Yeah, that's what I thought

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Yeah, that's what I thought

Post by Hostrauser » Sat May 23, 2009 1:04 pm

Conservative radio host gets waterboarded, and lasts six seconds before saying it's torture
"I wanted to prove it wasn't torture... They cut off our heads, we put water on their face... I got voted to do this but I really thought 'I'm going to laugh this off.'

It is way worse than I thought it would be, and that's no joke... It was instantaneous...and I don't want to say this: absolutely torture.

If I knew it was gonna be this bad, I would not have done it."

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Re: Yeah, that's what I thought

Post by senza cervello » Sat May 23, 2009 7:19 pm

Now if we can get Rush Limbaugh to try that...

(if he can get his feet that high)
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Re: Yeah, that's what I thought

Post by IsnipeWithAknife » Sat May 23, 2009 7:44 pm

gotta give him credit for turning his opinion around and telling his listeners that it is torture. Other pundits would have been made up some BS excuse to keep touting their rhetoric.
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Re: Yeah, that's what I thought

Post by Bandmaster » Mon May 25, 2009 12:04 am

But what is the definition of torture? Is it bodily harm, physical damage? Is it psychological mind games? If someone losses weight while being detained, is that torture? Is sleep deprivation torture? Nobody will say for sure what is or isn't except for water boarding! Since it worked it MUST be torture, right?

When I was growing up hearing stories from WWII, Korea and Veitnam, we were told that torture was when someone was physically injured. You know, the old pulling out of the finger nails, chopping off of body parts, electrodes connected to the genitals and so forth. Has anyone proved weather or not subjects are physically damaged (injured) by water boarding? Or is it the fact the it takes advantage of the body's built-in survival instincts? I have read about studies of drowning cases that discuss the body's reaction to the experience of drowning. Panic is the one big reaction and panic is a great motivator. So I guess causing the feeling of panic must be torture under the new rules.

If we now can not even "trick" somebody into telling us things, even if it does not physically injure them, then I guess we might as well just give up and admit defeat. How can we fight them if they can do what ever they want to our captured personnel and all we can do is give them a bed and ask for their diet restictions. Anything more than name, rank and serial number is now torture. :roll: Never mind that they are NOT soldiers of any country and have no rank or serial number and are NOT covered under the Geneva Conventions.

I'll take bets that after the next big attack, weather it be a dirty bomb, a real nuke or a bio-agent, the administration WILL change the policy back or use even harsher techniques. Any takers on my bet?

The only sad part is that the Americans that die in this attack will still be dead! But there are those that are in denial about that.... Who will volunteer to be amoung the victims of the next attack so we can protect the "feelings" of the detainees who were caught trying to kill us? How many Americans will have to die so Europeans can have a better "opinion" of us. Does that sound good to you? :shock:
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Re: Yeah, that's what I thought

Post by IsnipeWithAknife » Mon May 25, 2009 5:43 am

There are better ways to obtain information. Increased use of Civil Affairs to build trust with the indigenous population. Use psychological operations to create distrust between the indigenous populations and insurgents. Rely more on human intelligence sources (spies, defectors) rather than electronically gathered information. etc. etc.

What is torture? Torture is the delicate balance of inflicting pain and discomfort to such a degree that any slip of that equilibrium will cause the detainee to die. This has happened with other "harsh interrogation techniques" though not with water boarding (yet).

In my opinion we don't need to be doing this because we are better and more civilized than our enemy. It is ineffective and undermines the mission of our military. In WW2 we gave good treatment to axis POWs which had many beneficial effects to help win the war.

Now before anyone says "the insurgents aren't POWs, they are illegal combatants!" That is true... and they have no legal protection under the Geneva and Hague conventions. The thing is those conventions are seriously out of date. Why is it inhumane to shoot animals with ball ammo but jacketed hollowpoints and softpoints are illegal for the military to use on humans? Is it possible to encourage people to fight as uniformed combatants and make acts of aggression ONLY to other uniformed combatants? Well I don't see how stooping to the enemy's level will encourage it more...

