms for so long that he can no longer put his hands on top of his head.

And you mock. What an asshole.

Fifth: to call this guy, as Brojo did, a "heroic bomber of children", is despicable. (NB -- the bombing a school charge wasn't true. IT MAKES YOUR FRIGGING POINT THAT IT WASN'T TRUE -- but recognizing that requires too much integrity for you fucking anti-American vultures.)

Finally -- Politics 101, folks: if you want to persuade people that you oppose torture because it is wrong AND ineffective, then you have to also persuade them that you are willing to protect them, as well as recognize their value. You guys aren't, and don't.

Fuck you.

*yawn*

Your righteousness is belied by the fact that think insults and mockery substitute for reason.

Pt of Inquiry: Have you ever bothered commenting on any thread on this site that wasn't about Obama?

I won't say anything against Senator McCain personally.

Why the heck not? He is a Republican who stands against almost everything I believe in and, everytime his leadership has been required over the past 6.5 years, bailed on the opportunity and fallen into line behind Bush. Why wouldn't someone other than a Bush-lover say anything against him personally?

But mostly I view him as sort of a pathetic, broken character who gave up everything in order to prepare for his 2008 run for president and is nevertheless being shafted by the party's base.

in the service of our country

Just like the soldiers serving in W. Bush's mission in Iraq, the soldiers serving LBJ's mission in Vietnam were not serving our country. Dropping bombs from aeroplanes on any part of Vietnam was not a service to our country.

I did say Sen. McCain paid for his war crimes with inhumane punishment. The same kind of inhumane punishment was performed on Iraqi civilians by soldiers serving in W. Bush's mission in Iraq. Americanists are performing the same kind of inhumane treatment on Iraqis and others right now.

Fuck them.

So he snitched jelly beans from another patient and hid them in his used bedpans ... I could trust a guy like that making Supreme Court nominations.

Posted by: theAmericanist

Wait, let me guess, more Politics 101?

Hear, hear! Gore/Obama '08

... it's still good. And it was quick. ... I only wish he gave me that sense all the time, not just some of the time.

—Kevin Drum

Hell, Miss America can't pass that test!

I think Obama's trying to get me to vote for him.

What I most look forward to with an Obama run is how Obama's race makes it virtually impossible for the media to continue to ignore the black suppression efforts and intimidation of Bush's prosecutors.

And all those racists, coming out of the woodwork, to post on public boards. Awesome...

Buzz -- lol, the other Kerrey story is that when he was told that many amputees feel phantom pains or itching in the missing limb (in his case, a foot), he asked for a baseball bat: when HE felt phantom pain, he pounded hell out of the mattress where he felt the absent foot.

But I didn't think that would have been quite as revealing for his Supreme Court nominations.

You disagree?

Sometimes, Brojo, people think they're serving their country, and don't find out otherwise until after the fact. You can fault them for not being better informed in the first place, but some understanding might be in order, as well.

And some of us were drafted, too. Not as pilots, but if the guy maintaing the aircraft is equally culpable in an immoral war, which I believe, he may have made that choice because he didn't want to leave his home behind for what seemed at the time like it would be forever. Maybe the wrong choice. But a blanket "fuck them" is a bit too much.

But I didn't think that would have been quite as revealing for his Supreme Court nominations. You disagree?

Posted by: theAmericanist

You probably made the right choice :-)

But for anyone who participates in torture, I agree with Brojo. No amount of ignorance can excuse that.

Ah, Kevin.

Barak's stants doesn't surprise me.

His middle name is "Hussien" after all.

What's that insipid chirping sound in the background? Never mind. It was nothing.

I was ambiguous about my epithet. I apologize. It was intended for those Americanists torturing other human beings right now.

Service to country can be a very dangerous thing for both the server and the served. But it is most dangerous to the receivers of that service. Being drafted made servers receivers, and I need to be more sensitive to that.

I think recipient is probably a better word than receiver.

Barak's stants doesn't surprise me. His middle name is "Hussien" after all.

Posted by: egbert

I think your reeding to much into his speach.

I'm sorta surprised that after all this, I can still be gobsmacked by the utter, selfrighteous stooooopidity of the likes of Brojo -- with, alas, thersites leaping up to enable the addict.

There's a great line in the Caine Mutiny where somebody says of serving under a nutcase like Captain Queeg: you don't serve the guy because you like him, or even respect him -- you serve the guy because he has the job OR YOU'RE NO GOOD.

Which applies to Brojo: the way he speaks of our military explains that it is Brojo who is no good. He doesn't have to obey orders, God forbid -- but to dis those who do simply BECAUSE they do, is vile.

It isn't a question of Decatur's 'my country right or wrong' (which somebody said once was like 'my mother, drunk or sober').

It's just NOT the job of our military to second guess the chain of command. I don't want every 'strategic corporal' deciding whether to do this or that mission because they may have read on some blog that they were really carrying out the orders of the Elders of Zion.

They have our back -- so we oughta have theirs.

Brojo, you are unworthy of the sacrifice that hundreds of thousands of men and women make to keep you the safe asshole that you are, 'making mock of uniforms that guard you while you sleep/is cheaper than them uniforms/and they're starvation cheap...'

And I note that the way you spell airplane strongly suggests you are presuming considerably.

in spite of the discussion in some quarters of "is he black enough" in the great American heartland he still qualifies as a n***er.

It's a sad fucking commentary on our great nation. But it's true.

I am truly shocked. I'm Canadian, and this stuff would not even occur to me. I know Detroit racism from way back when, but I thought racism was pretty well gone in contemporary America.

Thanks for the insight.

Actually, this statement could be even stronger, but it's still good.

Seems you elided the stronger parts:

...but torture is not a part of the answer - it is a fundamental part of the problem with this administration's approach. Torture is how you create enemies, not how you defeat them. Torture is how you get bad information, not good intelligence. Torture is how you set back America's standing in the world, not how you strengthen it. It's time to tell the world that America rejects torture without exception or equivocation.

Obama never really says anything concrete or specific when he talks. He's in Congress now, and on important committees--he could be stopping this now, by not funding any of it. He could have been trying to stop this for years now, but didn't. Anyone who thought they would actually listen to the Supreme Ct. about any of this stuff is a fool. They're still spying on all of us too.

And he didn't say how or when he would actually stop all this.

Barack Obama? A game changer?

He supports the same welfare-warfare state that Bush supports. Just as Bush declared that people must be "free" around the globe for the U.S. to be free, Obama declared people must be "secure" around the globe for the U.S. to be secure. Bush is a liberal when it comes to spending, and so is Obama. Neither gives a damn about balanced budgets, which is a shame considering how far the value of the dollar has dropped. Both want government to meddle in our lives at home and unnecessarily meddle in the internal affairs of other nations abroad. And both are free trading globalists.

How could anyone sick of George W. Bush even support Barack Obama? Do people actually think that, simply because Obama is registered Democrat, that he is any different from Bush, aside from a couple social issues like abortion?

