McCain debates torture on O’Reilly
posted at 10:37 am on May 10, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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I guess this means it’s on. O’Reilly gets the worst of this exchange for not comprehending that the Geneva Conventions bind nations to standards of conduct regardless of reciprocation and for many different kinds of detainees and refugees; doesn’t the man research the topic before an interview? He also lets McCain off the hook on the allegation that it makes American soldiers less safe in future wars, given the fact that we don’t plan on fighting France or the Brits any time soon:
I’m inclined to think that waterboarding is torture, even when done under controlled conditions that keep the detainee from suffering physical harm from it. Last November, I interviewed two Special Forces veterans who had very personal perspectives on waterboarding, and especially on the tenor of the national debate on the subject. Both concluded that any effectiveness waterboarding had as a interrogation technique had likely vanished as a result of the publicity surrounding it, and the CIA’s decision to stop using it in 2003 meant that they agreed.
However, apart from waterboarding, what exactly are the limits? Do we have to ensure the physical comfort of detained terrorists? What about the ticking-clock scenario, which McCain dismisses? Some have suggested — as O’Reilly does here — that some close-to-the-edge techniques have to remain on the table, subject to presidential approval, in rare cases. If so, then the law has to be written to allow for that. Some lawmakers suggested that the President could authorize the use of illegal techniques and that no one would prosecute if an attack got averted. That’s a ludicrous suggestion, setting up regulations to force someone to break the law in order to use apparently legitimate methods to secure the nation from attack.
McCain remains adamant that strict interpretation of the Geneva Convention will save American soldiers from torture in future wars. I’d argue that it hasn’t saved American soldiers from torture in any war, save perhaps World War I. Japan, for instance, was one of the earliest signatories to the GC and still treated American POWs more barbarically than did the North Vietnamese — also a signatory. We should treat POWs consistent with our own values, which would strongly argue against torture anyway, but don’t tell me that refraining from waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would keep jihadists from beheading and torturing American soldiers now or in the future.
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Actually, what Brian Ross said was that the importance of water boarding in extracting info from KSM was “open to debate.” At least, that’s what he told O’Reilly in one interview widely heralded by water boarding fans: http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NWYxY2RkOGE2YjExNzc0OTBhMjQ5MGQ5MTUzYmNlY2Q=
If you have an interview or other material with more extensive information that you’re relying on, please link it. It’s not clear from Ross’s testimony that the water boarding alone is what did it, and many other details are unclear. Without knowing much more about the interrogations and how the information was processed, we can’t really answer the question as to whether water boarding was critical to stopping the Library Tower plot or any other.
It’s also less likely now that water boarding would work again. So, what next? Silver spoon to the eyeball? Electrodes or pliers to the testicle? How about kidnapping his loved ones and torturing them before his eyes? Where do you want to stop? How useful is he going to be afterward, even if he does tell you something?
As for your hypothetical, I’ve already answered it: IF a true ticking time bomb situation arose, not only I, but almost anyone on either side of this debate (including, btw, Sen John McCain, according to his own words), would give the OK to desperate measures if no better recourse seemed available. On the other hand, unless you’re proposing that we immediately pull in everyone we suspect of being involved with possible terror plots, and subject them to as much torture as it takes until we’ve convinced ourselves we’ve ended the immediate threat, then you’re talking about something that, as far as we know, has never occurred and is not likely to occur, or, if it ever has occurred, isn’t likely to occur again. It’s more a subject for late night bull sessions, not for policy-making.
The capture of AQ bigwigs after 9/11 was one of the most difficult and unusual cases of all time. I personally am not upset that they were water boarded, but I accept that neither the specific practice nor others can be adopted as policy, for practical reasons as well as moral ones.
CK MacLeod on May 10, 2008 at 11:12 PM
I’m familiar with the incident and with others like it in the annals of war, though I’m not sure you’ve described it accurately. I also don’t trust the reporting, since I’ve only ever heard the officer’s side. More to the point, however, it’s not a ticking time bomb scenario involving a decision by the President of the United States over whether to torture a captive, nor does it bear directly on overall US policy. It had to do with a battlefield decision and overt threats to a civilian as I recall. It may have involved harming him in some way.
If it’s relevant to this discussion, it may be so in the sense that it illustrates how exceptional cases will tend to be treated: The Army for very practical, life and death reasons doesn’t endorse such actions as policy, but it also doesn’t subject people who engage in them to harsh punishment.
