Torture Debate
It’s been a long time since I got all lectury and started an argument. And It’s been a bad week for me.
I think that many of the things our government has done in the pursuit of actionable intelligence against terrorist threats constituted torture. I think that the agents that participated in torture should face legal punishment, as should the lawyers who advised that it was legal. By that, I mean they should stand trial.
Following orders is not an excuse for committing a crime. We established that during various war-crimes trials after WW2. We teach it to our soldiers in Basic Training. I think that government agents can be held to at least the same standards of conduct as a 17 year old who has been in the military for three months.
I appreciate what a bad situation some interrogators found themselves in. I do not envy their position. But they did wrong.
“Giving legal advice” is not a carte blanche to justify a crime. Lawyers who knowingly advise a client to break the law, are breaking the law themselves. I understand that they were attempting to support a policy intended to protect our country. But they did wrong.
Some people feel that attempting to prosecute people in the former administration will be viewed as a political attack. That is a risk. But to do otherwise is to send the message that our laws, ethics, and convictions only apply when they are convenient. If you don’t live up to it when it’s tough, then it’s not a conviction. It’s just an affectation.
I feel that if lying about a blow job or being involved with a break-in warrant investigation, then this definitely does.
Some might like to point out that torture must be an effective tool, as who could hide the truth under those conditions?
The torturers, that’s who.
You could get the truth out of somebody. You could also get them to admit to plots that they formed against our country, and plans they have to hurt us again. Of course you could also probably get them to confess to crimes that took place before they were born, or that the Giant Space Ants masterminded 9/11.
The same justification currently used could also be applied towards using torture against Americans. After all didn’t the DHS issue a warning about rising right-wing extremism? Does anybody remember what the worst terrorist act in our country was before 9/11? I don’t want my friends who lean to the right politically to be rounded up and abused.
There is always the argument that the enemy we fight is willing to resort to these methods. They also strap bombs to civilians. Does anyone seriously accept using terrorist cells as some sort of moral guidepost for our own actions?
By becoming a country that accepts torture we increase the risk our soldiers face. Not because we make the enemy more likely to use those same methods. But because we dramatically decrease our enemies willingness to surrender if they feel they will be mistreated. Consider the difference in behavior between the Japanese soldiers in WW2 who believed that they would be tortured after capture, versus the behavior of the Iraqi army during Desert Storm, who knew that they would be fed and well treated.
If torture is such an effective and morally sound behavior, why don’t we use it in all of our criminal investigations?
Follow
April 30th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
I feel that if lying about a blow job or being involved with a break-in warrant investigation, then this definitely does.
Breaking into the opposition’s office is not within the scope of duties for the president.
Lying about a blow job is not within the scope of duties for the president.
Writing legal opinions is squarely within the scope of duties of a presidential legal adviser.
There is a huge difference.
If torture is such an effective and morally sound behavior, why don’t we use it in all of our criminal investigations?
If lethal force is such an effective and morally sound military action, why don’t we just kill the whole world?
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SPC Hyle reply on April 30th, 2009 10:15 pm:
“Writing legal opinions is squarely within the scope of duties of a presidential legal adviser.”
Yes it is. Torturing people is not, nor is deliberately giving advice contrary to the law. If your lawyer advised you that cocaine trafficking was legal, he’d also go to jail.
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Phelps reply on April 30th, 2009 10:40 pm:
Malpractice is not a criminal crime. You could sue the lawyer, but you could not send him to jail.
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SPC Hyle reply on April 30th, 2009 10:42 pm:
Actually, he could be sent to jail, as he could be charged with conspiracy. This, by the way, is what the White House lawyers were charged with in Watergate. For giving exactly that type of advice to Nixon about hiding information.
The courts take a very, very dim view of such behavior.
Phelps reply on April 30th, 2009 11:03 pm:
No, he can’t. You have to prove up a crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege to even get to the point where you can bring evidence of him telling his client anything in court, and even then, you will have to show an affirmative action beyond simple advice to count the attorney as part of a criminal conspiracy. You can’t make the guy testify about it just because you suspect it, you can’t make the attorney testify about it, and if you recorded it knowing it was an attorney-client communication, you are probably in bigger trouble than the attorney. (Remember, judges are attorneys too, and they guard their cartel jealously.)
I work in litigation, and deal with attorney-client privilege all the time. You aren’t going to win this argument based on what you’ve learned from Law and Order. Part of our system is that people have broad, general, protected rights to legal counsel, and it is damned, damned hard to pin anything on an attorney’s advice. In your example, the guy would be convicted, and maybe the attorney would lose his bar card, if the con made a convincing case against him and actually followed through to the Bar Association. And that’s on something as obvious as “cocaine trafficking”.
FYI: The Watergate lawyers went down on Obstruction of Justice and Perjury, based on how they handled the investigators, not because of the advice they gave to the president.
Schwal reply on May 1st, 2009 2:36 am:
Legal malpractice is merely a civil offense, but the lawyers clearly meet the requirements for Conspiracy against rights. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_against_rights
Conspiracy against rights is a federal offense in the United States of America under 18 U.S.C. § 241:
If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person […] in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same;…
They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.
Gray Ghost reply on May 1st, 2009 12:26 pm:
A “Conspiracy Against Rights” theory won’t work to the extent the legal memos were about interrogating persons who were not U.S. citizens. By definition they don’t have constitutional rights which are entitled to protection.
Schwal reply on May 1st, 2009 3:16 pm:
But they are being held within the United States, and therefor have the full protection of the Constitution. If a Mexican drug runner gets arrested, he has the right to a fair trial. We don’t get to hold him forever, or deny him an attorney.
Viper Chief reply on May 3rd, 2009 3:45 pm:
No, The people who were being interrogated weren’t being held in the United States. Which is why this wouldn’t fly. at all.
Jim A reply on May 4th, 2009 9:55 am:
I’m not sure that there is any attorney-client priviledge in this case. It’s my understanding that these we’re talking about Justice Department lawyers who were advising the U.S. Government what was permissable. I believe that’s why Clinton hired his own lawyer in the Monica Lewinski case.
April 30th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
“Writing legal opinions is squarely within the scope of duties of a presidential legal adviser.”
– But writing a legal opinion that you know, or should have known, violates the law, is *not* within the scope of the duties of a presidential legal adviser, which is kind of my point. We did execute people for this sort of behavior during WW2.
“If lethal force is such an effective and morally sound military action, why donâ??t we just kill the whole world?”
Because we’re not at war with the entire world. We do however have other investigations.
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Gray Ghost reply on May 1st, 2009 12:30 pm:
“But writing a legal opinion that you know, or should have known, violates the law, is *not* within the scope of the duties of a presidential legal adviser, which is kind of my point. We did execute people for this sort of behavior during WW2.”
Skippy, so far I have not seen anything which indicates the legal opinions were written other than in good faith by the lawyers. Can you point to any evidence that the authors of the opinion (1) conspired with others to reach a legal conclusion not on legal grounds but for policy reasons or (2) should have known their legal conclusions were so far beyond plausibility as to violate the law?
Please give an example of someone we executed during WWII for giving a legal opinion in good faith. Or in bad faith. Otherwise your assertions don’t have much force.
Gray Ghost
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skippy reply on May 1st, 2009 3:37 pm:
“Please give an example of someone we executed during WWII for giving a legal opinion in good faith. Or in bad faith. Otherwise your assertions don’t have much force.”
My assertion is that they broke the law. Not that they should be executed for it.
as far as 1 and 2 go, I’d have to say that the lawyers definition of “not torture” allowed the inclusion of practices that matched “is torture” by previous legal precedent.
It is my opinion that this was deliberate misconduct. Whether deliberate or not I believe it warrants investigation, and possibly prosecution.
I’m not suggesting that they be killed, or tortured themselves, or locked away without a trial. I am saying that I think that there is enough evidence to justify further examination.
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Timroff reply on May 1st, 2009 9:17 pm:
to expand on this, skippy and Gray, the executions that skippy refers to are not lawyers that were executed. No, the people executed were Japanese prison guards that were executed after WWII for waterboarding American P.O.W.s.
Also, as an aside, please note that during Reagan’s tenure as President, a southern sheriff and three deputies were tried, convicted and jailed for waterboarding prisoners. Also note that members of the US Military were convicted in 2005 for the Abu Ghraib torture cases — the only thing is that the people who gave the orders were never tried.
April 30th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
As a pacifist, I don’t condone any violence, but believe that torture is a particularly horrible crime. That’s my two cents.
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Shadowydreamer reply on May 1st, 2009 7:44 am:
This is gonna shock a few people coming from the tree hugging Canadian..
But you do realize you’re posting on a blog written by the men and women who go forth to war and put their limbs and lives and minds on the line so you have the right to practice pacifism? Is this REALLY the place to be waving that flag?
When the whole world believes in pacifism, then yeah, it’ll work. However, till then there’s people who need protecting and (ahems) with weapons who need to be stopped. And frankly, I’m damn glad for the gun toting American monkeys (tongue in cheek name calling) to the south of me.
As far as torture goes.. I think anyone just needs to watch “In the Name of the Father” to see the fundamental flaws.
Captcha : Negotiation Null.
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April 30th, 2009 at 10:19 pm
I gotta just say, “amen, brother!” The measure of how great we are as a people and a nation is not what we do when we are at peace and when we have it easy; it is how we behave when we are besieged and maligned on all sides. When everyone and everything seems to be against us- if we can behave honorably under those conditions, then (and only then) we deserve to consider ourselves among the greatest civilizations ever to exist in the world (note: root word: CIVIL.)
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April 30th, 2009 at 10:33 pm
If we are to accept that torture is a valid form of interrogation, we must accept a few other things.
John McCain is guilty of war crimes. He confessed as much under torture. To the Hague with him!
Witches were quite prevalent in medieval Europe, and routinely sacrificed babies, had orgies with the devil to gain the magic power to give someone a wart.
Let’s not forget the inquisition.
Let’s go quickly to fiction, and look at what torture is used to accomplish in 1984. People are tortured until they agree with whatever nonsense is put in front of them, and until they genuinely believe it.
