Video: UAE sheikh tortures grain dealer for shortchanging him

Another mess I have to clean up. Lovely.

ckoeber:

I don’t get it.

How can you use this video as a defense of torture under the Bush administration?

Um, perhaps because the Sheik here is doing FAR worse than waterboarding to a grain merchant, NOT because he is a national threat, NOT because he plotted to conquer the UAE, but because he SHORTCHARGED him. And by the way, do we have any confirmation that the merchant actually shortcharged him as opposed to simply one word against another?

This man is violently hammering a nail into a man who did nothing warranting more than a prison sentence- if it is true- and if that.

There was nothing at stake here safe for a Sheik’s change and his ego.

Compare THAT to KSM.

It’s a moral issue.

And the thing with moral issues is that you must pick under what circumstances you will do something, if ever. So we can both agree that the Sheik’s actions- which were torture for simple sadism- were unwarrented? Well, what if the person being tortured were-say- a German general who had the plans to the upcoming Ardennes Offensive that, if not stopped, could claim hundreds of thousands of lives and open the way back to a German Westward thrust? And that is a real example.

You pick up videos of torture to defend the use of torture.

What sense does that make?

Um, by defending against allegations that we are NO BETTER than our opponents, and that we use torture wantonly?

OK, so this video is to show what real torture looks like?

It is a video of what one FORM of Torture looks like. Big difference.

No one has even seen what our “harsh interrogation sessions” look like to compare.

More accurately, nobody’s seen who has a reason to be accurate about it.

This video just reaffirms that torture is bad.

Yes it is, and unlike some here, I define torture far more loosely than most (according to me, it is the deliberate and systematic inflicting of pain on a captive subject to achieve an end), it is sometimes a necessary evil. Which is worse, waterboarding- hell, doing THIS- to KSM or letting the “Second Wave” attacks claim dozens of thousands? It all depends.

Torture is a valuable but very dark tool. And that is why we must always be careful in allowing its use. But sometimes use it we must.

Which is why an investigation is warranted, isn’t it?

Yes, but NOT RIGHT NOW.

we kept the lid on radar during WWII silent up until the very day of the Japanese surrender, and we kept shut up on things like the Coastwatchers, enigma, and the Purple Code for ever longer. And I don’t doubt we are keeping some things silent even now.

You DON’T conduct open investigations when it can damage a war effort and cost lives.

I don’t understand. You should be clamoring for an investigation.

And when the tide of Jihadism is curbed, WE WILL. When we actually have something to REPLACE what we are using now, WE WILL. But not until then.

If Bush did everything right to defend this country then he should be vindicated with these investigations.

The problem is that we have two different defentions of “everything right,” and god knows what definition the kooks on Washington have.

Because, like it or not, to win a war you must do unpleasant things. Some- like the Germans and Russians of the World Wars- do not really care about these petty little destinctions and do anything they can to win. For the rest of us, we must balance between winning the war and keeping our morals intact. But we must realize that while we may occasionally do the unsavory, to loose conflicts of these proportions is to LOOSE what we fight for, not only on the battlefront but also in these internal ethnics issues.

But you cannot realize that. And that is why such simple, cut-and-dry people such as yourselves would have NEVER had the strength to drive back the hordes of the Reichstag, the Kremlin, the Chrysanthemum Throne, or Peking.

The investigations would backfire on us and we would look bad. Instead, you are fighting investigations tooth and nail.

Why is that?

Because we are dealing with stupid, short-sighted individuals such as yourself who will hang the West and the millions of innocents across the world out to die in the name of Quixotic foolishness dressed up as ethics in the MIDDLE OF A WAR?

I am assuming you are referring to Prisons or military boot-camps as a reference point behind your questions. In the case of Prisons, people are generally tried in a court of law with representation provided or obtained by the defendant.

Um, the problem is that captured terrorists are not criminals. By the Geneva Convention, any caught fighting on the field of battle in violation of Geneva can be executed legally. Needless to say, we only keep them alive by our MERCY and our need for intel.

In the case of military boot-camps, an enlistee voluntarily joins the service under the presumption that there would be rigorous training and exercises.

But did the guilty in Gitmo not VOLUNTEER to take up arms against this nation and the West? Were they not usually caught on the battlefield in defiance of International Law? While some may be innocent, you fail to deal with those who certainly aren’t.

In the case of the detainees, there were neither. We wanted information from the detainees.

Well, consider it a trade: we get a chance at intel, they get to keep drawing breath after violating international law.

So, as for the question itself, my answer is that for any forced activity it must be confined to the set of laws that we have created.

The second is false. We want to have a better understanding of why a system of torture was put in place which was never done before in the history of the United States.

You REALLY don’t realize what we did in WWI, WWII, and the Cold War, do you?

theloms:

Allah, I think you’ve done a great job on torture posts, but this is just not fair to the other side, and it’s a mischaracterization of the debate. You will find very few people saying this is exactly the same.

Conceded.

What you will find are people who say that torture is a absolutely wrong morally, whether it’s what the CIA has done or whether it’s something like this.

Ah yes, not these uber-pacifists again.

It’s similar to abortion opponents who say that abortion is the same as murder.

Which I will declare it sometimes is, but often isn’t.

Pointing out the differences between a cruel, torturous murder and an abortion does not invalidate that position, which is that taking life is morally wrong no matter what form it takes.

No, what DOES invalidate it is pointing out that such moralities would advise all of us to throw ourselves into the furnaces of Auschwitz rather than do any harm to the nice SS/Gestapho/NKVD/KGB/etc people attempting to kill us.

The fallacy of such morality becomes clear when some try to apply it to men like Bismarck, Hitler, Ludendorff, Mao, Tojo, Eichmann, Beria, and Himmler.

If one has the chance to strike down one of these monsters and doesn’t simply because “taking life is morally wrong no matter what form it takes,” than that is a crime against their past and future victims.

Turtler on April 27, 2009 at 9:16 PM