What is constitutes as torture.

brneyedgrl80

Member
May 25, 2004
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This won't hurt much

Terry Jones
Wednesday June 16, 2004
The Guardian

For some time now, I've been trying to find out where my son goes after choir practice. He simply refuses to tell me. He says it's no business of mine where he goes after choir practice and it's a free country.
Now it may be a free country, but if people start going just anywhere they like after choir practice, goodness knows whether we'll have a country left to be free. I mean, he might be going to anarchist meetings or Islamic study groups. How do I know?

The thing is, if people don't say where they're going after choir practice, this country is at risk. So I have been applying a certain amount of pressure on my son to tell me where he's going. To begin with I simply put a bag over his head and chained him to a radiator. But did that persuade him? Does the Pope eat kosher?

My wife had the gall to suggest that I might be going a bit too far. So I put a bag over her head and chained her to the radiator. But I still couldn't persuade my son to tell me where he goes after choir practice.

I tried starving him, serving him only cold meals and shaving his facial hair off, keeping him in stress positions, not turning his light off, playing loud music outside his cell door - all the usual stuff that any concerned parent will do to find out where their child is going after choir practice. But it was all to no avail.

I hesitated to gravitate to harsher interrogation methods because, after all, he is my son. Then Donald Rumsfeld came to my rescue.

I read in the New York Times last week that a memo had been prepared for the defence secretary on March 6 2003. It laid down the strictest guidelines as to what is and what is not torture. Because, let's face it, none of us want to actually torture our children, in case the police get to hear about it.

The March 6 memo, prepared for Mr Rumsfeld explained that what may look like torture is not really torture at all. It states that: if someone "knows that severe pain will result from his actions, if causing such harm is not his objective, he lacks the requisite specific intent even though the defendant did not act in good faith".

What this means in understandable English is that if a parent, in his anxiety to know where his son goes after choir practice, does something that will cause severe pain to his son, it is only "torture" if the causing of that severe pain is his objective. If his objective is something else - such as finding out where his son goes after choir practice - then it is not torture.

Mr Rumsfeld's memo goes on: "a defendant" (by which he means a concerned parent) "is guilty of torture only if he acts with the express purpose of inflicting severe pain or suffering on a person within his control".

Couldn't be clearer. If your intention is to extract information, you cannot be accused of torture.

In fact, the report went further. It said, if a parent "has a good-faith belief [that] his actions will not result in prolonged mental harm, he lacks the mental state necessary for his actions to constitute torture". So all you've got to do to avoid accusations of child abuse is to say that you didn't think it would cause any lasting harm to the child. Easy peasy!

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I currently have a lot of my son's friends locked up in the garage, and I'm applying electrical charges to their genitals and sexually humiliating them in order to get them to tell me where my son goes after choir practice.

Dick Cheney's counsel, David S Addington, says that's just fine. William J Haynes, the US defence department's general counsel, agrees it's just fine. And so does the US air force general counsel, Mary Walker.

In fact, practically everybody in the US administration seems to think it's just fine, except for the state department lawyer, William H Taft IV, who perversely claims that I might be opening the door to people applying electrical charges to my genitals and sexually humiliating me.

So I'm going to round up all the children in the neighbourhood, chain them and set dogs on them. I might accidentally kill one or two - but I won't have intended to - and perhaps I'll take some photos of my wife standing on the dead bodies, and then I'll show the photos to the other kids, and finally, perhaps, I might get to find out where my son goes after choir practice. After all, I'll only be doing what the US administration has been condoning since 9/11.

· Terry Jones is a writer, film director, actor and Python

terry-jones.net


http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1239824,00.html
 
Originally posted by Sir Evil
That was'nt good, that was horse shit! Making comparisons to your children to the likes of those prisoners is pretty scary! well I guess I should not expect more for supporters of the far left!:rolleyes:

But it actually is an apt comparison, at least in legal terms. Children are considered, legally, as being in the custody of their parents. Prisoners, legally,are in the custody of the state or nation that has apprehended them. Of course POWs and children share no comparison outside the legal framework unless one's child is a school shooter. But considering this is a country of law, the legal comparison is pretty damned pertinent.
 
Originally posted by menewa
But it actually is an apt comparison, at least in legal terms. Children are considered, legally, as being in the custody of their parents. Prisoners, legally,are in the custody of the state or nation that has apprehended them. Of course POWs and children share no comparison outside the legal framework unless one's child is a school shooter. But considering this is a country of law, the legal comparison is pretty damned pertinent.

However, one is by birth, the other by circumstance.

The legal comparison is apples and oranges and the analogy stinks.

Creative writing however and I did get a chuckle out of it.
 
