Point taken, but at the very least it could be more discreet. And, as for the 'What if it was you?' argument - how can the western powers do it, and yet condem others for it? Wouldn't it be so much better if the security forces used conventional, legal means? And, if the worst came to the worst, how many can the terrorists kill? It's not as if they're a credible threat.
Because the definition of theft is the 'unlawful taking of property', and the definition of murder is the 'unlawful taking of life'. They are defined in accordance with whatever the law happens to be at the time. Torture is not.
The United States hasn't heavily bombed cities since the early days of the Korean War. And the United States has never assassinated a head of state. In fact, IIRC, the first people the CIA ever killed were the four Al Queda terrorists in Yemein in 2002. Killed in their car by a Hellfire missile fired by a Predator drone. And I too absolutely hate the "if it happened to you, or if it happened to one of your family" arguments. Thats reducing every debate to base, personal self interest. Get a clue people. You don't make the policies of the worlds superpower with 300 million people based on one persons personal tragedy or misfortune.
"conventional, legal means" That is assuming that terrorism is a law enforcement and legal problem rather than a military or national security problem. I see it as the latter.
Combatants caught fighting against ones armed forces are brigands and outside the protection of the rules of war. Historically they have been executed as spies. If their life is forfeit then what matter is their comfort before that life ends if their discomfiture benefits the state? If they want to be protected by the rules of war then they should abide by them. Its their choice. but I gues personal responsibility isn't big these days with the weiner crowd. I see once again some retard has responded to one of my posts without actually reading my arguments. If you had you would have noticed that I do not approve of states torturing their own citizens except under extreme circumstances or if the citizen has forefeited any right to protection by committing treason. And I'm not American, yet another thing that was gone at length about in this thread that you conveniently missed. No its plain Nationalism you twit, look it up. However will I sleep at night? Soundly. Thanks to my knowledge that my government is doing all it can to protect my safety and the safety of my beloved country. Like a responsible government should. As forthe rest of your post, its just repeating (poorly) points already brought up and answered ad-nauseum in this thread.
We bombed Hanoi during 'Nam. No. They always had someone else do the dirty work for them. The CIA best ability has been their ability to wessel constantly and cover their own asses. Had that hit gone wrong with that attack we'd find out it was Air Force personel who controled the drone.
They shouldn't. And keep in mind I've hardly advocated unlimited torture of all and sundry, I've posted specific circumstances where I think torture is rightly applicable. Once again, the subject of torture does not begin and end with terrorism, talk about fucking tunnelvision. And to answer you last question I believe the record stands at around 3,000 people.
If there were actual evidence that they had violated those rules in the first place. But the government, at least in the US, has been quite adamantly opposed to having to provide any justification for holding and torturing people for years without charge. And for more fun, it recently came out that the government has the FBI running around desperately trying to find evidence against these people, because in spite of all these years under this wonderfully effective method of torture the CIA has developed, they don't believe they have enough evidence to convict them of littering, much less plotting terrorist actions against the US. Lol, this from the guy whose entire argument is essentially, "I don't have to think! My government does it for me!" Would you trust some random guy down the street to run the country and look after your safety? If not, why would you trust the guy he elected to office? I am really curious at what point you believe that this ray of light comes down from the Heavens and renders politicians incapable of doing anything untoward and makes them totally and completely devoted solely to doing what is best for you and the country, and therefore renders them immune from any questioning or oversight by anyone.
Their power is determined by the Constitution. And the Constitution says that Cruel and Unusual is unconstitutional. It also states that people are ensured the right of due process. Torture violates both of these and hence is a Constitutional Violation. And nice job ignoring the fact that I detailed exactly how torture fails.
Not heavily. Certainly not indiscriminately. And most certainly not carpet bombing. And the CIA is largely a joke and has been for years. Sure they've had their successes. But more failures and incompetence than anything else. I doubt even the Soviet KGB was able to pull off the things that people have accused the CIA of doing. And the KGB had thousands of times more power and resources than the CIA.
Your scenario fails. Such situations are exceedingly rare. More to the point, having someone in custody while this situation happens is unheard of. What if your suspect intentionaly drags the process out and admits the truth, but too late so that the victim dies? What if the suspect says nothing? What if the suspect lies? What if the suspect is innocent and knows nothing? You assume torture works when in fact it has been proven time and again that it does not. When you torture someone, the information they give is entirely suspect. You don't know if its true or not. Adding in the fact that the "Ticking bomb" scenario you give is a non issue, you have no moral justification.
Yeah they got to kill Dubya's attempt at reform (aurgable on what results if any it would have had but if there was one branch of national secuirty that required reform 15 years ago it is the CIA) by springing a thousand leaks... All of which dried up when Bush replaced Gates with a CIA insider.
Oh, so it's okay for me to beat the shit out of you in my country (assume I'm actually a government agent), and that isn't torture, but if I do the same thing to you in your country, it is? I take it back. You're not a wanker, just an idiot. Likewise, you can't expect people to support those policies, especially when said superpower is hypocritical enough to bash others for doing the same thing. That is especially true when you can make a very good argument that this particular policy doesn't actually do anything useful, and you are therefore inflicting unnecessary suffering on people that history has so far shown are mostly innocent of any wrongdoing. I also find it rather disgusting that the US defined a large number of these 'acceptable' techniques as torture when the SS was using them, but is happy to use them itself. If they were torture then, why aren't they now?
