Originally posted by cal7man
reply to post by pieman
"The torture of human beings" those are strong words used in defense of people who would kill you in an instant, not all of them, but you have to admit a percentage of these detainees are guilty of terror against innocent lives. This is just like the age old arguement of capitol punishment, to end the life of somebody who has taken lives.
When does it stop, when do we stand up for ourselves instead of turning the other cheek. God said killing is a sin, but not in defense against adversaries inclined to doing such. It's a hard topic to debate because of the numerous gray areas intertwined within. Who to torture, who not to? Being ex-military and having alot of friends & relatives still involved with that kind of makes me bias towards certain methods of intelligence gathering, not saying its humane, but trying to deter loss of life is our ultimate goal, not torturing people for the hell of it.
How do you know?
The only way to be sure someone is a murderer or who might murder again is in a court of law during a trial. Have these people been tried?
Maybe the government was covering their own asses and has no evidence. How do YOU KNOW what people are guilty of? Why should we trust people who have lied to us repeatedly?
Didn't you read about the NSA whistleblower who said that BushCo was spying on EVERYONE? They lied about that.
Didn't you read about Abu Ghraib tortures? They told us it was a few bad apples -- right after they said nobody was being harmed.
If you knew a DAMN THING about intelligence gathering, then maybe you might listen to every top intelligence gatherer who has been on the record saying "it doesn't work."
You are trusting people, who have done nothing but work in the shadows, that they have done the right thing. Pay not attention to all the no-bid contractors filling steamer trunks with cash.
Here's how you can be sure that someone isn't duping you into harming someone who is innocent; support the rule of law and don't torture. Stop basing every decision on an episode of 24 where gouging out someone's eye saves everyone in California from a really big bomb. A what if scenario justifies a bunch of crooks raping and torturing thousands of people. Did you notice that we found no WMDs? Oops!
Did you even notice that all the justifications for even being in Iraq were found to be lies? Oops!
Why exactly, is the guy in Abu Ghraib needing torture, when there IS NO THREAT TO AMERICA, this person is not Saddam Hussein (and the Saudis have a worse record on human rights, by the way), and beyond that, there has been no proof that we gathered any intelligence this way.
Wow, lots of faith to give something with no merit, no ethics, no proof, no justification. Maybe some people like torture -- they have a secret dark pleasure, that enjoys torture. Maybe you some don't LIKE these people. They have a lot of fears of OTHERS that they can't rationalize but they feel better when they can hurt the OTHER. I can't answer that. I just can't find any logical reason to support it.