But, hey, you might not give a shit about that. Let’s see what the intelligence community has to say about torture.
http://www.fas.org/irp/dni/educing.pdf
Uh…doesn’t work…makes it harder for us to get other countries to cooperate with us…is illegal on numerous counts, from treaties to internal laws, uh…
Hrm.
There is something very important behind all of this. Terrorists are the bad guys. If we act the way they act, that makes us the bad guys. It isn’t the ends that makes people bad guys, far more often it is the means.
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Pop & Hop reply on May 1st, 2009 10:34 am:
Torture is useful for obtaining information that can be verified or disproven. It is not useful for ascertaining guilt or innocence. In that limited context, torture works… and it did.
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Timroff reply on May 1st, 2009 9:29 pm:
sorry, Pop & Hop, but there’s very clear evidence that there are far more effective ways to extract information from prisoners that do not damage them or strip them of their human dignity. In fact, as outlined in the PDF linked above, SPC Hule’s assertion is right on the money: Torture doesn’t work, it is illegal both domestically and internationally, and makes us look really bad to the rest of the world. Is that really the price you’re willing to pay for information you could get with less damaging, more humane means?
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Billy reply on May 1st, 2009 10:58 am:
Don’t forget, the witches also weighed about as much as a duck and would turn you into a newt.
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TJNerd reply on May 1st, 2009 11:57 am:
You get better tho.
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April 30th, 2009 at 10:39 pm
I’m just going to pass on commenting here.
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Stickfodder reply on May 1st, 2009 2:25 am:
Dang. Never mind.
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Minty reply on May 1st, 2009 9:24 am:
Some days you just can’t win, eh?
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Stickfodder reply on May 1st, 2009 8:31 pm:
Not really no.
Michiel reply on May 1st, 2009 2:58 pm:
Why do you hate America?
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April 30th, 2009 at 10:46 pm
The base argument is that what we did was not torture.
The straw man argument is that, since the political opposition to the past administration has decided a priori that what we did was torture, that any argument against this point is an attempt to justify torture.
The memos in question were opinions that limited what the interrogators could do. They limited it by saying, “if you go beyond this point, then that is torture and you are breaking the law.”
Now, the argument has been shifted to, “well, I decided that it was torture anyways, so you are evil.” I call bullshit on that. This is just the “baby killer” argument all over again, only this time a larger portion of the population has been conned into buying it.
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skippy reply on April 30th, 2009 10:55 pm:
“The memos in question were opinions that limited what the interrogators could do. They limited it by saying, “if you go beyond this point, then that is torture and you are breaking the law.” ”
True to a point. The issue at present is whether or not the limits those lawyers set where legally valid. I think they exceeded the law.
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Phelps reply on April 30th, 2009 11:06 pm:
In other words, you think they were wrong. Fine. That makes it a political issue, not a criminal one.
I think that having any administration seek to jail members of the former administration over a political disagreement will be the death knell of our republic.
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skippy reply on April 30th, 2009 11:13 pm:
If a lawyer wrote an opinion that rape was legal, and someone, following his advice rapes someone, that’s not a political debate. That’s a crime.
Gray Ghost reply on May 1st, 2009 12:44 pm:
“If a lawyer wrote an opinion that rape was legal, and someone, following his advice rapes someone, that’s not a political debate. That’s a crime.”
1. A lawyer’s opinion that rape is legal is not a crime. It’s just an incorrect opinion. Someone who relies on that opinion and commits rape is still guilty of rape. If a lawyer conspired with a government agent to intentionally write an incorrect opinion in order that the government agent could claim he was relying on the opinion to shield the government agent from prosecution, that might be a crime.
2. Your analogy is faulty. These memos were not about whether torture is permitted. Everyone agrees torture is not permitted. The memos were about what constitutes torture and what does not. The analogy would be a lawyer writing a memo on how far you can go touching a woman before it constitutes rape. The lawyer might incorrectly argue that you can grab her breasts without consent and that is not rape. But if the lawyer wrote that opinion in good faith, used normal legal reasoning and cited valid precedent, the giving of the opinion is no crime.
Gray Ghost
skippy reply on May 1st, 2009 1:24 pm:
1)A lawyer who deliberately gives an incorrect legal opinion is guilty of, minimum, malpractice. In some places and situations they could be charged with a crime.
2) True these memos where about defining torture, in such a way as to allow it. It would be like saying “Rape is clearly illegal. But holding down someone and having sex with them isn’t rape, as long as you wear a condom.”
Schwal reply on May 1st, 2009 2:41 am:
Not that I like your argument in general, but we tried waterboarders with war crimes after WWII. And executed them. You don’t get to change your mind after that.
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Gray Ghost reply on May 1st, 2009 12:47 pm:
Please provide an example of someone who was executed for the war crime of waterboarding. And anyone who was convicted at the same time with greater crimes isn’t a valid example. If you are going to say waterboarding is historically a capital crime you need to cite and example where it was the worst crime the executed criminal was convicted of.
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skippy reply on May 1st, 2009 1:19 pm:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.icwc.de%2Ffileadmin%2Fmedia%2FIMTFEC.pdf&ei=3Vj7SaXAOJOHmQes-Ni9BA&usg=AFQjCNHMEDwmYraoZ3WcNbZJwKFiKBO2CA
Crimes Against Humanity (Which is how we defined waterboarding at the time) can carry the death penalty.
Gray Ghost reply on May 1st, 2009 2:58 pm:
Skippy, with all due respect, you asserted we executed people for waterboarding. I asked for an example and the best you can do is a link to the statute? First of all the statute you cite doesn’t specifically mention waterboarding as a crime against humanity. Second, the text of the statute is not an example of an execution. Not very persuasive.
GG
skippy reply on May 1st, 2009 3:29 pm:
Actually someone else asserted that. I just demonstrated that the statue that the International Military Tribunal for the Far East operated under was allowed to execute a defendant found guilty.
I don’t know if any of them were executed exclusively for waterboarding. But as it fell under Class C it was a capital offense.
Schwal reply on May 1st, 2009 3:43 pm:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201170.html
Gray Ghost reply on May 1st, 2009 3:54 pm:
Schwal, the story you linked to doesn’t support your assertion that we executed waterboarders. It doesn’t state anyone was executed.
And, even if some of the “high Japanese officials” were charged with waterboarding and were executed (which is not what the story says), the story doesn’t make it clear whether the ones executed were also charged with more serious war crimes — war crimes which resulted in people being killed, for example.
I don’t doubt waterboarding is torture and illegal. But to say we have executed people for waterboarding in the past is not yet proven. Anyone have any better evidence?
Timroff reply on May 1st, 2009 9:39 pm:
According to Paul Begala:
Pte Walker reply on May 1st, 2009 10:17 am:
Hee hee-I get a little concerned when I find points of Kantian logic on skippys list…Now my opinion is that torture is the result of tunnel vision and confusion on the part of the torturers or their higher ups. And that it leads to false confessions more than it does anything solid; simply, info begotten via torture isn’t reliable enough to justify torture. and thats ignoring the moral arguments completly.
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Michiel reply on May 1st, 2009 3:01 pm:
Lets have a trial and find out who did what and if it was legal or not.
That will settle this arguement.
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April 30th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
The same justification currently used could also be applied towards using torture against Americans.
I want to expand on this, too. Every single tactic short of waterboarding (which only happened to three detainees) is already used against American suspects in general crimes. Stress positions, loud noises, climate control, sleep deprivation, threats, lies — all are routinely used against criminal suspects. Hell, our prison system is based on their use.
Hell, I wish that we had some memos of the sort of these telling our oh-so-professional police that, “hey, you know, ‘pain compliance techniques’ with a taser are electronic torture. Cut it out.” Or, “no, you can’t keep a 17 year old in a cell continually lit by floodlamps at 60 degrees in solitary confinement until he ‘confesses'”.
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skippy reply on April 30th, 2009 11:01 pm:
1) Weatherboarding is torture. To use the “We only did it to three suspects” argument kind of misses the point. You can’t really defend a crime by saying “I did it a few times.”
2) Do you think I’m arguing that police should be allowed to torture suspects or that I used it to make a point? I know that many of these techniques are used by the police. It doesn’t make it okay.
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Phelps reply on April 30th, 2009 11:14 pm:
1) Waterboarding is not torture. Obama is playing fast and loose on this issue — he’s issued an executive order stopping its use without his permission. He’s not stupid, and he knows that his administration is politically dead in the water if there is another attack. If they think that they can prevent one with waterboarding, whether they are right or wrong, they are going to do it, whether it is legal or not.
2) Your argument assumed that the things described were torture and that if they are allowed, then Americans would be next. I disagreed on both counts. They aren’t torture, and we can’t be next for something that is already happening to us.
(And I have noted that “tasers in stun-drive mode” are not allowed in military interrogations. But they are just fine for the cops if someone doesn’t want to get up at a hippie protest.)
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skippy reply on April 30th, 2009 11:19 pm:
1) Waterboarding has been pretty well established as torture by international law, American war-crimes tribunals and even the former chief of the Navy SERE course.
2) The second situation was not an interrogation. And cops should not be allowed to use a taser to interrogate a suspect.
SPC Hyle reply on May 1st, 2009 12:15 am:
1) Waterboarding is not torture.
Oh? Let’s ask Christopher Hitchens who was waterboarded, per his request, as part of an attempt to show it isn’t torture.
Instantly changed his mind.
Stickfodder reply on May 1st, 2009 2:25 am:
Crap I guess I’m getting sucked in.
“And I have noted that “tasers in stun-drive mode” are not allowed in military interrogations. But they are just fine for the cops if someone doesn’t want to get up at a hippie protest.”
Cop’s don’t use tasers in interrogations, and they don’t use them on someone who “doesn’t want to get up at a hippie protest” they use them on violent suspects in situations where they otherwise could come out far more injured (both the cop and the suspect). Now I’m well aware there are situations where the taser is abused like that whole “don’t tase me bro” thing but in general the taser is used responsibly and is a far better option then guns(both lethal and less lethal round), batons, and mace.
Phelps reply on May 1st, 2009 8:14 am:
Cop’s don’t use tasers in interrogations, and they don’t use them on someone who “doesn’t want to get up at a hippie protest” they use them on violent suspects in situations where they otherwise could come out far more injured (both the cop and the suspect).