That’s close to the solution that McCain, when pressed, endorsed on the ticking time bomb scenario. It entails problems of its own, of course.
CK MacLeod on May 10, 2008 at 11:26 PM
All very dramatic. 4/10 for effort.
We are morally superior to the headchoppers, Do you question that?
Waterboarding is not risk free - google it - hence I said it was right on the line. I think it is worthwhile for people like KSM as it happens but it is sailing close to the wind. It can go wrong.
No offense but you sound like you just finished watching series 6 of 24 and didn’t realise it was fiction.
Ares on May 10, 2008 at 11:46 PM
Actually, CK MacLeod’s link proves my point, not his…or if would if he quoted the “open for debate’ snippet in context. So here’s the context:
O’REILLY: OK. So he gave it up. And most of them gave it up within seconds of being waterboarded, correct?
ROSS: 20, 30 seconds is the most people can take of this technique. It’s that harsh.
O’REILLY: Can this hurt you if they continue to do it? Can it kill you, water boarding?
ROSS: If they continued, it could. But essentially, it creates a gag reflex, where you think you are about to die, you think you’re drowning. You’re not.
O’REILLY: OK. So nobody got permanently injured during this that you know of?
ROSS: Permanently physically injured. Some would argue there’s a mentally damage.
O’REILLY: So in all 14 cases, coerced interrogation methods, being debated in the Senate right now, were used. And in all 14 cases, according to your report, they gave it up.
Now the opposition, you just heard it. Human Rights Watch, ACLU, they say it’s garbage. They told them what they want to hear. It wasn’t truthful. Is that true?
ROSS: That has happened in some cases where the material that’s been given has not been accurate, has been essentially to stop the torture.
In the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the information was very valuable, particularly names and addresses of people who were involved with al Qaeda in this country and in Europe.
And in one particular plot, which would involve an airline attack on the tallest building in Los Angeles, known as the Library Tower.
O’REILLY: Well, in fact, you say in your report that more than a dozen plots, a dozen al Qaeda plots to kill people were stopped because of the information they got from coerced interrogation?
ROSS: That’s what we were told by sources.
O’REILLY: Do you believe that?
ROSS: I do believe that.
Salamantis on May 11, 2008 at 12:31 AM
This is a good point. Are the Democrat candidates prattling out detailed explanations of exactly how they intend to torture and/or coddle terrorists?
Remember the good old days, when the “McCain is the Manchurian Candidate” meme was just another crazy Vast Right Wing Conspiracy Theory? Now, McCain is using his own post-traumatic stress syndrome as the basis of his intelligence gathering policy.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s a tragedy that he has the problem in the first place. But there is NO EXCUSE for publically admitting it. That’s just plain stupid.
Aside from giving terrorists moral support, this is politically retarded. It leaves Obama free to take the most terrorist-friendly stance imaginable, but just tack onto the end a quick: “…But - unlike my opponent - if the worst-case scenario did somehow come to pass, then I would do whatever it takes to save American lives!”
logis on May 11, 2008 at 12:32 AM
We should, like every other country, lie and claim that we will never use “torture” (which means too many different things to too many different people to have any real meaning).
And then simply do what is necessary, when extreme circumstances arise, to secure the information needed to defend our nation properly.
Is it torture to scare a prisoner by yelling at them to stop throwing their sh*t at their Gitmo guards?
The “War is not the answer!”/surrender-now/AmeriKKKa Last!/COEXIST crowd hate everything the U.S. does in self-defense, so anything (except curling up in a ball and dying) would be construed as a black mark and used as propaganda in the worst possible light.
We would never be able to fight using their self-gelding standards.
McCain, one hopes, is being a Machiavellian b.s. artist and pragmatist, throwing sops to the suicidally stupid and willing to crack terrorists’ nuts in the backroom if need be, in an emergency.
No one had ever tried to follow the Geneva Conventions but the U.S. (The Nazis and Japanese and Soviets, etc., tortured and and killed -and sometimes NEVER RELEASED- prisoners when it suited their cyncial goals.)
Our decency has gotten us only grief because our enemies take it as weakness, and our internal critics use our willingness to listen to criticism as a tool to undermine America, which they ludicrously and delusionally considered “a hegomonic and imperialistic terrorist state”.
If the 20th hijacker could have been waterboarded into foiling 9/11, who would have said:
“Jeepers, we’ll lose the moral highground.”
I think the real highground to remember is the one that those leaping from 100 stories up in the burning World Trade center faced.
