So. . . . that torture thingie.

Xelebes said:

Check the math. 38.8% (Domestic) + 7.5% (South Ally) + 15.1% (North Ally) = 61.4%.

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Yeah but you're getting that figure because you're treating domestic oil and oil from nearby allies as a single category. Wasn't Kuwi listing them as separate categories?

It's a minor point, admittedly, but I realized that Montoya is in the right here and I may never get another chance to say that.

kuwisdelu said:

It's not as if I don't know the various ways people justify it.

I was saying that if we don't have some kind of moral high ground, then we're basically just a bully.

I guess that's okay with some people, but many of those same people also posture about how America is so great.

Can't have it both ways.

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But how many people who think the US is great would concede that the US doesn't have a moral high ground of some kind, or would use the word bully as a descriptor?

To me, it's more an issue of not being able to agree on the premises, not so much an issue of inconsistency.

Michael Wolfe said:

It's a minor point, admittedly, but I realized that Montoya is in the right here and I may never get another chance to say that.

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Gather ye roses while ye may, Michael.

Michael Wolfe said:

But how many people who think the US is great would concede that the US doesn't have a moral high ground of some kind, or would use the word bully as a descriptor?

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No, but then we could at least have a sensible debate about whether our use of torture is moral or justified.

The "torture may not be moral but it's war so I don't care" position isn't very fruitful when it comes to useful discussion.

kuwisdelu said:

No, but then we could at least have a sensible debate about whether our use of torture is moral or justified.

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I really don't think it hinges on that. If someone conceded that torture presents an impediment for the US in having a moral high ground, I don't think that same person would argue that torture is moral. So there would be no debate at all, let alone a sensible one.

The "torture may not be moral but it's war so I don't care" position isn't very fruitful when it comes to useful discussion.

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No doubt.

Michael Wolfe said:

I really don't think it hinges on that. If someone conceded that torture presents an impediment for the US in having a moral high ground, I don't think that same person would argue that torture is moral. So there would be debate at all, let alone a sensible one.

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No, I assume they would argue torture doesn't present such an impediment. But then the debate would still at least be about whether torture is moral or justified, which is what this thread was originally about.

kuwisdelu said:

No, I assume they would argue torture doesn't present such an impediment.

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Originally you were talking about someone who concedes that it does.

Go back a bit…

It's not as if I don't know the various ways people justify it.

I was saying that if we don't have some kind of moral high ground, then we're basically just a bully.

I guess that's okay with some people, but many of those same people also posture about how America is so great.

Can't have it both ways.

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If there is someone who is "okay" with the US not having a moral high ground, then obviously they wouldn't need to argue that torture is somehow not an impediment in that regard.

Later on, I said…

But how many people who think the US is great would concede that the US doesn't have a moral high ground of some kind, or would use the word bully as a descriptor?

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And you said…

No, but then we could at least have a sensible debate about whether our use of torture is moral or justified.

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I took the "but then" to mean "in the case of that happening", meaning in the case of someone conceding that the US didn't have a moral high ground.


Maybe you misspoke or I misunderstood?



In any case, I think it's clear that there's a much larger problem here. You want this to be about whether torture is moral. Obviously you can't have a sensible debate about whether torture is moral if no one is willing to take the view that it's moral. But, you know, people can take whatever position they want. Maybe it's frustrating that someone can agree with the axiom that torture isn't moral yet draw a different set of conclusions, but no one is going to change their given framework just to make a conversation about what you want it to be about.

If you think someone's position isn't fruitful for discussion, then that should be the end of it, no?

This thread has been going around in circles for days. Why stop now?

Andreas_Montoya said:

That's because I don't choose to participate in the race baiting topics. They simply don't interest me. The "cheap shot" dragging police departments into this thread was that in fact torture has been used against me by a police department.

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The personal horror stories/anecdotes aside, the subject of torture by police is irrelevant to this topic.

Andreas_Montoya said:

I won't list all of the topics I have posted in for you, you are the one making accusations. You can look those up yourself.

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Oh, don't concern yourself. No need for you to list anything for me. I already know all the topics you have posted in. While you proclaim your disinterest in participating in race-baiting, there isn't a similar inclination to not participate in gay-baiting.