Number one, if you are talking to a cop, it’s an interrogation. Remember that “anything you say” part of the Miranda speech?
As to protester…
http://www.femalebeauty.info/2006/ucla-student-tasered-for-passive-resistance.html
“But UCLA police are allowed to use Tasers on passive resisters as “a pain compliance technique,” Assistant Chief Jeff Young said in an interview Friday.”
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/04/video_stun_gun_/
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2005/03/09/865/28869
This is routine. You may not have seen it, but it is the policy, it is how they are trained, and it is what they do.
skippy reply on May 1st, 2009 10:52 am:
Again, that is not an interrogation. I could repeat this discussion in a court of law as evidence against you. That’s not the same as an interrogation. A police officer is allowed to use a gun to force compliance in some situations. It doesn’t mean that they are allowed to pull one on you in a cell to get you to confess to a crime.
Random reply on May 1st, 2009 12:21 pm:
Can’t reply directly to Phelps’s last post in this thread, but…
I don’t know how YOUR cops are trained, but around here, SOP is to treat tasers as “lethal force lite”; ie, they’re only to be used in situations where there is an immediate threat of bodily harm, and are less than a step away from just shooting the guy.
May 1st, 2009 at 12:40 am
torture
–noun 1. the act of inflicting excruciating pain, as punishment or revenge, as a means of getting a confession or information, or for sheer cruelty.
2. a method of inflicting such pain.
3. Often, tortures. the pain or suffering caused or undergone.
4. extreme anguish of body or mind; agony.
5. a cause of severe pain or anguish.
These are the definitions from dictionary.com According to this definition, water boarding is torture, not because it inflicts pain but extreme mental anguish. Following those guidelines, every military person who has involuntarily been deployed over and over and cannot be with their familys for extended periods of time is being tortured. The fact that we are thousands of miles away from home and cant get a beer and a lapdance is torture. Being spit on by people at home because we fought to defend their worthless cowardly asses is also torture. Waterbording may be cruel, but it wont keep a believer from entering paradise when they finally die. I say we do away with the waterboarding, and break out the Lard,a harmless greasy white pork product. Do away with the special meals for the “detainees” make them eat the same food as the guards. It cannot be considered torture if we feed it to our own troops. Perhaps all of their accomedations should over look the pool, where the female guards should be encouraged to wear bikinis and drink alcoholic beverages while eating pulled pork sandwiches. Im sure the UN would scream torture to that also. I am sorry but i really have no sympathy for people who believe it is perfectly fine to kill women and children, throw acid in the face of a woman who spurns your advances or murder your own sister because she dared to fall in love with someone you didnt chose for her. All in the name of honor. These “individuals” are prepared to die because they believe they are going to paradise. I think the treat of keeping that from happening would be a bigger deterant than water boarding. Place cute little piglett in sight of the interigation room, ask you question. explain that if the questions are not answered, the detainee will have a new room mate. While my knowledge of the koran is not complete, i dont know how one could purify themselves once they have been defiled by contact with a pig. It might be possible, but its probably not easy.
Perhaps we should reinvent waterboarding, Im thinking something along the lines of bikini carwashes, subliminal messages being played under soothing music while scantily clad college girls wash the glass booth that contains our detainee with lots of soapy bubbles… Oh but wait that is torture and cannot be allowed.
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Stickfodder reply on May 1st, 2009 2:58 am:
“Perhaps we should reinvent waterboarding, Im thinking something along the lines of bikini carwashes, subliminal messages being played under soothing music while scantily clad college girls wash the glass booth that contains our detainee with lots of soapy bubbles… Oh but wait that is torture and cannot be allowed.”
If there are any male guards around then I can’t help but think that this would be torture for them.
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StoneWolf reply on May 1st, 2009 4:19 am:
I volunteer for this bikini car wash torture. I’ll “take one for the team” and act as the guinea pig. Whoo-hoo!
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Minty reply on May 1st, 2009 12:15 pm:
Hey, what about female detainees? Does that mean Chippendales are going to be prancing around at the same time?
Damnit, this is America, equal rights for all, and I want to be a test subject for how torturous it is to watch Chippendales have a pillow fight.
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tgobg reply on May 1st, 2009 12:27 pm:
actually Minty that may be more effective to some of the detainees, so perhaps the chippendales and bikini babes acan take turns, kinda a shock and awe thing
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May 1st, 2009 at 1:46 am
skippy, you were in the military, so you were sort of in the gov’t too…
since when has anything been fair in the military?
“perception is everything” in the military? remember?
why you expect the gov’t to be fair, or follow the rules, i don’t know.
i agree, they should be held accountable for crimes. but thats really not likely going to happen.
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May 1st, 2009 at 3:04 am
I think this issue comes down to three points. One: Is torture effective? After all if torture isn’t effective it becomes a moot point on whether or not to use it. Two: Is it morally right to use it? If torture is wrong absolutely, it makes no difference how effective it is, you can not torture anyone and still be morally right. Three: Is what we did (i.e. waterboarding) torture? If it isn’t torture then it doesn’t mater if torture is morally right because it’s not torture.
Issue one. Is torture effective? Most experts agree that once an interrogation becomes torture it loses its effectiveness. The reason is quite simple, after a certain amount of pain you will admit to anything in order to stop the torture. Now this might work for our police departments who are only interested in obtaining a confession, and not reliable information. You have to remember the point isn’t to get a confession to crimes here but to get information to save lives. If torture is effective why were the detainees waterboarded so many times? Shouldn’t once or twice been enough? Certainly less the the 183 times a week that has been reported. I think the only position one can take with this evidence is that torture is not effective.
Issue two. Is it morally right to use? How do we decide what is morally right or wrong? Despite popular belief the answer is not found in an ancient text, but found through logic and reasoning. I think most people would agree that torture can be wrong, if not wrong all the time. But it begs the question is it wrong all the time? Or, is it morally justified by the the evil acts of the person being tortured (the “they deserve it” argument)? The problem with that thinking is we always feel morally justified by the person’s actions (how else could we do it if we didn’t feel justified). We don’t have rules against torture because at least 99% of the time its the right thing to do, we do because we always think that this instance is that 1%. I make this point to show it doesn’t matter if we feel justified now because we always feel justified. I think we have to look at how we judged the actions of people in the past to see if this is right or wrong. And after WWII we judged the Japanese to be wrong for actions very similar to the acts of today, and their fear of an attack was very much justified. If we feel they were wrong for their actions, how can we feel justifed for ours? There is also the argument that the information can save lives, but that can only work if torture itself is effective, which its not.
Issue three. The last issue is waterboarding torture? the U.N. convention against torture says torture is “any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him, or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in, or incidental to, lawful sanctions.” and I think that covers waterboarding. Some people might believe that waterboarding is harmless other then the pain and discomfort it causes, but people have died from waterboarding (not from the recent U.S. waterboardings) and that sounds like torture to me.
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Larson reply on May 1st, 2009 3:11 am:
My question is, on the regards to numerous definitions of torture, is what constitutes severe? One person’s level of severity will differ from anothers. There is no clear definition of how far you can go, or how hard one can be pushed. If there is no clear definition then it shoudl be reexamined and defined. After that has been done only then can it be applied.
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May 1st, 2009 at 3:07 am
THere’s a lot of comments saying that if we were to sink down to the leavel of those we fight then we would become as bad as them. Let me ask you this, how many people realize that, as per the Geneva Convention, a non-uniformed soldier fighting against the US can be considered a spy and shot on sight?
We are already fighting a war highly above what we have to because of political correctness. I’m sure you can ask any veteran of OIF and see how many of the people they fought against were uniformed, which by the GC standards could have been shot on site. I’m sure you can all imagine the political outcry for that.
Secondly, if everyone is so law abiding here, I suggest you take a look at the number of deserters that have come along since the beginning of this war, and then see how many of those we’ve executed, because desertion from the military during a time of war is punishable by death, as well it shoud be.
America has taken a much higher road in this war than it is legally bound to do. If everyone wants us to follow the law to the letter, no more, no less, then we will start killing these non-uniformed combatants, we can begin to hunt down those prior deserters and hang them for their crimes. We can stop giving money to local towns for businesses and other needs. We’ll do only what’s required and that’s it. Seems like if one doesn’t follow the law exactly as it’s described, then you’re wrong.
The problem is that few people, roughly .5% of the American population, serve in the military. Even if you count prior service, like Skippy, that may bump it up to 1%. Yet the other 99% feel like they know what’s best for the military during a time of war. That their ideas on doctrine, interrogation, and what’s right and wrong should be taken as credible and applied. THe war we are fighting today isn’t likek the wars of before. There are no set lines of advance. The same guy could shake your hand while doing a patrol during the day and emplace an IED that night. In extreme circumstances, estreme measures must be taken.
I’m not saying all forms of torture are ok. I’m not saying that torture at any time is ok either. But specific times, under specific conditions, to save the lives of Americans, yes, then it should be allowed. Even during WWII the decision was made to drop the atomic bomb. It killed thousnads of civilians, but saved millions of lives of soldiers, would that decision be condemned as torture by todays standards?
And in response to the actions of Japanese soldiers during WWII and Iraqi soldiers during Desert Storm, the main reason the Japanese soldiers refused to surrender is hbecause it would dishonor them and their family. Each Japanese weapon had the seal of the emperor on it, making it a gift, to surrender would be to dishonor your entire heritage.
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Schwal reply on May 1st, 2009 3:37 am:
The Geneva convention says no such thing. The only uses of the word uniform in the entire thing is referring to medical workers, and clothing for POWs.
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Albaholly reply on May 1st, 2009 4:01 am:
What I think Larson was referring to here was actually in the Hague Convention of 1907.
Relative to the rules and customs of war on land.
CHAPTER I
The Qualifications of Belligerents
Article 1.
The laws, rights, and duties of war apply not only to armies, but also to militia and volunteer corps fulfilling the following conditions:
To be commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
To have a fixed distinctive emblem recognizable at a distance;
To carry arms openly; and
To conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
In countries where militia or volunteer corps constitute the army, or form part of it, they are included under the denomination “army.”
It is not a uniform required per say but a “fixed emblem” and “bearing arms openly”
Anyone who bears arms outside these rules is considered an “outlaw” and therefore it is entirely up to the discretion of the opposition force as to how they treat them in combat or after being captured.