Because of this pantywaisted handwringing over “torture”, sworn enemies of our nation have been idiotically released from Gitmo, and have returned to the Jihad and to killing our people.
I’d like to see those who petioned for the release of these maniacs replace those terrorists in their same cells.
(As much as it would torture them, I wouldn’t lose a REM wink over them.)
profitsbeard on May 11, 2008 at 12:44 AM
What we have here is the inability to dispassionately evaluate the issue, and allow our natural squeamishness and revulsion to emotionally overwhelm our intellects, so that we fail to do what must be done to save lives. The fact that we have this weakness is well known by the jihadists, they sneer at us for it, and they use it against us. The same cringing impulse that would compel some to consign thousands of our own civilian citizens, including women and children, to excruciating deaths, rather than to subject the bastard who planned their demise to a few minutes of temporary and non-damaging discomfort in order to extract from him the intel necessary to prevent such an atrocity, compels many of our citizenry to respond to infiltrating foreign Al Qaeda jihadis slaughtering Iraqi civilians, including women and children in order to inflate casualty counts, by having the urge to turn away, avert our eyes, withdraw, bug out, retreat, leave the scene, and get the pictures off our TV tubes - even if it means betraying and abandoning the Iraqi people, who have trusted us with their lives, freedoms, families and futures, to the untender mercies of the likes of Al Masri’s murderous mujaheddin and Iran’s proxy Mahdist militia, as long as the genocide happens out of our easily nauseated sight.
What we must bring to bear here is a minimax cost-benefit analysis of the consequnces, both of our actions, and of our failure to act. If we precipitously withdraw from Iraq, we don’t have to continue to see the carnage on our TV screens…and yet millions, rather than thousands, of murders would most likely ensue; they’d just be out of our sight. Likewise, we can refuse to subject the terrorist mastermind in front of us to a practice - waterboarding - that we feel discomfort even witnessing, much less participating in, and try not to watch or read the news of the thousands of our fellow citizens who died because of our homicidal-by-default excess of emotional delicacy.
Salamantis on May 11, 2008 at 12:50 AM
No, you’re shifting the definition. In the last statements, Ross was referring to “coerced interrogation,” a very broad term which, by the definition used in the interview, encompasses a wide range of techniques ranging from the rather trivial (belly and chest slap, loud music) to the widely practiced (sleep deprivation) to water boarding. I don’t know of anyone who is arguing against all forms of coerced interrogation. As I’ve said, I myself am not particularly upset by the recourse to water-boarding in this exceptional instance: I just accept that for several reasons it’s not good policy.
In addition, we have Ross describing the method directly as torture, and so harsh that “no one can stand it for more than 20 to 30 seconds,” in contrast to others here and elsewhere who insist that it’s no big deal, hardly up to the level of fraternity hazing. Others have claimed that, once someone prepares for it, it’s unlikely to be effective. If they’re right, then that cat’s way out of the bag by now.
Ross states that water boarding broke KSM. He neither states nor pretends to know that KSM wouldn’t have broken the next hour, the next day, or the next week, without water boarding, or that the information he and others provided was so time-sensitive that if getting it had taken another day, week, or month, the plots wouldn’t still have been broken up. He doesn’t state or pretend to know whether water boarding would still be effective today. He doesn’t state or pretend to know whether other techniques never tried on the AQ captives were or have become available, and might have worked better.
There are some on the side of water boarding in particular who assert that it isn’t torture. There are others who accept that it’s torture, and who not only don’t care, but seem ready to graduate to the hot pokers, iron maidens, and rape rooms on a moment’s notice.
Neither group has responded to the larger issues regarding torture policy except to assert that anyone who recognizes any is some form of traitorous wimp. That’s not a discussion, that’s dancing in the dark.
CK MacLeod on May 11, 2008 at 1:03 AM
Who wanted to rape Khalid Sheik Mohammad?
I think you went over the p.c. hyperbole cliff there.
profitsbeard on May 11, 2008 at 1:28 AM
It could have been for his or someone else’s womenfolk, I suppose. Still leaves the question (actually one of several) unanswered by the big-talking torture groupies: Where do you stop? Who decides where you stop? How do you control it? If you’re willing to torture someone to save thousands, are you willing to torture a few people to save hundreds? Hundreds of people to save a few? And where do you begin - that is, how many suspects win the torture lottery? 14 extraordinary cases a decade? 14 a year? 14 a day? Non-citizens only? Adults only? Only when we’re already sure they’re guilty and have information? Only when we’re nearly sure? Only on suspicion? For the hell of it? Torture ‘em all and let God sort them out?