Romney, Thompson, Giuliani, Obama, Hillary, all of them are looking to be the next Nanny at home and Caesar abroad, meddling in our lives and the lives of foreigners (as long as those foreigners aren't named bin Laden, then the bipartisan Elite are suddenly reluctant to use force-shows how much they care about America).

theAmericanist: I'm sorry if I offended you by speaking politely to Brojo. You fucking asshole.

theAmericanista: Brojo, you are unworthy of the sacrifice that hundreds of thousands of men and women ...'

And if you meet Jesus, tell him I'd prefer he didn't climb on that cross for me, too. Sometimes sacrificing one's life on a fool's errand is actually a bad idea.

.


Well, it's rather nice to have an American around this joint for a change.....



/

.



I didn't realize I'd stepped into the middle of a moron-group pie-fling.

What I wanted to say was that Obama -- although he is not my favorite candidate -- represents America at about its best.

-dlj.



.

Torture is illegal. Interrogation techniques vary according to the subject and the situation. Different techniques are effective with different subjects for different reasons. We do not waste time trying to force someone to sign a false confession. We do not waste time with someone who has little or no valuable information to disclose. Certain methods are classified. They are not classified to hide anything from the American people. They are classified to keep the bad guys guessing. None of the techniques in use are torture.

majarosh, the internet is your friend. Spend 10 minutes online and you'll discover how much bullshit you just wrote.

We do not waste time trying to force someone to sign a false confession.

Sure we do. A former Guantanamo detainee from Britain was interviewed this evening on CNN. They "coercively interrogated" this man for months -- basically beating him, hogtying him, throwing freezing water on him, depriving him of food and sleep -- until exhausted and under duress he finally signed a confession saying he was a member of Al Qaeda.

And then they let him go. And now he's free in Britain. Which didn't charge him with anything.

Try and get your facts straight before posting.

We do not waste time with someone who has little or no valuable information to disclose.

Sure we do. In fact, the modus operandi at Guantanamo and the Black prisons has been to torture inmates to discover whether or not they have any valuable information to disclose and then eventually release them upon discovering they don't.

Since by the Pentagon's own gradual admissions the majority of detainees were captured for being in the wrong place at the wrong time or turned in for bounties by their enemies, most are eventually let go.

After we've "wasted time" with someone with little or no valuable information to disclose.

Certain methods are classified. They are not classified to hide anything from the American people.

Like hell they aren't. That's EXACTLY why, because if the American people got a whiff of what was really going on they'd rebel against it. The Pentagon's own Mouth of Sauron was on Wolf Blitzer's show this evening and she wouldn't even admit to the U.S. using the "coercive techniques" that have openly been testified about in Congress, so scared shitless are they of public backlash.

None of the techniques in use are torture.

Absolutely fucking false. If I may reprise:

If it was your daughter who was shackled to the floor of a cell for days at a time, unable to stand up and forced to defecate and urinate on herself, deprived of sleep by blaring rock music, intimidated with vicious dogs, and subjected to exposure until the hypothermia along with the totality of these physical stresses caused her to experience a break with reality, you'd say that was torture. If she were beaten to the point where she needed treatment at the base hospital, you'd say that was torture. If she were put in a box for weeks, unable to completely stand up or sit down, eventually experiencing nerve damage, you'd say that was torture. If she were raped, as happened in Abu Ghraib and is alleged to have happened at Guantanamo, you'd say that was torture.

And if her day care facility was the perpetrator of these atrocities you'd sue them for torture. But because the U.S. military is doing it and because they're doing it to people you consider to be untermenschen you happily pretend there's nothing wrong with it.

If your daughter were subject to all these treatements you wouldn't say, "oh, she was just coercively interrogated, it's no big deal." You'd say she was tortured, and it would be true. And it's compounded by the fact that a huge number of these people were innocent and consequently RELEASED by our government because of their innocence. Some of the Guantanamo prisoners were in their eighties and some as young as thirteen years old, for fuck's sake.

The next time you're tempted to write a post filled with bald, unsupported assertions
that may as well have dropped out of a Soviet-era propaganda film, just type "wank wank wank."

We'll know what it means.

theAmericanist: Brojo, you are unworthy of the sacrifice that hundreds of thousands of men and women...

Who the hell are you to say who's worthy? Nothing gets under my skin like the old "we fought for your freedom, now don't you dare use it in a way I don't like" BS.

trex, The next time you're tempted to write a post filled with bald, unsupported assertions
that may as well have dropped out of a Soviet-era propaganda film, just type "wank wank wank."

Couldn't even muster your own rejoinder? Who'd have thought you could compose something with even less original content than that first piece of vacuous twaddle.

Because being against torture is so, ya know, weak.

These guys don't even pretend to be human.

"American Flags? We don't need no stinkin' American flags."

Sincerely,
Barack Obama

"Who the hell are you to say who's worthy?"

Brojo himself explains that he's not worth the sacrifice that folks make on his behalf, because he tells us that he doesn't want them to make that sacrifice.

I expect it is largely because he simply doesn't know what it is -- which is why I notice the unAmerican way he spells 'airplane'. Americans have a different kind of relationship with our military than other countries.

In another thread, I noted some facts about Islam that I've learned in the past few years, based on extensive reading and interviews I've done with Tariq Ramadan, abou al Fadl, W. Deen Muhammad and Jamil Diab.

Brojo replied by wondering if this made me a 'bigot'. There is a pattern here: projection.

Likewise, note that Jeff mis-stated Senator McCain's war record. When corrected, he huffed that I had poor choice of reading material -- as if actually knowing what you're talking about is a disqualification from, er, talking about it.

The irony of this sorta ignorance is that more often than not, the facts tend to support the good guys in most arguments. Jeff's vile thinking notwithstanding, it IS a black mark on McCain that he was tortured into making a false confession, yet he does not unequivocally condemn torture by our own government. (It is proof of Jeff's vile character that he didn't know McCain had confessed, when -- more proof of how despicable Jeff is -- he claimed that McCain had 'allegedly' given only name, rank, and serial #. This guy managed to imply that McCain had lied to hide something that the Senator has said as publicly as possible is the deepest shame of his life.)

Fairness compells me to add that McCain insisted on classified briefings before he bought into the whole extraordinary rendition/coercive methods thing, so it is possible he knows something about the effectiveness of these methods that I don't. It is also possible that, having been tortured into a false confession himself, he is in a better position to evaluate that effectiveness than others. I don't give him the benefit of the doubt, but I do note that these are possible.

Those of us who know a little about Islam (cuz we've taken the trouble to learn something before forming opinions) understand that there is a epochal struggle going on within the faithful, and we recognize that quite literally America has to take a side.

We just think that you have to KNOW what you're talking about to do that effectively.

But the more you look at the Jeff's, Heavy's Tomecks and Brojos of the world (not quite so with Dice, for example, who is more of an arrogant, opinionated baby lawyer than delusional), the more you realize it's not about the argument, much less the policy, for 'em.

Thersites, that's why I noted you're an enabler.

These guys are essentially intellectually addicted to the emotional pose of the anti-American: McCain flew missions in Vietnam? He bombed children -- that sums it up for Brojo. Brojo's image of the world is an old East German cartoon, in which he is the fearless defender of right and justice. He's not. It's a delusion -- and there is a proper response to the delusional.

