Senators Clash With Nominee About Torture

[tw]

The US sucessfully prosecuted Japanese soldiers for war crimes after WWII for torturing some Navy and Marines. These Japanese were declared guilty because they used water boarding. Suddenly it is OK - it is not torture - it is not a war crime because Americans did it? It says so much about a government whose lawyers will also rewrite science for a political agenda.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

This war will be won and lost on its HUMINT, tw. YOU, of course, have NO better suggestions for getting better HUMINT, but then you never wanted to, either.

You don't want us to win, tw. We all know this, and think you really suck because of this one mis-choosing.

[Ibby]

He said feeling... When you're drowning youre less concerned with the technical aspects of it than the fact that youre, uh, drowning.

[queequeger]

Dude, all due respect, you're a twat. Your 'with us or against us' blither gets really exhausting. You just don't get it, but the 65% of this country that doesn't want us fighting this 'war,' we don't CARE if we win it. We'd rather not soil our attempt at upholding human rights fighting in a country that is not tied to our national security at all.

It's not that we 'hate freedom and democracy,' or that 'we want the US to lose the war,' because both those statements are fucking ridiculous. The truth of the matter is that we know it was a stupid idea in the first place, and don't want to go around torturing people to get intelligence to win a war that produces nothing but the dead bodies of our friends and relatives.

And my dear god, shut the hell up about the one book you read about poor countries being havens for terrorism. No one cares about your 'Gap' philosophies, and we all heard them in Political Science 101.

[DanaC]

*cheers queeq*

Dude, all due respect, you're a twat.

hehehehe. I rather liked that.

[Kitsune]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

This war will be won and lost on its HUMINT, tw. YOU, of course, have NO better suggestions for getting better HUMINT, but then you never wanted to, either.

This war was started on HUMINT gained from torture.

Under torture after his rendition to Egypt, al Libi had provided a confession of how Saddam Hussein had been training al Qaeda in chemical weapons. This evidence was used by Colin Powell at the United Nations a year earlier (February 2003) to justify the war in Iraq. ("I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these [chemical and biological] weapons to al Qaeda," Powell said. "Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story.")

But now, hearing how the information was obtained, the CIA was soon to retract all this intelligence. A Feb. 5 cable records that al Libi was told by a "foreign government service" (Egypt) that: "the next topic was al-Qa'ida's connections with Iraq...This was a subject about which he said he knew nothing and had difficulty even coming up with a story."

...and that worked out just great.

[Happy Monkey]

Torture provides false confessions. In the cases where they provide true confessions, the torture continues until the torturer is satisfied, which is unlikely to coincide exactly with the amount of actual intelligence the subject has. Therefore, it is likely that even true coerced confessions will be mixed with stuff that the subject thinks the torturer wants to hear.

There's a reason that torture is usually associated with situations where the veracity of the confession is of minimal importance.

Originally Posted by queequeger

Dude, all due respect, you're a twat. Your 'with us or against us' blither gets really exhausting. You just don't get it, but the 65% of this country that doesn't want us fighting this 'war,' we don't CARE if we win it. We'd rather not soil our attempt at upholding human rights fighting in a country that is not tied to our national security at all.

It's not that we 'hate freedom and democracy,' or that 'we want the US to lose the war,' because both those statements are fucking ridiculous. The truth of the matter is that we know it was a stupid idea in the first place, and don't want to go around torturing people to get intelligence to win a war that produces nothing but the dead bodies of our friends and relatives.

And my dear god, shut the hell up about the one book you read about poor countries being havens for terrorism. No one cares about your 'Gap' philosophies, and we all heard them in Political Science 101.

We can't lose the war, mission accomplished... time to come home.

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

Torture provides false confessions.

I haven't read Merc's books yet, but I've found one source that says this isn't always true: turns as the French resistance was partly broken when captured individuals provided detailed directions to their friends under Nazi torture.