CK MacLeod on May 11, 2008 at 1:39 AM
The three most important subjects, the dyed-in-the-wool jihadist masterminds, were subjected to the other techniques to which you refer for weeks on end, and did not talk. There is no reason to believe that continuing failed tactics would have yielded success in a future soon enough for any intel obtained to have been of use, as it clearly was in their cases. The definition of insanity is to continue doing the same thing, while expecting a different result. It is quite certain that supplying them with tea and Qurans and making nice did not work; all they could see were Allah-condemned infidels whose murder would assure them a place in Paradise.
I am HAPPY that those three could not withstand a technique that works via fear (of drowning), not pain, and that does not cause any permanent damage. Those who have undergone the procedure state that the terror is total, and not amenable to personal control; this fact alone means that, except in the rarest of instances, it is highly unlikely that it could be ‘prepared for’. On the contrary; having undergone it previously would most likely highten the dread of a repetition, not lessen it, and this would work to enhance its effectiveness, not detract from it. Ramsi Binalshib reportedly spilled his guts after merely witnessing the procedure practiced on Khalid Shaykh Mohammed.
It really saddened me that the recent reported capture of Al Masri, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, was a misidentification. Many, many innocent Iraqi lives, and the lives of many of both our soldiers and theirs, could have been saved by waterboarding him, and rolling up the Al Qaeda networks and cells within Iraq that he could have divulged. Not to do so would have been to engage in murder by default, just as certainly as refusing to grab the hand of someone falling from a cliff, or refusing to restrain another who was about to push someone off a cliff.
I am here not urging that we engage in any of the techniques that Al Qaeda and the Mahdists have routinely used upon people, such as electrocuting genitals, gouging eyes out with spoons, crushing heads in vises, or drilling into joints; I am simply advocating that we employ the least painful, damaging and intrusive technique in our arsenal that is still effective - and that technique is waterboarding (I know of no other technique that is nearly as effective upon the strong-willed and uncooperative while inflicting so little damage or pain). I also grant that it is a technique that should be applied rarely, on only the most senior and knowledgeable of terrorist masterminds, but it should be employed upon them whether we have heard of ongoing terror plots associated with them or not. Just because we have not heard rumors of an impending terror attack does not mean that one isn’t in the offing. Likewise, the senior operatives are the ones in position to give up cells and networks, thus allowing us to prevent them from perpetrating such mass murder atrocities in the future, including those not yet being pursued, and those to which the operative might not be privy.
Salamantis on May 11, 2008 at 1:41 AM
CK MacLeod’s slippery slope argument cuts both ways; the logically entailed conclusion, in order to forfend progressing down such a primrose path, is to forbid anything that can be called torture by anyone, no matter what the stakes might be. Of course, such an absolutist stance, if taken to its logically entailed conclusion, could lead to the extinction of of us all, if someone had planted at time-released virus that would extinguish all humanity, and we were not willing to coercively interrogate them in order to prevent its release. Everyone would die - the terrorist, his captors, and everyone else - if such an absurd and nonsensical absolutist standard were upheld.
But to answer the previous question, if it would for certain save one innocent life, I would waterboard the guilty. The discomfort of the guilty dismays me quantums less than the death of the innocent. That’s just the way my ethics and morals orient me; I guess that those of some are travestously different.
Salamantis on May 11, 2008 at 1:50 AM
I’m already confused. The way I understand it, either I made a straw-man of your argument (i.e., false argument), or I have a valid point. Do you really think there is no advantage to coercive vs. non-coercive methods of interrogation?
Couple other points:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to argue that the GC influenced the Japanese to treat our prisoners more humanely than otherwise. But you say that “indiviidual Japanese commanders” acted more humanely. How can you attribute the actions of individuals to the GC? Many individual Japanese were educated in the West, and may have absorbed Western notions of morality. But it would seem that the Japanese would have to follow institutional humane policies (which they did not do) in order to claim that the GC had an effect. Same for Vietnamese et al.
Which seems to capture a theme with your posts: that our enemies have Western sensibilities. And yet they explicitly deny the legitimacy of Western civilization.
And you seemingly overlook the propaganda aspect. Just because our enemies, and those sympathetic to them, might think that we torture, is not persuasive, since we know that we don’t, nor does it affect their behavior. They aren’t being secretive about cutting off heads and clitorises.