They bombed Hanoi during the Vietnam war. Salvadore Allende, if the US didn't directly pull the trigger they sure as hell created the circumstances and caused the coup that led to his death and the imposition of the dictator Pinochet. The US has most definately tried to assassinate Castro. LOL!! In this particular instance we're discussing combatants caught out of uniform, evidence of that is usually pretty easy to gather in such a situation. The alleged happenings at Guantanamo bay = torture in general and totality the world over how? I elect my government to run the country for me, part of that is maintaining the defence force and intelligence agencies and keeping the country safe. If I think they've done a good job I re-elect them come election time. I doubt you expect the President and Intelligence Agencies to personally contact you and ask for your private opinion before he does anything do you? If you do then LoLZ!, you don't thinkf or yourself!!11 When you show yourself capable of representing my arguments accurately I'll respond to you further. I'm not going to waste my time responding to strawmen. Oh no! Wow... how dense can you be?:wtf: It wasn't even an attempt at a 'justification of torture' which any fool should be able to see, it was my attack on the personalisation and the "what if it happened to you" arguments that were cropping up. It was a deliberatly stupid scenario all the better to show up the stupid scenarios that people were positing here with me the star in them. Everybody else seemed to get it.
Oh but the US has tortured before, upon slaves, during the Civil War, the Indian Wars and the Cold War (when it has been specialized). Why do you think it's standard practice to offer a class for CIA and FBI agents to learn about torture and how to apply it effectively? What's different now is that its use has been publicly acknowledged and has official sanction.
As I've said before, the threat of communism justified ANY response by the United States SHORT of genocide
Why stop so short? After all better dead then red, right? I'm sure all those Slavs and Chinamen would thank you from hell (after all that's the only place reds can go after they die, right?) that you freed them from the life of toil under the yoke of communism with the sweet, liberating kiss of death.
That's one of the main reasons why the US has been kicked off of the UN Human Rights Council. Refer to Es' reply: Anyway, that's off the point in this thread. Or maybe not: If the US was (and likely is) willing to remove heads of state via assassination, injury and/or coups, wouldn't it then be willing to do torture?
Okay, so lets review: Scenario 1: I'm a foreign agent, and I waylay you in my country doing something objectionable. So my mates and I lock you in a room with painfully bright lights and constant loud music playing, denying you food and sleep. After a week of this, you're a psychogical mess and ready to tell us anything, but we decide we need to send a message to Ameriland to mind its own business. So, out come the sense-enhancing drugs and the electrodes. After another week or so of pure, mind-searing pain you are no longer ready to tell us anything, because you are no longer ready to tell anything to anyone ever again. You just cower in the corner of your cell, soiling yourself and not eating unless force-fed. A nervous wreck who can no longer form coherent sentences, or see another human without screaming and fleeing as fast as possible. You can't even commit suicide or look in a mirror, you're so terrified of human contact. You arrive back in America in a crate, and are commited to a mental institution, to live out the rest of your life in a nightmare of flashbacks, delusions and crying relatives. No (lasting) physical injury though. We were very careful with the electrodes. Scenario 2: I'm a foreign agent, and I waylay you in my country doing something objectionable. So I punch you in the face, knocking a tooth out, and have you deported. Now, which of the aforementioned is torture? NB: No, this isn't a 'What if it happened to you' argument. It's just more fun to write it this way.
If the evidence is so easy to gather why is the Government so hellbent on refusing to present it? The Government is still allowed to talk to people in prison, so with all this overwhelming evidence it should be quite easy to try and convict these people. Jose Padilla comes to mind. A US citizen thrown into solitary confinement for three years without charge or trial, and when it became obvious the Supreme Court was going to force their hand anyway, all the yammering about dirty bombs and plots to attack the US and links to Al Qaida vanished, and they ended up convicting him for essentially plotting (but nevery carrying out) terrorist acts in the 1990's. All of which they knew from the day they arrested him. Don't be naive, unless you're going to argue that Al Qaida, or Saudi Arabia, or Syria are fully justified in torturing and killing random people because they have no obligation to protect them, we're talking about torture among the supposedly superior western nations. And while I'm sure Australia is very important to you, the US is what the world is watching. I expect my government to be accountable for it's actions, and further to behave in accordance with the same laws and the Constitution that govern it's existence and define it's powers. As opposed to you and the others in this thread whose opinion seems to be "As long as the people whose views I share control the government, anybody who questions them is a terrorist lover and they should be free to do whatever they choose without being answerable to anyone!" You've stated that you trust your government implicity to kidnap, I mean "arrest" people and torture them without ever having to provide a shred of evidence to justify any of it on the basis that the only possible motive they could have is protecting you. And even went so far as to say you wouldn't mind it being done against your fellow citizens, provided of course these same paragons of virtue in the government would only do it in the most extreme cases. So how exactly am I misrepresenting your views?
I do not believe that foreign nationals should have the same rights and protections as a nations citizens. Otherwise, what is the point of being a citizen unless some special consideration is given?
Rights =/= privileges. You have to be a citizen to vote, for example. However, as the USSC upheld in Rasul v. Bush, US constitutional rights are granted to non-US citizens, in some cases, even when those individuals are not on US soil.
Let me say this politly..Screw you. So it would be justfied that the US would push Spain to invade Portugal during the 70´s because there was a risk of a communist takeover in my nation? Lucky more rational heads prevailed and nothing happened or else another war would burst in Europe. *this information comes from recently declassified articles from both the the spannish and portuguese arquives*
Vietnam war, more bombs dropped there than in WW2, and yes, the Linebacker campaigns count. Not to mention the offensive against Baghdad in GW 1 or even 2. Not really......... How are you defining killed BTW? Of course, but the legalistic approach, such as the fact that out of the terrorists caught in the US, not a single one has been convicted on the count of terrorism but rather criminal fraud or other misdeamenor, that a significant number of people in Gautanamo are innocent of the crime of terrorism, the results doesn't justify the means. No its not. The right to bear arms is something that's present in Afghanistan and Iraq. Therefore, just simply detaining someone because they're carrying weapons and are out of uniform is simply not proof of partisan activity.