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SPC Hyle reply on May 1st, 2009 8:21 am:
“That their ideas on doctrine, interrogation, and what’s right and wrong should be taken as credible and applied. THe war we are fighting today isn’t likek the wars of before. There are no set lines of advance. The same guy could shake your hand while doing a patrol during the day and emplace an IED that night. In extreme circumstances, estreme measures must be taken.”
This was true in Vietnam a well. The man cutting your hair could try and overrun your base the next night. I guess torture was justified then, right?
Wrong. Torture is NEVER justified, under any circumstances. It is a slippery slope that is followed, routinely, to the end.
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David reply on May 1st, 2009 8:57 am:
You’re right, something like 0.5%-1.5% of the American population have experienced military service, yet the other 98.5% attempt to dictate policy to the military.
Guess what? Thats what it means to live in a REPUBLIC!
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Larson reply on May 1st, 2009 9:27 am:
What I’m saying about that is that this is our job. Would a person with no cooking experience whatsoever walk into a 5 start restaurant and try to change how they cook, no. Would A person with no experience in flight try to get onto a plane and tell the pilots how they are flying is wrong, no. Civilians telling the military how thigns should be done is the same way, they have no experience, they don’t know the threats that we face, they don’t understand the split decisions that must be made sometimes to save a life. Civilians have no place telling the military how to do it’s job. I won’t tell other people how to do their job, don’t tell me how to do mine.
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David reply on May 1st, 2009 9:35 am:
Sorry, no. Their job, their RIGHT UNDER THE CONSTITUTION, whether you like it or not, is to tell you when, where, how, and under what conditions you get to do whatever it is that they allow your job to be. Like it or not, and that doesn’t matter, the military answers to the civilian government and the civilian government consists primarily of civilians with no military experience whatsoever.
So, yeah, maybe it is like my mother-in-law telling Bobby Flay how to cook a steak. But we live in a Republic, so thats what you get.
I’m not saying is the most efficient system. I’m saying its OUR system.
skippy reply on May 1st, 2009 9:57 am:
Actually I tell cook’s how to do their job all the time. I want that medium rare, no onions, that sort of thing.
Additionally we have laws and health codes that offer further instruction on how they can do their job.
Random reply on May 1st, 2009 12:28 pm:
Civilians are ignorant of military realities, but YOU aren’t. You’re one of the privileged elite… who somehow forgot the Colonial and Settlement periods of American history, the Communist uprising in China, Vietnam, and First Afghanistan, on top of the constitutional issues with your argument.
That’s a pretty major chunk of military history right there, and the only one the US wasn’t directly involved in, it had a front-row seat for. I hope you can understand why some of us might take that argument with a grain of salt. Remember the past, maybe even try and learn a lesson or two from it, and maybe that whole “You don’t know as much as I do!” argument will have a leg to stand on.
SPC Hawk reply on May 1st, 2009 9:44 am:
Go ahead say what ever the hell you want, but know that you have no freaking idea what it is we go through. Me and Larson are both infantry men. We go out almost everyday and then do raids some nights. It is easy for you to say what we should be doing from you comfy office chair on your home computer. So stay in your lane.
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David reply on May 1st, 2009 9:46 am:
Prior Army.
SPC Hawk reply on May 1st, 2009 1:07 pm:
Let me guess… finance. You bad ass you.
David reply on May 1st, 2009 2:08 pm:
Medevac.
Random reply on May 2nd, 2009 5:53 am:
Did I ever say that beign a front-line soldier isn’t the hardest damn job in the world? Because I certainly didn’t intend to. You have HUGE respect from me for what you do every day.
The thing is, that doesn’t give you some secret insider knowledge on what is and is not valid practice under American law and precedent. That would make you a lawyer. So claiming a position of priviliged information is disingenuous at best, and outright lying at worst. Doing so and then making a ridiculously ignorant statement about US military history just makes you look the fool.
I know you have it etremely hard, and you deserve every bit of support you can get. Which only makes me more eager to see Guantanamo shut down entirely. By my math based on the military’s own statements, the money used to keep it running could have saved up to 1700 US soldiers in a two-year period. How many soldiers has torture saved? Go ahead, try to find some numbers. I can wait.
You may be a while.
(Just in case anyone wants to check my numbers: Guantanamo has an operating budget of $125 mil/year. A fully-loaded Interceptor kit costs $1585. That’s almost 79000 suits of armor it could’ve bought before deployment, and the same again every year afterward, leaving the entire force kitted out before the end of 2006. Total casualties as of December 2005 were 2171. While I can’t find a breakdown by wound type, the Pentagon stated that 80% of torso-wound casualties could have been saved with the full kit. That’s up to 1736 people.)
May 1st, 2009 at 3:30 am
Ok look. I am in the infantry and in Iraq, so don’t tell me I don’t know what I am talking about. My friends got blown up a couple of weeks ago and if there was someone I could have beat the piss out of to give me some intel before hand, I would have done it in an instant. I am not saying round up everybody you can and torture them until you have something, but the people in Gitmo and those other secret CIA prisons were not just in the wrong place at the wrong time. They are all known and high tier terrorists. The simple fact it is that they have information that we need to save human life. What do you think they would do if the tables were turn? Do you think they would just ask you nicely, make sure you had humane living conditions, enough sleep, and not too stressed out? Hell no! Every single soldier who has been captured by the enemy in Iraq in Afghanistan has reported that they were tortured. And it isn’t even like we were really doing anything terrible. We were using sleep deprivation, water boarding, nudity, and intimidation with military working dogs. And guess what, WE DO ALL OF THAT TO OUR OWN SOLDIERS. In the SERE (survival evasion resistance and escape) program you learn torture resistance and they do all of those things and more. So lets collectively analyze this for a second, the government does worse things to our own voluntary soldiers than it does to foreign fighters and these foreign fighters do much worse things, usually ending in death, to anybody not like them. So your complaining about our military’s tactics is like stopping a bully from making fun of someone while another kid is hanging on the flag pole by his underwear getting the snot kicked out of him. Way to go, your trying stop the lesser of the 2 evils while psychotic terrorist kill us soldiers. I guess I can see you side.
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Shadowydreamer reply on May 1st, 2009 7:53 am:
Thank you for serving. I’m sorry about your buddies.
However.
You stop a bully, you don’t take him to the back and beat him into an inch of his life and go back every so often and beat him again.
I know of at least one innocent Canadian that was in Gitmo and was refused release contrary to our government’s requests than demands.
The MAJOR problem with torture, and I say this as a trueborn cynic, is not that it harms the guilty, but that it harms the innocent. Torture, like the death penalty, is a little hard to undo.
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SPC Hawk reply on May 1st, 2009 9:52 am:
The torture that was going on in Gitmo was not beatings with in the inch of thier life, it was all psycological games to crack them into giving us information that we needed to save lives.
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Shadowydreamer reply on May 1st, 2009 10:12 am:
I was continuing the metaphor you created in the first place.
And what of the people who had no information to give?
And what of the people who would make up anything to get the ‘psychological games’ to stop?
SPC Hyle reply on May 1st, 2009 8:40 am:
First of all, a 16 year old kid is not a high-tier terrorist. And yes, we had one in Gitmo.
Second of all, just because you wish you could have done something to save your friends doesn’t make it right. I lost friends in Afghanistan to a non-suicide VBIED (yeah.) But I would not condone the use of torture to prevent another one.
It doesn’t matter that we train a certain segment of our soldiers that resisting torture isn’t possible (that’s really the object lesson behind it, everyone breaks with very, very rare exception). They’re volunteers for this, and they can walk away from it. They can just quit the program. A prisoner can’t. The only way it gets to stop is when the interrogator hears what they want to hear. If they have information, they may or may not give correct information. If they don’t, they’ll just make something up to make it stop. I’d like to remind you of the witch hunts, where torture was widespread as a means of obtaining information on who was a witch and who was not. Guess how many people named other people whilst on the rack?
But the fact that torture doesn’t work isn’t the point. Even if it did work, it would still be morally indefensible. You are deliberately inflicting serious physical and mental harm on someone with the sole intent of inflicting harm. We’ve banned weapons that aren’t sufficiently lethal because they were made to just inflict pain. We’ve banned weapons that are made to be more lethal because the lethality comes with horrific pain. Our moral standard is “as little pain as possible.” That is why we don’t burn people alive for executions–we use quick and painless (or as much as possible in that direction) methods.
We have to uphold that standard universally or it is meaningless.
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Fred reply on May 1st, 2009 9:00 am:
First of all, a 16 year old kid is not a high-tier terrorist. And yes, we had one in Gitmo.
He’s still there, actually… He’s 24 now.
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Random reply on May 1st, 2009 10:28 am:
Three points. First, you’re a soldier. You undoubtedly have a wealth of information and first-hand experience about a soldier’s life in Iraq, the pain and loss of having comrades and friends killed, and the unpleasant decisions you’re faced with on the front lines. No question there.
But you’re not a lawyer, are you?
We’re dealing with legal definitions – very technical and finicky things at the best of times – and prison management here. I understand and sympathize with your anger and desire to DO something, but legal decisions grounded in emotion will be wrong. Every. Single. Time. Emotional justice tends to be of the “hang us a negro” type, and certainly not founded in any sort of evidence or moral and ethical principles.
On top of this, despite your “expert” assertion to the contrary, about HALF of the people in Guantanamo have been charged. How dangerous are they if we can’t even find a law they broke? And what of the innocents that keep turning up? People like Maher Arar or the 17 Uighurs would certainly disagree with your “they’re all high-ranking terrorists” assessment. In fact, simple logic will show that the vast majority of them can’t possibly fit that description – there are only so mny high rankers, and their coordination hasn’t collapsed.
And as if that isn’t enough, the intel community has said it time and time again – Torture. Doesn’t. Work. The information obtained is unreliable, and often outright fiction. Which will save more soldiers’ lives – sending troops off on a wild goose chase and weakening force concentrations (and subjecting those troops to potential ambush) because a scared half-drowned kid said there’s a camp there, or keeping your people together and vigilant on a day-to-day basis?