Don't enable 'em. When folks say things that are vile or stupid, SAY SO.

Thersites, is it okay with you that Brojo described Senator McCain as "a heroic bomber of children"?

Note, btw, that in this Brojo is ENDORSING the confession that was tortured out of McCain: is that okay with you too, Thersites? Or, like Brojo, do you only believe tortured confessions when they feed your prejudices?

You ok with Jeff mocking McCain cuz he can't comb his own hair -- much less the way this knucklehead attacks folks who bother to learn the facts before they speak?

An enabler makes excuses for addicts, accomodates them, soothes the way they sustain their addiction. That's what you're doing for these guys -- you're making 'em feel right at home with this kind of ignorant, unAmerican, vile and stoooopid crap.

You okay with that, Thersites?

This is only true, of course, if we get rid of half of Congress and outlaw corporate lobbying. Right. Monkeys, my butt, fly out of.

I, for one, welcome our flying-out-of-JeffII's-butt monkey overlords!

The burden should be that torture should require the moral courage to break the law out of extreme necessity, not expected and excused routine behavior. What fucking country is this? Man, we suck.

Trypticon, if it can be justified in a legal review, we would still suck.
It's got to be a crime, and it has to be punished every time it is committed, for whatever reason.
The only question a review(which should be a trial) should address is whether you tortured someone or not.
We can make adjustments in sentencing(or have an aggravated or malicious component to the charge) to differentiate between someone desperate to get information about an imminent suspected attack and someone getting their jollies to get the phone number of the cousin's best friend's former roommate of a suspected terrorist sympathizer.

You can find accounts of soldiers jumping on grenades to save their comrades, and other such sacrifices - acts that could be considered suicidal if not for the goal.
The standard for torture should be similar - if it's not important enough to do 10 years in a federal penitentiary, it's not that urgent.
And if, as an intelligence officer, you're not willing to face that kind of penalty, maybe you should find other employment and free up the job for someone that does take it that seriously.
If you want to hold the moral high ground, you've got to prove to the world that even your heroes are held accountable.

Fairness compells me to add that McCain insisted on classified briefings before he bought into the whole extraordinary rendition/coercive methods thing, so it is possible he knows something about the effectiveness of these methods that I don't.

That was exactly the same dodge Iraq war supporters used whenever someone would pick apart every single WMD claim made by the administration. Their "argument of last resort" was "they must know something we don't" (implicitly admitting that based on everything we "know," the WMD threat did not require an invasion).

The next time you're tempted to write a post filled with bald, unsupported assertions...

You might want to take a look at the plank in your own eye, first...

The next time you're tempted to write a post filled with bald, unsupported assertions
that may as well have dropped out of a Soviet-era propaganda film, just type "wank wank wank."
Posted by: majarosh

Your two posts have provided this board with all the wanking it could ever need, troll.

theAmericanist: This useless, but here goes:

a) No, I'm not comfortable with someone like Brojo characterizing all service members as torturers. That's why I asked him not to lump me, a draftee, together with the pilots that I overheard once having a good laugh over a farmer they'd run into a ditch. Yes, some of our service members are heroes. Alas, some of them are despicable scum.

b) If I hadn't gone overseas, if Sen. McCain hadn't gone overseas, I suspect we would all be just as free as we are now.

c) your "epochal struggle within Islam." How exactly are we helping that?

d) if spelling "aeroplane" in an archaic manner is un-American, what about spelling "stupid" as "stoopid"?

DJ, My first post was an attempt, obviously unsuccessful, to inform.

My second post (returning someone's words back to them) is a method used to expose someone for behaving precisely in the manner the project on others. It appears you and Tyro believe the phrase, "The next time you're tempted to write a post filled with bald, unsupported assertions..." originated with me, not its true author, trex.

Talk about a 2 X 4 in the eye...

My first post was an attempt, obviously unsuccessful, to inform.

It wasn't informative. It was a mindless repetition of talking points for the purpose of gratifying your ego. Dana Perino gets paid to say such things. There's no reason for you to do it for free.

Thersites: "Aeroplane" is not an archaic spelling. It's a foreign spelling.

So it seems reasonable to conclude that Brojo did not grow up on American English. The way he argues reminds me of Peter Brimelow, whom I debated in a conservative venue a long time ago (I think it's still up on VDARE, which isn't a site I go to): I noted Brimelow is living proof that we need better Americanization, cuz he managed to become a US citizen without learning what it means to be an American. Thus, Brojo.

I spell it "stooopid" to denote scorn.

Tyro: It's not unfair to point out that 'I know something you don't know' is an appeal to authority. If you reject the authority (or its credibility), then it doesn't work. So to that extent (and no further) you have a point.

I merely noted that there is a place BEYOND that, where fairness requires recognizing that McCain did request classified briefings on what the methods are and what results they've gotten. Since the guy had a false confession beaten out of him, he's surely got a more practical perspective on this than many of us -- and it's fair to note that. I try to be fair.

One reason why I am so mean to Brojo and Jeff is fairness: that they are the NVA/George Bush/Karl Rove clones in this discussion, believing the confession that was tortured out of McCain (the school bombing hero), along with the implication that torture deranged him, viz., Jeff's maybe "McCain gets off on abuse", which was part of the Rove slander against McCain in the SC primary in 2000.

That's okay with you?

On the other hand, Kenga is right: we ought to hold even our heroes accountable.

I dunno where the lines are, exactly, between legitimately uncomfortable questioning of a prisoner and the various things that eventually become outright torture. I do know that it's not pleasant even with a lawyer present for a guy to be questioned for hours about what he did, and saw, and said, until he contradicts himself or admits he did it.

I used to know a cop who described what he called the union negotiator rule of thumb for interrogation. That is, he conducted investigation interviews, including coffee and bathroom breaks, like they were contract negotiations on the edge of a deal -- or a strike.

I've never heard of anybody confessing to something they didn't do, or accepting a contract they couldn't live with, cuz of techniques like that. They're effective.

Torture is not. So it's the smart, PATRIOTIC way to frame the debate.

Clearly, Bush authorizes torture, which is always wrong. But more than a few of you guys are basically full of anti-American shit.

So, not to confuse with informed speculation but to illustrate a better way to talk this stuff through, there is a step outside the rules which is not torture: lying to and deception of a prisoner.

When screwballs took the Grand Mosque in Mecca in 1979, it was largely because they had a guy named Muhammad Abdullah with them, whom they thought was the Mahdi. (Blue eyes, fair hair, birthmark, barking mad: checked all the boxes.) With him on their side as the incarnate Will of God, they fought like hell. Abdullah himself believed in his invulnerability. In fact, for several days he did astonishingly heroic deeds in fierce fighting, like grabbing live grenades and throwing 'em back at the Saudi troops. Naturally, one of 'em finally blew up next to him, shredding his legs. Tellingly, his comrades didn't help him as he bled to death -- if he was the Mahdi, they figured, he didn't need their help; if he was not, the hell with him -- literally.

When he died, the Mecca siege turned against those he had inspired, because they realized --- ooops! -- that they had committed the sacrilege of spilling the blood of the faithful in the holiest place on earth.