PS. Happy memorial day. Thank you to all who serve or who have served. Our troops are given a double standard to act professional while fighting an enemy that wages war dishonorably and they still do it with pride. Santa Barbara (the city I live in) is home to the 425th Civil Affairs BN which are doing many good things overseas which I believe are super crucial to winning these wars so this topic hits a little close to home.
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Re: Yeah, that's what I thought

Post by Bandmaster » Tue May 26, 2009 1:54 pm

OK... I have some questions for folks that think water boarding is a tool of torture. The way it has been covered in the media you would think that we have water boarded dozens, if not hundreds of prisoners. I would like to hear what people "perceive" as the truth.

1. In total, how many detainees have been been listed as having been water boarded?

2. Why were they ultimately water boarded? In other words, why did the authorities feel it was neccessary?

3. What information was gained from these interogations?

Now we find out how closely people actually listen to reports and interviews in the news.
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Re: Yeah, that's what I thought

Post by Hostrauser » Tue May 26, 2009 2:30 pm

You're missing the point entirely. I'm not saying it's okay if we get something from it, or that it's okay under certain circumstances, I'm saying that it's not okay. At all. Ever.
1. In total, how many detainees have been been listed as having been water boarded?
More than one, so, too many.
2. Why were they ultimately water boarded? In other words, why did the authorities feel it was neccessary?
Irrelevant. There are no circumstances that would justify the action for me.
3. What information was gained from these interogations?
Irrelevant. There are no results that would justify the action for me.

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Re: Yeah, that's what I thought

Post by Bandmaster » Tue May 26, 2009 5:47 pm

My point is the the debate is not honest! Most people do not know the truth! The main stream media doesn't care about the truth. The ONLY reason that water boarding is even an issue is because the media made it one to hurt President Bush. Not one member of Congress or the Senate had a complaint about it when first told. No one complained until it became a handy tool to beat up Bush. Water boarding has been around for a very long time. George Marshall, who later became the general in charge of our military during WWII, was water boarded as a cadet at the Virginia Military Academy. Compared to what we and our allies did to prisoners during WWII, Korea and Vietnam, water boarding is nothing. It has now become nothing more than a tool to achieve a political end. At least be honest about that!


OK, please explain in detail what makes water boarding torture? What about it crosses the line? Then please explain why other methods of coerst interogation are not torture?

Again, will you volunteer to be among the victims of the next attack just to prove that you are right and on the moral high ground?

War is a nasty affair and even the nicest people will have to do some unsavory things to win. Your other choice is surrender.
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Re: Yeah, that's what I thought

Post by JLGORMAN » Tue May 26, 2009 6:28 pm

I find it interesting that many people who are so concerned about torture of suspected terrorists, have never had to make decisions about the lives of their people.

My job has given me a more than passing bit of knowledge about this area, and I have had friends in Iraq who have had to make some split second decisions about using enhanced interrogation. Before people tell me how to do things, try and decide for yourself what you would do. The following are true scenarios.

1. You capture an insurgent who you know has information as to where an ambush is being set up along with IED's that will be used to ambush"Your Soldiers" You are the unit commander. Do you send him back for normal interrogation and continue on, or do you threaten him in the attempt to locate the site and possibly save the lives of american soldiers, all of whom you command and lead and KNOW IN PERSON.

2. You are aware that a captured enemy combatant knows where an IED will be planted to maximize deaths of women and children. This IED will go off soon, what do you do?

3, You are in charge of finding us personnel captured by an enemy(guess what folks, the Taliban, Al Queda and other terrorists groups do not abide by any code of conduct such as the Geneva Convention). Do you attempt enhanced interrogation when the time americans being held hostage continues to slip away,or do you determine that the enemy combatant should be turned over to the rear area folks.

Guess what, these three scenarios are not just from the War on Terror, but also have taken place with US Forces in World War II, The Vietnam War, the Conflict in the Philipines in the early 1900's and in the plains wars between the Army and the Indians.

