Example critical corollary questions to this are,

“What legal definition would you use for the term “torture?”"

“Would you use the 1975 UN Declaration against Torture definition -
1. …torture means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted by or at the instigation of a public official on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or confession, punishing him for an act he has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating him or other persons. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to, lawful sanctions to the extent consistent with the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.
2. Torture constitutes an aggravated and deliberate form of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”?

“Would you use 1984 UN Convention against Torture definition -
1. …“torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
2. This article is without prejudice to any international instrument or national legislation which does or may contain provisions of wider application.”?

“Would you use the -the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC): “‘Torture’ means the intentional infliction of severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, upon a person in the custody or under the control of the accused; except that torture shall not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.”?

There are also others. The issue is that it doesn’t much matter whether public officials condemn ‘torture’ if virtually nothing is included in its definition when someone is treated to the severe pain & suffering intentionally inflicted by public officials who thereby aren’t held accountable for what they did to another human being.

e.g http://ghosdog.podbean.com

DoJ declared that the treatment you can hear here that went on for hours without justification is not a criminal civil rights violation. They also refuse to consider federal laws broken outside of this specifically chosen viewpoint. Prosecutors for the State refuse to charge anything…or actually even investigate…not even simple assault. I disagree and have published some of the recorded statements. Feel free to comment. I want to know what people think.

As I remember it, Ashcroft ran for political office against a dead man, and ultra-conservative Missouri still had enough sense to vote for the stiff.

BTW: For you global warming nuts. You won’t see this in the liberal press -

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/news_press_release,176495.shtml

ROTFL

a completely stupid and useless question. This isn’t a hollywood movie or TV show. Information garnered by torture is unreliable at best.

Comment by Krazny

I’ll take that as a “No”…….

http://osi-speaks.blogspot.com/2007/09/u-s-attorney-general-list-is-narrowed.html#links

The other compelling argument against torture is that if an enemy on the battle field thinks he might be subjected to torture, he will be more likely to fight on hopelessly and less likely to surrender. This puts our soldiers at greater risk.

Your arguments are more moral, but for those who care most about “supporting the troops”, torture is still a bad idea.

It is vital to refute the “ticking time bomb” fallacy as well. This is a story line intended to scare the public into thinking that there are ticking bombs around every corner. None of the “terror plots” were uncovered in an especially advanced stage.

You make excellent points in your post at #49.
I would also like to add, if I may, what can happen to the soul of a person who administers torture. He may disconnect from humanity. He risks losing empathy with others for the remainder of his life. He may suffer from inner demons. He can reach a point where he can’t handle interpersonal relations because he has lost touch with himself.
Being on the receiving end of torture is a horrible, horrible condition. Being on the administration end of torture may also be horrible; it just takes longer to die.

Comment by ronjazz — September 12, 2007 @ 6:09 pm

Give her a break, ron… ya never know, she might have helped do the torturing…. ;-D!!!

Comment by dauntless diana — September 12, 2007 @ 6:18 pm

a completely stupid and useless question. This isn’t a hollywood movie or TV show. Information garnered by torture is unreliable at best.

Would you have subjected Mohammad Atta to waterboarding IF the information could have prevented the 9/11 attacks??

Comment by dauntless diana — September 12, 2007 @ 6:00 pm

I heard he admitted to killing JonBenet Ramsey as well.

