Obama-"we tortured people"

There , he finally said what I knew (or strongly suspected for quite some time)- the United States President admitted that "waterboarding" and other forms of "enhanced interrogation techniques" employed by the "Company"( CIA) or at the very least connived at in cases of "extraodinary rendition" amount to torture; something Americans(media and politicians at least expressly condemned unambigously when practised by the French in Algeria, us Brits during the NI "Troubles" as well as by Saddam's Iraq and Stalin's Soviet Union).

Some may argue that given the known ruthless brutality of the foe( Al Qaeda and its offshoots), they were hardly in a position to protest, but this is absurd.

Societies have put down terrorist insurgencies without recourse to torture and societies have used torture to fight terror and have lost( I refer of course to NI and Algeria under the British and French respectively).

Shortly after the abduction and murder of former Italian PM Aldo Moro, a local police chief was asked to sanction the torture of Red Brigades suspects, his reply?: "Italy can survive the loss of Moro but it will not survive as a civilized society with the introduction of torture!"

The big question is : where do we go from here? Personally I favour the discreet pink slipping of CIA officials who condoned or participated in such base tactics (taking early retirement et al with the promise of a Presidential pardon) and the prosecution in federal court of those Bush Administration officials (including "Dubya" himself) who signed off on such inhumane and fantastically counter productive tactics!

Anybody else think as I do?

Terry

We could be using worse torture methods

LoL

Why shouldn't we torture people? It's a usefull way of gaining information.

Because, dummy- torture is MORALLY reprehensible!!! You do remember what morality is, don't you?

And what's worse than waterboarding????

Terry

@hylian: @paracelsus: No need to call him a dummy. Torture shouldnt always be used especially when we dont know what is being done. Have you not heard about the bricks/rope. They strap you down in ropes then stack bricks on top of that until your knees snap. There is also the white room torture which sounds worse than it is

INB4 "Odin fulfilled his promise but Obama didn't" thingy. Joke got overused.

To gain information about the events of September 11? Torture is acceptable, IMO.

One of those things I have mixed feelings on. It would be a shame to torture somebody who really doesn't have the information that the torturer is looking for. But like people said it is a good way of gaining information, but only if its on somebody who has info and is willing to spill the info, some people can and do endure the torturing and just wont talk no matter how much they sit through it. Idk how I feel about it. Its hard to pick a side.

Touchy subject.

Not really.

could be worse, we could make them sit through a 24 hour Tim Allen Christmas marathon

They got Osama's location from torture....

Look, the U.S would hardly be the first country to commit atrocities in war time. The fact is, the best intel is always from the enemy, and you need to get that info no matter what.

Certainly i think the people who ordered the torture should be "re-assigned" to other positions, but why are we holding the CIA to a high moral standard when they are doing exactly what their job entails?

You know what's also morally reprehensible... blowing people up... but things get a little different in times of war when our monuments are getting blown to bits. They're the enemy. If we make some of them "too uncomfortable" along the way, well. That seems proper. But, I haven't been in the thick of things so I can only pontificate so much on it. Let's see what @granitesoldier: and @risingbean: have to say.

This is hardly surprising tbh...

Seriously, why you keep making political and religious threads on COMIC Vine? There are other sites for that.

@dragonborn_ct: Was gonna say. CIA ain't got nothin' on those Bolton bastards.

@joygirl: The reason why this isn't acceptable is because the Constitution clearly outlaws torture in the 8th Amendment. Enemy or not, you don't start trying to give yourself reasons as to why doing something that is outlawed is now acceptable.

And here we go

I swear this country is so damn brainwashed, that they themselves act like they're military generals or corrupt politicians, saying "It was the right thing to do and they are the ENEMY!!!"

I hope the Bush Administration and Bush get tried as war criminals for breaking the Geneva Convention laws. But that won't happen, because M'urica.

@wolverine08: Fair enough.

QFT

@joygirl:

@silkyballfro94: And Obama should not be tried as a war criminal?

@joygirl: Hey if you wanna throw him in there, I don't care. He has been responsible for the lives of innocent people from random drone attacks.

@silkyballfro94: Cool beans. Just wanted to make sure that if you were gonna condemn people you weren't just condemning the people you personally disliked.

@joygirl: @silkyballfro94: He's also broken U.S and U.N laws in the Libyan intervention (think I discussed this in another thread).

@maccyd: @joygirl: Yup. But if we really went to the extreme, we could put about ten more presidents on trial. Just saying.

Of course torture is immoral and possibly the worst thing a man can do to another person, but we have to see things in perspective. When someone is in a position of power, he has to take hard decisions, for the sake or gaining the desired outcome. Torture in this case is one of these decisions, like spying what German is doing, as it was discovered few months ago (but seriously, America isn't the only one spying allies).

The dumb thing now is admitting this in public, which is retarded imo. I don't see any possible advantage by this; even though I'm sure governments make a lot of terrible stuff for their purposes, they would be not only unscrupulous, but even dumb to come and admit something like that. I don't know how international laws work, but if justice really existed, then Obama (or who's in charge for this) should have some kind of consequence.

@silkyballfro94: Yup, they had to add new acts to the constitution just for Nixon. It's funny/ironic when they begin to make claims against the enemy for doing certain things, when in fact they've already done something similar.