I do not pretend to have an answer for each situation, however I find it most amazing that politicians, most of whom never served a day in their life in the military can be experts about what Commanders in the Field have to deal with. Most of you are probably not aware that each US Military Manuever Brigade now has a Staff Judge Advocate lawyer attached to them throughout combat to help in these decisions. Sometimes there are no good answers. Sometimes even the best answer is not good.
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Re: Yeah, that's what I thought

Post by Hostrauser » Tue May 26, 2009 8:18 pm

Bandmaster wrote:Compared to what we and our allies did to prisoners during WWII, Korea and Vietnam, water boarding is nothing. It has now become nothing more than a tool to achieve a political end. At least be honest about that!
You are make a relativistic argument, I am not. You're also making a logical fallacy: that a lesser evil act is "okay" simply because it's not a greater evil act. What American POWs have suffered at the hands of the enemy IN NO WAY morally legitimizes the act of waterboarding.
Bandmaster wrote:OK, please explain in detail what makes water boarding torture? What about it crosses the line? Then please explain why other methods of coerst interogation are not torture?
An act is torture when it fulfills four definitive requirements:
1. The act causes severe physical and/or mental pain and suffering
2. The infliction of pain and suffering is intentional
3. The act is committed for specified purposes
4. There is involvement/endorsement of the act by a person of authority

Waterboarding fulfills all four requirements: it causes severe mental suffering, it's intentional, it's done to extract information, and it is state-sponsored.
Bandmaster wrote:Again, will you volunteer to be among the victims of the next attack just to prove that you are right and on the moral high ground?
What a nonsensical question. Will you volunteer to be among the victims of the next attack just to prove that torture is a necessary source of information in the war on terror?

The answer is no, and just because I'm not willing to sacrifice my life for every opinion I have does not render those opinions hollow.
JLGORMAN wrote:1. You capture an insurgent who you know has information as to where an ambush is being set up along with IED's that will be used to ambush "Your Soldiers" You are the unit commander. Do you send him back for normal interrogation and continue on, or do you threaten him in the attempt to locate the site and possibly save the lives of American soldiers, all of whom you command and lead and KNOW IN PERSON.
Normal interrogation.
JLGORMAN wrote:2. You are aware that a captured enemy combatant knows where an IED will be planted to maximize deaths of women and children. This IED will go off soon, what do you do?
Normal interrogation.
JLGORMAN wrote:3, You are in charge of finding us personnel captured by an enemy(guess what folks, the Taliban, Al Queda and other terrorists groups do not abide by any code of conduct such as the Geneva Convention). Do you attempt enhanced interrogation when the time americans being held hostage continues to slip away,or do you determine that the enemy combatant should be turned over to the rear area folks.
Normal interrogation.

In all three scenarios you make the unrealistic assumption of 100% certainty (the your POW has the info you need) and 100% success (that the torture will ALWAYS work and ALWAYS give you the answers you need). But this is silly: if we HAD all the information we needed, we wouldn't need to TORTURE someone for more information. Therefore, ALL torture is begun with a measure of doubt or uncertainty, and HIGHLY susceptible to error. It is not okay to torture nine innocent people even if you get the info you desire from the tenth. The ends do not justify the means.

It has been estimated that as few as two dozen of the 600 detainees at Guantanamo had any potential intelligence value even if it could be obtained from them. That's a maximum success rate of 4%. Thus, if we tortured 20 prisoners, 19 of them legitimately did not know the information we were pursuing.

I leave you with the words of the U.S. Military's senior interrogator in Iraq in 2006...
Major Matthew wrote:In my humble opinion, which is not always so humble, The Global War on Terrorism (a name I despise, by the way) will not be won by national policy or advanced weapons or economic might. It will be won, like all wars, by intellect (imagine that)...