Nothing personal, but my favorite law professor loved pointing out that when someone uses “clearly” or “obviously” to make an argument, that’s usually their weakest argument.
Why is waterboarding clearly torture? If it does no physical damage, leaves no physical scars, and doesn’t maim or permanently injure or kill someone, why is it torture? Every slope is slippery, why is waterboarding on the bad side of the slope?
Your examples of the slope that waterboarding will lead us down are all characterized by physical damage, scars, maiming or killing. Why is waterboarding torture?
misterpeasea on May 11, 2008 at 4:18 AM
Waterboarding also works by inflicting psychological terror, not physical pain; that would also seem to militate against the torture definition.
Salamantis on May 11, 2008 at 4:54 AM
Torture, shmorture. Waterboarding is an interrogation technique designed to quickly extract information.
All those other methods are exactly the same, but for one tiny detail: they are the exact opposite. They aren’t designed to GET information; they are designed to GIVE information to people who might otherwise think about opposing the folks liberals call “Freedom Fighters,” or the rulers of what liberals refer to as “Workers’ Paradises.”
Liberals use the same argument about this that they use about capital punishment: execution is the same thing as murder.
Sure it is. Just like incarceration is the same thing as kidnapping, and fining is the same thing as stealing…
And collateral damage is terrorism; and free enterprise is greed; etc., etc…
Because, for the people who live in Moral Equivalency Land, everything is the same as everything else.
logis on May 11, 2008 at 5:07 AM
“If it’s relevant to this discussion, it may be so in the sense that it illustrates how exceptional cases will tend to be treated: The Army for very practical, life and death reasons doesn’t endorse such actions as policy, but it also doesn’t subject people who engage in them to harsh punishment.”
The Colonel who fired the gun close to the ratbag was not allowed to stay in the Army. His options for working outside th army are severely limited.
Anyone attacking torture will win everytime. Torture just doesn’t sound nice whatever the reason. Anyone supporting coercive measures cannot win an argument over whether torture or coercive measures is acceptable for whatever reason.
By the way, it is my understanding that the GC and the UN rights conventions forbid any form of psychological persuasion. No lying either.
davod on May 11, 2008 at 6:10 AM
As a logician all things must be seen exactly as they are and you dogsoldier have just archived a checkmate.
Holmes on May 11, 2008 at 6:25 AM
At the end of the day, if we want to become the scum we are fighting, than lets just call it a day and give up the ghost of a decent society.
Squid Shark on May 11, 2008 at 8:05 AM
Psychological persuasion is most certainly allowed under GC.
Squid Shark on May 11, 2008 at 8:07 AM
Like Nancy Pelosi said, Go ahead and break the law , we wont prosecute you. Uh huh , ok Nancy, sure. Want to ask the Haditha MARINES how much they trust you??
Rick554 on May 11, 2008 at 10:04 AM
That’s because there’s too much PC and not enough GSP (George S. Patton).
In your opinion. Depends on how it is explained and the reasons for it.
:rolls eyes:
eanax on May 11, 2008 at 10:45 AM
I agree with you, vehemently, and call McCain on this. To me, this is an instance of him pandering for votes, just like hiring freaking Juan Hernandez. We all know it’s a game, and it’s not what we want to hear from the supposed pro-American grownup in the race.
He’s running his campaign like Bush did against Gore, each trying for the same voter segments, when he should be running a policy campaign ala Gingrich and leading us out of this mess. The choice between him and Obama is stark; no frothy sentiments like his about “torture” will change that.
PattyJ on May 11, 2008 at 11:14 AM
Or, we can swing the other way, define all forceful interrogation as “torture” and gain little information which can be used against our enemies in order to protect ourselves. That way we eventually won’t have to worry about the type of society we are because we won’t have any choice in the matter.
a capella on May 11, 2008 at 11:57 AM
I believe with your “coke and a smoke and a chat” comment you were trying to be sarcastic, suggesting that it’s laughable to think that what you call “non-coercive” methods might be preferable or more effective than coercive ones.
It’s my understanding - based on wide reading and very limited interaction with professionals and their subjects - that interrogation for intelligence purposes is typically a complex and time-consuming project.
To make a long story short, if you can give an unimaginably bored, isolated, hopeless individual a little bit of hope, a little taste of pleasure or home - a coke, a smoke, a chat partner, if he’s cooperative - most of the time he’ll talk to you. Once he’s talked to you a little, he’ll talk to you a lot. Once he’s said something, he can be questioned about it. Once he’s talking, he’ll reveal things about himself, including vulnerabilities that can be approached from other angles and at other times. He may also start telling you things without realizing it. Sometimes the interviewer may not realize the value of a tidbit until much later, maybe when questioning someone else, or when re-questioning.
