Obama Kicks Bush Torturers in the Nuts

[Zoe]

Lemur866: The goal of fighting the war isn’t to kill people, it’s to win the war.

Using your own logic, if we don’t set a goal of winning a war to begin with, there won’t be any fighting and there won’t be any war to win.

George W. Bush stated a philosophy of war similar to what you posted when he participated in the first Presidential Debate in 2000:

I believe the role of the military is to fight and win war and therefore prevent war from happening in the first place.

In another direction, can Congress act on the prosecution of those responsible for the violations of the law(s) against torture?

[Captain_Carrot]

@Rand_Rover

Who in this thread has done that?

You, you [string of expletives deleted because of the wonderful Pit policy]. You keep saying ‘well, you say these practices are a horrible affront to the dignity of a human being and a blatant violation of the Constitution, and these guys being paid to justify it say it’s maybe not horrible, so it’s all just opinion and you guys are a bunch of poopyheads for saying it’s bad’. You have repeatedly defended their tortuous reasoning that the United States should torture, mostly because you refuse to believe that the feelings of any other person matter or even exist, because your hero, Ayn Rand, worshiped psychopaths and sociopaths.

[RedFury]

@Jack_Batty

If that’s true, is that even using the technique as it’s designed? As I understand it, waterboarding is supposed to fill the “subject” with a sense of imminent drowning. Color me cynical but after the first 20 or 30 times where I don’t drown, I think I might catch on.

Jack, it won’t matter how many times it is done for the response is a hard-wired survival instinct.

If you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend you read our own Scylla’s account of the experience.

Should that not be enough, read this expert’s take:

Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE)

There is No Debate Except for Torture Apologists

1. Waterboarding is a torture technique. Period. There is no way to gloss over it or sugarcoat it. It has no justification outside of its limited role as a training demonstrator. Our service members have to learn that the will to survive requires them accept and understand that they may be subjected to torture, but that America is better than its enemies and it is one’s duty to trust in your nation and God, endure the hardships and return home with honor.

2. Waterboarding is not a simulation. Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.

Waterboarding is a controlled drowning that, in the American model, occurs under the watch of a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a trained strap-in/strap-out team. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning. How much the victim is to drown depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim’s face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral.

More at source…

[gonzomax]

http://www.politicalaffairs.net/article/articleview/6038/ Japanese soldiers were found guilty of torture after WW2. They specifically were accused of beatings and water boarding. It was torture until we said, it is now not torture but merely enhanced interrogations. it is torture.
The latest story saying a prisoner was waterboarded 183 times in a month is ridiculous. That would be over 60 times a day. that would be impossible. That would be every 8 minutes night and day.

[The_Tooth]

No, it’d be around 6 times a day.

Not that that’s any better or anything, just easily accomplished.

[bmoak]

Might want to check your math there, gonzomax.

[Captain_Carrot]

Your math is doubly bad, dude. Even if it were 60 times in a day, that would be once every 24 minutes, not 8. In any case, it’s about 6 times per day* on average*, which is roughly every four hours on average.

[elucidator]

Well, glad we got that cleared up! Now, I am only about 60% as nauseated and heartsick as I might have been.

[Captain_Carrot]

@Captain_Carrot

Your math is doubly bad, dude. Even if it were 60 times in a day, that would be once every 24 minutes, not 8. In any case, it’s about 6 times per day* on average*, which is roughly every four hours on average.

Not that that makes this any better, of course, just pointing out that gonzomax is often wrong.

[elucidator]

Bless his heart, he means well.

[Ocean_Annie]

@Rand_Rover

Who in this thread has done that?

If I am wrong, please clarify. I thought you and others defended the state’s legal right to use torture on enemy combatants because it is an effective method to extract information. Should torture be legal for military interrogations?

[Guinastasia]

@RedFury

Jack, it won’t matter how many times it is done for the response is a hard-wired survival instinct.

If you haven’t done so already, I highly recommend you read our own Scylla’s account of the experience.

I think that’s one of the reasons I’ll always have respect for Scylla. (I may not agree with him politically, but damn, he certainly has balls.)

