Here, let me illustrate some more. There is a whole spectrum of opinion on what does and does not constitute torture.
One far side of the spectrum says that torture is the intentional infliction of any momentary discomfort. Under this definition, holding a suspect in custody would probably be torture because the suspect would experience the psychological discomfort of not being able to leave when he pleases.
The other far side of the spectrum says that torture is the intentional infliction of injury so severe that deat would be the inevitable result without any medical intervention. Waterboarding clearly is not torture under this definition.
Says who, they aren’t going to be prosecuted? They aren’t being indicted TODAY.
Look, the fact is that public opinion is important in this case. Prosecuting the ringleaders will fail unless the public begins to understand exactly what happened, and why, and what the results were. And the public is still insulated from this. And so the focus of the Obama administration right now is not prosecution but releasing information that shapes public opinion, to the point where prosecution eventually becomes possible.
It seems longer because he was invisible during the election, but Bush has only been out of office for three months. To say that these guys will “get away with it” because they aren’t in jail three months into the Obama administration is a bit impatient.
How fascinating. Lawyers working for Bush’s administration made findings supporting the administration’s position. I never saw that objective opinion coming, and certainly their untested opinion is every bit as valuable as legal precedent.
Please. He thrives on slinging it in hopes of making each and every thread he participates in, about him. Reminds me of an ex-poster here who shall remain nameless.
Best to just ignore the cumstain.
As if we didn’t know already, so much for America’s occupation of the moral high ground. Sad and disgusting all at once.
You are defending their validity. They are pieces of trash written expressly to justify the use of torture, which is blatantly unconstitutional and in violation of at least a couple of treaties to which the United States has been a signatory.
But the “far side of the spectrum” is clearly wrong. If I tie you up and start burning you all over your body with red hot irons, that’s torture, right? But you aren’t going to die simply because of a few burns all over your body. How about if I shove a nightstick up your ass–if you don’t die, does that mean I didn’t torture you? Or is A sometimes not A?
And even under your retarded devil’s advocate definition, dozens of people at Gitmo actually were tortured to death. They were injured so severely that death was the result.
And just because you can find a lawyer to say something is legal doesn’t make it legal. You people who defend torture love to focus on waterboarding because it doesn’t seem that bad to people who haven’t thought it through. So you ignore all the other kinds of torture that happened, and pretend that waterboarding was the only form of torture that went on, and only against a few high level prisoners, and only a few times.
But that turns out not to be the case.
I wonder what Ayn Rand would think about a Government that employed professional torturers? Didn’t she, you know, escape the fucking Soviet Union to, you know, get to a country where the State didn’t have that kind of power?
Thanks for illustrating my point. There is a spectrum of opinion. People can fall on different parts of that spectrum. Doesn’t make one right and another wrong.
Also, note that I have never said where I fall on the spectrum.
How have I defended torture?
Oh goody, here we go with the ad hominems (or something). I already know I’m a bad father and will probalby be disbarred and have a mental defect, so you guys are going to have to come up with a new one in this thread.
By defending the argument that calling it “stroking fluffy bunnies” makes it not torture.
Simple question: by a reasonable standard informed by Western jurisprudence and international norms and the Geneva Conventions on Torture, beating prisoners’ heads against a wall, enclosing them in glass cages with unpleasant insects and waterboarding are acts of torture. True or false?
Yes, there is a spectrum of opinion. But some are right, and some are wrong. Your opinion doesn’t change reality, reality stays the same no matter what your opinion about it is.
Simple question: a concession agreement granting the right to collect tolls entered into in connection with the purchase or long-term lease of a toll road is an amortizable section 197 intangible and is not a USRPI under FIRPTA. True or false?
That’s not a simple question, and is totally irrelevant. Laymen are familiar with the basic concepts of suffering, torture, wall-bashing, insects and simulated drowning. Laymen are not familiar with the basic concepts of amortizable intangibles under section 197, USRPIs and FIRPTA.
Well sure, that’s because you’re a patriot because you’ve found a way to shelter your assets from the government. We should, like, lower your taxes or something.