Waterboarding is torture

[Joe Hillshoist]

anti I don't think that loophole matters.

Torture does work. When I was involved in some dodgy things in my youth, criminals would torture people.

You rip off a drug lord, and you will suffer before you die, simple. It was a deterrant. I have seen people do some stupid and nasty things cos they were scared of what would happen if they didn't pay up on debts they owed.

So I believe it "works" but I am definitely not a fascsist.

It works on many levels, including the one that there is probably an unspoken acceptance and support of torture in the US and other parts of the west among the general population cos they feel ... I dunno its complex, but it probably empowers them and they feel its justified cos of 911 and "terrorism" in general, and the feeling of powerlessness many people have.

But that is irrelevent to whether or not the US or any of us in the west should condone torture.

Of course we shouldn't.

Its scumbag behaviour.

That should be enough.

The fact that torture is unreliable opens the door to torture as much as saying it works IMO, cos if its unreliability is being used against it, then surely if a way to get reliable information with torture becomes available, then that objection to it loses its power.

I dunno maybe we are saying the same thing here.

Anybody who is really against torture takes the same line as the last German Chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder. In the wake of Dershowitz one of his ministers mused publically whether it was worth thinking about.

Schroeder fired him.

Since then there has been no discussion of torture in Germany.

Csos I completely agree with that.

Doodad most people here who object to "waterboarding" and the rest of the US' methods also object to the other stuff happening in the world, but unlike here and now, that other stuff is, to a fair degree, beyond our control.

This is being done "in our name" and to that extent of course it inspires more outrage. So it should. That other groups in power elsewhere engage in torture is irrelevent to the fact that we don't (well shouldn't) especially at a level condoned by government.

If you think thats just "america/west bashing" you are either stupid or playing games.

[Telexx]

Joe, we are pretty much in agreement but I urge you to read my post above yours: Torture doesn't "work" - it makes no sense to civilisation.

Thank you,

Telexx

[Doodad]

If you think thats just "america/west bashing" you are either stupid or playing games.

Joe, it's you who create this "just," position. No where did I suggest that the criticism was entirely about bashing the west, just that the focus is, as one can see easily by looking for any mention of torture elsewhere among these posts and references, on the west and that speaks to an agenda which supersedes the issue of torture. Now I could suggest you are stupid or playing games for creating that false impression but to what end? I thought we were all trying to be civil around here. Some didn't get the memo I guess.

[antiaristo]

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Joe,
I think the key to this is that this is truly universal. It applies to us all.

Whether torture "works" depends on where you stand in the relationship.

If you are inflicting the torture, torture might well achieve what you want, whatever that is.

That's the elite.

But if you are on the receiving end, torture NEVER works.

Speaking for myself, and as a representative of humanity, I will NEVER be the one inflicting pain. To me, torture means being on the receiving end. And torture NEVER works.

The trick that Doodad is up to, by braying on about "the west", is to try to get the reader to to side with the elite and against their victim.

It's the sort of thing the Establishment mean when they bang on about "Freedom!".

Now one thing I've learned is that if you let 'em get away with these sorts of atrocities abroad, then sure as eggs is eggs they will come back home.

I've watched Northern Ireland morph into the whole of Great Britain (excluding Scotland).

I'm with the blackfellas on this, we are brothers in our humanity.


And Joe, I think you are being a bit naive about the loophole. She's SOVEREIGN. Don't you understand what that means? She can fit herself through ANY loophole.

Torture NEVER works.
There is NO loophole.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Joe, it's you who create this "just," position. No where did I suggest that the criticism was entirely about bashing the west, just that the focus is, as one can see easily by looking for any mention of torture elsewhere among these posts and references, on the west and that speaks to an agenda which supersedes the issue of torture. Now I could suggest you are stupid or playing games for creating that false impression but to what end? I thought we were all trying to be civil around here. Some didn't get the memo I guess.

Its the impression you give. I didn't create it. BTW that was civil, it may be blunt, but its civil. If you aren't playing games, or being stupid what is it? - How don't you see this:

The focus is on the west cos in the west, now, torture is being accepted as a valid way to act. That isn't an agenda that supercedes torture. Its an agenda that says "WTF we are not supposed to do this, it goes against the grain of what we are supposed to be about."

What other agenda is there beside that?

Reinventing Communism?

The objection here is that the worst of the methods we are supposed to reject are being justified by our governments, and by many ordinary citizens, and this is in any language wrong.

It is you who are inventing other agendas, other reasons for that objection.

Why? Cos you can't grasp that point or cos you are playing games?

Or is there some 3rd reason I've missed?

[Doodad]

Joe, it's you who create this "just," position. No where did I suggest that the criticism was entirely about bashing the west, just that the focus is, as one can see easily by looking for any mention of torture elsewhere among these posts and references, on the west and that speaks to an agenda which supersedes the issue of torture. Now I could suggest you are stupid or playing games for creating that false impression but to what end? I thought we were all trying to be civil around here. Some didn't get the memo I guess.

Its the impression you give. I didn't create it. BTW that was civil, it may be blunt, but its civil. If you aren't playing games, or being stupid what is it? - How don't you see this:

The focus is on the west cos in the west, now, torture is being accepted as a valid way to act. That isn't an agenda that supercedes torture. Its an agenda that says "WTF we are not supposed to do this, it goes against the grain of what we are supposed to be about."

What other agenda is there beside that?

Reinventing Communism?

The objection here is that the worst of the methods we are supposed to reject are being justified by our governments, and by many ordinary citizens, and this is in any language wrong.

It is you who are inventing other agendas, other reasons for that objection.

Why? Cos you can't grasp that point or cos you are playing games?

Or is there some 3rd reason I've missed?

Ok, well it appears I have wasted too much time hoping you weren't like them. So, I'll have to write you off as well.

[Telexx]

Don't be a moron. You are reading shit into my points that just aren't there.

Maybe you should lay off the self hypnosis for awhile.

Incorrect - I am revealing the deep structure, that which lies beneath the surface structure, of your lame assertion that "Torture Works".

In other words, I am logically disproving your assertion. Can you deny the logic? Of course not, hence the ire and snide comments. If you care to comment on the logic, then I'd be interested to hear, but of course (being a last-word freak) you'll just either:

1. Take a line out of context and send the conversation elsewhere.

OR

2. Quote the whole post and reply with something insulting & irrelevant.

I feel sorry that you cannot understand this, but I appreciate that your map of reality is severely limited Doodoo. You should re-read my post and perhaps your map of reality could be less impoverished as a result.

KTHXBYE,

TLXX

[Username]

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How has waterboarding come to define torture? I'd read lots more about the use of electric drills and certain other techniques before someone came up with this sporty name for it.

I mean, how could we ever be outraged by something that sounds like a beach activity?

omg do you think the use of electric drills are a legal form of torture? i've read some of those reports too and it's beyond me, way beyond me how anyone would EVER be able to do that to any living creature much less another human being.

my main question on this issue is...what is it that makes a torturer? does s/he tell his mother what s/he does for a living?

screw waterboarding...you're right Seamus (above quote pg. 2) they have named it after a beach activity and now the concept of torture has become associated with something that might even sound cool and refreshing, and that's all they talk about. i think isolation is cruel and inhumane treatment as well and we do that in american prisons...legally. drive people insane as a matter of course.

do you remember, in his drum up for the war how bush would say over and over and over again ("to catapult the propaganda") we had to remove saddam because he had torture chambers? (...and wmd and mass graves and he gassed his own people...) what we have set out to destroy, we have become.

brings to mind a quote maureen dowd used recently in an editorial about blackwater:

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster,” Nietzsche said. “And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

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