Let me start off here with a quote, since that seems to be a very popular thing to do in today's culture: "It is a fundamental mistake to see the enemy as a set of targets. The enemy in war is a group of people. Some of them will have to be killed. Others will have to be captured or driven into hiding. The overwhelming majority, however, have to be persuaded." -- Frederick Kagan, "War and Aftermath"

...What's interesting to me is that the debate over torture in interrogations is morally important but pragmatically irrelevant. Politicians and bureaucrats supporting the current administration have put in Herculean efforts to legalize harsh techniques, labeled "enhanced interrogation techniques," and to keep them classified, but these methods are in complete contradiction to the standards that we expect our own troops, when captured, to be afforded. Enhanced interrogation techniques are torture by the standards of the Geneva Conventions which we proclaim to uphold, and what's more important is that they are neither the most efficient nor reliable methods of achieving cooperation. There are rare circumstances where force and threats would be more effective and timely than intellectual methods, but in those rare circumstances, if we resort to torture in violation of the Geneva Conventions, the actual harm done to us is greater than any benefit that we could obtain. Abu Ghraib is the perfect example.

If the Abu Ghraib abuses had occurred in the process of obtaining critical intelligence information that would have prevented a major terrorist attack, it still would have had an overall negative impact in The Global War on Terrorism for the United States. Working side by side with the chief of interrogations for foreign fighters in Iraq, my duties included monitoring their interrogations for compliance and offering advice on interrogation strategies.

The foreign fighters consistently cited Abu Ghraib as their number one reason for deciding to come to Iraq and it is al Qaeda's best recruitment tool. You heard that correctly. Abu Ghraib is al Qaeda's "Army of One" commercial. No, they didn't come because they drank the Caliphate Kool Aid. They came because, and you'll get this if you've ever watched Band of Brothers, they fight for the guy next to them, just like us, who just got tortured, shamed, and humiliated.

Torture or inhumane treatment, even in isolated cases, such as in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, is not worth the price. The integrity of our country is more important than any singular terrorist attack, even if it costs American lives. We must come to understand that the measure of our country is not in lives or resources, it is in the validity of our ideas of liberty and justice. We cannot sacrifice those values, even to stop a terrorist attack because if we do, then we allow the Islamic extremists to achieve one of their major goals - to defeat the idea of freedom. Yes, I said the idea, because that's what's important.

In interrogation, what's more important than the methods is our own intellectual ability to outsmart the enemy within the rules. We will win the war by being smarter, not harsher. By yielding to harsh techniques we are displaying our lack of confidence in our ability to defeat the enemy on an intellectual level.
The use of torture is not a sign of strength or a show of will. It is a display of fear. Every time we torture a prisoner, we are saying to the world "we are so afraid of you we will do anything... ANYTHING... to try and stop you from hurting us."

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Re: Yeah, that's what I thought

Post by Bandmaster » Tue May 26, 2009 11:25 pm

Hostrauser wrote:
Bandmaster wrote:Compared to what we and our allies did to prisoners during WWII, Korea and Vietnam, water boarding is nothing. It has now become nothing more than a tool to achieve a political end. At least be honest about that!
You are make a relativistic argument, I am not. You're also making a logical fallacy: that a lesser evil act is "okay" simply because it's not a greater evil act. What American POWs have suffered at the hands of the enemy IN NO WAY morally legitimizes the act of waterboarding.
I DID NOT talk about what happened to OUR POW's, I talked about what we and our allies did to the POW's we captured!!!!! The British used far more harsh techniques than we did and Churchill wanted to do even more but he was over ruled by others in the British government!
Hostrauser wrote:
Bandmaster wrote:OK, please explain in detail what makes water boarding torture? What about it crosses the line? Then please explain why other methods of coerst interogation are not torture?
An act is torture when it fulfills four definitive requirements:
1. The act causes severe physical and/or mental pain and suffering
2. The infliction of pain and suffering is intentional
3. The act is committed for specified purposes
4. There is involvement/endorsement of the act by a person of authority

Waterboarding fulfills all four requirements: it causes severe mental suffering, it's intentional, it's done to extract information, and it is state-sponsored.
Under these rules ALL interogation techniques are torture. Simply incarcerating them could be considered torture. You need to define more realistic rules, these outlaw everything.
Hostrauser wrote:
Bandmaster wrote:Again, will you volunteer to be among the victims of the next attack just to prove that you are right and on the moral high ground?
What a nonsensical question. Will you volunteer to be among the victims of the next attack just to prove that torture is a necessary source of information in the war on terror?

