Well, when you look at the psychological science, it’s not really surprising.
That’s because Terr is even more of a patriot than George Washington. (Insert sarcastic smiley here.)
“Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause… for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.” - George Washington, charge to the Northern Expeditionary Force, Sept. 14, 1775
It’s true, since ol’ George only meant physical injuries. Causing mental trauma is hunky-dory, natch. Also he only meant prisoners who were U.S. citizens.[/sarcasm]
You do realize that you should be having a very hard time grouping all Americans, all 316.1 million of them, together in one heap. I’m not sure why you focus on the vast minority of posters in this thread who don’t have a problem with torture and seemingly ignore the vast majority of us who do. I get it that bashing America and Americans is fun, but the continued attempt to compare us with Soviet Russia and North Korea is getting tiresome.
Posters in this thread are not a representative sample of the US citizenry. Acceptance, even endorsement of torture exists much more widely than is apparent in a message board populated by ignorance-fighters - the election of Bush and the ratings of Fox demonstrate what needs to be worked on.
As for why the focus is on the supporters, that’s the nature of fighting ignorance - it takes much more work than congratulating support of basic morality and law.
There is an emerging narrative I’ve seen in certain outlets (e.g. NY Post, but also here) that aims to discredit the Senate report on grounds that the Senate committee didn’t talk to the CIA people actually involved in the program.
Does anyone know the straight dope on why they proceeded as they did?
I understand they went through 6mm pages of documents but not sure why they wouldn’t bother talking to people from the CIA, even if those people would obviously be biased toward covering their asses.
There was an ongoing Department of Justice investigation into the destruction of torture videos by the CIA. The Committee’s Republicans argued that CIA employees would be put at legal risk by answering investigators’ questions, and the CIA also refused to compel them to testify. So the Senate Committee did not subpoena their testimony.
Additionally, many of the principals had already been interviewed at length by the CIA internally and by the DOJ, and the Committee reviewed those interviews.
Finally, they gave the CIA a chance to comment on the report, and they incorporated some comments and made edits accordingly.
So the claim that the report was made without talking to the CIA is pretty misleading.
From the NY Post, I would expect nothing less than to be misled. Thanks.
It’s not just Murdoch media. It’s the same CIA officials that the torture defenders in this thread trust to tell them the truth about torture’s effectiveness. This is part of their well-funded PR campaign to mislead the public about this report.
And did we need to see them? Not any more, we already know that they are worse than what we already know.
I find myself wondering about that movie, Zero Dark something or other. I’m given to understand, having not subjected myself to it, that it implies that torture was essential to the death of ObL.
Any of you ever see The Green Berets, with John Wayne and a wide variety of Asian actors…Japanese Vietnamese, Chinese Vietnamese, we couldn’t tell the difference in those days…in a patriotic spectacle. Had all the elements, the goofball n’er do well who discovers the righteous well springs of his patriotism, the liberal reporter who sees the light of truth. And, of course, Big John himself, as they guy who can handle the truth…
There was, I understand, some cooperation on the part of the Defense Dept. Mmmm, yes.
How, though, does your second sentence follow from the first? Republicans dropped out in 2009. CIA said they wouldn’t compel people to testify. Maybe I’m missing the significance of that last part, but how does that prevent the Senate from subpoenaing them?
It didn’t prevent it. It just made it unlikely to be effective, and would have undermined any bipartisan support they had (and were able to maintain). Given their other access the CIA input, it wasn’t worth it to ask officials the same questions and have them not appear or take the Fifth.
**Untrained CIA Agents Were Just Making Up Torture Methods As They Went Along **
Not going to post excerpts, feeling kinda heartsick today.
Well Europeans all get thrown together as one homogenous group with frightening regularity on this board.
Only because “Eurotrash” is such a terrific pejorative,
Reviewing the last couple of page:
THERE WILL BE NO MORE NEGATIVE COMMENTS ON THE HUMANITY OR CHARACTER OF OTHER POSTERS IN THIS THREAD.
We have a perfectly fine BBQ Pit forum where such comments are permitted. And while I am not prohibiting such comments regarding either the actual non-SDMB parties involved in the torture program or its investigation, if I consider such comments to be efforts to insult posters as if they were protoges of the insulted parties, I will issue Warnings.
Stick to a discussion of the issues and leave the personalities out of it.
[ /Moderating ]
Oh bullshit. The whole “investigation” is pure political nonsense. It was never an investigation. Nobody from the CIA was interviewed and there was never an actionable outcome to it. It was pure theater from day one.
What you and others are calling a moral atrocity is a vacation in the eyes of the people we’re fighting against. They’re busy killing people 50 at a time. They’ve already killed more than 5000 people last month alone. We’ll get zero respect from them over this. They know damn well we’re bombing them indiscriminately with cruise missiles in countries like Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan and Pakistan and won’t hesitate to slaughter people like Bin Landen’s family if they get in our way.
Your outrage doesn’t match reality.
Cite, please.
Cite, please.
Cite please. And also, what information would be gained from CIA employees that is not gained from their memos, reports, and communications?
Cite please.
I’m sorry, I’m not seeing the relevance. Can you explain a bit more?
Umm, true. Are you under the misapprehension that this report has anything to do with garnering our enemies’ respect? Seriously, what the hell?
Again, huh? What does that have to do with anything?
.
It’s not about getting respect from them. It’s about getting respect from ourselves and the rest of the world. How can we be the greatest country on earth if we do something that most of our allies consider among the vilest actions that can possibly be taken? If we become known as a country that is okay with torture, and that tries to hide the torture, then that will hurt us far, far more than the terrorists ever could.