On the other hand, once you’ve maimed (or killed) a guy, or truly “broken” him, it can get (rather) difficult to question him effectively about anything. He may become incapable of cooperating, or he may be so desperate to cooperate that he’ll tell you anything, or he may for all intents and purposes have lost his mind.
Again, we’re not privy to all of the details, but I strongly suspect that the water boarding sessions with the AQ leaders were highly choreographed for the sake of climactic effect on the subjects, and that what the subjects revealed still had to be embedded within a larger intelligence tapestry woven together over time. I don’t think even the strongest proponents of that technique or other coercive ones think they’re simple magic bullets, as in “water board the bad guy - save the world - celebrate.”
On the other issues:
I don’t see what’s hard to understand about this. Even the most rigidly totalitarian society consists of diverse individuals with divergent opinions and sensibilities. Some Japanese were extremely hostile to Western morality and influence. Others, for a range of reasons, felt differently. The Geneva Conventions and related laws were one expression of the Western moral consensus, and Japan had itself officially subscribed to it (in large part) at a very recent point in its history.
In a large country, no matter how inward-looking and totalitarian, there will be many individuals susceptible to external or dissident viewpoints. If those viewpoints aren’t ever advanced in the first place, then there’s nothing for them to be susceptible to.
In more recent times, to cite a parallel example, the Soviets made a propagandistic gesture in signing the Helsinki Human Rights Agreements of the ’70s. The dissidents of the Eastern Bloc were later able to use those agreements to advance their own cause, including by exerting influence on members of the Communist Party.
I still see people posting the totally a-historical and simplistic view that only the US ever followed the Geneva Conventions, with possible exceptions. It’s just false. The US never perfectly followed the GCs (no one has or could - they’re too generalized and debatable), and even flagrant violators have chosen or been compelled to follow them, appeal to them, or explain themselves in relation to them.
Even Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, the most flagrant violators of every imaginable civilized rule of warfare, sought to portray itself as a protector of civilians and prisoners. Individual Iraqi military and non-military officials could as a result be pressured, and prisoners could be cared for, reached, and freed.
In Bosnia, when the Serb forces used captive soldiers as human shields, even they were eventually forced to relent, in part after recognizing the damage done to their cause in the court of world opinion. Eventually, however, such excesses against uniformed military and of course against civilians were critical in rallying international opposition to them, including military opposition.
There are a host of such examples. The Romans used to kill Christians for sport, and laughed at Christian beliefs and ethics. Eventually, the entire state was converted to Christianity.
“They” are not a monolithic block. Neither are “we.” If we assume that everyone who has ever been sympathetic to terrorists can only be destroyed, never influenced to change, then we better get ready to kill several hundred million people, just as a beginning point.
I personally put water boarding right on the edge. I don’t believe that a working definition of “torture” can exclude psychological damage, risk of injury and death rather than certainty of same, etc. (Someone in ill health or with a relatively excessive fear of drowning might be killed or permanently hurt by water boarding.)
I think it’s certainly a kind of torture, for instance, to take someone’s loved ones and abuse them before the subject’s eyes, even though the subject of the interrogation may himself not be physically harmed at all.
I don’t personally want to define torture down to the point that dealing with intermittently hostile or vexing posts on complex subjects on Hot Air qualifies as “torture,” but I think water boarding is closer to the rubber hose (hurts a lot, doesn’t necessarily leave marks) or thumb screws or burying you up to your neck or denying you food and water, etc., than it is to making you explain yourself on an internet message board.
CK MacLeod on May 11, 2008 at 1:33 PM
To be a liberal is to be a subjectivist. And the only goal of the subjective mind is to feel good about one’s self.
Let’s face it, stopping bad guys is a very hard and dirty business. Sticking your head in the sand is an awful lot easier. The end result of liberalism may be horrific, but many people would prefer to not think about such unpleasant things - so they don’t.
logis on May 11, 2008 at 2:09 PM
There has been a pretty clear standard for a hundred years.
Squid Shark on May 11, 2008 at 2:21 PM
Thanks for the lesson, I am well aware of the dangers we face. But I submit that torture supporters are the ones being relativists, saying that because they are cruel we must be cruel. I worry that my children will grow up not thinking that America is not a Shining City on a Hill.
