It's Official - US is anti-torture

[k3nt]

[iceman5]

[Stoneburg]

Personal question follows, intended for Ice but relevant for everyone.

So you ever consider you may be wrong? Several people seem to accuse the other side of not listening. You yourself claimed debating was akin to ramming your head against a brick wall. How sure are you that you are right? 90%? 99% 100%?

Do you feel that you are able too see all sides of the issue, and if someone makes a persuasive argument, are you willing to change your mind? Not immediatly, but after some time has passed.

Do you sit down and think critically about your own opinions, weigh the facts and try to see it from alternative viewpoints really *trying* to find flaws in your own reasoning?

Where do you trace your opinions to? Have you come up with them independently by amassing unbiased facts and rationally formulating a method of analysis, or are you influenced by several biased sources or your own background, heritatge and experiences?

I'm not trying to be obnoxious, I really want to know.

[Irexes]

[DoctorHandles]

[DoctorHandles]

[Irexes]

[DoctorHandles]

[Irexes]

What was the US defending itself from in Iraq?

In Afghanistan there was a known threat which was directly linked to Al-Q.

Not in Iraq.

Diplomacy is silly because appeasement failed in 1939.

That's specious and akin to saying war is silly because Vietnam failed.

And we all know that war is not at all silly.


War as has been said many times is just an extension of diplomacy. North Korea are currently under intense pressure from China to stop what they are doing. If this was supported by a credible US dimplomatic push it would be hard to resist even for such an insular state. As it is the region is in a state of heghtened tension and China's credibillty and diplomatic capital rises. This a real shame because the last thing the rest of the world wants to be is indebted to China with its human rights abuses and terrifying economic potential.

[DoctorHandles]

Those are good points.

I never said diplomacy is silly, I said saying diplomacy is the solution to North Korea is rather silly. If there was any way it could work, I'm of course all for it. If it doesn't, you need to be ready to take real actions or accept real consequences.

Also the whole Iraq thing was largely fueled by the idea we have to to strike first. Intelligence told us Osama was up to no good years before 9/11, but we still didn't go after him aggressively enough. The president wanted to make sure we didn't make the same mistake again, and saw Siddam (not sure if this spelled right) as a potential target and decided to take him out.

[Stoneburg]

[k3nt]

I owe allstar an apology. Handles pointed out something important: just because you don't have a policy to torture, doesn't mean you don't torture.

Looking back, that's clearly the point allstar was making, and I clearly missed it. I was a moron. My apologies.

I agree that most likely torture happens sometimes, especially in times of war, even when it's not legal or a part of policy.

But to me, that is a really good argument against making it "legal" and aboveboard.

If there is a really desperate situation, a ticking bomb type situation, then in a time of war the torture is going to happen anyway. And nobody will be prosecuted for it. Or, if they are, they can plead circumstances, and no jury in the world will convict them.

But if you make torture legal, like this administration has, then you quickly make it common. It becomes the first resort, rather than the last. It happens to everybody, guilty and innocent alike. And that is what destroys a nation's standing in the world and its soul.

In the US, right now, torture is a completely normal part of day-to-day operations at sites around the world. That's disgusting, and horrible.

If you have never read Gulag Archipelago -- or at least parts of it -- you really, really need to do so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago

The US isn't nearly up to the standards set by Soviet Russia, in terms of the sheer number of these places and the number of people who went through them. We never will be, I'm sure. However, many of the horrors that are reported to go on in the American version are depressingly similar to what Solzhenitsyn reported.

Someone in the future will probably write a book similar to Solzhenitsyn's, about his experiences in the American system of infinite detention and torture. Makes me sick just thinking about it.

[Allstar7]

[k3nt]

[Allstar7]