first of all, NONE of the torture conducted by the bush administration happened under these circumstances. there was not “24″ deal. the plot against library tower in la had been uncovered long before anyone was tortured.

in fact, much of the evidence shows that this torture was to try to find a connection between iraq and 9/11, after the fact. to justify a war. you okay with that, jeff?

jeff, again with the ENTIRE quote. you’re cherry picking. obama’s chief of intel did say that valueable information was gotten from waterboarding but that the distinct possibility exists that that same information could have been gotten other ways, and that in the end, torture did more to harm our country than help it.

we’re talking about dark things happening in dark places as opposed to a country whose adminstration was blatantly breaking international agreements and embracing torture techniques used by pol pot and the nazi’s.

this is about morals and values. and who we are as a nation.

and…my breath was taken away by this…you’re comparing a stolen candy bar to brutally and violently torturing another human being?

no, seriously?

i guess all sin is sin.

and i know you’re not saying whether torture is good or bad. but you should be.

This guy says what I’m trying to say. If it’s important enough to break the law and torture, then have the balls to do the time.
Or, if it’s important enough to torture, then chances are you’ll get leniency when it comes to sentencing and you’ve got nothing to worry about.
But don’t think for a minute you get a free pass, no matter how much mental gymnastics you go through to justify it. As a nation, we give no cover for torture.

great retorts creadm67. thank you. all i’m saying is some things aren’t as black and white as we’d all like them to be. no matter how our judicial system has laid out laws and punishments, things fall through the cracks. yes, i would expect our goverment and its various agencies to conduct interrogation of suspects/prisoners/terrorists that fall within the guidelines or our Constitution. but when all else fails and the issue of national security is in question, i condone the use of other means to get information that will protect U.S. citizens.

as far as the candy bar example, if it were me and i needed that candy bar to save my wife or child, odds are i wouldn’t have to kill the owner of said candy bar to get it from him. but if it was kill him or my wife dies, that guy’s a dead man.

Not that torture is trivial. The fact is that some, if not most negative political activities can be boiled down to the result of human nature’s inhumanity to man. The intention for government is that as a whole we must overcome that which is seemingly the “dark side” of our natures.

Thanks so much. I truly enjoyed this exchange from both the blogger and responder.

PS – This IS CPL, isn’t it?

First of all, I should refine my final comment about “I will not be a party to torture”, but I won’t because it makes me feel morally superior.

Family rumour has it that there were some hard men of Irish decent in my lineage who did things in dark and dangerous places of the Republic that people don’t talk about in polite company. So I have on many occassions asked myself if I would do the same.

The answer is yes.

I’ll do you one better than your question supposes. I would kill you for that candy bar to save my wife. And I would kill that terrorist prisoner to get information to save my family. My people invented kneecapping. Hell, I’d probably kill him anyway just to make a point to his buddies that kidnapping my family is a really bad idea. Then I’d go after everybody they knew and loved, just to get to them. I’m actually pretty sure that I’d start off by assuming my family was already dead and just start killing people for revenge and tell them if they wanted me to stop, they better pony up my family alive tres vite.

It precisely because of this that I expect any government acting on my behalf to behave better, with greater morality and with a longer view than I do. It’s why we have police and courts instead of lynch mobs and summary judgements. That’s why we have international agreements not to act this way; because we all know we would if it was just up to us to save our individual families. It is precisely because we act in our own best interests to the exclusion of all others when our loved ones are at risk, that we hand over the authority to defend ourselves to a central, democratically elected authority.

If my government cannot behave better than I would in these situations, then I want no part of it.

Let’s examine your first example. It seems you expect me to answer that I’d use force to get that candy bar to save my dying wife. Are you comfortable with a government that would use force against you to save my dying wife? I said I’d kill you for it. Are you comfortable with a government that would kill you to save another man’s wife — over a candy bar? I would hope not.

Let’s take your second example. You seem to lead me to a conclusion that I would use abusive force (torture) to save my family. Are you confortable with a government that would torture you to get information to save my family? Your no-name kidnappers don’t have a country, so I’ll assume you are American; the CIA captured you outside the country and has transferred you to somewhere safe (for them) to torture you. I assume you kidnapped them for some damned good reason. We’re going to torture you anyway. You’re OK with that? I wonder, are you OK with that if it’s the FBI and not the CIA? They’re both government security agencies. How about if it’s the State Troopers? How about if it’s the local cops? Still OK with getting tortured for kidnapping my family?