The false Mahdi's death was EFFECTIVE. It convinced some who had taken the Mosque to lay down their arms right away, and dispirited the rest.

It doesn't take much wit to realize that the kind of guy who is likely to know the most about Muslim terrorism is also the kind of guy (like Sijan, pbuh) who is least likely to give up anything worth having from torture. BUT that guy IS likely to give up useful information if his faith is shaken -- which, btw, is barred by US law.

Without a Mahdi handy, what could we show a guy like that to shake his faith? Mecca in ruins, perhaps? These guys aren't watching CNN in Guantanamo, yanno, and you can do a lot with computer graphics and editing.

I dunno what McCain got in the classified briefings, but a reasonable person should bear in mind that it may not be waterboarding that they're trying to keep secret.

As opposed to HRC, who never gives anyone the sense that she's a game changer?

Any reasonable person would not believe anything told them by any representative of the Bush administration without significant independent corroboration.

Tyro,
My words are my own, as I'm sure yours are your own. And a discussion of inflated egos is probably something you should avoid. Just trying to be helpful.

I did notice you ignored your mistaken attribution of trex's condescending remark and your subsequent admonition that I take a look at the plank in my own eye, first...

Good advice, though misdirected, and I recommend you follow it, however the original suggestion is to first, REMOVE the plank, not take a look at it.

Now, is it possible to get back to a rational discussion of Mr. Obama's comments on torture?

Fortunately for theAmericanist, there's no law against torturing analogies.

I like how maryrosh is the perfect wingnut combination of stupid, patronizing, and feigned seriousness. Certainly a step above the average troll we see on here, but no less transparent.

Sorry to see Brojo reverting to his Hostile days of smearing all who have served this nation.

But, that use of "Hero" - So widely bantied around - A hero goes above and beyond the call of duty - The average soldier, sailor, airman, police or fireman are not heros, unless they risk their own lives to save others. I recall the line from one of the Band of Brothers saying ssomething to the effect of, "Do not call me a hero; the heros are in those graves".

Of course, the average military person, presently serving, is indeed a hero to the Chicken Hawks - Because they are putting their lives in jeopardy to save the sorry hides of the blowhard cowards - This is not intended for Americanist in any manner. I, simply, mean that while McCain served honorably and underwent horrendous treatment as a POW, he was not a hero, in any sense of the term.

I assume Obama was responding to the NY Times article yesterday about the secret Justice Dept. memos that purported to justify all CIA interrogation practices as "legal" despite the 8th Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, the Geneva Convention's similar prohibition, and the law prohibiting torture that Bush finally signed. These memos prove that the author, one Steven Bradbury, his boss, Alberto Gonzalez, and his boss George W. Bush each violated his oath of office, in which he promised to uphold the constitution of the United States and the laws of the land. These men are traitors who have placed American soldiers and others at mortal risk and have provided aid and comfort to our enemies. In earlier times they would have been shot or hung. Today, the evidence of their wrongdoing goes virtually unremarked. How nauseating.

Sorry to see Brojo reverting to his Hostile days of smearing all who have served this nation.

Yes. But it's difficult to determine which of the participants in this conversation is actually most annoying; several are giving him a run for his money.

But I can only worry about one group of irritating people before lunch each day. Today it's got to be the Cubs pitching staff.

I, for one, welcome our flying-out-of-JeffII's-butt monkey overlords!
Posted by: kenga

Posted on the wrong thread, but thanks for the name check?

But I can only worry about one group of irritating people before lunch each day. Today it's got to be the Cubs pitching staff.

All I can say is thank gawd I'm not a Cubs fan, otherwise I'd be as depressed as everyone else in the office.

All I can say is thank gawd I'm not a Cubs fan, otherwise I'd be as depressed as everyone else in the office.

Someone in this town needs to have some sense. Guess it's you.

JeffII - it's the right thread - Obama as potential game changer, right?

Now, about that getting rid of half of Congress and outlawing corporate lobbying ... I suspect having monkeys fly out your butt won't be comfortable, not unlike cruel inhumane and degrading treatment, but you're willing to take one for the team, right?

Now, is it possible to get back to a rational discussion of Mr. Obama's comments on torture?

Ah no, with you it isn't.

Dang it - All seems to come at once - First, there is that Pledge Drive for the classical station going on in the Portland area - and, now, horror of horrors, there is a vast shortage of anti-venom supplies in the Chicago area.

And here I sit, tapped out, after giving my all to the Rest in Peace memorial for the A's season.

Ya think the Mecca siege is an improper analogy? Tell it to bin Laden, cuz he uses it.

"Heroism" has always struck me like "tragedy", but in an apposite way: we use "tragic" when we really mean "sad". A kid killed by a drunk driver is a sad thing, but if you always call things like that 'tragic', what do you say when you have somebody like Colin Powell, whose devotion to duty and the chain of command led him to a place I expect he never wanted to go?

I've always liked Shakespeare's notion of tragedy, where what makes somebody great is also what brings him down -- and in the best plays, not really in a way where you can BLAME him, exactly. Hamlet is a shmuck, but he's not a bad guy; Lear is a prick, but he's not smallminded. What brings 'em down is actually what makes 'em interesting, and even great.

Just so with heroism. I don't think it's fair to say that McCain's service as a POW falls short of heroism. He was tortured, broke a couple times, but his fellow POWs praise the way he fought back, mocking their captors and generally showing resilience when he KNEW it meant pain and suffering: if that's not heroic, why not?

This gets at what I think Brojo misses about Americans and our military. Sure, "heroism", particularly the stuff we award with medals, denotes service above and beyond the call of duty.

But ya gotta know what duty is. That's why he's wrong (and profoundly unAmerican), in using his freedom to dis folks who guard his sorry ass.

Somebody like Sijan believed to the moment he died that in refusing to give up anything but name, rank and serial #, he was only living up to the Code. In his case, it isn't so much what he DID, which was his duty, that made him heroic, but the circumstances in which he did it.

Likewise -- most of the firefighters killed on 9-11 were probably standing around drinking coffee and telling dirty jokes when the tower fell on 'em, which they didn't anticipate cuz their radios didn't get the signals. But it's the fact they were THERE, and ready to go up into the fire when deployed, that's heroic. Right?

That it was simply their duty exalts rather than diminishes their heroic sacrifice, doncha think?

What causes a person to recognize and perform their duty, is what makes a person heroic -- when the circumstances arise. That gets at why the relationship of Americans with our military is different than other countries.

I think that's what folks who have survived combat mean, when they say 'the real heroes are dead'. They understand the utter capriciousness of war's extreme violence, where skill and bravery and intelligence are no protection.

One of Reagan's better lines (I think it was in Normandy at the 40th anniversary of D-Day), was when he was gawking at the beaches and the cliffs, and asked rhetorically: where did we GET the men who crossed here, and climbed there? So he answered his own question -- everywhere, cuz America grows people like that.

I don't mind using 'heroic' to describe ordinary people, cuz it fits: the single mom working two jobs and setting an example for her kids, f'r instance. The guy who never got a GED working his ass off so his kids can go to college.