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Random reply on May 1st, 2009 10:42 am:
Actually, come to think of it: What’s Guantanamo’s budget? How much body armor would that buy for the troops on the front lines? And which do you think would save more lives?
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Jim A reply on May 4th, 2009 12:16 pm:
People like Maher Arar or the 17 Uighurs would certainly disagree with your “they’re all high-ranking terrorists” assessment. Well of course the reason that we haven’t sent them home is that CHINA thinks that they ARE terrorists, and stands ready to arrest them. But I, for one don’t think that we should be using the CHICOMs as our measuring gauge of “who is a terrorist.”
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May 1st, 2009 at 4:07 am
You all are missing the point entirely. It doesn’t matter if they would do the same or worse to us because WE ARE BETTER THEN THAT. It doesn’t matter if our government trains are solders to endure torture because they are volunteering for and and can stop at any time. It doesn’t matter why the Japanese didn’t surrender because the issue was their torture of our solders not their refusal to surrender. It doesn’t matter if you have been in the military because this isn’t a military issue, nor a legal one, its a moral one. We have to be better then them even though we would like to do nothing more then to torture them for the rest of their days. SPC Hawk I am so sorry that you lost your friends and if I was in the position to stop their deaths by torturing some terrorist scum I would do it in a heartbeat, but our government has to be better then that, better then you and me, they have to be there to say “No, we are going to be better then that, because we have to be”. There is a price to pay for living in a free society and this is it.
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Minty reply on May 1st, 2009 11:50 am:
Just to reinforce the above–the point is, if we demand that the rest of the world uphold a specific morality (in this case, the whole human rights thing which, by the way, are only “self-evident” because we say so; the bulk of human history has suggested otherwise), in order to justify our demands, we too must adhere to that morality. “Do as I say, not as I do” just is not going to fly with the rest of the world.
By the way, just like ineedhelpbad, if I were in SPC Hawk’s position, I would have the exact same reaction as him regarding the loss of my friends (shit, I haven’t lost any friends in Iraq and some days I still feel that way, just on principle). Knowing this about myself, while believing in the importance of human rights at the same time, is one of the big reasons I purposely have prevented myself from being in any position where I could act (for right or wrong, better or worse) upon my instincts.
Maybe that makes me a coward and a hypocrite, but that’s just the way I am, and I personally feel better knowing the world is a slightly better place with me looking over my own shoulder.
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May 1st, 2009 at 4:34 am
Honestly, the only problem I see with torture is its questionable effectivness, and how it is used. If it works, and you use it to get information, then go ahead. I agree there are limits on what we should do, in a pragmatic sense. You can’t get intel from a dead man. But some people include any inficted action that is unpleasant as torture. The go/no go argument would be far more effective if everyone agreed on what torture is, but they don’t, so the best you can do is go by particular action. For example, waterboarding doesn’t cause permenant injury. Go. Breaking off fingers causes permenant injury and probably is more effective as a threat than if actually done. No go. Excetera excetera. Just saying “torture is bad” is way too broad a statment. Maybe this is the engineer in me, but I like specifics.
Now, as to the morality aspect, fuck what the enemy does. They are not our morale guide. Morality is highly subjective. We need to decide what we thing is “good” and what we think is “evil” and stick to that, whatever it is.
Finally to the pragmatic, we are trying to win a war. All the moral high ground in the world doesn’t matter if that high ground becomes a blast crater. At its core, moral behavior is survival behavior. Additionally, humanity does not have a “moral instict”, it is taught to us to help us survive dealing with other people. This must be kept in mind when speaking of morality. “Feel good” morality has no place in the real world.
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May 1st, 2009 at 5:10 am
If I may ask, what law are we talking about being broken as far as the torture arguement? What would we be charging these lawers with, exactly? My contact with the military has been purely as a civilian contractor (due to some physical issues that Uncle Sam feels bars me from serving), so there may be something in the military code that I am unaware of. Indeed, at my best barroom not-a-lawyering, I only see this as a moral issue, but I would be happy to educate myself on what law we are talking about having been broken if someone can point in the right direction.
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skippy reply on May 1st, 2009 10:13 am:
Sections 2340-2340A of title 18 of the United States Code.
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May 1st, 2009 at 5:44 am
It is the responsibility of America to make sure that we always choose the hard right over the easy wrong. That means that even though we may lose lives, we do so with honor. I’m not on the “kill the former administration” bandwagon, but I believe that, as a private, I would never follow an order that required me to torture someone, and I would expect to be prosecuted if I had. And while writing legal opinion does sit squarely with a presidential legal advisor, writing legal opinion condoning torture does not.
captcha is playing too: “pattern myths”
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SPC Hawk reply on May 1st, 2009 7:42 am:
Ok, so if you have a guy that has told you he blew up a group of Americans and had already issued plans to his men to hit us again, you would just try and ask him nicely and say “If you don’t tell us what you know, were going to have to send you to jail.” So interigation doesn’t go so well, your PL tells you to knock him around a little bit, you would say no. You would let some other soldiers walk into a death trap. Would you narc on someone else stepping up and doing the hard thing and getting some answers?
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SPC Hyle reply on May 1st, 2009 8:48 am:
I would refuse to allow an officer such conduct, as every soldier is legally and morally obligated to do. It is unlawful conduct, and you have a duty to inform an officer of that before he acts, and you have a duty to stop him from doing so, and you have a duty to report him for committing unlawful acts. To do less is moral cowardice–taking the easy, convenient, illegal, route rather than difficult, hard, legal route. It is pure and simple.
You can bet your ass that I would not stand for such actions. Every foot patrol I was on may as well have been a death trap. But I would rather fight my way through an ambush than know that we tortured for information. I would rather be buried than be complicit in torture. There are moral principles at stake, and every soldier who signed up fights for them. If we accept torture, we invalidate every veteran’s service. Near whole companies were killed in WWII in ambushes. Commanders didn’t try and torture captured German officers (and there were plenty of them) to get information.
I cannot abide moral cowardice, and you shouldn’t either. Your unit is failing you for fostering that attitude in you.
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SPC Hawk reply on May 1st, 2009 10:07 am:
I think you are failing your unit by allowing liberal propaganda to convince you that you and other soldiers are some piece of shit that is expendable. These people are weak willed over here. If you hint that an Iraqi soldier is going to take them in a back room they spill the beans. It really doesn’t take much.
Now I want you to imagine what would have happened if we had gotten those German officers to talk. How many American lives would we have saved? Well since you don’t seem to care to much for American lives, how many prisoners in the concentration camps would we have saved?
As for the moral cowardice, get off your high horse. You know as well as I do that it is easy to go turn the ‘bad guys who wanted to hurt that nice man’ and then just walk away like your hands are clean. Have you no sense of commarodary? Try standing up for your brothers once in a while. Let me guess, your not an 11b.
SPC Hyle reply on May 1st, 2009 12:05 pm:
I’m sorry, but you completely fail to understand a single point I made. Not a single one. You chose to deliberately misunderstand me, and apply a fraudulent standard to my words.
You seem to think that I do not value American lives. I do, and very much so. But I also value American principles, and those will endure beyond the lives of any individual American, as long as we uphold them. Our forefathers died to uphold them. They fought tyranny and oppression and men who did exactly what you advocate doing. They found those actions to be abhorrent, and fought against them. They found them to be abhorrent, and wrote laws to protect against them, laws that would be incredibly difficult to change. They fought and died for these principles because they are of value. The American revolution is unique because the people who led the revolution had much to lose materially. But they would have lost their principles if they had not fought.
You fail to understand this. It is because you are young and dumb and surrounded by the young and dumb, and guided by the moral cowards that seem to have cropped up of late. I am no longer young, but I’m still ignorant of many things. I have never lost sight of my principles, nor have I lost sight of the principles on which this country was founded.
Do you know what real camaraderie is? I ETSed nearly a year ago, and I still would go and fight for my platoon if they asked me to. I’d still go and kill and die for them. I would leave school a second time to do that. But it is because I respect them, and am loyal to them, that I would never sacrifice my principles for the expedient. I would sooner die than do that, and they know it.
You don’t get it. You simply don’t get it. If the means invalidate the ends, then the means are invalid. Torture to save American lives ends what it means to be American, and that ends every American life. That is the principle at stake here. American lives, and what it means to be American. Hundreds of thousands of men died for those principles. I would not see that their deaths were invalidated for expediency, and you should be ashamed of yourself for willing that.
To answer your question about MOS: 13B1P. I served as a cannon crewman, as a member of the FDC, and as an infantryman in combat patrols in Khowst province. I spent 15 months in Afghansitan, 12 of which were consecutive with no pass or leave. I know far too many men who didn’t come back from that deployment. And I’ll be goddamned if some leg tries to tell me about camaraderie when he can’t even fathom how far back our camaraderie extends. 230 years of camaraderie. 230 years of men who fought for the principles that make America what it is.
You don’t understand camaraderie at all if you’re willing to invalidate 230 years and millions of comrades for the sake of a handful. You don’t get it because your unit utterly failed you, from start to finish. Your unit has a history, and you are their comrades. Each and every one of them. Do not be so willing to dishonor them.
You just don’t get it. You simply fail to get it. There is a lot more to it than the man to your left and your right. There are the men who were there before them, and before them as well. It’s every man who served under our flag, and every man who fought to make our flag a reality. As long as the ideals of that flag hold, none of those men are truly dead. When you make a conscious effort to destroy those principles, you kill them. You destroy and dishonor their memory.
When you are under fire, you do what you can to protect those to your left and to your right. But you also must not lose sight of the men who stood in their place in years past. You’re fighting to protect them and their ideals as well. If you can’t do that, then you need to get out of the Army because you fundamentally do not understand what camaraderie is.
If I have a choice between a high horse and the gutter, a choice between comrades known and unknown, a choice between valor and cowardice, a choice between honor and shame, I know damn well which choice I’d take. I know damn well what any soldier worth his salt would take. The question is whether or not you are willing to take it.
Larson reply on May 1st, 2009 12:48 pm:
First off, SPC Hyle, who are you to judge the leadership of that unit. You make assumptions based on the opinions of one person. To degrade an entire unit is a horrible statement to your own intelligence. If everything was judged by teh single actions of a single person the world would be a different place.