You’ve assured me they will die, so we’re not torturing you just to figure out if your friends have ties so some different guys we don’t like or anything. We’re not torturning you to get you to give us some reason to pound on some totally different guys that piss us off for some reason. I mean, we’re not torturing you to just to give ourselves some basis for telling the public that we have to totally kick these guys asses cause you told us (as a result of our torture) that “yeah sure, we got ties to these other guys…and they’re thinkin’ they might want to kidnap some people’s kids too”; I mean we’re torturing you for GOOD reasons: you know where your buddies have got my family stashed. At least you think you know, ’cause you and your buddies never talked about what they’d do if you got captured or anything, so you’re not totally sure they’ll take my family to the same place or not, ’cause well, um, gee, they KNOW you got your ass captured and you do know what the original plan is and all, and geez, you’ve been in custody for kind of a long time now, (I’m assuming your not a pussy and can take a little “enhanced interrogation” and won’t cough up anything really useful until we’ve been at this for, oh I dunno, maybe a 183 times or so) and shit, they coulda totally changed their plans by now, or maybe just killed my family and dumped them somewhere and said “fuck it, these kids are really annoying”.

You’re cool with that, right?

And your example about picking my pocket for $10 a month is a false analogy. To be a better analogy your example would need to be that you were my agent who billed me $10 a month to support some illegal alien who had a job mowing my neighbors lawn (between dialysis treatments — he’s a tough mofo). The government doesn’t pick my pocket Jeff, I agreed to let them decide where my money goes, and so did everybody else. Sometimes the rest of the gang’s guys out vote my guys and sometime my guys win the vote. If I don’t like the job my guys are doing, I can find a new guy to rep me, shit I can even do it myself if I want. BTW if you know where I can get kidneys for $120 bucks lemme know dude, ’cause up in Canada they could turn a nifty profit knowwhatImean???

It’s hard not to agree with a guy who can pull a good Sean Connery quote out of his ass, but in my own defense, I’m more comfortable being called a hypocrite than a party to war crimes anyday. And as far as Daniel Pearl, I feel fairly certain, given what little I know about him, but making certain assumptions based on his writings and profession, that he’d be just as appalled at what we’re learning now about the US government as (some of) his fellow journalists are.

hey, i’m not saying torture’s good or torture’s bad (for the sake of this comment). hypothetical question i put to a friend on Facebook and he couldn’t answer it. think about it this way…what if your entire family were being held by some no-name terrorist group – in a secret place – and the CIA captured one of the kidnappers? your family will die in less than 24 hours if they’re not freed. the kidnapper the CIA has knows where they’re being held and the only way to find out the location (yes, after all … Read Moreother avenues have been exhausted…remember, clock’s a-ticking) is by torturing the guy to get the info out of him. i didn’t say kill him – just torture.

would you condone torturing him if it meant your family is saved OR would you take your chances with the CIA questioning him using means that are civil – he doesn’t tell you where your family is and your family dies?

my friend didn’t answer the question. said it has nothing to do with reality and would never happen and if it did he’d have no way of telling what he’d do.

according to the report released by Obama’s chief of intel, valuable information was extracted from the prisoners that helped to stop future attacks. so yes, torturing has been effective. Obama ok’d the release of that report to the public…only the information on how effective the interrogation was conveniently left off the public report. if Obama wants his administration to be readily accessible to the public, that means telling us the whole truth.

my hypothetical question that i put to my friend, i think, has everything to do with reality. it’s convenient to cast dispersion when it doesn’t happen within the 4 walls of one’s own life. it’s easy to turn the other cheek when our tax dollars are paying for illegal aliens but if i picked your pocket of $10 per month and said,”this goes to pay for an illegal alien’s kidney transplant”…would you just let me take your $10? it’s easy to say, “torture is barbaric and cruel and we’re better than that”. but if my family is being held against their will and i can free them by torturing one of the kidnappers, i’ll do the torturing myself.

the world of spies and intelligence and all that cloak-and-dagger, Cold War stuff is anything but “fair” and “just”. it’s like the quote from “The Untouchables”, “they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.”

negotiating’s nice. i’m fairly certain that that’s the U.S. first option and i’m all for it. i’m sure Daniel Pearl would’ve appreciated his captors playing by our rules, too