You stay inflamed about race enough for the two of us.

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Thanks for noticing. But then the person who isn't inflamed about race probably doesn't even notice there's smoke.

Andreas_Montoya said:

And yes, I'll take popcorn with my executions.

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Should be quite the show.

Detainees were forced to stand on broken limbs for hours, kept in complete darkness, deprived of sleep for up to 180 hours, sometimes standing, sometimes with their arms shackled above their heads.

Prisoners were subjected to “rectal feeding” without medical necessity. Rectal exams were conducted with “excessive force”. The report highlights one prisoner later diagnosed with anal fissures, chronic hemorrhoids and “symptomatic rectal prolapse”.

The report mentions mock executions, Russian roulette. US agents threatened to slit the throat of a detainee’s mother, sexually abuse another and threatened prisoners’ children. One prisoner died of hypothermia brought on in part by being forced to sit on a bare concrete floor without pants.

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Be sure to pop enough to share with Evil Dick Cheney while you're both enjoying the rectal hydration show.

Andreas_Montoya said:

We didn't start this war.

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But we're in it and getting out of it isn't as easy as getting into it.

Andreas_Montoya said:

How do you get around? A horse? The US has a vested interest in the areas we go to war mainly because we are not allowed to drill for our own oil.

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Yeah, that's a crock.

The U.S. will remain the world’s biggest oil producer this year after overtaking Saudi Arabia and Russia as extraction of energy from shale rock spurs the nation’s economic recovery, Bank of America Corp. said.

U.S. production of crude oil, along with liquids separated from natural gas, surpassed all other countries this year with daily output exceeding 11 million barrels in the first quarter, the bank said in a report today. The country became the world’s largest natural gas producer in 2010. The International Energy Agency said in June that the U.S. was the biggest producer of oil and natural gas liquids.

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Andreas_Montoya said:

When the entire stability of the oil producing regions of the world is threatened, the US gets involved.

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it sure has. The U.S. has involved itself in Middle East affairs for decades with both positive and negative consequences.

Andreas_Montoya said:

You can't have it both ways. I say drill here and let them go on killing each other as they have for thousands of years.

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That's not going to work.

Retreating into isolationism will not extricate America from its involvement in the Middle East mess. It does not serve the national interest of the United States to allow radical Islamic states to bloom unchecked in Iraq, Syria and Libya or to abandon Israel to its hostile neighbors or to indulge in the empty illusion the U.S. can simply drill its way to energy independence.

The U.S. can try to close its eyes and shut its ears to the potential threats coming out of the Middle East, but deafness and blindness won't protect the country from future 9/11 events. The forces that hate America the most will not forget about us no matter how much we want to forget about them.

Michael Wolfe said:

Maybe you misspoke or I misunderstood?

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Oy vey. By "that" I meant the overall situation in which we torture and get involved in unnecessary wars, in which I consider us a bully, and sure they may disagree with that assessment, but... oh forget it, this is going around in circles and getting extremely pointless. What I meant doesn't really matter.

If you think someone's position isn't fruitful for discussion, then that should be the end of it, no?

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It took until now to figure out what that position even was.

kuwisdelu said:

oh forget it, this is going around in circles and getting extremely pointless.

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It's not completely pointless. At least it's good exercise.

CassandraW said:

It's not completely pointless. At least it's good exercise.

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I don't think it'll cause me to lose any weight, so I doubt it.

kuwisdelu said:

I don't think it'll cause me to lose any weight, so I doubt it.

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I burn off a lot of calories cussing before I can type reasonably polite replies. YMMV, of course.

kuwisdelu said:

Oy vey. By "that" I meant the overall situation in which we torture and get involved in unnecessary wars, in which I consider us a bully, and sure they may disagree with that assessment, but... oh forget it, this is going around in circles and getting extremely pointless. What I meant doesn't really matter.

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oy vey is right.

It took until now to figure out what that position even was.

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I thought it was pretty clear pages ago.

Michael Wolfe said:

I thought it was pretty clear pages ago.

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I guess I'm just slow.

CassandraW said:

This thread has been going around in circles for days. Why stop now?

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I think it has run it's course.

nighttimer said:

The personal horror stories/anecdotes aside, the subject of torture by police is irrelevant to this topic.