That ordinariness of heroics is why it works for extraordinary circumstances.

It's sorta like JFK's line when some kid asked him how he became a war hero: "They sank my boat."

I wasn't actually talking about you, Paul. But I suppose my general snark should have stayed off this thread. Not a good idea to be posting in this mood.

Or when a rather mild college professor stands tall, at Little Round Top, and says "Gentlemen, fix bayonets".

Or when a rather mild college professor stands tall, at Little Round Top, and says "Gentlemen, fix bayonets". Posted by: thethirdPaul

Back on that heros crap, huh Paultothethird? I tell you, just like a bull dog - can't let go.

Sorry.

Americanists who torture are not contributing to my freedom, liberty or safety. Americanists who drop bombs on civilians are not contributing to my freedom, liberty or safety.

The United States has had many foreign military actions since WW II, have any contributed to my freedom, liberty or safety? I doubt it.

When I am told Americans are torturing and killing Iraqis, or Vietnamese or Nicaraguans or Afghanis, for my freedom and liberty and safety, I am filled with disgust.

I want to find a way to stop Americans from doing these things. I want a game changer who can communicate that America's bad world cop role is wrong. Will Obama be that person? Or Hillary? I doubt it, but I do know no Republican will.

Go Diamondbacks!

LOL -- gotta admire a guy who calls a turning point in abolishing slavery and saving the Union "that heros crap".

Still, what I've always loved about Chamberlain isn't the heroism of it, as the utterly absurd way it happened. Ever been to the site? (I recommend it, Civil War battlefields are very human-scale.)

What Chamberlain ordered his men to do was a marching band manuever. You can see high school bands do it at any football halftime, playing trombones and what not. He had drilled his men by marching around fields for weeks, after all, it had been the bulk of their military training before they got to combat, and as they ran out of ammunition he literally couldn't think of anything else to DO -- but he didn't just tell 'em to run down the hill (not much of a hill, at that, behind Little Round Top), he happened to hit upon the absolutely perfect move at the decisive moment.

Honest, look at the site sometime: you could have West Point guys study it for years (um, they have) and not come up with a better plan.

The way the Maine men moved down the hill, wheeling to the right, pushed the Confederate troops back toward the guys behind the stone wall, who figured, well, hell: THIS must have been why he put us here, so they opened fire. Chamberlain, of course, had no idea where the hell they were.

America (not to mention freedom's cause) came up three 7's.

But I can only worry about one group of irritating people before lunch each day. Today it's got to be the Cubs pitching staff.

It's going to be a mighty depressing weekend, what, with the Cubs facing elimination on Saturday and the Bears bending over to take one in Green Bay on Sunday. I think I saw Bob Babich scouring Lower Wacker for defensive backs in the wee hours last night.

More wisdom from John "Hero" McCain.

McCain Jokes About Using Greenspan to Lead Tax Study Group _ Even if He's Dead

JIM DAVENPORT
AP News

Oct 04, 2007 18:36 EDT

Republican John McCain said Thursday that as president he would appoint Alan Greenspan to lead a review of the nation's tax code _ even if the former Federal Reserve chairman was dead.

"If he's alive or dead it doesn't matter. If he's dead, just prop him up and put some dark glasses on him like, like 'Weekend at Bernie's,'" McCain joked. "Let's get the best minds in America together and fix this tax code."

Obama's comment on the torture issue is excellent - But, too little, too late? Is he just now realizing how he needs a coordinated team to not only react, but to stay ahead of the curve?

For what it's worth - as discussed over at D'Kos - Obama came out firing, yet most of the media is concerned about him not wearing a flag pin in his lapel.

"game changer" is Obama's brand.

"Safe & experienced" is Hillary's.

Posted by: cazart on October 4, 2007

------

Game changer who can defeat any Republican is Edwards!

Reading the thread, it was theAmericanist who first mentioned McCain combing his hair.

I almost forgot to add:

Just how safe is Hillary,

-- who wanted more troops in Iraq than Bush,
-- who won't call for complete withdrawal,
-- who says we need to be prepared for "the next war" and
-- who voted for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment to declare part of the Iranian military a terrorist organization?

Sound scary to me. I haven't even heard a Republican take a harder position than her.

In 2004 the Clintons used Clark as a stalking horse to lose, so Hillary would be set for this year. Kerry didn't fail and he helped by setting up Obama as a straw man meant to fail to Hillary. They're trying to rig our entire political world. It's sick.

Break out! Don't be hypnotized by their machinations!

Alberto J. Mora: "...In 2001, President George W. Bush appointed Mora as the General Counsel of the U.S. Navy, the most senior civilian lawyer for the Navy, after a recommendation by former U.S. Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, who is friends with Mora.

Mora was in the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, when it was struck by the Boeing 757 of American Airlines Flight 77. ..."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_J._Mora

read what he has to say about interrogation techniques -- "...Cruelty harms our nation's legal, foreign policy, and national security interests. I can't put it any plainer than that. Domestically, cruelty is contrary to and damages our values and legal system, including our constitutional order. Internationally, the effects and consequences of cruelty are contrary to our long-term strategic foreign policy interests, including many of the principal institutions, alliances, and rules that we have nurtured and fought for over years, and even decades.

From the national security standpoint, the use of cruelty has been demonstrably counterproductive to the effort to wage the war on terror successfully. Cruelty has made us weaker, not stronger. It has blunted our moral authority, sabotaged our ability to build and maintain the broad alliances needed to prosecute the war effectively..."
http://www.cceia.org/resources/transcripts/5403.html

or you can watch the video:
http://www.cceia.org/resources/video/data/000021

Oedipus solved the riddle of the Sphinx and became a hero. Then he unknowingly killed his father and had sex with his mother. The knowledge of this led to his ripping his eyes out and becoming a tragic hero.

I doubt McCain understands the source of his heroism is also the source of his tragedy. Instead of gleefully calling for the bombing of Iranians, he should be tearing at his clothes and hair in grief for what has occurred in Iraq.

This analogy also works for the American people, who hold the service of the military so high, that they cannot see the violence they commit will be the source of their downfall.

In Antigone, the chorus gave civic power over to the king, who then offended the gods by not allowing Antigone to give her brother the proper death rituals. Some have wondered who is the tragic figure in this play. I always thought it was the Chorus of Elders, who, like America's Congress, allowed too much power to the executive, which then led to a public tragedy. We should impeach our Creon before we suffer such a tragedy.

Royalblue: Jeff called McCain pathetic and sniveling in a post that mis-stated the Senator's war record, claiming that McCain "allegedly" gave up only his name, rank, and serial # while a prisoner.

So I corrected him, pointing out that McCain has stated as publicly as possible that the thing he is most ashamed of in his life, is breaking under torture. As it happens, the truth might tend to support Jeff's point. But I posted:

"I can't bring myself to give any credit to somebody who could call John McCain pathetic or snivelling. The man can't comb his own hair."

That's the first reference you mentioned. Don't you understand it?

Jeff went on to mock McCain, saying "The man doesn't really have any hair that needs combing."

So I noted WHY he can't comb his own hair: while a POW, he was suspended by his broken arms and a broken shoulder. He can't bring his hands to the top of his head.