The answer is no, and just because I'm not willing to sacrifice my life for every opinion I have does not render those opinions hollow.
Well if we don't press for information, someone will die. But I guess that is OK... as long as it is not you!
Hostrauser wrote:
JLGORMAN wrote:1. You capture an insurgent who you know has information as to where an ambush is being set up along with IED's that will be used to ambush "Your Soldiers" You are the unit commander. Do you send him back for normal interrogation and continue on, or do you threaten him in the attempt to locate the site and possibly save the lives of American soldiers, all of whom you command and lead and KNOW IN PERSON.
Normal interrogation.
JLGORMAN wrote:2. You are aware that a captured enemy combatant knows where an IED will be planted to maximize deaths of women and children. This IED will go off soon, what do you do?
Normal interrogation.
JLGORMAN wrote:3, You are in charge of finding us personnel captured by an enemy(guess what folks, the Taliban, Al Queda and other terrorists groups do not abide by any code of conduct such as the Geneva Convention). Do you attempt enhanced interrogation when the time americans being held hostage continues to slip away,or do you determine that the enemy combatant should be turned over to the rear area folks.
Normal interrogation.
Please define normal interogation!

Under your rules listed above nothing can be done to press the prisoner for information. So under all three senarios above the prisoner lives and our soldiers and the civilians die!

Let's change the senario.... YOU are the commander in the field and you capture a terrorist that admitted to setting IEDs but refuses to say where. While questioning him he laughs at you and brags about the US soldiers he is about to kill. Your brother is a member of the unit checking out the road ahead for IEDs. How will you get the information from your prisoner? Your brother's life hangs in the balance.... what do you do?
Hostrauser wrote:In all three scenarios you make the unrealistic assumption of 100% certainty (the your POW has the info you need) and 100% success (that the torture will ALWAYS work and ALWAYS give you the answers you need). But this is silly: if we HAD all the information we needed, we wouldn't need to TORTURE someone for more information. Therefore, ALL torture is begun with a measure of doubt or uncertainty, and HIGHLY susceptible to error. It is not okay to torture nine innocent people even if you get the info you desire from the tenth. The ends do not justify the means.

It has been estimated that as few as two dozen of the 600 detainees at Guantanamo had any potential intelligence value even if it could be obtained from them. That's a maximum success rate of 4%. Thus, if we tortured 20 prisoners, 19 of them legitimately did not know the information we were pursuing.
This just tells me that you have absolutely no idea how things work in the real world!
Hostrauser wrote:I leave you with the words of the U.S. Military's senior interrogator in Iraq in 2006...
(Please note that this is one man's opinion and there are many other high ranking military officers that feel differently.)
Hostrauser wrote:
Major Matthew wrote:In my humble opinion, which is not always so humble, The Global War on Terrorism (a name I despise, by the way) will not be won by national policy or advanced weapons or economic might. It will be won, like all wars, by intellect (imagine that)...

Let me start off here with a quote, since that seems to be a very popular thing to do in today's culture: "It is a fundamental mistake to see the enemy as a set of targets. The enemy in war is a group of people. Some of them will have to be killed. Others will have to be captured or driven into hiding. The overwhelming majority, however, have to be persuaded." -- Frederick Kagan, "War and Aftermath"

...What's interesting to me is that the debate over torture in interrogations is morally important but pragmatically irrelevant. Politicians and bureaucrats supporting the current administration have put in Herculean efforts to legalize harsh techniques, labeled "enhanced interrogation techniques," and to keep them classified, but these methods are in complete contradiction to the standards that we expect our own troops, when captured, to be afforded. Enhanced interrogation techniques are torture by the standards of the Geneva Conventions which we proclaim to uphold, and what's more important is that they are neither the most efficient nor reliable methods of achieving cooperation. There are rare circumstances where force and threats would be more effective and timely than intellectual methods, but in those rare circumstances, if we resort to torture in violation of the Geneva Conventions, the actual harm done to us is greater than any benefit that we could obtain. Abu Ghraib is the perfect example.

