People in these threads don’t attack torture as immoral because it’s such an obvious answer. If it held weight with the person asking the question, they would not have asked.
Actually, no, they appear to be very old; probably predating humanity. Even chimpanzees will engage in genocide; one troop will target another, systematically hunting them down. Killing the males, the offspring, and the older females. Keeping only the young females for breeding. It’s right out of the Bible; Moses would be proud.
The only real change is that now, sometimes we kill even the young women.
They’re no longer combatants when they are captured. And the reason people care is that they don’t want it to happen to them, which is basic common sense, to leave decency out of it altogether: if you don’t torture my soldiers after capturing them, mine are probably won’t torture you. That’s to say nothing about the points made earlier about how it encourages wars to go on longer.
Whether people are actually ‘better than this’ or not, most of them like to believe they are, so they don’t approve of torture. And there’s no legit reason to do otherwise.
You keep associating war and torture, but
This is completely inaccurate, as has already been explained.
Chimpanzees don’t happen to live in capitalistic societies based primarily on agriculture and mining 
I think the question is in the inconsistencies. Why is it ok to drop fire on a village but not ok to slap an enemy combatant around? It’s kind of like, if it’s indescriminant, it’s ok.
Don’t most people who get married?
To assume it won’t happen is idiocy. All the bleeding heart policies in the world will have no affect.
1st Baron Fisher of Kilverstone Admiral Jaci Fisher had it right when he said “You want to regulate war? You may as well try to regulate hell”.
But the pro-torture bigwigs have been going around telling us that Obama’s release of the memos will prevent us from ever torturing in the future!
Surely you can’t mean to imply that these former Bush administration officials are lying to us Americans, yet again?
Bullshit.
Didn’t you read my first post in this thread?
Iraqi troops during both Gulf Wars surrendered en masse to American troops.
I guess we should have just massacred them as they tried to surrender, eh? After all, War Is Hell, innit?
We have the curious notion here in the 21st century that total war is the normal form of war, and limited wars fought according to rules are some sort of anomaly. But that isn’t true.
Think about why people fight wars. Wars are fought to achieve political and economic ends. You raid the neighboring village to carry off some of his cattle, and perhaps a girl or two. You invade the neighboring country to annex some farmland. You conquer the enemy city to make it part of your empire. You attack the natives to make them slaves on your plantation and in your mines. You kill the enemy king and marry your younger brother to his daughter and now the enemy kingdom has become an allied kingdom. And so on and so on.
The ultimate purpose is almost never to simple exterminate the enemy, the purpose is to get some benefit for your troubles. Limited war is the norm because human beings are lazy and greedy and would rather steal than work, not because they love genocide. Even the Nazis didn’t exterminate wholesale the people they conquered, they wanted those conquered people as subjects and slaves to work in the factories and fields.
And why are we invading Iraq? To kill every last man, woman and child in Iraq? What possible benefit could we gain from that? We’re trying to set up a friendly client state. Now, how does torturing Iraqi prisoners help us do that? Do you think torturing Iraqi prisoners makes Iraqis more inclined to accept their client status? Oh, they like torture because that’s what they’re used to? Then why didn’t we leave Saddam Hussein in power? Did we go over there to enslave Iraq or liberate Iraq? And if we went over there to enslave Iraq, how’s that working out for us? How many hundreds of billions of dollars have we spent, and how much treasure have we extracted from our slaves? The balance sheets don’t exactly add up to a profitable conquest, do they?
So; you think that there’s no difference in the effects of a pro-torture policy that orders and excuses torture, and between one that opposes torture and punishes those who engage in it ? That torture occurs at a fixed rate no matter what due to some sort of Law of Conservation of Atrocity ?
And by the way; the phrase isn’t “bleeding heart”; it’s “decent human being”. You are demonstrating the basic principle that when someone uses the phrase “bleeding heart”, what they really mean is “anyone who isn’t a sociopath”.
Of course I read your post though I doubt you understood mine. You are letting your idealogy colour your response. Iraq has nothing to do with gaining information- it is a theatre in which information is gained.
In your view of the world. We will all hug and kiss and everything will be fine.
And how many of the atrocities in- say Africa- has this law or principle of yours prevented or avenged?
This is my favorite thing so far this thread.
I read this as “Genghis Khan’s rampages and conquest of the Americas” and was trying to figure out a polite way to tell you that Genghis Khan was never anywhere near this continent.
Honestly, I don’t know why people are still trying to debate this here. The pro-torture camp is going to keep sitting there with their fingers in their ears and their eyes screwed shut, screaming “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU” at the top of their lungs. Anybody who’s still pro-torture after every single one of their supposed arguments has been well and thouroughly debunked is just going to keep rejecting any facts that don’t support their chosen worldview.
No, we just toss in prison for life or execute anyone who commits torture, no excuses, no parole, and hunt them down if they run. I think that people will get the point.
It’s interesting that you are portraying our soldiers as worse people than I do, considering how often I’ve been vilified for my opinion. You seem to think that they have such a lust for torture that no order, no threat will stop them from inflicting it on people. According to you, the one order they won’t obey is “don’t torture people”.
My, I must have missed us annexing Africa.
… How many homicides in Switzerland have American gun control laws prevented?
Your question makes no sense.
Sounds much more frightening when its in all caps
I’m not arguing about how effective torture may be. I believe what was done does not rise to the level of TORTURE!
You do know the Japanese method was different from what we did.
We agree
Again, I am not defending torture. I don’t believe these methods constitute torture. I DO believe this is a political witch hunt because the very people waiving the pitchforks were in favor of these techniques at the time. There was bipartisan agreement for once.
To the extent that people who are calling for prosecution now are the ones who were fully informed of them at the time and approved, yes, that is hypocritical. However, there are a hell of a lot of people who are just plain opposed to torture, and yes, what we did was torture, your ridiculous “it’s my opinion” assertions aside. John McCain says waterboarding is torture; where will you move the goalposts now?
On their own, perhaps not. When you’ve got someone in captivity I think there is a cumulative effect.
Politicians are politicians, and they’re famous for caring about things only when they think they need to. Regardless, Nancy Pelosi is not posting here, and plenty of people on this board have been consistently opposed to torture. Other people here and around the country, unfortunately, only came to their senses after the distance of several years’ allowed them to realize that actually, no, we did not need to waterboard prisoners in order to prevent the terrorists from setting off a nuclear bomb under the Little Acres Mall in downtown Dubuque.
The army appears to agree with you:
see post #59.
The fallacy of the excluded middle.
The fact that some people will steal no matter what is not an argument to make stealing legal.
It’s true, there are some sick fucks who will torture regardless of whether there’s a law against it or not. But there are plenty of other people who will think twice about doing it if they know it is illegal and the law will be enforced.
From the army field manual FM 34-52 Chapter 1
The use of force, mental torture, threats, insults, or exposure to unpleasant and inhumane treatment of any kind is prohibited by law and is neither authorized nor. condoned by the US Government. Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear. However, the use of force is not to be confused with psychological ploys, verbal trickery, or other nonviolent and noncoercive ruses used by the interrogator in questioning hesitant or uncooperative sources.