Did you have a point in noting that I had first mentioned that McCain can't comb his own hair, royalblue? Don't you see a difference between admiring the man's heroism, and mocking it?

Oh, yeah: somebody mentioned Duke Cunningham, who is a crook.

You can't make sense if you won't make distinctions: McCain's service is relevant for a couple reasons -- first, he's running for President, and second, he was tortured as a POW. I expect most folks recognize that he has the moral and political clout that if he condemned Bush's waterboarding stuff, it would have MUCH more impact than, say, Obama's. Hell, that's surely why folks are more harsh on him on the point than, say, Huckabee -- we had higher hopes.

He hasn't done it. I disagree with the guy, but I won't say anything against him personally -- unlike the 'pathetic weasel' crowd.

(And remember, I'm not shy about using harsh language 'round here.)

Cunningham isn't particularly relevant. I dunno as anybody much cared what he thought about torture before Marc Stern looked into his real estate transactions, and for damn sure nobody much cares now.

I like Kenga's observation that we need to hold even our heroes accountable.

Yo, Brojo: whaddaya mean "we"?

Brojo wrote: "When I am told Americans are torturing and killing Iraqis, or Vietnamese or Nicaraguans or Afghanis, for my freedom and liberty and safety, I am filled with disgust."

Sir, what is disgusting is how some will immediately believe anything they are told that trashes America and the military, then lie by accusing those with a different view of saying things they never said, and then engage in name-calling, vulgarity and hate-filled mongering.

ckelly,
Over 2 1/2 hours ago, I asked, "Now, is it possible to get back to a rational discussion of Mr. Obama's comments on torture?"

You responded, "Ah no, with you it isn't."

It appears my absence did not add to the level of rational discussion. Ergo, the problem must lie elsewhere.

So much for civil discourse. See ya!

majarosh, if you truly wanted to engage in rational discourse you would have responded rationally to trex' dissection and rebuttal of your initial post instead of flipping him off. What's funniest is that you have no idea how transparent you are -- an inane asshole whining about how everyone else is an inane asshole. You need to STFU and spend some quiet time growing up.

Sir, what is disgusting is how some will immediately believe anything they are told that trashes America ...

How is it "trashing America" to call out those of our representatives (and yes, our armed forces represent us) who have betrayed the ideals America is supposed to stand for?

To claim that all Americans commit atrocities would be obscene. But to claim that that no Americans have committed atrocities is naive. To shout down the truth-tellers who would stop the atrocities? That is betraying America.

Can we have the cats now? I need to calm down.

FWIW, waaaay upthread: trex is right and majarosh is wrong.

slightly OT:

Next time a winger complains about the left marching in ideological lockstep, show them this thread!

Yo, thersites: STOP ENABLING folks who DO reflexively trash America. I'll give ya a couple in this thread alone -- Brojo and JeffII.

Everybody knows that the bad guys are better at symbolism (was Senator Obama wearing a flag lapel pin? Why not?) and wedge issues than the good guys are.

So why give 'em that?

When you see somebody like Brojo bitching, oh, so piously how he objects that "Americans are torturing and killing Iraqis, or Vietnamese or Nicaraguans or Afghanis, for my freedom and liberty and safety..." don't coddle him. Tell him he's full of shit, cuz he IS.

When you see somebody (like Brojo) claiming how he's against torture, who then ENDORSES a confession beaten out of an American pilot (John McCain, the heroic bomber of schoolchildren), tell him to go fuck himself.

You're not being rude (although of course you can phrase it as you choose). You're being FAIR.

Take these folks at their word.

You want to have traction when you oppose torture, the way the Bush guys have made it US policy, forfreaksake? Then cut its advocates off where they are vulnerable -- McCain's experience proves it does not make us safer, cuz tortured people sign false confessions.

It's not simply that you don't need to dis the man's service to make the point, nor his moral courage as a politician. It's that these are counterproductive, they;'re distractions, and they alienate the folks we want to persuade.

Which is just fine with Brojo and Jeff, cuz they don't CARE except insofar as they can pose to themselves as morally superior to the people who keep 'em safe from the bin Ladens of the world.

In a sense, I suppose, precisely because they DO keep these assholes safe, the US military is an enabler of their bullshit.

But folks who argue in a blog thread are under no such obligation: tell 'em off.

Which is just fine with Brojo and Jeff, cuz they don't CARE except insofar as they can pose to themselves as morally superior to the people who keep 'em safe from the bin Ladens of the world.

I don't recollect that Brojo or Jeff said anything disparaging about the FBI in this thread....

Sorry for the typo in my name above. I wasn't trying to be cute.

Tell him he's full of shit, cuz he IS.

But what if I think he isn't full of shit? Your reflexive insistence that Americans never do wrong is just as nonsensical, and in the long run more pernicious.

I'm going to stop arguing with you now, because it's becoming circular.

BTW "Disputorojo" was kinda cute, intentional or not.

I said twice McCain's punishment was inhumane. I have never endorsed the torture of American POW's.

Questioning the service to the country by individuals was wrong. I think the policies that put that military service to use are not in the best interests of the country.

Since I am adamant in my opinion against killing and torture by my government and its military in the execution of policies I disagree with, I guess some think that makes me out to be some kind of self-appointed holy man. It is almost amusing.

The word aeroplane is amusing, though, and the reaction to my using it hilarious.

The word aeroplane is amusing
I thought maybe you were quoting the Chili Peppers, as in "music is my aeroplane."

Captain Beefheat's, "Take me for a ride in your terraplane," was my inspiration.

Sir, what is disgusting is how some will immediately believe anything they are told that trashes America and the military,

Abu Ghraib.

then lie by accusing those with a different view of saying things they never said, and then engage in name-calling, vulgarity and hate-filled mongering.

My word, what a hysterical drama queen, clutching her pearls and fanning herself at the rough salty language she encounters. You should watch out, Miss Prissy, or you might faint dead away, I do declare!

Captain Beefheart

Captain Beefheat's . . . Posted by: Brojo

That was actually the band's first name. But the record company thought it too weird, so they made them change it.

First off, for all you pantwads, thanks for sharing.

Posted by: Disputo
majarosh, if you truly wanted to engage in rational discourse you would have responded rationally to trex' dissection and rebuttal of your initial post instead of flipping him off.

[[ok, i'll respond below. but tell me, how can quoting someone exactly be a flip off unless, of course, the original is a flip off, huh???]]

What's funniest is that you have no idea how transparent you are -- an inane asshole whining about how everyone else is an inane asshole. You need to STFU and spend some quiet time growing up.[[didn't whine, didn't call anybody an inane asshole, wouldn't be prudent, though it is tempting. and no, don't think i will su.]]

[[now, on to trex]]
Posted by: trex
me:
"We do not waste time trying to force someone to sign a false confession."

Sure we do. A former Guantanamo detainee from Britain was interviewed this evening on CNN. They "coercively interrogated" this man for months -- basically beating him, hogtying him, throwing freezing water on him, depriving him of food and sleep -- until exhausted and under duress he finally signed a confession saying he was a member of Al Qaeda.
And then they let him go. And now he's free in Britain. Which didn't charge him with anything.
Try and get your facts straight before posting.

