There’s no middle ground with you folks. It’s either in the Army field manual or it’s TORTURE, nothing in between.

Correct. The vast number of fascinating torture techniques developed throughout history attest to the creativity of the human spirit. At each point in history, certain techniques were defined as torture and then outlawed; the torturers just devised new methods as bad as, or worse than the ones previously known. As just one instance, in early New England, “torture” was defined by broad methods – strangling, drowning, striking, or breaking the skin. So they developed a method where they placed a board on someone and gradually placed more and more small rocks on the board. Eventually the chest muscles could no longer expand the lungs and they’d suffocate. Didn’t hit the guy at all, y’r honor. That’s why it’s necessary to give a list of what interrogators can do, rather than what they can’t.

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Tim Vaculik Says:

What happens when, God forbid, we capture a terrorist with time-sensitive information we need to prevent death and destruction of our homeland.

Wow, maybe you’re right… Let’s use “what happens” logic for everything! Hey, what happens when (as some have hinted) the wingnuts grab their gun collections and try to overthrow the U.S. Government? I guess we’d better throw all the wingnuts in jail and torture them to find out. And don’t go whining to me about guaranteed constitutional rights; traitors don’t get rights. Wow, that sure is fun and easy!

There has never been a “24″ scenario, there will never be one, and even if there was one, torture wouldn’t help.

You just want to hurt people because you are a coward.

Now, this was because of one of two things: The security measures we put in place prevented any other planned attacks from getting carried out, or there were no other plans to blow something up. Either way, torture was not justified because it would have played no role in the fact that nothing happened. So, again, there was never any justification to use torture.
January 12th, 2009 at 10:41 pm
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Wayne, one more possibility to look at with regards to the US not suffering anymore attacks after 9/11 is the report that Bin Laden had warned the US government that there would be more attacks in the US if the we kept our military presence in Saudi Arabia. Bush appeased Bin Laden and quietly had our military removed from Saudi Arabia.

Why do you get such a kick out of humiliating yourself. You are an object of pity. How could someone even as stupid as you think you are clever when you are just pathetic?

Spare us the ticking bomb scenario. It is mythical. Either you know enough to KNOW he has that information and then you know enough to investigate by other avenues or you DONT and you are guessing. What do you think. A terrorist is going to walk into the CIA headquarters and say I know where there is a bomb and I am not going to tell you. You people have no decency and no empathy. Torture is evil. We wont torture people we have given trials and PROVEN are terrorists so we WOULD be torturing innocent people. We already sent an innocent man to Syria for 10 months of torture. Maher Arar.

Conservatives like you would trade away all our honor and values so you can FEEL safe. You are cowards. Not BE safe you cannot show this is necessary to KEEP you safe only to make you FEEL safe. You bedwetters really need to man up.

Tim, can I mail you one of those leg lamps?

“It’s a major award!”

There was no “24″-scenario that the torture-supporters always use to justify the use of torture. And we know this because there weren’t any more bombings on our soil (I refuse to call it “the homeland”) after the 9/11 attacks.

Now, this was because of one of two things: The security measures we put in place prevented any other planned attacks from getting carried out, or there were no other plans to blow something up. Either way, torture was not justified because it would have played no role in the fact that nothing happened. So, again, there was never any justification to use torture.

What happens when, God forbid, we capture a terrorist with time-sensitive information we need to prevent death and destruction of our homeland.

Mr. Vaculik,

The problem that we have with this remark is that the way Still President Bush (and I call him that with all disrespect) has set things up, he alone (or his designee) can make the determination that the person they have captured has the vital, time-sensitive information of which you speak. And it doesn’t have to be the truth!

Let me ask you about something. People who have participated in the interrogations that used torture (or read the reports of them) have concluded that we received no actionable intelligence from them. And this is what you’re forgetting: Nothing happened! You know what that means? Nothing was going to happen! Yet we waterboarded people to get the kind of information that you claim we needed to torture them to get. If there was obviously no “ticking time bomb”, no “imminent strike about to happen”, then what justification was there to use torture?

And please don’t come back with “We may never know what plots they stopped,” because they bragged their asses off about “plots” they claimed to have stopped that either weren’t plots or weren’t stopped by them. You think if they actually stopped a real attack, they wouldn’t still be bragging about it?

What happens when, God forbid, we capture a terrorist with time-sensitive information we need to prevent death and destruction of our homeland.
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Ya mean, like a NIE paper titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside US”???

You’ve been watching too much Fox television Timmeh…

Lushy! Wheeew… I was worried about ya… afraid mebbe you had passed out in a snow drift, p*ssed all over yourself, and frozen to death… or… simply slipped into a coma from liver failure. Or something… heh…

Today our government tortures our so called enemies, tomorrow they may torture us.
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Though the point will be lost on Timmeh, I was under the impression that that is EXACTLY why the US military has avoided torture all along… fear of reprisals on US troops.

What you say, Timmeh? Gonna tell me I need to do more reading?

Secondly there is nothing we as a nation can do about terrorist threats when our own leader ignores advice and reports given by experts on possible future terrorist threats.

Today our government tortures our so called enemies, tomorrow they may torture us.

By saying he is looking forward and not at the past gives a green light to all future presidencies who wish to trample the constitution, lie us into wars, torture, scoff at the rule of law, turn their backs on the Geneva Conventions.

This just goes to show that our politicians are in a elite club, an exclusive institution and that in most instances,regardless of party or crimes committed will always protect the institution.

This would certainly put a smile on most of the earths inhabitants.