Squid Shark on May 11, 2008 at 2:36 PM
Agreed. Some things should happen out of sight without public discourse.
Now you’re soundling like a wingnut. Why don’t you go on a countryside tour of Laos and tell all the amputatee kids and their families that their suffering was worth it because Kissinger had to go to toe with the evil commies to prove American toughness… but by the way, Americans are really the good guys. It’s amazing that people in that country aren’t filled with hatred toward Americans and turning out scores of suicide bobmers.
bayam on May 11, 2008 at 5:03 PM
Sure. Liberal self-loathing is the only thing saving America from the endless hatred you feel is rightfully due it because America evily interfered with the world’s free and willing coalescence into a giant “Workers’ Paradise” - for absolutely no reason other than the mindless blood-lust of some evil capitalist oppressors.
Collectivism wasn’t just some lame-brained economic theory debunked a hundred years ago — it is a religion. And make no mistake: liberals are NEVER going to forgive those of us who are infidels to their faith.
All that “moral equivalency” claptrap is nothing but a big smokescreen. Liberals don’t for one second equate America with dictators and terrorists. Deep down inside, they honest-to-God believe we are the source of all evil in the world.
logis on May 11, 2008 at 5:24 PM
Do you think that General Pershing was wrong in his approach to fighting terrorism? He stopped it for many years.
Johan Klaus on May 11, 2008 at 6:57 PM
I worry that my great grandchildren could grow up under Sharia law, because we allowed it to happen.
a capella on May 11, 2008 at 7:24 PM
When Laos turns capitalist you can move there and tell everyone how wonderful it is to live in a country that’s best described as a massive mindfield that kills hundreds of civilians every year thanks to your hero Kissinger’s secret war.
bayam on May 11, 2008 at 7:26 PM
Here’s what happens when we allow own-country-loathing politicians to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/wehner/827
Salamantis on May 11, 2008 at 7:49 PM
Did’nt Kennedy get the U.S. involved in the war in southeast Asia?
Johan Klaus on May 11, 2008 at 9:02 PM
Not torturing prisoners is not going to lead to Sharia law, but whatever helps you sleep better at night.
Squid Shark on May 11, 2008 at 10:17 PM
Being sucessful does not make it right.
Also Phillipine Insurrection does not equal Jihadi nutjobs.
Squid Shark on May 11, 2008 at 10:19 PM
There is one reason, and one reason only, that we’re even talking about torture today — and that is that the Democrats wanted something they could use to take the high moral ground when addressing Republicans. They knew all about rendition. They approved it. They knew all about waterboarding. They approved it. But they wanted to sound pure (the opposite of what they actually are) so they invented a moral absolute, that however civilly we treat our prisoners, we must treat them even more civilly than that.
So, now candidate McCain has to take a ridiculous position on something we’ve never used as a policy, but have always had available. There isn’t another nation that treats its prisoners as well as the US. But the Democrats, those supercilious prigs, have inflicted yet another instance of their twisted, self-righteous faux principles on us all, simply so they could have one more club with which to beat the President while telling everybody “We are holier than thou.”
Self-righteous people are dangerous people, and the more so if the rest of the populace has lost the ability to dismiss their posturing. A wise nation would snort and ignore; because our nation has become unwise, we’re debating nonsense.
I, for one, find it appalling that I would have to come up with some sort of clever argument to defend the notion that I’m as morally sound as Nancy Pelosi, or worse, as Hillary Clinton. These are some of the most morally disgusting human beings on the planet. How did we let ourselves get into this fix?
philwynk on May 11, 2008 at 10:48 PM
just curious, do you believe that abortion is murder?
crr6 on May 12, 2008 at 1:26 AM
bayam at 5:03 PM-
The fact that absurd overkill is sometimes used during wartime (sowing mines …in Laos or anywhere…that have no time-sensitive, self-extinguishing fuses) is not the point.
Technology already existed to construct munitions’ fuses that would become inert after any chosen time period (whether 6 hours or 6 months or 6 years). I have been in favor of them, and deplore the indiscriminate use of “always live” bombs/mines/ etc.
That our military and government are brutally ineffective and imperfect, at times, is hardly to excuse the opposition’s claims that “America is the real source of all world terrorism/evil”.
Propaganda memes that the the anti-U.S. p.c. cadres indulge in.
They do not reasonably criticize our specific mistakes or “sins” as unique failings and tactical follies and human idiocies , but presume that they are systematic signs of the utter corruption that underlies the nation.