[Captain_Carrot]

@Guinastasia

I think that’s one of the reasons I’ll always have respect for Scylla. (I may not agree with him politically, but damn, he certainly has balls.)

Except that lately he’s become a whiny-ass anti-liberal drive-by-one-liner. And that’s when he’s having a good day.

[Guinastasia]

@Captain_Carrot

Except that lately he’s become a whiny-ass anti-liberal drive-by-one-liner. And that’s when he’s having a good day.

Which is a damned shame. Scylla’s always been one of my favorite posters-when he’s not talking politics, some of his stories are hilarious. (I always love hearing about his interactions with his kids)

[The_Tao_s_Revenge]

@Rand_Rover

Who in this thread has done that?

Since it isn’t torture would you be okay with your daughter being water boarded, dipped in a vat of bugs, banged head into wall, or shipped off Syria for beatings?
If you say no then why not? Keep in mind “innocent” doesn’t matter since there have been innocent victims of this torture.

Answer the question. I’ve asked you three times now. You’re being disingenuous.

[elucidator]

Trying to remember this, google fu is weak…

Either Kahlid Sheik Muhammed provided the info that fingered Abu Zabeda, or vice versa. At least I recall reading that. Anybody got thier finger on that cite, by chance?

And which one provided the “intel” that connected Saddam with AlQ?

“A wilderness of mirrors” in the words of professional paranoid James Jesus Angleton.

[Scylla]

@Captain_Carrot

Except that lately he’s become a whiny-ass anti-liberal drive-by-one-liner. And that’s when he’s having a good day.

I appreciate the compliment Guinistasia paid me. I resent the mischaracterization you’ve applied to me.

These are my last 750 posts:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/search.php?searchid=4256456&pp=25
It’s extremely rare that I make a single post in a thread. If I do, usually it’s MPSIMS or a joke.

I got up to # 125 looking for a “whiny-ass anti-liberal drive-by-one-liner” but didn’t find any.
Here are your last 750 posts:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/search.php?searchid=4256501&pp=25
I think I remember dismissing you as a dishonest and immature flaming left-wing nutjob. Now I remember why.

And yes, this will be a drive by. I don’t think you’re interesting or intelligent enough to engage further.

[Scylla]

@Guinastasia

Which is a damned shame. Scylla’s always been one of my favorite posters-when he’s not talking politics, some of his stories are hilarious. (I always love hearing about his interactions with his kids)

Thanks. If you change your mind I hope you’ll do so based on your own observations of my behavior rather than that lying idiot.

[Captain_Carrot]

@Scylla

I think I remember dismissing you as a dishonest and immature flaming left-wing nutjob. Now I remember why.

Dishonest? Immature? Nutjob? Strong words. Care to back them up?

@Scylla

A recent study seems to indicate that Republicans are more charitable than Democrats:

http://philanthropy.com/free/articles/v19/i04/04001101.htm

In a thread that had nothing to do with a partisan approach to charity.
And this:

@Scylla

Some of the same people that were so upset at Bush’s wiretapping, really have no problem with the government seizing the assets of public citizens, and inciting death threats against them while suggesting they commit suicide.

I seem to remember a lot of folks throwing around the term “cognitive dissonance” about that whole Bush thing. What do those words mean again?

is, to put it charitably, creative logic.

@Scylla

@The Tao's Revenge

Would Jesus approve torture? Republicans do.

Yeah, we do, in the same sense that Democrats hate America, want to turn all school children gay, and encourage them to have sex in the 1st grade.
Stupid comments like that, make you a stupid person. Show a little intellectual discipline, for chrissake.

TTR’s comment was entirely correct, as many Republican officials, in the mainstream even, approve of the CIA’s conduct over the last several years, which is also the opinion of a majority of self-identified Republicans. You then proceeded to construct a strawman of ridiculous lies and claimed that the two were equivalent.

I will concede that the posts I quoted are not one line long. There is not a significant difference, for the most part.

[Guinastasia]

@Scylla

Thanks. If you change your mind I hope you’ll do so based on your own observations of my behavior rather than that lying idiot.

Well, I wish you wouldn’t be so hasty to judge all liberals the same way. (Don’t turn into a Starving Artist or a Shodan-we don’t need another, please!)