[[i don't know if the cnn interview is a fact, but if you say so, ok. i do not know if what was said is the truth, and neither do you. neither one of us gets to arbitrate whether unproven allegations are true or not. nor do we know if the guy was an al qaeda member or not]]

me:
"We do not waste time with someone who has little or no valuable information to disclose."

Sure we do. In fact, the modus operandi at Guantanamo and the Black prisons has been to torture inmates to discover whether or not they have any valuable information to disclose and then eventually release them upon discovering they don't.

[[i'm curious as to your 'fact' source for the modus operandi, perhaps marvel comics???]]

Since by the Pentagon's own gradual admissions the majority of detainees were captured for being in the wrong place at the wrong time or turned in for bounties by their enemies, most are eventually let go.

[[i suppose they were all having a picnic in an area marked 'keep off the grass.']]

After we've "wasted time" with someone with little or no valuable information to disclose.

[[i was talking about wasting the time of valuable resources engaged in directed interrogation of low value targets. this is more than you need to know, but usually directed interrogations are to expand or verify previously gathered intelligence from a seperate source]]

me:
"Certain methods are classified. They are not classified to hide anything from the American people."

Like hell they aren't. That's EXACTLY why, because if the American people got a whiff of what was really going on they'd rebel against it. The Pentagon's own Mouth of Sauron was on Wolf Blitzer's show this evening and she wouldn't even admit to the U.S. using the "coercive techniques" that have openly been testified about in Congress, so scared shitless are they of public backlash.

[[you really are clueless, aren't you. if the american people knew 'what was really going on' they'd wonder why we are coddling killers. btw, dildo, regulations prohibit confirming or denying any intelligence gathering method or technique]]

me:
"None of the techniques in use are torture."

Absolutely (XDELE) false. If I may reprise:

If it was your daughter who was shackled to the floor of a cell for days at a time, unable to stand up and forced to defecate and urinate on herself, deprived of sleep by blaring rock music, intimidated with vicious dogs, and subjected to exposure until the hypothermia along with the totality of these physical stresses caused her to experience a break with reality, you'd say that was torture. If she were beaten to the point where she needed treatment at the base hospital, you'd say that was torture. If she were put in a box for weeks, unable to completely stand up or sit down, eventually experiencing nerve damage, you'd say that was torture. If she were raped, as happened in Abu Ghraib and is alleged to have happened at Guantanamo, you'd say that was torture.

And if her day care facility was the perpetrator of these atrocities you'd sue them for torture. But because the U.S. military is doing it and because they're doing it to people you consider to be untermenschen you happily pretend there's nothing wrong with it.

If your daughter were subject to all these treatements you wouldn't say, "oh, she was just coercively interrogated, it's no big deal." You'd say she was tortured, and it would be true. And it's compounded by the fact that a huge number of these people were innocent and consequently RELEASED by our government because of their innocence. Some of the Guantanamo prisoners were in their eighties and some as young as thirteen years old, for fuck's sake.

[[no need to rebutt, the absurdity is self evident]]

The next time you're tempted to write a post filled with bald, unsupported assertions
that may as well have dropped out of a Soviet-era propaganda film, just type "wank wank wank."

We'll know what it means.

[[back at ya, trex, you ignorant slut.]]

Speaking of circular, thersites writes: "Your reflexive insistence that Americans never do wrong..."

Show us where I have ever said anything REMOTELY like this. Use quotes. Remember, I'm the guy who corrected Jeff that McCain HAD broken under torture. Reflexive insistence that Americans do nothing wrong, my ass. Wanna see circular? Look at your own notion that folks who recognize bullshit must themselves be bullshitting.

And as for Brojo being full of shit, here is an example. His recent post sez "I have never endorsed the torture of American POW's..."

Yet this is the same asshole who posted: "McCain is a heroic bomber of children, who was punished inhumanely for his war crimes..."

It was McCain's TORTURE that caused him to 'confess' to being a 'bomber of children.' QED.

Brojo isn't against torture, he endorses it when the victim is an American pilot, beaten until he signs something that Brojo agrees with.

The facts:

McCain was shot down on a mission to bomb a power plant, his 23rd mission over North Vietnam, flying A-4s mostly over Hanoi and Haiphong. (An A-4 is a small carrier based bomber, not the big B-52. It doesn't do carpet bombing, nor area bombing.) McCain describes his first combat mission in his biography, noting that when he looked at the history of the target, an army barracks, it had been hit 27 times already. But just a half mile away was a bridge with truck tracks, clearly used by the Vietnamese military. It was not targetted, because it was also used by civilians. WTF sense does that make?

But it also shows that McCain and his squadron weren't missing their targets by as much as half a mile, now doesn't it? Flying back over the same goddam targets over and over again denotes not only courage, but accuracy: the late Admiral Stockdale, who was shot down and captured in 1965, described the Johnson strategy as "making gestures with airplanes". He didn't have to mention the pilots lives -- but if America HAD wanted to simply blow the shit out of North Vietnamese targets, civilians and all, it's not like we couldn't have done it.

What McCain was doing was NOT the way to do it. War crimes, my ass.

The year McCain was shot down, 1967, one third of his squadron's pilots were killed or captured, precisely because they were making strikes risky enough to be accurate. By 1968 when LBJ stopped Rolling Thunder, after McCain was himself a prisoner, his carrier had lost 38 pilots killed or captured. Fighting over Haiphong, America lost a pilot a day. I don't care if you like the guy or think the war sucked (I do, on both counts), that's courage.

And it's humane, to the extent anything in war is humane. McCain wasn't making napalm runs on civilians, he wasn't blowing up Cambodia's dike system, he was flying through SAMs and anti-aircraft fire to blow up military targets.

Starting with the squadron's commander, Bryan Compton, and continuing up the chain of command, they spent months asking for Walleye smart bombs, which allowed them to hit military targets in civilian areas. Without the Walleyes, they did not attack targets like the power plant near Truc Bach Lake, which is where McCain's plane was shot down.

Let's be clear: there is NO evidence, not even any specific charge, that McCain bombed kids, or committed war crimes of any sort -- except the generic confession that was beaten out of him by his captors.

If you believe that he did, if you place any credence in this crap at all, you are endorsing torture. Period. Full stop. The rest of the 'argument' that Brojo and his ilk make is so much bullshit, to cover up a reflexive anti-Americanism that stinks like the backed up sewer of his mind.

Got it now?

TheAmericanist is a disgusting liar.

Am I? DO tell, Brojo -- what did I quote you saying between quotation marks, that you didn't say?

What did you post, that didn't mean what the words say?

DOOO tell, dude.

Majarosh,
Damn, I thought you were leaving...
Anyway, so basically, your response is to reiterate what you've spouted previously, again fact-free with no evidence to back any of it up.

We do not waste time trying to force someone to sign a false confession.
We do not waste time with someone who has little or no valuable information to disclose.
They are not classified to hide anything from the American people.
None of the techniques in use are torture.