If the Abu Ghraib abuses had occurred in the process of obtaining critical intelligence information that would have prevented a major terrorist attack, it still would have had an overall negative impact in The Global War on Terrorism for the United States. Working side by side with the chief of interrogations for foreign fighters in Iraq, my duties included monitoring their interrogations for compliance and offering advice on interrogation strategies.

The foreign fighters consistently cited Abu Ghraib as their number one reason for deciding to come to Iraq and it is al Qaeda's best recruitment tool. You heard that correctly. Abu Ghraib is al Qaeda's "Army of One" commercial. No, they didn't come because they drank the Caliphate Kool Aid. They came because, and you'll get this if you've ever watched Band of Brothers, they fight for the guy next to them, just like us, who just got tortured, shamed, and humiliated.

Torture or inhumane treatment, even in isolated cases, such as in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, is not worth the price. The integrity of our country is more important than any singular terrorist attack, even if it costs American lives. We must come to understand that the measure of our country is not in lives or resources, it is in the validity of our ideas of liberty and justice. We cannot sacrifice those values, even to stop a terrorist attack because if we do, then we allow the Islamic extremists to achieve one of their major goals - to defeat the idea of freedom. Yes, I said the idea, because that's what's important.

In interrogation, what's more important than the methods is our own intellectual ability to outsmart the enemy within the rules. We will win the war by being smarter, not harsher. By yielding to harsh techniques we are displaying our lack of confidence in our ability to defeat the enemy on an intellectual level.
The use of torture is not a sign of strength or a show of will. It is a display of fear. Every time we torture a prisoner, we are saying to the world "we are so afraid of you we will do anything... ANYTHING... to try and stop you from hurting us."
Abu Ghraib was not US soldiers interogating prisoners! It was sick, twisted US soldiers getting their jollies at the prisoner's expense. Yes, it was bad, and it was stupid, but it was not interogation run-a-muck. It wasn't interogation at all. The real sad part is, we as American's can not, in the world's eyes, be anything other than perfect. The terrorists can kill, mame and do any terrible things they want to anyone they want, and no one in the world media will hold them accountable. If we make one mistake we are demonized. And with our own media working against us (they released the Abu Ghraib photos knowing full well what would happen... and they didn't care), we have no hope of ever gaining world opinion. If our media had acted in a similar manner during WWII we would have surely lost the war.

The key quote above is this:
Major Matthew wrote:There are rare circumstances where force and threats would be more effective and timely than intellectual methods, ....
So again I ask you, how many detainees have been been listed as having been water boarded?

Since I know you won't answer the question because you feel it is beneath you, the answer is only THREE! Out of the hundreds of prisoners we have in detention we have only subjected 3 to water boarding. That makes them very rare occurances. But you would never know it by reading the media.... :roll:

The answer to my third question above is that at least 3 major attacks were diverted, including an attack where they were to fly airplanes into high-rise buildings in downtown Los Angeles.
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Re: Yeah, that's what I thought

Post by Hostrauser » Wed May 27, 2009 7:36 am

I think this will be my last post in this thread, since you aren't presenting any new arguments, just reiterating old ones I've already answered (and missing the broader point of my responses, I guess).
Bandmaster wrote:Under these rules ALL interogation techniques are torture. Simply incarcerating them could be considered torture. You need to define more realistic rules, these outlaw everything.
No, most interrogation techniques do not fit Item #1 (specifically the fourth word). Stop being silly. You don't see Amnesty International and the Red Cross saying that police departments can't question suspects, do you? There *IS* a difference between interrogation and torture, and your pedantic refusal to acknowledge a reasonable definition doesn't change that.
Bandmaster wrote:Well if we don't press for information, someone will die.
I call B.S. Prove it. And when I say "prove it" I am NOT saying "prove that info gained from torturing suspects has prevented attacks" I'm saying "prove that the info that prevented attacks could not have been gained from any other means other than torture."
Bandmaster wrote:Let's change the senario.... YOU are the commander in the field and you capture a terrorist that admitted to setting IEDs but refuses to say where. While questioning him he laughs at you and brags about the US soldiers he is about to kill. Your brother is a member of the unit checking out the road ahead for IEDs. How will you get the information from your prisoner? Your brother's life hangs in the balance.... what do you do?
Question him in a humane and acceptable way. The insurgents have already proven themselves willing to die for their cause thousands of times over.