Oh, don't concern yourself. No need for you to list anything for me. I already know all the topics you have posted in. While you proclaim your disinterest in participating in race-baiting, there isn't a similar inclination to not participate in gay-baiting.



Thanks for noticing. But then the person who isn't inflamed about race probably doesn't even notice there's smoke.

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Torture is the topic so torture by the police as a personal experience is relevant.

Everything else you said is not relevant to the conversation though, but it sure took you a long time to say it.

I'm flattered that you hunted down all of my posts. Again, race baiting does not interest me, it serves no purpose. Your perceived "gay baiting" is also inaccurate. I was pointing out that the use of the word "homophobe" is as much of a slur as the terms used against gays, nice try though.

As far as being inflamed about race, it stops being about race when it becomes about free Air Jordans. Nothing quite says you want justice like looting and setting fire to innocent business owners shops, after you have stolen everything inside, right?

Not to interrupt this Really Fun! exchange of ad hominems, but yesterday, the NYT editorial board called for prosecution of the torturers and their bosses. A few noteworthy bits:

Mr. Obama has said multiple times that “we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards,” as though the two were incompatible. They are not. The nation cannot move forward in any meaningful way without coming to terms, legally and morally, with the abhorrent acts that were authorized, given a false patina of legality, and committed by American men and women from the highest levels of government on down.

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These are, simply, crimes. They are prohibited by federal law, which defines torture as the intentional infliction of “severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” They are also banned by the Convention Against Torture, the international treaty that the United States ratified in 1994 and that requires prosecution of any acts of torture.

So it is no wonder that today’s blinkered apologists are desperate to call these acts anything but torture, which they clearly were.

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In July 2002, C.I.A. lawyers told the Justice Department that the agency needed to use “more aggressive methods” of interrogation that would “otherwise be prohibited by the torture statute.” They asked the department to promise not to prosecute those who used these methods. When the department refused, they shopped around for the answer they wanted. They got it from the ideologically driven lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel, who wrote memos fabricating a legal foundation for the methods. Government officials now rely on the memos as proof that they sought and received legal clearance for their actions. But the report changes the game: We now know that this reliance was not made in good faith.

No amount of legal pretzel logic can justify the behavior detailed in the report. Indeed, it is impossible to read it and conclude that no one can be held accountable. At the very least, Mr. Obama needs to authorize a full and independent criminal investigation.

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Who should be on the hook, in their opinion?

any credible investigation should include former Vice President Dick Cheney; Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff, David Addington; the former C.I.A. director George Tenet; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, the Office of Legal Counsel lawyers who drafted what became known as the torture memos. There are many more names that could be considered, including Jose Rodriguez Jr., the C.I.A. official who ordered the destruction of the videotapes; the psychologists who devised the torture regimen; and the C.I.A. employees who carried out that regimen.

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Lastly, and most importantly, IMO:

Starting a criminal investigation is not about payback; it is about ensuring that this never happens again and regaining the moral credibility to rebuke torture by other governments.

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Indeed.

I wasn't able to read the article (I guess you only get a certain number of free articles per month), so apologies if I'm repeating anything.

In principle, I support prosecutions for torture, but there are some major obstacles that I see…

1. Obama (understandably) doesn't want to set a precedent that would apply to his own administration.

2. Prosecutions would have a low chance of obtaining convictions. If torturers are officially found not guilty by a court, that would be even more of a disaster than if they were never prosecuted to begin with.

3. Obama already invoked the state secrecy privilege to stop torture victims from using evidence of torture against government officials in civil cases. If state secrecy was such a trump card for those cases, how can Obama argue that it's not an issue for criminal cases?

Two alternatives:

1. Torturers could be prosecuted internationally. This is still unlikely though.

2. The most novel alternative I've seen suggested is for Obama to formally pardon everyone involved in torture. On the surface, this would seem like a pretty unappetizing option, but there is an important upside. Since prosecutions are so unlikely, in reality the only actual alternatives are a formal pardon or a tacit pardon. Realistically speaking, that's the totality of options. A formal pardon is far superior, since it establishes a clear precedent of criminality. After all, why the need for pardons if no crime was committed? Anthony Romero, head of the ACLU, supports a formal pardon under more or less the same reasoning.

