The problem is that when we discard the rule of law and our unique philosophy, we destroy it.
You may be right. I am only human after all. But I would consider myself weak and unprincipled.
So I’ll ask you this–why shouldn’t we just leave? Hey, let’s all go to Finland. Our families will be saved. The terrorists haven’t hit Finland yet. Or we could surrender and live in an Islamic theocracy. Then our families might get to live too. Sure, we’ll have to learn new languages and maybe not have so many rights, but rights are a lot like philosophies, and we can discard them when it’s useful for our survival to do so.
Or maybe we should cling to that weak-ass philosophy shit a little more tightly.
You present a choice that I judge to be unlikely at best, but also inaccurate.
It’s not pouring water into “a” committed killer’s mouth for two minutes. It’s doing it to many, many people over a period of years. At least some of whom will have had no connection whatsoever to the problem at hand.
Having said that, I’ll bite:
I would rather die or sacrifice my children than have water poured into many, many (potentially innocent) people’s mouths for two minutes each.
That’s not the kind of world I want to live in, or raise people to live in.
America is different from a lot of countries. Its formation was heavily influenced by the age of enlightenment–a philosophical era which triumphed logic, reason and objective truth over superstition and fear. It didn’t appear organically over centuries of common heritage–it was created suddenly and violently by people who wanted the right to live their lives a different way. It’s been said that America has an individualist culture that has in no small way developed out of Enlightenment principles–we as a nation, believe in the power and ability of an individual. I believe that we’ve generated and attracted more than our share of brilliant, productive people because of these philosophies. I feel it is because we continue to generate and attract these people that we continue to dominate on the international stage.
It’s by no means a perfect country, and no country can dominate the world stage forever (nor should they). But I think it’s unique in a lot of ways worth preserving.
Yeah, I read somewhere that the inverted possition keeps much water from being aspirated.
But what about the plastic wrap? I’m still really confused about this whole thing.
How could it not matter? I’m trying to understand the sensations involved here. How is this not a rather pertinent detail? No one seems to have an answer yet.
Well, one problem I can spot right away with your hypothetical- what if the “committed killer” is actually an innocent?
Here, let’s try it this way:
Would you be willing to have your children waterboarded, just because someone else suspects they might be a danger? 'Cause that’s what you’re asking other people to do for you.
No, that’s alright. We’ve still got, “uncivilized, immoral, and outright evil” to fall back on.
Well, I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a country that consider routine torture to be acceptable. I’d probably choose emigration over death, though.
How would ABC’s Brian Ross be in a position to know this? What he knows is likely what the government has told him to be true. And, we all know how reliable that is.
But, hell, even if we assume it is true, then let’s see how far you are willing to take this: 40,000 people are killed in auto accidents each year in the U.S. Over the lifetime of a car (let’s say 10 years) that adds up to 400,000 people, or over 100X the number killed by the 9/11 attacks (and, like them, most are in the prime of life). If one assumes that having side and curtain airbags installed on cars could reduce the number of deaths by a measly 1% then one would save more lives than were lost in 9/11.
So, my question to you: Would you support using “waterboarding” to force auto industry executives to make side and curtain airbags standard on all cars sold in the U.S. (assuming that they don’t respond to less coercive measures)?
[And, by the way, if you are worried about the additional cost of having all cars so equipped, it would cost less than the Iraq War has cost in the 3 years so far…and would actually save lives rather than cost lives.]
America has the largest GDP (though that wealth is highly concentrated). It has 17 of the top 20 universities in the world. It has the most technologically advanced military in the world. The automobile, the integrated circuit, the transistor, the polymerase chain reaction, the cyclotron, the first nuclear chain reaction, the airplane–all invented or occurred in the United States. American astronauts were the first and last to walk on the moon.
What I’m trying to argue here is that the U.S. has been able to generate such an immense amount of wealth and innovation, as well as wield such great power, due in no small way to the philosophy on which the country was founded (with a healthy dose of general fortuitousness to be sure). This is not to say the U.S. should never change anything about their government or principles–that would be foolishness, and is not borne out by history. Nor does it mean the U.S. is inherently better in any way than other countries–it’s fucked up in a lot of ways that are related to this philosophy as well (the gulf of wealth, quality of education, and quality of healthcare is very wide between those who have and those who do not). Nor do I think the individualist philosophy espoused by the founders is always tenable. This question (should we use torture to protect ourselves), however, seems pretty clearly in opposition to the country’s historic commitment to justice and reason, as well as to the rights of the individual.
Anyway, this is all pretty off-topic, I think. As I asked Martin Hyde, what, may I ask, are you getting at with this particular line of questioning?
Before you go any further, you really must answer: what number of fingers cut off joint by joint of innocent persons is OK for you, assuming this technique has any utility at all? My answer is “none”. What’s yours?
There are people in this country with no conscience as well. You are advocating facilitating them.
Incorrect. One one hand we have your unsupported belief that only persons who are guilty would be tortured, on the other you have the reasonable assumption that torture of this type would be inevitably be inflicted on innocent persons.