@paracelsus: There are many torture methods way worse than water boarding. Like getting stretched on a rack or thumb screws.

@silkyballfro94: Ten? More like almost every.

I'm honestly shocked how politically savvy people are around here :0

@cgoodness: It's the internet, I'm sure that helps a little :P

Not only have we nationally outlawed torture with allied countries, but we've also outlawed it in the eighth amendment. (As already stated above).

If these methods were acceptable then why would the CIA burn evidence of these war crimes? For fun?

Heretics will burn!

Whatever we do, I don't want anything to be done in a back door sort of way. I'm tired of the government secrecy.

Involving the "Is water boarding torture?" debate, the Republicans argument has always been a pretty thin game of semantics. It seems like any unbiased judgment would declare it torture, but when lawyers are involved, they can find a way to argue just about anything.

As far as torture itself, I have no moral problem with it. If I knew that someone had kidnapped my wife and that by torturing him I could get her back safely and in one piece, I would do it and hold my head high at the end of the day even if it emotionally disturbed me. However, do I want the government to have the power to torture people? I don't know about that. The Constitution clearly protects citizens from this in the 8th Amendment, but I don't think I trust the government with this power to use against anybody.

Any discussion of torture should admit that it does sometimes work. The intel used to find and kill Osama Bin Laden was gained through torture. It also, reportedly, is seldom used, but I don't particularly trust the government to be honest about that since they've been caught in so many lies.

As far as torture being illegal for the United States in war, can someone tell me where this is found? I looked into it many years ago, but I've forgotten the specifics. A quick google search showed lots of international agreements that the United States ratified banning torture, but they seemed to be for times of peace. Does anybody know exactly which international law was broken by torturing an enemy combatant?

As far as how to deal with those that engaged in or endorsed torture, I'm fine with bringing the full weight of the law on President Bush or any other high office holders, but I think lesser sentences should be given to the foot soldiers who are not as expected to know and follow the intricacies of the law. That being said, the Constitution is trampled daily, and if we are going to prosecute every politician who violated a law, then that will remove about ninety-five to a hundred percent of Congress from office. It will certainly put every living President behind bars. I mean, I'm okay with this, but I don't think the majority of people know the law well or care enough these days to actually support such a move.

Morality is a line in the sand. Once you do certain things you can't ever go back. Killing. Whether in self defense, war, or for reasons other then those all leave a mark. I'd be willing to bet the same goes for torture. You lose pieces of yourself. While you may win the battle, You'll eventually lose the war.

Ben Franklin is attributed with ”Beware of little expenses. A small leak can sink a great ship.” Look at the police state America is edging toward. The little expenses are us letting our morality slide for a bit of tactical advantage. It's crummy that the enemy will do act X, Y, or Z, but we cannot stoop to the level of our enemy if we truly want victory. We also have to be the beacon of hope for the rest of the world. Sometimes we fall short. But we need to learn from that and be better.

When I was in Baghdad I was sometimes tasked with detainee watch. We'd have to sit on guys for a few hours while they were on our COP. (Our outpost.) They may or they may not have done anything wrong. We were not told so unless we picked them up ourselves, we didn't know why they were taken in. It always burned my ass when guys would treat detainees like they were subhuman. If that guy was an innocent before he came in, now he has reason to dislike us. It was a cycle of diminishing returns.

On the subject of torture itself there are reports that it is ineffective on the whole. You hurt somebody bad enough they'll tell you what you want to hear. I won't get into that beyond saying research it if you'd like. What I do know is that torture makes people doubt the legitimacy of America. We're built to be a proud and just nation, but the concept of torture diminishes that justice in the eyes of the world.

It doesn't matter if the bad guys blow us up. It doesn't matter if the bad guys use guerrilla tactics. It just doesn't matter what the enemy does. We can't afford to cross that line in the sand.

@risingbean: Aaand that's why I called you out. Thank you good sir.

They are not enemy soldiers and they are not U.S. citizens so the Geneva convention or the U.S. constitution mean squat for them. /THREAD CHENEY 2016 YOU NEED DICK!

Eh, I think his threads are usually the better ones in the Off Topic.

*kanye shrug*

Oh yea, Off-topic is a crazy place.

Jezer, in the words of John McEnroe "You can not be serious!" (P.S. that is not a dated refrence at all @paracelsus)

Humans are funny.

@cuddlebear: What do you mean by "not enemy soldiers"?

"By the standards of Nuremberg they'd all be hanged"--Noam Chomsky.

The "they" in this case, being U.S. leaders of the past couple of decades.

Are they uniformed soldiers fighting for a country?

@cuddlebear: Na they're not, but they're still human. If you're referring to the Geneva Conventions and the enemy combatant, it still applies to unlawful combatants.

@joygirl: Bean hit it on the head. I'm better than the enemy. I will kill, but I won't kill an unarmed man. I will maim someone, but in self defense. Not a prisoner. Like Bean said, it's a line I don't agree with crossing.

You do lose a part of yourself every time you put someone down. People don't often realize that. I'd rather not talk a lot about my own experiences but anything I can do to hold on to who I am when I deploy, I try to do. This is simply not something I could ever be on board with.