You question CNN as a source but provide nothing in return except "I don't know and neither do you"
You mock the roundup of Guantanamo prisoners though this and the subsequent release of most as innocent is pretty well established.
Simply regurgitating what you've heard from George W (a la "We don't do torture") isn't "rational discourse" and doesn't really cut it around here. Maybe try PowerLine.

THey're sorta interesting, maja's talking points.

1) We do not waste time trying to force someone to sign a false confession.

If you're waterboarding the guy, how do you know it's false?

I mean, if you know what the guy is guilty of, there isn't much point of getting him to sign a confession: this isn't about CRIMINAL investigations, admissible evidence and the like. It's more like -- 'who are the terrorists, and where are the bombs?' We're not looking for confessions, the show trial stuff that the North Vietnamese made McCain and his fellow POWs do. We're looking for accurate information.

Jon Stewart had a great bit about it, waterboarding a guy and demanding to know the capitol of Maryland. The guy kept saying "I don't know, I don't know", until finally, on the edge of drowning, he gasped: "Baltimore?"

Stewart looked at the camera: PROOF this is an effective technique.

2) We do not waste time with someone who has little or no valuable information to disclose.

See #1.

3) They are not classified to hide anything from the American people.

It's speculation, but not entirely ignorant I think, that what we're hiding is not so much the waterboarding, but the kind of deceptions that would be hugely offensive to many people.

But personally, I dunno as I'd object much if we got bin Laden and held him for a couple years until we'd turned him by shaking his faith in Salafism, maybe by faking news of an apocalyptic war -- which Muslims lost, viz., the destruction of Mecca, the way false Mahdis have been killed in the past. Would a disillusioned jihadi be more inclined to give up and tell us who his fellow terrorists are and what they're doing?

The way the siege of Mecca ended says so.

4) None of the techniques in use are torture.

Waterboarding sure as hell is. I dunno about deception, though.

Whaddaya think?

ckelly:
"Anyway, so basically, your response is to reiterate what you've spouted previously, again fact-free with no evidence to back any of it up."

Jackass, I reiterated nothing other than trex's post. All of the quotes of me are in his response to my original post. I repeated NOTHING from my original post. As Disputo requested, I responded to trex's "dissection and rebuttal. see below:

Posted by: Disputo
"majarosh, if you truly wanted to engage in rational discourse you would have responded rationally to trex' dissection and rebuttal of your initial post instead of flipping him off."

I did not "question CNN as a source." I questioned the truthfulness of the person interviewed and the lack of evidence to support his accusations. I did not "mock the roundup of Guantanamo prisoners." I mocked trex's assertion that they were picked up "for being at the wrong place at the wrong time."

Again, you dick head, my words are my own. I do not attribute your or other's words to someone else, though with all the mistakes you idiots make, you might want to consider some sort of disclaimer. And tell me, please, where is all the "evidence to back up" the rantings of those who engage in the uncivil discourse of the brain dead?

The US Department of Defense has admitted that hundreds of prisoners at Guantanamo were picked up for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, many of them after having been identified by sources who were paid a bounty.

And tell me, please, where is all the "evidence to back up" the rantings of those who engage in the uncivil discourse of the brain dead?

You're such an idiot. This evidence has been posted over and over and over and over on this blog. Being new doesn't excuse not being informed on the subject.

The largest single group at Guantanamo Bay today consists of men caught in indiscriminate sweeps for Arabs in Pakistan. Once arrested, these men passed through several captors before being given to the U.S. military. Some of the men say they were arrested after asking for help getting to their embassies; a few say the Pakistanis asked them for bribes to avoid being turned over to America.

...."The one thing we were never clear of was where they came from," [Michael] Scheuer said of the Guantanamo detainees. "DOD picked them up somewhere." When National Journal told Scheuer that the largest group came from Pakistani custody, he chuckled. "Then they were probably people the Pakistanis thought were dangerous to Pakistan," he said. "We absolutely got the wrong people."

That's Michael Scheuer speaking, the man who headed the CIA's bin Laden unit through 1999 and worked for the agency up through 2004.

i'm curious as to your 'fact' source for the modus operandi, perhaps marvel comics???

Again, what would drive you to comment on a subject you know nothing about, and then open yourself up to the appropriate humiliation for talking out of your ass?

Tony Lagouranis was an Army interrogater at Abu Ghraib. He's made it very clear that because we had no fucking clue who was the enemy and who was not in Iraq, that we would simply pick up people off the streets and "coercively interrogate" them until we decided they didn't know anything. He says that 90% of the people they tortured didn't know anything at all.

90%.

Worse, he admits that they knew in advance that most of these people were innocent and/or had no actionable intelligence -- but they were under orders to "coercively interrogate" them anyway just to make sure. As you may have heard, it was common to torture these innocent Iraqis in front of another to achieve maximum humiliation. You may not have heard that they tortured children and even families in front of one another.

He says the worst was the torture inflicted by untrained soldiers in the field, who figured that as long as these people were being sent to prison it was OK to beat them or break their bones. Because they're nothing but dirty Iraqis and they're all guilty of something, right?

i do not know if what was said is the truth, and neither do you. neither one of us gets to arbitrate whether unproven allegations are true or not.

Wrong.

We know this because former prisoners from as diverse locations as Guantanamo and Afghanistan and the Black Prisons, men of different nationalities, social class and linguistic backgrounds, and men who have never met or spoken to each have described similar treatment.

Men who were innocent and released.

We know this because FBI agents observed these techniques and filed complaints about them that are a matter of public record.

We know this because the NCIS agents, after having witnessed these abuses, alerted the General Counsel of the Navy who launched an investigation which eventually uncovered a legal brief by a JG allowing for “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment could be inflicted on the Guantanamo detainees with near impunity�.

Further, the tribunals are set up to ALLOW INFORMATION OBTAINED UNDER DURESS, you idiot.

btw, dildo, regulations prohibit confirming or denying any intelligence gathering method or technique

In fact, these techniques have been enumerated in numerous official reports, including that of the Navy General Counsel referenced above -- who, by the way, led a campaign to end the "coercive interrogation" on the grounds that it was illegal and the equivalent of torture.

The tactics used in interrogation have been an open topic from Congressional testimony to talk shows. They're no secret. How could you be so igorant of this???

Every single claim you made made has been rebutted by an official source or a witness for the government. I have no expectation that you possess the kind of healthy human shame or introspection that would prompt a normal person to slink away after having been revealed as a know-nothing on this issue. Doesn't matter. The next time you blithely shoot your mouth off on a critical issue expect someone on this board to hand your ass back to you.

Next.

Amen.

NOW will you shut up your inane blather, majarosh? Or will the mods tire of your repetitive bullshit and decide you should go the way of the Hawk and RDW?

Oh - and that was some fine presentation of ones own ass on a platter, trex. It makes me glad we are on the same side!

that was a fine ass-handing, trex.

BTW, the Fort Hunt guys who interrogated ACTUAL Nazis are finally speaking up, and saying flatly how they got more and better intelligence from playing chess and being respectfully smart with prisoners than today's "torture guys".

Today's Washington Post.

trex hands ass with authority, style and grace. He is the ass un-whisperer.