No, I wouldn’t. Firstly no one intends to kill your family specifically, unless there’s something you’re not telling us, and the chances of your family being killed by terrorists is only slightly higher than their chances of being simultaneously eaten by sharks, and far lower than most common risks. Secondly, I do not accept torture as a valid, honorable, moral or particularly useful method of obtaining information to prevent a crime, and I would not change this view even if I had certain knowledge that my family, or myself, were at significant risk of death by terrorism. Which, I remind you, they are not.
I would rather die or sacrifice my children than have water poured into a innocent person’s mouth for two minutes. Since I am absolutely certain that innocent persons are or will be subected to this, this is what I must be concerned about, not persons who may or may not be “committed killers”.
I don’t know what this reaction is called, but its similar to the reflex that that simply won’t let you breathe when you sense you are underwater, you don’t have to tell a baby not to breathe. I get it when I hold my head under the shower at a certain angle, I get a frightening sense of breathlessness. I have read, but can’t put finger to, that the art of waterboarding consists of inspiring that reflex horror and fear without actually using a lot of water.
How very odd. An administration at such great pains to protect methods and sources, and yet, somehow, this nugget of information wiggles free…
What probably stopped the attack, and saved lives, was that the subject was captured, period.
Think about it. Let’s say you are a mutant white lab rat bent on world domination, you are El Brain, head of Al Queso. A highly placed co-conspirator is captured, you fear that, under torture, he may rat you out. What do you do?
Obviously, you consider all codes, information and plans that he was privy to to be compromised! I recall this but dimly, but unless I am mistaken, our own military uses such an approach: do not subject yourself to torture simply to avoid passing information, we will assume you have done so anyway, so there is no reason why you shouldn’t. Besides, we ain’t telling you anything that damned important.
And as for waterboarding Ali bin Bad so that Jack Ryan can dash in and defuse the bomb as the LED blinks down 07…06…05…the blue wire, dumfuk!..and save Cleveland…
Unlikely? The whole point of the debate in the Senate is what the CIA can and cannot do to someone designated a “high value” target. In other words, someone high enough on the food chain to have information that is actionable. Why bother to do this to anyone who doesn’t have anything of value to tell you?
Do you guys think the CIA will be doing this to schoolchildren to see if they cheated on thier homework or not? Again, the rules about who can do the waterboarding…and to whom…will be spelled out. Pretending that “thousands of innocents” will have it done to them is either slippery slope paranoia or a deliberate attempt to muddy the waters and dilute the point.
I’ll just mention that I’ve been through something not totally unlike waterboarding during Helicopter Underwater Egress Training (HUET), which is one of my oilfield certifications. In the central part of HUET, which takes place in a large swimming pool, four persons are strapped into a device simulating a helicopter passenger cabin, which is then inverted. The passengers must unbuckle themselves, get oriented, wait for a signal from a spotter/lifeguard, then swim out from the inverted position. Usually one goes through three rounds of immersion, with the last one requiring that a passenger open a specific door and the other passengers follow them out.
I’m a decent swimmer, and can hold my breath underwater for a lengthy period, but each immersion set off a feeling of involuntary panic in me that I found unpleasant in the extreme. On the first try, I unbuckled and swam out the back (not the doorway) of the simulator long before the spotter’s signal, and even having gone through the experience three times in quick succession I was unable to wait to follow the first passenger out the correct door on the last try.
Of course, this must also be considered in the context that taking part in HUET training is purely voluntary, and that the spotters are there to help you if appear to be in distress, not hold you under longer. Based on my own experience, I have no doubt that that waterboarding would indeed have the victim begging for mercy within moments, but that same experience leaves me no choice but to find that carrying it out on someone simply for the sake of extracting information that the victim may not even have, would be an intolerable atrocity.
Just to put everything into perspective, before 9/11 there have been between fewer than 1000 Americans killed in terrorist attacks. On average, 80 people get struck dead by lightning every year (about 250 people get hit by lightning every year). Before 9/11 there have only been 2 years when more Americans died in terrorist attacks than were strick dead by lightning.
On 9/11, death due to terrorism went from an incidental cause of death to a significant threat.
Terrorism has been with us longer than Christianity, so presumably we are not going to end terrorism once and for all, however we cannot afford to let 9/11 be the new standard for terrorist attacks either.
So we have to reduce and hopefully elimnate the likelihood of 9/11 type events. Right now Al Queda is the only terrorist organization I know of that has perpetrated this sort of atack and it is the only terrorist organization that has expressed a desire to do so in the future. So it seem to me that there are a few things we can to do to prevent 9/11 type events. We can punish state sponsors of terror like we did with Afghanistan, we can try to disrupt Al queda around the world and we can address the root causes of what drives men to kill thousands of innocent civilians.
Noone likes the idea of torture but it works, its been used for cneturies and for good reason. It worked for the French in Algeria (even though they eventually lost that war), it worked for the Italians when they had domestic terrotists, it works all the time in China. Sure you get a lot of innocent people being tortured and some false positives but you usually get the answers you want eventually.