Second, why are you berrating someone who simply has different morals than yourself? You may not agree with his statements, you may dislike what he is saying, but to put him down for his beliefs is morally reprehensible in and of itself. You talk about the morality of an issue but sacrifice your own to make a point.
Third, in terms of the men who have fought in the past, it doesn’t invalidate what they fought for. You think of soldiers in previous wars who used flamethrowers, Agent Orange, and any number of weapons that are no longer in use today, are you going to say that they were morally wrong because at the time that was acceptable to use. The argument over this is the exact same, at the time this was going on it was an acceptable action. Now that the law has changed are we going to condemn those men who acted upon those directives? Are we going to go back and persecute all those people who committed acts that are, by todays standards, morally wrong and persecute them?
These men acted under the directive that was they were doing was legal, and at the time it was. You can’t possible think that because a law is changed after the fact that you can go back and hold those responsible for past actions.
SPC Hyle reply on May 1st, 2009 1:21 pm:
First, I can make a judgment on that unit because they have failed to impress upon him military honor, tradition, and values. They have failed to impress upon him his unit’s history, and our collective history. That’s how I can judge them. They have failed him. That much is evident. I cannot speak for the rest of his comrades, but I can know for certain that they have failed in their duties to him because they let him remain ignorant of his history and his comrades. When a soldier fails in the Army, his leadership is always blamed, and for a reason. It does not matter how that soldier failed. If I had ever gotten a DWI/DUI while I was in the military, not only would I have to report to the Division Commander, but I would have to be accompanied by my 1SG and commander, who would have to explain to him why I failed. So yes, I can hold his unit accountable for his failings, because it is their duty to prevent them from happening, no matter what they are. Whether they have failed the rest of his unit is uncertain, but I made no claims about that–I have only made claims about how they have failed or not failed him. You would do well to distinguish between “they have failed you” and “they have failed every one of their soldiers”. Do not misrepresent what I have said. That is a true sign of your own intelligence.
Second, I can berate someone who lacks morals because they lack them. It isn’t about being different–it is about showing a decided lack of concern for what is right and what is wrong. I can berate a man who justifies murder for pleasure just as easily, and I am no less justified in doing so. This isn’t about private practices between consenting parties, this is about using power over another without their consent. If it is immoral to shame the unjust, then there never was any right or wrong. I know you’re sticking up for a battle buddy, but you are failing him and yourself. I am criticizing your beliefs because they are morally wrong and unjustifiable. I am demonstrating that your arguments in favor of them are invalid. This is corrective action. In demonstrating that his arguments are invalid, I am showing him that he must not accept the immoral position because there is no justification for it. If I just wanted to berate him, I wouldn’t bother pointing out that his comrades extend backwards for 230 years and across all branches. I wouldn’t bother to mention that they fought for specific principles, and that he is part of that tradition. I’d just call him a disgusting coward and be done with it. Be he isn’t a disgusting coward–he’s just young and dumb, just like I and everyone in the world is or has been. And, like everyone else, he needs to see that he is young and dumb so he can become merely ignorant, which is where I stand, and probably always shall. All that will change for me is to see how ignorant I am about a great many things. But he doesn’t see that yet. And to grow up, he needs to. I am doing what his unit should have done for him.
Third: nice red herring. They did not fight for the principles of “fire is bad”. They fought for the principles of freedom and justice. They fought to defend our Constitution, and the ideals it represents. Flamethrowers were used because they weren’t considered cruel. They are now, so we no longer use them. Torture is still cruel, just as it was 230 years ago. That is what you are fundamentally misunderstanding here. SPC Hawk is advocating torture, and rather explicitly. That flamethrowers once weren’t considered cruel and were used under that set of principles only reinforces the point–they did not consider them to be cruel! They were explicitly NOT using tools that were considered cruel or torture. That we consider them cruel now is irrelevant to this discussion because the issue is whether the use of torture and cruel weaponry is justified! It is of further importance that when we started to consider them cruel, we stopped using them. That is the whole point. In 1776, slavery was not considered cruel. In 1865, it was. It ended. We have not re-instated it. Torture is, by its very definition, always cruel. That’s what makes it torture. Instituting it now invalidates 230 years of the rule of law and our American principles, and the lives of every man who fought and died for them.
That’s why this matters. You need to understand this, and I will do whatever I can to make you see this. But I will not break into your house in the middle of the night, drag you to a concrete room, but a bag over your head and pour water over your face until you accede.
SPC Hawk reply on May 1st, 2009 2:27 pm:
I don’t think that every single person we bag and tag we should torture, but there are definatelt people who know things that could help us end terror in the middle east and around the world. There is such a thing as nessacary evil. Not everybody has the streghth to carry them out, but those who do do so to save others. I am done argueing with you, because you will not change my mind nor I yours.
Larson reply on May 2nd, 2009 4:27 am:
Once again SPC Hyle, you’ve either misinterpreted what I was trying to say, or completely ignored it.
First, you can’t blame the unit for the actions of one soldier. I agree that if you or I were to get a DUI/DWI then ourselves, along with the team leadr, squad leader, possibly even the PSG would be in front of the commander, but all that does is identify the problem to higher leadership so that they can come up with an effective way to stop it. Your team leader can’t keep tabs on you every minute of every day, he can’t stop you from making personal decisions. No matter how much guidance or supervision a leader gives you, there are wlaways personal choices to make. Blaming leadership for the single action of one soldier is a bad generalization to make of a unit.
Second, I disagree that you can berrate a person for their supposed lack of morals. Once again, the reason you believe he lacks morals is because he doesn’t have the same morals as you. You can’t put someone down because they have different beliefs than you do, that’s not what the military is based on. It’s about accepting the differences of those aroudn you and learning to work with them. You judging him on these morals would be like a person in your unit judging you for being part of a different religion, it’s a different moral base, and because of that your wrong. That kind of thinking is what needs to be expunged from the military. You say that he has moral cowardice because of what he believes, yet you refuse to even try to acknowledge what he believes and instead come back with the argument “What you believe is different from what i believe, so that makes you wrong.”
Third, it wasn’t a red herring, in fact you completely missed the point of the argument. I wasn’t arguing what they were fighting for, I wasn’t arguing that what they used to fight was wrong, what I was trying to argue is that in this day and age, using those tools of war is morally unacceptable, but we cannot persecute those of the past for using them. I’m trying to say that passing a law and then persecuting those who broke the new law before it was passed is wrong. If prohibition were passed today, would we condemn everyone who has drank in the past? I’m saying that during the time of these interrogations, nothing that was done was illegal at the time. Now that a new law is passed, you can’t hold people responsible for those actions when, at the time, they were legal.
One last point, can you acurately define torture? Can you show me at what point sleep deprivation chnages from being an interrogation tool to torture? Can you have a set of guidlines stating that certain actions are deemed torture and nothing else is? Taken from the earlier definitions of the word, it cannot be done. Severity is not a definite word, the idea of ‘severe’ changes form person to person. Along thos same lines the idea of torture ranges from person to person. Until there is a clear definition of the word, there can be no set of laws that govern it. I may say that sitting in a room by myself for any length of time is sever mental anguish, while you say otherwise. The problem with definitions is that they include the idea of emotional words that don’t have a clear idea of what’s trying to be said.
SPC Hyle reply on May 2nd, 2009 10:50 am:
Once again, you demonstrate that you are not interested in reading what has been written.
First: Part of the duties of the chain of command is to impress upon their soldiers military values and traditions. When a soldier fails to exhibit them, it is evidence that they have failed in their duties to him. They may not be around every day to watch his every actions, but their job is to impress upon him what is expected of him, and what is and is not right. When he acts in a manner not consistent with that, it is evidence that they did not properly instruct him. When you see a child running riot across a grocery store, you assume that the parents have not done their job as a parent properly. When you see a soldier advocating conduct unbecoming of his profession, it is not unreasonable to assume that he was not properly instructed. That is all I have ever said, and if you cannot grasp that simple statement, your career as a debater is surely going nowhere.
Second: On the contrary, I can indeed berate someone for a lack of morals. This isn’t about morals being different in the slightest. This is the exhibition of a lack of morality, the willingness to deliberately inflict pain and cruelty, with the intent of being excessively cruel, upon another sentient being. If this is morals simply being different, then one cannot berate a rapist for raping a woman–after all, his morality is just different. If one cannot shame the wicked, then there is no right and wrong. Torturing another because it is expedient is the very definition of moral cowardice–taking the easy, but immoral, choice over the more difficult but morally correct choice.
Beyond that, the military does indeed have a uniform set of morality, and conforming to that is part of it. If you’ve ever bothered to look at the UCMJ, you’d see moral conduct featured quite prominently at time (with those words being used), and the idea of a common implied morality is inherent in our military tradition. While there are points where the individual may differ, there are some that are absolute in military conduct. Torture, in fact, is specifically delineated as being wrong and illegal.
Third, it was a red herring, since it did not address the point of my argument, and instead attempted to make a non-related argument. You then, in an attempt to once again distract from the issue, repeat it, ignoring in the entirety my argument regarding it. You then say, “Well, the laws at the time said that these torture methods were okay.” This is flatly untrue. Even if they tried to alter what they considered torture, we still have treaty obligations to outside authorities on what does and does not constitute torture. They did not have the authority to alter the law at their pleasure, so their alterations were invalid. As such, their actions were illegal when they were performed.
For your last comment, I have not the polite words to express what comes to mind. You attempt to compare temporary isolation with partial drowning, and argue from that conflation that torture cannot be adequately defined. Not only is this an invalid argument (there are several fallacies, both logical and factual in it), but it betrays an inherent character flaw. If you honestly and truly cannot see a difference between partial drownings and temporary isolation, then you begin to qualify as a sociopath. Do you understand that? These are vastly different things, your pathetic argumentation to the contrary notwithstanding. Either you cannot see that, and have severe defects, or you can and just don’t care.
It doesn’t matter which it is. You exhibit little to no conscience, morality, or concept of dignity. The idea that there are certain inalienable human rights is wholly foreign to you, as your arguments indicate.