Destructive, not constructive criticism, is their forte.
Exaggerating waterboarding beyond its real injury (psychological panic) or calling nude Abu Ghraib body pyramids or placing panties on the heads of prisoners or barking dogs the immoral equal of jihadis sawing off someone head on video for deliberate terroristic effect renders their moral equivalencies polemically suspect and stuptifyingly dishonest.
We weigh and self-criticize our failings and try to balance survival with necessary evils like placing a captive terrorist under psychological (via some physical) duress.
The militant Islamofascist enemy, meanwhile, glories in the torture of captives.
We are not proud to pressure prisoners, but cringe that it may need to be done.
They are thrilled that they have crushed an infidel dogs, and slaughtered him in the most horrific manner posssible, publically humiliating and desecrating his body -and spirit.
I don’t think the slope is as slippery as you fear.
But I do think the enemy is more than willing to cunningly exploit of fear of “becoming like them” and use it to destroy us during our moments of hesitancy and self-paralysis.
profitsbeard on May 12, 2008 at 1:30 AM
How convenient to forget the reason for the US incursion into Laos.
davod on May 12, 2008 at 5:02 AM
Number 1: No declared War thus no Geneva convention
Number 2: Terrorist do not belong to any signee country of the Geneva Convention. They are from a number of different countries. They do not wear the uniform of a country the is party to the Geneva convention. (a major historical example here are spies…they don’t where uniforms and they are not covered by the Geneva convention)
Number 3: Historically, the Geneva convention has not prevented any country from torturing or soldiers.
McCain is a RINO, what else can be said!
Golfer_75093 on May 12, 2008 at 8:59 AM
Values are worthless to a dead man. Waterboard away.
Spanglemaker on May 12, 2008 at 9:19 AM
Pansies. Every single one of you who would oppose the use of ANY force necessary against a terrorist animal to save the lives of loved ones and countrymen. Pansies and pussies. You folks need to man up. What the hell is wrong with you pantywaists? Esto vir.
Charles Martel on May 12, 2008 at 11:56 AM
There are two reasons - if you count the fact that John McCain has no practical experience at opposing Democrats
Did somebody say “slippery slope?”
What do you mean, “we?” John McCain is the guy who’s blabbering himself into a bottomless pit here.
We conservatives need to focus our soul-searching on what we did through last February. To wit: how in the Hell did we let this dipwad become the Republican Nominee? For all practical purposes, we’re completely out of the loop now. John McCain isn’t listening to our advice any more than than Barak Obama is.
logis on May 12, 2008 at 3:14 PM
Waterboarding isn’t torture and to call it such is to diminish real torture.
Real torture is
cuttinghacking off someone’s head with a dull sword.Real torture involves burning, cutting off body parts, severe beatings, etc. The list is long and grewsome.
Nowhere on that list should be seen “put panties on head” “play loud rap music” “keep them awake” “make them uncomfortable” “make them do stupid naked dogpile tricks so we can take pictures of them”.
Not waterboarding terrorists when necessary isn’t going to win the hearts and minds of our enemies. They will only view that as weakness. It won’t stop one act of real torture against our troops or civilians anywhere in the world.
Anyone who can’t see the difference needs to take a step back and really think about this. If you don’t get it, you don’t understand our enemy, but they do understand you.
My oldest son is looking to deploy to Iraq early next year. So I have skin in the game.
I don’t view this topic as some kind of parlor exercise. It’s for keeps.
TheCulturalist on May 12, 2008 at 4:45 PM
McCain makes the mistake of comparing himself (and our men), to captured Iraqi soldiers and politicians.
I guarantee if you captured any regular marine, and captured Pelosi; Pelosi would spill her guts out before the interrogator finished the question. The marine will give out info, but nothing useful, and if so after a long “battle” with the interrogator.
McCain gave false info because he was trained, these top Iraqi guys are essentially politicians, they need to be coerced to tell what they know.
The sad part is, McCain knows the information received from these guys was invaluable.
right2bright on May 13, 2008 at 9:40 AM
A lot of that idiocy happened precisely because our leadership was too chickenshit to do interrogations RIGHT. So the guards were left with vague “don’t ask, don’t tell” instructions about how to get information - and absolutely no training.
And that was with BUSH running things. With somebody like Clinton, McCain or Obama in charge, who knows what kind of crap will be going on?
logis on May 13, 2008 at 3:33 PM
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