BLOG | Posted 08/28/2007 @ 6:41pm
It is likely — though not entirely certain in these tumultuous times for the dangerously adrift Bush-Cheney administration — that the next Attorney General of the United States will be a conservative.
The question is whether he or she will be a conservative who disregards the Constitution — as did the disgraced and disgraceful Alberto Gonzales — or a conservative who respects the document.
Richard A. Viguerie, the political direct-mail pioneer who has been referred to as “the funding father of the conservative movement,” ought to understand the distinction better than just about anyone.
Viguerie has been at odds with the Bush-Cheney administration for the past several years — arguing, appropriately, that the current president and vice president have abandoned conservative principles in order to expand the power and authority of the federal government.
Last year, Viguerie authored a smart book on the subject, Conservatives Betrayed — How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause (Bonus Books). This year, he signed on with an even smarter initiative, the American Freedom Agenda, an effort by conservative leaders to reassert basic Constitutional principles by prohibiting warrantless spying, restoring habeas corpus, banning extraordinary rendition and torture, barring presidential signing statements and renewing open government protections.
The American Freedom Agenda, led by Viguerie, former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr, American Conservative Union chair David Keene, Reagan administration lawyer Bruce Fein and Viguerie has bluntly assessed the failings of the Bush-Cheney administration when it comes to defending the Constitution and the Republic it serves. “Especially since 9/11, the executive branch has chronically usurped legislative or judicial power, and has repeatedly claimed that the President is the law,” it declared. “The constitutional grievances against the White House are chilling, reminiscent of the kingly abuses that provoked the Declaration of Independence.”
In April, Viguerie, Keene, Barr, Fein and their allies signed a letter to President Bush calling for the firing of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. “Mr. Gonzales has presided over an unprecedented crippling of the Constitution’s time-honored checks and balances. He has brought rule of law into disrepute, and debased honesty as the coin of the realm,” they declared. “He has engendered the suspicion that partisan politics trumps evenhanded law enforcement in the Department of Justice.”
Now that Bush has fired Gonzales — and, make no mistake, the timing of the Attorney General’s exit on the eve of what will likely be Bush’s roughest month as president, confirms that this is not a willing exit — Viguerie is proposing a list of candidates to fill the nation’s top law-enforcement job.
Disappointingly, most of the names of Viguerie’s list are individuals who have sided with the Bush-Cheney administration in assaulting the Constitution. For instance, Viguerie suggests Chris Cox, the current chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. But in October, 2001, when he was serving in the House, Cox voted for the USA Patriot Act. House Republicans such as Texan Ron Paul and Idaho’s Butch Otter opposed the act because they recognized that it attacked basic Constitutional protections. By any reasonable measure, Cox failed the most critical Constitutional test of his congressional tenure.
The same goes for former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, a Patriot Act supporter in 2001 and defender in the years that followed. In 2006, Santorum also voted for the Military Commissions Act, which the American Freedom Agenda campaign has made a prime target of its criticism. From a Constitutional perspective, Santorum would be an atrocious choice to follow Gonzales.
Ted Olson, the Bush-Cheney administration’s Solicitor General from 2001 to 2004, failed at every critical turn to defend individual liberties, as did former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore, who chaired a congressional commission on terrorism that did a miserable job when it came to balancing security concerns and the duty to defend basic freedoms.
If Viguerie and other conservatives are serious about undoing the damage Bush, Cheney and Gonzales have caused to the Constitution, they need to come up with better choices than these.
Where to begin? Why not with Bruce Fein, the chairman of the American Freedom Agenda?
Fein is qualified. A much-published Harvard Law School graduate who served as an associate deputy attorney general from 1981 to 1982 and as general counsel to the Federal Communications Commission, he has frequently been called on by Republicans and Democrats to help them sort through prickly Constitutional issues.
Fein is a true conservative, and he would serve as a very conservative Attorney General. But he would take his oath of office seriously, particularly the section requiring him to defend the Constitution rather than the political whims of the president and vice president.
So why did Viguerie refrain from proposing the name of Fein, a candidate who would do everything that Viguerie and other true conservatives know must be done to remake and renew the Department of Justice as an agenda that respects the Constitution?
Unfortunately for his own ambitions, Fein is an sincere conservative. As such, the man Ronald Reagan trusted to enforce the laws of the land has called, most recently in an appearance we did together on “Bill Moyers’ Journal,” for the opening of impeachment hearings targeting President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Additionally, he was working with a Democratic congressman on articles of impeachment against Gonzales at the time of the Attorney General’s resignation.
Fein’s willingness to put principle above politics undoubtedly disqualifies him from consideration by Bush as a successor for Gonzales. But Viguerie and other Constitutional conservatives owe their compatriot — and their country — better. Anyone who is serious about cleaning up the mess at the Department of Justice knows that the job will not be done by lawyers who have, by their actions, shown that they do not understand the basic intentions or values of the nation’s founding document.
Bruce Fein’s name belongs on the list of conservatives who would make appropriate replacements for Alberto Gonzales. Indeed, Fein’s name should be at its top.
———————————————————————
John Nichols’ new book is THE GENIUS OF IMPEACHMENT: The Founders’ Cure for Royalism. Rolling Stone’s Tim Dickinson hails it as a “nervy, acerbic, passionately argued history-cum-polemic [that] combines a rich examination of the parliamentary roots and past use of the ‘heroic medicine’ that is impeachment with a call for Democratic leaders to ‘reclaim and reuse the most vital tool handed to us by the founders for the defense of our most basic liberties.’”

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=227562

Comment by dauntless diana — September 12, 2007 @ 5:56 pm

Translation; my group home had an outing and I got to see a movie. They included a soda, but I don’t get to have straws.

Margaret – I never take it upon myself to ASSume I know as much about interrogation thru waterboarding as you seem to. But I do KNOW Khalid Sheik Mohammad sang like a dolphin after a thorough dunking……….

Yes, I did….as well as another “prog” favourite, “The Constant Gardener”. The good news…..I was a guest of a friend from the Academy and didn’t have to spend a dime of my hard earned money…..

Margaret, I recommend you explain to the American people EXACTLY what would happen to the US economy if we pull the plug on foreign oil before we transition fully to alternative energy sources…….

Which is exactly what Bush has done. He has only hired (or nominated) people who think exactly like he does and we all know how well that works out. Don’t you think that we have the right to have an AG who represents us, you know, we the people instead of who represents the President of the United States. That’s how it is supposed to happen.

I hope that the Democrats refuse to confirm anyone as AG until such time as they can finish their investigation into the US Attorney firings.

That would have to assume that torturing people gives good intel which is not the case. All experts say that you are not likely to get good information when you torture people. If we were to get good information, then why have they not tried any of the people in Guantanamo who were tortured. If it worked, one would think that our government would have evidence to use against the people they are holding indefinitely with no charges being filed against them.

But, if you want my opinion, I’ll tell you what it is. No, I would not want you to torture Atta under any circumstances because torture is a slippery slope. Doesn’t it bother you that now that we have legitimized torture for our government, it is opening our soldiers up to being tortured if they are ever captured. We certainly could not protest if Iran captured our soldiers and then tortured them. We lost that moral high road when Bush defied the Geneva Conventions and authorized torture.