ArchaicDome reply on May 3rd, 2009 7:36 pm:
I like you, Hyle. I’d still, years later, follow my 1SG into Hell if he asked me, because he was the kind of Soldier that taught the hard right over the easy wrong. If using torture would keep him alive, I’d say, “Until we meet again, Top” and drive on. That’s the way Americans do things- just because the enemy cheats doesn’t mean we stop playing by the rules. Period. And shame on the leadership who teaches otherwise. I thank God every day I had the 1SG and CO I did. Oh, and they’re both taking leave- one from Hawaii and one from Baumholder- to come to my wedding 5 years after my discharge.
captcha: 29 thaws- a Marine base after the Ice Age.
Larson reply on May 2nd, 2009 12:53 pm:
First off SCPY Hyle, I’d like to thank you for the last post, it’s shown me a few things about you that I did not see before. I understand now your arguing technique. You begin to try and make a valid point, and in some cases you do, but within your point you and little quips of belittlement, and spruce it up with a few intelligent words. Making points is all about what arguing is about, it’s the entire basis, but at no point during my arguments did I belittle you, only present my side of the argument.
I’d list the areas in which this was done, but I’ve neither the time or inclination to point out a persons mistake on an internet blog, though you seem too. I’ve got a theory though; It seems that within this medium of a comment post, you seem to have the inherent need to prove yourself right. Maybe it stems from the lack of power as being a SPC, or it could stem from any number of sources. I can admit when I’m wrong, and I admit that torture is wrong, but you seem so ignorant that you won’t even hear the other side of the argument, and instead let emotion drive your rebuttals. Arguing isn’t about who’s mad or not, who can belittle the other person more, it’s about facts.
I’m sure this will warrant a response, in fact I planned that it will as predictable as you’ve become. I’ll be interested to see how I’ve failed myself and my unit next, maybe I’ll make some popcorn before reading it.
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May 1st, 2009 at 6:24 am
The real problem that people are having here is the question of right and wrong. However, we are not in the wild west. The good guys dont wear brown hats and the bad guys dont wear black hats. I dont agree with what was done, however i understand why it was done. As a soldier, and a patriot, i feel that america is the best nation in the world, and americans and our allies are more valuable than other people. We should do what ever is necessary to protect our lives and our interests. The bad guys are doing much worst things to my brothers over seas, and to any american alli they can get their hands on. We rent cutting heads off, were not pulling fingernails out, were not even breaking fingers, so forgive me when i dont feel that getting a little watter poured on their face isnt so bad. I dont like what happened to the scumbags in GITMO, but i do understand why it happened.
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May 1st, 2009 at 9:45 am
As I said before, I don’t believe in open torture, but in certain situations it should be accepted. And I know that people say it may not be effective, neither are polygraph test but the majority of police academy’s still use them as a screening process.
For teh argument that it’s the innocent that people are worried about, innocents are jailed everyday without the use of torture. No system will ever be perfect, is that acceptable? No, but there will always be a percentage of innocents that are persecuted, it’s inevitable.
I also agree that the US has to take the morally high road, we always have, and we always will. At teh same time though, who decides what is moral or immoral? Your morals differ from mine, as do a thousand other peoples. When you bring morality into an issue, you risk the chance of it being a personal choice of the person making the decision than that of what’s best for the greater good. One person may say that taking up arms and killing anyone, for any reason, is morally wrong, which is why the Amish community is absolved from military service. But when a persons morals interfere with the task at hand, things need to be reevaluated. You wouldn’t just sit back and let someone tell you it’s not ok to practice a certain religion because it’s morally wrong in their eyes would you? That’s the issue here, what you believe is morally wrong and what is best for the greater good.
War isn’t about who’s morally wrong or right, religious wars of the past have been fought for those reason and nothing came of it. War is about who’s better at their job, who has more tools at their disposable to protect yourself. It may be ugly, but that’s how it is. You can’t condemn somebody for something they did just because your morals say it was wrong.
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May 1st, 2009 at 10:42 am
I agree with everything you said, but would go one step further:
Isn’t the whole point of a trial to determine a)whether an act committed was a crime and b)if certain parties are guilty?
If there’s even a decent argument for a and b, then it seems to me like grounds for a trial.
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May 1st, 2009 at 10:43 am
Jeez theres a lot of responses there.
Just break it all down. Is the torture of a human/animal morally or ethically right? I say it’s not, and that is why it is outlawed in practically all countries and under the Geneva Convention. Remember that bit of paper signed at Versaille?
I do believe a lot of people in the Old American and UK Governments should be tried under the Geneva Convention for War Crimes, starting with complicity in tortoure and kidnappings.
As to the boys and girls on the ground: the British Forces this week withdrew from Basra, peacefully and happily, and the locals were sorry to see them go. The locals are now also worried sick at what will happen when the American Forces move in behind them. They are worried about what the orders from the top will be and how that will filter down to the ground.
It all comes down to those who are giving the orders, and then how those orders are translated by the powerful people in charge of the GI Joes and Tommys.
So I am very much against torture, but i also believe those who took us to war should also be charged for terrorism and extremeism.
Oh sod it.
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May 1st, 2009 at 11:09 am
You know what, I now miss the comedy I was hoping for this morning. I think that that, in its own right, is torture, just like going to McDonalds, ordering a nice, fatty, but tasty Big Mac and finding out the patties were replaced with veggie burger patties and all of the taste had been sucked out of the remaining parts, and the bun was replaced with some kind of tasteless flatbread. I can only take solice in the fact that, metaphorically speaking, there is a Burger King across the street that still has the calorie packed Whopper.
captcha paleface tion, what the hell is that supposed to mean?!
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Minty reply on May 1st, 2009 12:10 pm:
When you’re right, you’re right. Damn, so many good points today. But RE the above, I guess that means there’s only one thing for you to do:
Leftovers.
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May 1st, 2009 at 12:25 pm
Personally, I think that I was tortured for the last 8 years from having to watch the previous pinhead represent this great nation. I’d rather be waterboarded.
Captcha – Throwers has – what, has a shoe? Throwers has a shoe? THROW IT THROWERS!
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May 1st, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Torture is wrong and is to be avoided. But there is such a thing as legitimate self-defense. And the right of self-defense applies to nations and not only to individuals. And you can imagine a situation where torture was necessary to gain information to save the lives of your citizens (the often-cited “imminent attack” scenario). In that scenario torture to save the lives of others would be justified. To argue that torture is NEVER justified — that we cannot act in self defense or to save the lives of others — wrongly places the lives and well-being of those who would attack us, above the lives of the innocents we protect.
Would you argue that you can’t shoot a person who is about to murder you?
Gray Ghost
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SPC Hyle reply on May 1st, 2009 2:09 pm:
No, but I would not argue that I have a right to torture his friends to find out if he plans to kill me.
And that is the difference.
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Gray Ghost reply on May 1st, 2009 3:08 pm:
“No, but I would not argue that I have a right to torture his friends to find out if he plans to kill me. And that is the difference.”
Self-defense is not a justification if the danger isn’t obvious. But it is still a justification in some circumstances. Let me be more specific about my imminent attack hypothetical. Let us say you are a CIA agent who holds Momhammed Nukem prisoner. You know beyond a reasonable doubt that Mohammed knows the details of a planned nuclear attack on a U.S. city to occur in 3 days. If you learn the details you might be able to stop the attack and save the lives of 200,000 people. Conventional interrogation techniques won’t get the information in three days. Can you torture Mohammed with the justification of self-defense if such torture has a reasonable chance of getting you the information in time to stop the attack? Of course you can, as a moral right. Mohammed’s right not to be tortured is trumped by the right to live of 200,000 innocent people.
So again, to say torture is NEVER justified is incorrect. There are some circumstances, which could occur, in which torture is not only justified but morally required. That’s what I’m arguing for here.
I’m not arguing for the right to torture anyone we want if it might help us in some fuzzy undefined way.
If you don’t trust the CIA to be able to tell the difference between convenience and necessity, well that’s another question.
GG
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SPC Hyle reply on May 1st, 2009 3:41 pm:
Then there is no right and wrong. If there is a nuclear war, and there are just enough surviving women to avoid a genetic bottleneck (which will kill the species), but they do not wish to have sex or give birth, raping them is fine, eh? The species right to exist trumps their right to not be raped. Or does it?
See, there are plenty of ways besides torturing Mohammed Nukem to find out information on a domestic nuke attack. Plenty. And, with three days left, they haven’t even begun to be tapped.
You haven’t even gotten to last resort territory, and until then, you cannot even begin to attempt a justification of it.
Once you do, we have another problem: you have validated the witch hunts. Their threats were very real, as far as they knew, completely imminent, and for the sake of their lives, their souls, and their blemish-free faces, they had to stop them covens. By whatever means necessary. Which meant that torture was legitimate. Heck, there were plenty of confessions. Then, too, was the Inquisition. Loads of confessions there too. So were the Nazi concentration camps, since they knew with mad certainty that the Jews would destroy Germany, and soon, were they not locked up and dealt with, once and for all.
You cannot justify torture without justifying every atrocity that has ever occurred, since the rationale has always, always, always been an imminent threat to public health and safety.
The imminent threat doctrine is false because it justifies that which we have already declared invalid. Either the witch hunts were valid, or torture is never justified. Take your pick.
Random reply on May 2nd, 2009 6:16 am:
First, Hyle, my hat is off to you. Time and again you’ve hit on vital points with an eloquence I can only wish I had.
Second, GG, your scenario will never take place in the real world and you damn well know it. You’re asking for more crtainty than you’ll find in the real world about your prisoner’s relationship to the attack, his resistance, his willingness to talk, AND his willingness to be honest. As we already know, torture might give people a powerful incentive to talk, but it gives them NO incentive to give you valid info.
May 1st, 2009 at 1:40 pm
I am tired of all the arguing. Stop taking prisoners, just shoot and kill all of them. No one left to torture, no need for prisons, problem solved. It is even in accordance with the Geneva Convention. After all they are not “uniformed personnel openly bearing arms”. Those would be POWs. Instead they are Saboteurs. Those are simply shot.
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SPC Hyle reply on May 1st, 2009 2:08 pm:
Or you could, you know, just show moral fortitude and accept surrenders and not torture them. That’s easy enough.
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Jim A reply on May 4th, 2009 12:20 pm:
You know, it’s easier to fight an enemy that knows that it can surrender.