Wiretapping works too, before the Warren court really put some teeth into the 4th amendment, we caught all sorts of criminals with warrantless search and seizure. Once again the problem is that you often get a lot of invasions of privacy that result in nothing other than the invasion of privacy.
They may be distasteful, immoral and unethical but they will probably help us get information that will disrupt Al Queda’s organization. The only problems are that torture and warrantless search tends to corrupt the organization that engages in it, at first it might be just the CIA and then it might be the military, hoepfully we can end this before it becomes and acceptable practice in the general population because I don’t know if Americans from 10 years ago would be able to recognize us as Americans anymore.
Maybe our society can handle this sort of moral slide for a short while but over a long enough time horizon, we turn into monsters. I mean really, if I told you 10 years ago that a country was using torture and warrantless searches for whatever reason, you would have thought that the contry in question had LONG way to go before becoming a real demoicracy.
I am on the fence about torture and warrantless searches. On the one hand, if you have nothing to hide, then what’s the problem and it might keep me from getting blown up. On the other hand, there are very few countries that use this standard of conduct that doesn’t eventually abuse its use for things we never intended.
What if we found out tomorrow that under the new law, the President torutured the journalist that published the story to disover the leak because he thought it was a national security concern (its not going to happen tomorrow but thats how a slippery slope works when you give the president such wide discretion), what if we found out that he started using torture as a form of political punishment. You have to trust your government a lot to grant it this sort of power and the entire point of the constitution was that we DON’T trust the government and the constitution protects us against abuses by the governemnt.
I dunno, but I certainly don’t want to stoop to torture and warrantless searches so that Iraq can have democracy even though the vast majority of Iraqis don’t want us there. Lets get out of Iraq, as far as I can tell, it doesn’t achieve any objective that will reduce terrorism. As a matter of fact, there is reason to believe that Iraq is only making things worse. Lets really fight the war on terrorism. The only people the Iraqis hate more than us is Al Queda. Al Queda is the bad guy we should be worried about, lets go after Al Queda. Ultimately we probably have to address the things that caused all this anger to begin with, we may not capitulate on all them but we have to at least think long and hard about them. At least some of this is caused by our military presence in Saudi Arabia, lets get out of Saudi Arabia. At least some of this is based on the Israeli issues, let work on trying to get past those issues, even if it means we push a little harder for a two state solution.
I know that a lot of people think that if we change our policies in response to terrorism, then the terrorists will have won. I guess that is a victory I wouldn’t begrudge them if the alternative is to keep torturing people forever in the face of increasing terrorist threats.
I shit you not when I say that on January, 1 2002 I was apolitical. The deception that I felt was used to get us into the Iraq war informs almost all my opinoons about politics. When we have a split congrss and we get past this problem I will probably go back to being mostly apolitical (I guess you can never really go back all the way). I predict that a lot of long time partisan Democrats will be surprised to find how many people go back to being almost apatheitc when this is all over. I mean really, I have never donated money to a campaign before in my life until 2002, I just never cared enough before that.
The legislation seems to give the President significant leeway. If the history to date is any indication, there WILL be innocent people with tenuous connections to members of Al Queda (as well as some middle east looking people who were just in the wrong palce at the wrong time) who will get tortured.
Yes, no doubt using some really specific terminology, such as persons who are believed to be unlawful enemy combatants, or some such.
So, arguing against a baseless assertion you’ve made is “muddying the waters”, eh? Gotta remember to use that one next time. In the meantime, please indicate who specifically used the term “thousands of innocents”: since you put it in quotes, I presume you are quoting someone in this thread. Also, since you have apparently read my post I will ask again: how many innocent persons tortured would you find acceptable to assuage your paranoia about terrorists coming to explode dirty bombs in your neighborhood? Until you acknowledge this point, I really don’t think our debate can proceed.
Since they are under constant attack by people whose goal is to damage and obstruct, truth be damned, it was in their best interest to let people know that things are actually working and actual attacks have been prevented. Of course, they’ll have to speak a little louder and/or slower for some people to get it.
Think so? Or did they cut you in on the briefings?
If you capture people high enough on the food chain to have knowledge of funding, future plans, supply procedures, communication codes…you have to get all the info you can from them. And you do it before you announce to the world that you’ve caught them. Yes, they could have reporting procedures that would cause them to assume the chain of command has been compromised if they don’t hear from each other within a certain period of time. If so, the sense of urgency to get good information is even greater. They aren’t going to talk if you wag your finger at them and tell them that their meal will be 15 minutes late if they don’t give up the information.
This is actually a decent effort to attempt to undermine my position by painting me as someone who thinks the world works in terms of action movies. Let me try.
"Are yiou ready to torture another innocent person, fellow rogue CIA agent?"
"Not quite yet. I'm not finished using the constitution as toilet paper!"
"Bwa ha ha! I love doing that too...almost as much as oppressing minorities!"
CRASH!!!
“Oh no! It’s Constitution Man!”
“You’ll not get your slippery slope past me, rogue CIA agents! Now you’ll face justice!!!”