Just some thoughts on the issue of prosecutions, fwiw.

Michael Wolfe said:

I wasn't able to read the article (I guess you only get a certain number of free articles per month), so apologies if I'm repeating anything.

In principle, I support prosecutions for torture, but there are some major obstacles that I see…

1. Obama (understandably) doesn't want to set a precedent that would apply to his own administration.

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Agree here, though ideally speaking, the best way to avoid that is to not authorize torturing people.

2. Prosecutions would have a low chance of obtaining convictions. If torturers are officially found not guilty by a court, that would be even more of a disaster than if they were never prosecuted to begin with.

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I don't think I agree with this - for one, I don't necessarily see a conviction as all that difficult, at least for some, but even if that's not the outcome, I do think a fair trial would be preferable to nothing. It at least brings what happened into daylight.

3. Obama already invoked the state secrecy privilege to stop torture victims from using evidence of torture against government officials in civil cases. If state secrecy was such a trump card for those cases, how can Obama argue that it's not an issue for criminal cases?

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Yeah, not a fan of him having done so.

Two alternatives:

1. Torturers could be prosecuted internationally. This is still unlikely though.

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There's a myth running around that Bush & co won't travel to Europe for fear of being arrested - while it's not (currently) true, I'd support an international trial. That said, I don't really see it happening (or any trial period), but I don't see us regaining any moral authority on the subject without it.

2. The most novel alternative I've seen suggested is for Obama to formally pardon everyone involved in torture. On the surface, this would seem like a pretty unappetizing option, but there is an important upside. Since prosecutions are so unlikely, in reality the only actual alternatives are a formal pardon or a tacit pardon. Realistically speaking, that's the totality of options. A formal pardon is far superior, since it establishes a clear precedent of criminality. After all, why the need for pardons if no crime was committed? Anthony Romero, head of the ACLU, supports a formal pardon under more or less the same reasoning.

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Interesting - on a visceral level, the thought of it sorta makes me ill, but more legally speaking, can a pardon be given without guilt having been established? Isn't that tantamount to retroactive immunity?

In any case, how would that satisfy anyone?

raburrell said:

Interesting - on a visceral level, the thought of it sorta makes me ill, but more legally speaking, can a pardon be given without guilt having been established? Isn't that tantamount to retroactive immunity?

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Do the Thanksgiving turkeys ever officially get charged with anything?

And yes, Ford pardoned Nixon to avoid the inevitable long, drawn-out trial.

raburrell said:

Interesting - on a visceral level, the thought of it sorta makes me ill, but more legally speaking, can a pardon be given without guilt having been established? Isn't that tantamount to retroactive immunity?

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Wouldn't the Ford pardon of Nixon be an example of that?

raburrell said:

Interesting - on a visceral level, the thought of it sorta makes me ill, but more legally speaking, can a pardon be given without guilt having been established? Isn't that tantamount to retroactive immunity?

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Ford did it with Nixon. So it can be done.

Actually, FWIW, Carter did it with the Vietnam draft evaders, too.

raburrell said:

I don't think I agree with this - for one, I don't necessarily see a conviction as all that difficult, at least for some, but even if that's not the outcome, I do think a fair trial would be preferable to nothing. It at least brings what happened into daylight.

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The problem I see is that a not guilty outcome would set a precedent for future administrations, making them more likely to consider using torture. After all, I don't think anyone facing prosecution is going to argue that they didn't do what they were accused of doing; rather they would argue that what they did was perfectly legal. If a court agrees, that's a huge problem, imo.

Interesting - on a visceral level, the thought of it sorta makes me ill, but more legally speaking, can a pardon be given without guilt having been established? Isn't that tantamount to retroactive immunity?

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I don't think it would be a problem, at least theoretically. Apparently Bush considered granting pardons to certain people involved with torture, but decided against it. (Probably for the same reason I'm in favor of it.)

In any case, how would that satisfy anyone?

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It's not necessarily satisfying, but it might be the best option, considering the fact that--realistically--I think the only other option would be nothing at all.

Haggis said:

Wouldn't the Ford pardon of Nixon be an example of that?

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Yep, sorry. Clearly need more coffee today.