This is not a Monty Python satire on the necessity for torture of Islamites. This Islamic daughter honor murder event is well known by most posters.

http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/1983/

A Muslim was jailed for life for slitting his daughter’s throat in an “honour killing” after she embraced western culture and began dating a Christian. This is a tragic story of irreconciable cultural differences between a father who had a traditional Muslim upbringing, values and background and a daughter who was a thoroughly westernized woman. Father with strict Muslim beliefs murdered “bright, vibrant” teenager who planned to runaway with Christian boyfriend.

A man with strict Muslim beliefs would certainly not kill his daughter. Such tragedies have nothing to do with faith or race. Her father could not control his emotions and his un-Islamic action is also liable for punishment under Islamic law. The tragedy could have been avoided if the poor girl was educated in a Muslim school by Muslim teachers. She is a product of de-education by state school. According to British law, the children should be educated according to the needs and demands of the parents but his daughter was educated to be a westernized woman, instead of a Muslim.

This tragedy is an eye opener for all those Muslim parents who send their children to state schools where they are exposed to teachers who have no respect for Islamic faith and Muslim community. There is a negative co-relation between home and school. The prime aim of schooling is to anglicize all children irrespective of their backgrounds. They are victim of institutional racism and Islamophobia. Already there are more than 6000 Muslim teenager girls in the custody of the social services, a product of the mis-education and de-education by state schools. Muslim youth are involved in drugs, prostitution, abandoning families, abortion and high rate of divorce. Muslim children need Muslim schools with Muslim teachers for proper growth during their developmental periods.

The silent majority of Muslim parents would like to send their children to Muslim schools but there are not enough schools to go by. The only alternative left is either British Government should introduce voucher system for parents to choose the school of their choice or designate all those state schools as Muslim community schools where Muslim pupils are in majority. There are hundreds of state schools where Muslims are in majority. Such schools may be handed over to Muslim educational Trusts or charities for their management. They are in a better position to educate Muslim children in accordance with their needs and demands. This demand is in accordance with the law of the land because there are state schools already managed by private companies.
 
While humorous, it is not an accurate comparison by any stretch.

What kind of knucklehead can compare parenting your children with treatment of suspected terrorists that may or may not have crucial information?
 
My mind goes numb again.
How you can compare enemy combatants to raising your children is just ....................I don't have a clue. This is exactly how the liberal mind functions. It distorts and then clouds over. The result is: BLEEDING HEARTS.
The enemy combatants that America has locked up should feel very lucky. They are still alive. American airmen shot down over the Pacific during WW2, when captured by the Japanese, were beheaded. No questions asked. They didn't have the chance to get chained to anything or to try to survive. They were executed.
If the liberals need anything, it is a history lesson. Oh, that's right, they have thier heads stuck so far up thier ass they can't learn anything. They're to busy chanting to themselves "If everything will just go away and be good again.:confused:
 
I feel your pain Sir Evil. I have a little brother who is an extreme liberal.(where did his gene pool come from?) I see how his disfunctional brain works. It always makes no sense. I like to refer to him as not just a liberal, but a stupid liberal. Now that's scary!!!!!!!!!!
 
Originally posted by Sir Evil
lol, the young are impressionable and taught much of this way of thinking in schools anymore. There are some decent thinking libs among us but I have to look pretty hard to find them!

the stupid libs are the ones that I call the radicals, much different than the average lib. you will find quite a few of the rads right here on this board, and only one normal lib. See if you can single out the normal one in your travels through the threads!

I KNOW! I KNOW! He's fun to pick on and some do it often!

But he gets you in the end!
 
I call him a stupid liberal affectionately. My brother and I love to talk politics and it gets very interesting, being on oppisite ends of the spectrum. But I don't feel I have to explain my relationship with my brother to anyone. So zip it menewa.
 
Originally posted by budboomer
I call him a stupid liberal affectionately. My brother and I love to talk politics and it gets very interesting, being on oppisite ends of the spectrum. But I don't feel I have to explain my relationship with my brother to anyone. So zip it menewa.

I didn't mean to offend you budboomer. :eek:
 
I just posted this because I thought it was funny.

I think the true point behind this was "What constitutes as torture?". Using children as a comparison was just a way to show how ridiculous the rules of torture are... but apparently it was missed by many of the extreme right-wingers.
 
Originally posted by Sir Evil
I say the article should be dismissed as it is a point of view from the far left side, and I hate to say this Browney but I think your posts are starting to reveal you as a extreme leftist.

Do ya think? You've noticed too.
 
Originally posted by brneyedgrl80
I just posted this because I thought it was funny.

I think the true point behind this was "What constitutes as torture?". Using children as a comparison was just a way to show how ridiculous the rules of torture are... but apparently it was missed by many of the extreme right-wingers.

I'm quite sure everyone that read it got the point.

What is idiotic is that he attempts to cloak his agenda with humor using an assinine analogy. A couple of lines were humorous, but the underlying message wasn't.

He's got his head up his ass, IMHO.
 
I won't sweat that much Evil. I'm new to this board and don't want to make too many enemies.
 

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