Again, you make the (ridiculous) assumption that my brother has 0% chance of finding and disabling the IED and 100% chance of dying without info from the insurgent.
Bandmaster wrote:This just tells me that you have absolutely no idea how things work in the real world!
No, it means that I do not like how things work in the real world. Too many people are intellectual lazy and figure the world can't be changed, ever. They (like you) just say "that's the way the world is, deal with it." Well what sort of foolishness is that? Of course the world will never change if no one ever holds a contrary opinion. The world changes because some people refuse to compromise their beliefs just to match the current state of the world.

I'm an idealist, I make no qualms about that. You say, "That's not the way the real world works!" I say, "Why not? Why shouldn't it be?"
Bandmaster wrote:So again I ask you, how many detainees have been been listed as having been water boarded?

Since I know you won't answer the question because you feel it is beneath you, the answer is only THREE! Out of the hundreds of prisoners we have in detention we have only subjected 3 to water boarding. That makes them very rare occurances. But you would never know it by reading the media.... :roll:

The answer to my third question above is that at least 3 major attacks were diverted, including an attack where they were to fly airplanes into high-rise buildings in downtown Los Angeles.
Again you miss my point. I don't care if it was three or 300. The ends do not justify the means.

What was it Bush always said? The terrorists "hate freedom" and "hate the principles this country was founded on." Well, he was absolutely right on this count.

The only way to "level the playing field" is to lower it. If we fight on the terrorists' terms, we've already accomplished their goal for them.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. For if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

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Re: Yeah, that's what I thought

Post by Bandmaster » Wed May 27, 2009 10:08 am

Hostrauser wrote:I'm an idealist, I make no qualms about that. You say, "That's not the way the real world works!" I say, "Why not? Why shouldn't it be?"
This is a most admirable ideal and I agree with it, but at the same time you must not employ it naively. We can not change the world by ourselves. Unfortunately right now there are not many other nations willing to put it on the line to help make this ideal happen. Even those that we helped defend during WWI and WWII. Make what changes we can but watch your back at the same time.

The countries in Europe freely criticise the United States, since we allow and tollerate such criticism without reprisal. But they do not criticise Russia or China because those governments do not allow it. Russia will cut off their oil or China will not trade with them which hits Europe right in their pockets books. This coupled with envy of our successes will always make us the target of the worlds media. Unfortunately the media has become totally political and real "journalism" no longer exists. No matter how much good we do in the world, which is far more than any other country, we will never be credited for it.
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Re: Yeah, that's what I thought

Post by JLGORMAN » Wed May 27, 2009 3:04 pm

I note that we have an idealist. Lilke many others in this world, I think that is great, however, we also live in a world of stark terror, where groups such as ETA in Spain, the IRA in Northern Ireland, the Badner Meinhoff Red Army Faction(I have worked against this bunch so I know of what I am talking about) the Kurdish Revolutionary Army, The Tamil Tigers in Sir Lanka, the the Black September and PFLP have terrorized innocent people to obtain power at the point of a gun or explosives C4. Unlike normal Police Work, Counter Terrorism is not hunting down leads. There are times when decisions have to be made to save the lives of many innocent people. Does that mean normal proceedures sometime do not apply, yes it does. Sadly I have found that most idealists become very much realists when they have to make life and death decisions. It is extremely easy to be an idealist when others are carrying the fight.
Deep in the Heart of Texas. Home of the III Mobile Armored Corps and the 1st Cavalry Division, serving America in Iraq

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