“‘Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren who have fallen into their hands,’ he wrote. In all respects the prisoners were to be treated no worse than American soldiers; and in some respects, better. Through this approach, Washington sought to shame his British adversaries, and to demonstrate the moral superiority of the American cause.”

In the worst of times – when foreign troops literally occupied American soil, torturing and murdering American patriots – and few believed that the cause of the revolution could ultimately win against the might of the British Empire, the first Commander in Chief of the U.S.A. set the precedent that this society is to lead even our enemies by “benignant sympathy of [our] example.” To win the war against the occupying army of Redcoats, the American revolutionaries needed right on their side.

And it worked. Many of the German Hessians in fact joined the revolutionaries in their fight against the English and stayed here in America to be free when the war was won.

O’RELY?

Name me one redeeming quality to TORTURE.
Name me one redeeming quality to LIES.
Name me one redeeming quality to MURDER.
Name me one redeeming quality to FRAUD.
Name me one redeeming quality, JUST ONE!

… And I will show you someone who thinks crime pays, you sociopath.

.

And yet the G. Worstever Bush is good enough to remain in office…

Dear Congress,
Please parse this for America.

.

We dispatched our NEST teams when we water boarded him again and he identified Oakland as the site. That is when we heard the news, Tacoma had gone up in a nuclear blast. The damned bastard lied about the location and the time of the explosion.

Un-fu(king-believeable!

it only takes a single case to set a precedent, bud. and when you start allowing the people who “knew where saddam’s weapons were” to act without consequence and allow them to torture at their discretion, you’ve started down a very dangerous road indeed. first, its true violent actors (mostly)..years later, when idiots like you think its acceptable, they will be torturing political dissidents instead of violent terrorists. are you truly no naive as to think that people in power will not abuse it?

please explain why you dont think jury nullification is a valid check against someone spending time in prison if thier torturing was truly just? do you think you could get a jury of 12 new yorkers to agree to convict a person that stopped the next 9-11 from hitting thier town?

and do you think its even possible that people who are allowed to torture might someday start abusing that privledge? if so, is that not a cause for concern?

I don’t think anyone doubts that there are situations where individuals might think the best course is to break rules. And once in a great while they are right. That would be a legitimate use of a pardon. The problem arises when the official policy is to break the law, compounded by obstruction of attempted oversight.

June 10th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
_____

Not to mention that torture has been found to produce bogus results, according to the CIA’s torture manual:

Internse pain is quite likely to produce false confessions, concocted as a means of escaping from distress. A time-consuming delay results, while investigation is conducted and the admissions are proven untrue. During this respite the interrogatee can pull himself together. e may even use the time to think up new, more complex “admissions” that take still longer to disprove. KUBARK is especially vulnerable it such tactics because the interrogation is conducted for the sake of information and not for police purposes.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB27/01-19.htm

It’s easy to contrive a scenario wherein it is justifiable to go as far as murder if you really thought that you would save the city, or planet or galaxy. Hell that’s what good movies are all about. And then it would be up to the person doing the torture to justify his actions before a jury. It’s still illegal.

But like Pete points out, that ain’t what we are talking about. We are talking about a premeditated, sanctioned by your President, systematic torture of prisoners.

Think Torquemada.

lol, that reminds me of the time I had to stop at the Social Security office and I saw those really scary pictures on the wall of Dubya and Dickey. omg, let’s talk about how scary that was. their heads look sooo big, they took up the whole frame. and Dickey had that evil Bond villain smirk! eek!

If Dick’s going back into ranching after leaving office, he’d better stay out of the barn, or the cows might mistake him for a weasel, and stomp his ass.

June 10th, 2008 at 5:27 pm

You do realize that you live in the real world, right? You are not, though this may be difficult for you to believe, a character on 24. The “ticking time bomb” scenario you torture-supporters love to throw out is beyond ludicrous. There is no concievable situation in this, the real world, in which we would need to torture someone in order to stop a nuclear bomb from going off. It can’t happen. It’s a bit of crappy paperback fiction used to scare voters into supporting an indefensible act of fascism.

oh, yeah! hmmm.. what was that thing again? innocent until proven.. proven.. uhhh… (crickets in the back round) uhhh… hey Bevis, uhh..hehe…uhh… yeah, Butthead… uhh..hehe… what were we talking about?… oh, yeah! torturing? nah.. you wanna get a slurpy? … uhhh..innocent, uhmmm…hmmmm… I need teepee for my bunhole!

gunclinger Says:

Get used to it; you have zero moral cred, after the last seven years. Go polish your Bush photo.

lol, that reminds me of the time I had to stop at the Social Security office and I saw those really scary pictures on the wall of Dubya and Dickey. omg, let’s talk about how scary that was. their heads look sooo big, they took up the whole frame. and Dickey had that evil Bond villain smirk! eek!

So why did they destroy the recordings of the interrogations, if it was no big deal?

So, let me get this straight. You actually believe that we have been involved in only three cases of “watergoarding”? If you think that, you are an idiot. That is the number of cases we have found out about. Since our government has a habit of lying to us, I suspect that there are many more cases where we tortured detainees.

The fact is torturing even one detainee is WRONG. I notice you call them “terrorists”. How do you know that? Have they been proven to be “terrorists”? As far as I can tell not one of the people we have in indefinite custody have been proven to be terrorists. We are holding kangaroo trials in September where we will attempt to convict detainees of being terrorists based on their confessions they made after being tortured. Don’t you find it odd that we don’t seem to have any hard evidence against any of the detainees we are holding indefinitely in violation of international law?