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May 1st, 2009 at 2:09 pm
My Dad, retired RAF Navigator said with the typical English wit.. “That’s the problem with wars today, in my day we just fed the enemy beer and he couldn’t stop talking. Too bad Muslims don’t drink.”
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May 1st, 2009 at 3:54 pm
So some argue that torture is acceptable/allowable if the state is in danger?
Well I guess that proves the NKVD was right – all those people WERE plotting against Stalin. And so were all those people interrogated by Pol Pot’s regime, they really were western spies sent to bring about the downfall of the regime.
Captcha: slogs of… war? Glad Shakespeare decided to re-write that line.
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May 1st, 2009 at 5:45 pm
“We Have Met The Enemy and He Is Us” – Walt Kelly
CAPTCHA – Energy dodgers – is that an oxymoron?
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May 1st, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Wow! Skippy, I’m shocked. You instigated quite the somber discussion and attempts at Skipite humor didn’t take root. But I must weigh in.
Set aside your moral and/or political positioning on this issue, but what about abortion? Over a period of time, enough like minded jurors are seated on the Supreme Court. As a result, a case before this new court makes abortion a murder offense. Are we then to prosecute every woman and doctor that ever had or performed an abortion that at the time was considered legal?
Granted, this torture situation has not reached that level, but under one administration, professionals whose job it was to provide legal advice provided it and others followed it. Now a new administration has decided that no, they were wrong. If these people are prosecuted, we run a huge risk of setting a terrible precedent.
Lets sway to hot button issues change the law and:
prosecute the developers of the atom bomb;
prosecute the politicians that repealed Prohibition;
prosecute oil companies in criminal court for contributing to global warming;
prosecute Roseanne for butchering the National Anthem;
prosecute Michael Moore, Pelosi, Reid and Murtha for treason;
prosecute Limbaugh, Hannity and Coulter for excessive use of the freedom of speech;
Sorry. I couldn’t resist the last two. But you get my point. It is like raising children. Yesterday you said they could do it, but today it isn’t ok and they are punished. We send the wrong message and set an awful precedent.
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stmercy reply on May 1st, 2009 8:33 pm:
Respectfully, I have to disagree. Torture- and the specific methods used at Gitmo, et.al- has been condemned as illegal and inhumane for ages. We have international law (as in not JUST this country, but this country and similarly-minded countries around the world) that states this. Saying that it’s okay because this war is not nice is ludicrous. Name a war that WAS nice.
That said- the purpose of a trial (as has been repeatedly stated) is to determine if a crime has, in fact, been committed and if those accused are, in fact, guilty. No one is suggesting that those soldiers and officers accused of torture be executed or imprisoned without a full examination of the evidence; quite the contrary. The soldiers and officers ought to have the opportunity to explain and, if necessary, defend their actions in a PUBLIC trial.
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skippy reply on May 2nd, 2009 7:18 pm:
“But you get my point. It is like raising children. Yesterday you said they could do it, but today it isn’t ok and they are punished. We send the wrong message and set an awful precedent.”
Sort of. I agree with the logic you are using, just not int he way you apply it to this situation.
To extend on the kid metaphor here the parents have told the kids that they cannot, under any circumstances, have any candy.
One of the kids asked his little brother to help him define candy, to better determine what specific treats he is allowed to have. And his siblings announces that peanuts constitute a healthy snack, and therefore Snicker being packed with peanuts, counts as a healthy snack and not at all candy.
I take the stance that the kids knew damn well that Snickers is candy, and playing word games doesn’t change that. In fact (analogy is now beginning to break down) the kids probably didn’t have any right to try to define candy on their own like that anyways. Their creepy uncle, the judicial branch, has the task of interpreting the definition of candy, while I dunno, the PTA I guess, determines whether or not candy is permitted in the first place.
(I’m pretty sure that this metaphor has been abused enough and I will now let it die in peace)
I think that if the current Executive Branch feels that there is evidence that the previous administration overstepped it’s bounds (which I believe to be the case) then they have an obligation to investigate. It would then be up to the courts whether or not my evidence supports my view.
Also, the entire problem could be prevented in the future by having Congress pass specific legislation on the subject.
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May 1st, 2009 at 9:54 pm
Does anyone remember what the original point of the post was? Just curious.
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stmercy reply on May 1st, 2009 10:03 pm:
In point of fact, I did and do:
“I think that many of the things our government has done in the pursuit of actionable intelligence against terrorist threats constituted torture. I think that the agents that participated in torture should face legal punishment, as should the lawyers who advised that it was legal. By that, I mean they should stand trial.”
Skippy advocated that those soldiers and officers who acted questionably in the name of actionable intelligence should STAND TRIAL. And, if found guilty, should face legal sanction.
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May 1st, 2009 at 10:49 pm
Well I could have scrolled up and cut and pasted that myself. My point was that the conversation seemed to have strayed just slightly from the main post. That being said I’m a little disappointed that in 112 responses to it no other Skippiest/Skippier/Skippian bothered to ask why it had been such a bad week for Skippy.
Captcha: tasting the…hmmm..leaves a lot to the imagination
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Mom to one of you reply on May 2nd, 2009 10:17 am:
Murphy? As in the Law that works so consistently for me? If you could have scrolled up and cut and pasted that yourself, you probably should have, and then added your bit about being a little disappointed…Your sarcasm phrased as a question was rather silly, I thought. As for the 112 responses, I have scanned many of them and have found some of them very interesting. From the vantage point of a pensioner I enjoy the passion of younger people (which most of you are, I think), and I find that your thoughts/opinions stimulate me to think over again about things I thought I was “finished” with.
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Murphy reply on May 2nd, 2009 5:04 pm:
Have you read the rest of Skippy’s site? Silliness and sarcasm are kind of the foundation on which Skippy nation was built. But thanks for the comment.
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May 2nd, 2009 at 6:22 am
I just figured out why debates like these leave a bad taste in my mouth like the veggie burger big mac I mentioned above. This is completely and utterly pointless. Nobody will win, and nothing will change. It is something I heard about since I was a kid, There is no point complaining about something if you can’t do anything about it. And as such, if you have a problem with it and can do something about it, fix it. All it is here is a bunch of people yelling at each other over who is right/wrong and nobody actually trying to fix it. We are a group of people, a group united, not by arguing about stuff, but a group united by our common desire to laugh about everything. It is us who find the comedy in anything, no matter how sick or twisted, or bland and mundane. It is us who will talk about our zombie plans, even if we get wierd looks from others later. We shouldn’t let ourselves get bogged down with debates on whether or not torture is bad or really bad, but instead we should be offering insight to the techniqes, and just tell them “your doin’ it wrong.”
captcha, 30 admired. They did?
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Mom to one of you reply on May 2nd, 2009 10:25 am:
I understand what you’re saying, Billy; for me it’s like having too much of one kind of food. There’s a limit to “if some is good, more is better.” But while much of what you say is true, “Nobody will win, and nothing will change..” it may only be true for this moment in time. Things DO change, however slowly. And, because we humans seem to rely largely on words to grow [oh god, that’s NOT a topic for here–sorry!]–anyway, we seems to need words to communicate with each other. And somewhere, sometimes, in the mash of words is a kernal (sp) for someone to change and grow.
I can’t respond to the “insight to the techniques”–I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. And I sure don’t understand what “captcha” means. Maybe I’m too old. It doesn’t bother me, tho’.
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skippy reply on May 2nd, 2009 1:37 pm:
Actually I think this sort of thing is pretty healthy, provided we don’t do it all the time.
Though my position hasn’t changed, I do look at some of the information differently, thanks to this debate.
I don’t know that I changed anyone’s mind on the issue. But I like debate for debate’s sake so I’m fine with it.
Also I’m pretty happy with how civil everyone was during this debate, with a few exceptions. I’ll bring back some funny next week.
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Billy reply on May 2nd, 2009 2:22 pm:
does this mean my zombie story I sent gets put up sometime?
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May 2nd, 2009 at 11:48 am
This brought me out of lurkerdom just to say: SPC Hyle, you fucking rock. God bless you and thank you for your service.
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May 4th, 2009 at 6:16 am
Dang, I skip a few days and miss all the fun.
1st off, all I admit to being is a clerk, and not an especially good one. In the reserve.
RE torture: is tossing a caterpillar into a cage with a guy that is scared of bugs torture? If he screams, cries and craps himself, then yes.
Is waterboarding torture even though you have to go thru it be SERE qualified, again yes.
We can go back and forth about this and about what happened in previous wars. I know a man that tortured VC in Vietnam and he’d do it all over again if he had to.
Years ago, when he was brand new lawyer just out of college I knew Judge Jay S. Bybee, the guy that gave Bush, et al the legal opinions on torture. 25 years ago he was friendly guy, even to lowly army privates.
In a perfect world, I would be against torture. In this world, our enemies routinely hack off the heads of prisoners with dull knives. It is a point of pride to detonate a bomb in a crowd of non-combatants. The “non-violent” populations of other countries dance in the streets whenever the USA is attacked.
If the torture offends you, you are a better person that I am.
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May 4th, 2009 at 10:10 am
I have sympathy for those who followed the legal guidance that they were given. But “following legal guidance,” is the next door neighbor to “following orders,” and frankly, we shouldn’t even be in the same zip code as the Nazis. I am frankly fed up with those who think that the mere physical threat that a bunch of murderers with medieval mindsets justifies the abandonment of our principles.
Jefferson said “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots.” Unfortunately, that is often not enough, and we nourish it with the blood of innocents. Every time someboyd is killed by a criminal because we had a mere preponderance of evidence (less than beyond a reasonable doubt) we do this. Could 9/11 have happened in Stalinist Russia? Probably not, after all SOME of the people swept up in pograms and denounciation WERE guilty, and everyone else had a finely tuned paranoia sufficient to prevent this sort of terrorist attack. The innocent vitims of 9/11 died BECAUSE of the freedoms that we enjoy. Freedom is sometimes expensive, but that doesn’t mean that we should abandon it the first time we get an unpleasent reminder of the costs.
Heck, a large proportion of these guys frankly DESERVE to be waterboarded. We shouldn’t abstain because we respect them, we should hold back because we respect our own principles, even if they don’t.
Shick mar : somebody should switch back to an electric razor.
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