[Happy Monkey]

The Nazis probably didn't particularly care if they killed a bunch of innocent people following the false leads, as long as there was some truth eventually. I'm sure that people they grabbed who weren't in the Resistance also provided detailed directions under torture.

That's not something I see as worthy of emulation.

[Ibby]

Uh, yeah, ut, but they were french.

We're talking about REAL people here.

[TheMercenary]

It may be an overstatement, but I doubt it is "horseshit".

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

I haven't read Merc's books yet, but I've found one source that says this isn't always true: turns as the French resistance was partly broken when captured individuals provided detailed directions to their friends under Nazi torture.

Torture will lead to true confessions but that doesn't matter if false confessions are in there as well because then you have to treat every confession with the probability of being false.

[tw]

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

Torture will lead to true confessions but that doesn't matter if false confessions are in there as well because then you have to treat every confession with the probability of being false.

How to make torture work. Assume the ten or 100 innocent people cited in the lies are also guilty. Massacre them all. Then the one honest answer is found and eliminated. The other innocents were from inferior races; needed to be eliminated anyway. Torture worked just fine for the Nazis.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by queequeger

Dude, all due respect, you're a twat. Your 'with us or against us' blither gets really exhausting. You just don't get it, but the 65% of this country that doesn't want us fighting this 'war,' we don't CARE if we win it. We'd rather not soil our attempt at upholding human rights fighting in a country that is not tied to our national security at all.

This sort of opinion, in a nutshell, demonstrates why I'm not a leftist, and too smart ever to become one. For one, it's shortsighted to claim "a country. . . is not tied to our national security." In a globalized world, there is no country that doesn't have an effect on the security and prosperity of every other. We, active international traders that we are, have interests all over the globe, and they are more or less vital -- hardly any are negligible. For another, our opposition is not at all about human rights but about their negation. That's why our opposition is despicable. It seems you're happy to campaign for human rights and liberties as long as it's by talk only, and not ever actually doing anything about it. That's a thing with the Left: with folded hands and flapping jaws is how they want to actually accomplish anything. Fools. Are sixty-five percent of you insufficiently partisans of democracy?

Exhausting? You bet; your view needs to be worn out, clapped out, vitiated, and replaced by a decent regard for human liberty in all places, which regard you do not currently possess and which I possess in spades. You're only "against" me if you make yourself so, but what I'm for is not something any decent person would be against. Remember our opposition isn't as sympathetic to women's rights as you are, yet somehow this does not move you to defeat them. I can only conclude this is because you haven't fully understood your own interest.

Originally Posted by queequeger

It's not that we 'hate freedom and democracy,' or that 'we want the US to lose the war,' because both those statements are fucking ridiculous. The truth of the matter is that we know it was a stupid idea in the first place, and don't want to go around torturing people to get intelligence to win a war that produces nothing but the dead bodies of our friends and relatives.

It's been said elsewhere that the thing wrong with the Democrats' writing the word "patriotism" is that it is so often preceded by the words "impugn my." Insert knowing chuckle here.

Ridiculous? When they are demonstrated every day by your actions, your statements, and your inactions? No, these add up, and they add up to no commitment to democracy, even for the places that could most improve with it. Proven would be a much more accurate description. By you leftists, doing anything to shrink the Non-Integrating Gap and advance democracy -- they are inseparable -- is "a stupid idea." And no new information, no success, and success is especially not desired by such as you -- can move you from this shibboleth. This is inherently ignoble, and too stupid an idea for me to accept. I've seen it noised around for thirty-six years, and I'm here to tell you it hasn't improved with age. Democracy is good and precious enough that its opponents should be taken down with fire and sword if they won't convert.

Originally Posted by queequeger

And my dear god, shut the hell up about the one book you read about poor countries being havens for terrorism. No one cares about your 'Gap' philosophies, and we all heard them in Political Science 101.

In other words, I'm getting through to you no matter how you flail and bellow. Excellent. No, shutting the hell up is exactly what I'm not going to do, for that would be the worst advice I could take. I think I may redouble it instead.