What Is "Torture"?

[MACAULAY]

I think torture may be having to put with this lying lazy incompetent fraud in the White House for 2 more years.

But, as to how Americans react to these matters...it pretty much depends on the exigencies of the circumstances. A Democrat President put American Citizens of Japenese descent in jail during WWII without any semblance of due process...and the pinhead liberals & hypocrite politicians didn't think to go all squishy on that until after the great danger ended.

Abe Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus during the Civil War....which let him arrest anybody....any American citizen, and not charge him, and keep him in jail for as long as he wanted...just like the Tudor and Stuart Kings used to do.

Exigent circumstances existed then, & they existed on 9/11 after we were savagely attacked by very committed soldiers fighting a new kind of war...which we had to learn how to fight against....to write new rules of combat for a stateless enemy while we did what we could to fend of another such attack. It was o. k. to fear a dirty bomb.

And you could not have found even the worst left-wing loon wandering on the streets of New York City who cared what the hell our CIA did to stop the Lunatic Muslims.

Now, for reasons I don't understand, it is reactionary to fear a dirty bomb; and progressive for our President to negotiate with Mullahs in Iran to see how much longer we will let them lie to us while they finish up work on a nuclear bomb.

We are in a War with people who think and behave like animals. I realize it ain't shiek in New York just now...but I STILL don't care with they do when they catch one, if it will help stop the next attack on the United States.

But, I do wonder how the Pinheads can go soft on waterboarding but they are just fine with droning a terrorist and blowing up all the women and children standing in his general direction.

The answer is that Pinheads are capable of a hypocrisy which normal Americans can not conceive.

Warterboarding a terriost is now bad because Republicans once did it....and blowing up a terrorist along with associated women and children is now good, because Barak Obama, a Democrat....is doing it.

 

[Discombobulated]

I think torture may be having to put with this lying lazy incompetent fraud in the White House for 2 more years.

But, as to how Americans react to these matters...it pretty much depends on the exigencies of the circumstances. A Democrat President put American Citizens of Japenese descent in jail during WWII without any semblance of due process...and the pinhead liberals & hypocrite politicians didn't think to go all squishy on that until after the great danger ended.

Abe Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus during the Civil War....which let him arrest anybody....any American citizen, and not charge him, and keep him in jail for as long as he wanted...just like the Tudor and Stuart Kings used to do.

Exigent circumstances existed then, & they existed on 9/11 after we were savagely attacked by very committed soldiers fighting a new kind of war...which we had to learn how to fight against....to write new rules of combat for a stateless enemy while we did what we could to fend of another such attack. It was o. k. to fear a dirty bomb.

And you could not have found even the worst left-wing loon wandering on the streets of New York City who cared what the hell our CIA did to stop the Lunatic Muslims.

Now, for reasons I don't understand, it is reactionary to fear a dirty bomb; and progressive for our President to negotiate with Mullahs in Iran to see how much longer we will let them lie to us while they finish up work on a nuclear bomb.

We are in a War with people who think and behave like animals. I realize it ain't shiek in New York just now...but I STILL don't care with they do when they catch one, if it will help stop the next attack on the United States.

But, I do wonder how the Pinheads can go soft on waterboarding but they are just fine with droning a terrorist and blowing up all the women and children standing in his general direction.

The answer is that Pinheads are capable of a hypocrisy which normal Americans can not conceive.

Warterboarding a terriost is now bad because Republicans once did it....and blowing up a terrorist along with associated women and children is now good, because Barak Obama, a Democrat....is doing it.

You live on very shallow equivalencies.

 

[Carla_Danger]

What is torture? I think it's listening to Sarah Palin trying to string a sentence.

 

[MACAULAY]

I think torture may be having to put with this lying lazy incompetent fraud in the White House for 2 more years.

But, as to how Americans react to these matters...it pretty much depends on the exigencies of the circumstances. A Democrat President put American Citizens of Japenese descent in jail during WWII without any semblance of due process...and the pinhead liberals & hypocrite politicians didn't think to go all squishy on that until after the great danger ended.

Abe Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus during the Civil War....which let him arrest anybody....any American citizen, and not charge him, and keep him in jail for as long as he wanted...just like the Tudor and Stuart Kings used to do.

Exigent circumstances existed then, & they existed on 9/11 after we were savagely attacked by very committed soldiers fighting a new kind of war...which we had to learn how to fight against....to write new rules of combat for a stateless enemy while we did what we could to fend of another such attack. It was o. k. to fear a dirty bomb.

And you could not have found even the worst left-wing loon wandering on the streets of New York City who cared what the hell our CIA did to stop the Lunatic Muslims.

Now, for reasons I don't understand, it is reactionary to fear a dirty bomb; and progressive for our President to negotiate with Mullahs in Iran to see how much longer we will let them lie to us while they finish up work on a nuclear bomb.

We are in a War with people who think and behave like animals. I realize it ain't shiek in New York just now...but I STILL don't care with they do when they catch one, if it will help stop the next attack on the United States.

But, I do wonder how the Pinheads can go soft on waterboarding but they are just fine with droning a terrorist and blowing up all the women and children standing in his general direction.

The answer is that Pinheads are capable of a hypocrisy which normal Americans can not conceive.

Warterboarding a terriost is now bad because Republicans once did it....and blowing up a terrorist along with associated women and children is now good, because Barak Obama, a Democrat....is doing it.

You live on very shallow equivalencies.

_____________________________

I swear, is that all you've got? How Pinhead is "....live on very shallow equivalences". Did you get that off MSNBC? Sounds just like Jon Gruber.

If you were as smart of a pinhead as you think you are, you would have dispensed with such an anemic response...therefore leaving yourself the option to pretend you did not read....that for which you have no response.

But, all Pinheads think they are smarter than they really are. It is much of what being a Pinhead is all about.

And, by the way, I don't think Groucho is your Marx. I think its Karl. I'll bet Karl Marx used to use "shallow equivalences"....sounds just like him.

 

[skye]

What is torture?

For our politically correct, idealist, progressive left wing friends......even "bullying" no doubt is considered a form of torture.

You are not allowed to speak harshly, give orders in a strong tone or admonish someone without being accused of causing mental anguish...which demonstrates the mindset of those who oppose the necessary firm interrogation methods of the CIA.

When it comes to terrorists, torture is a necessary and valid device, to retrieve information which will save lives , when all other methods have failed.

 

[tosacco]

If what the CIA did to interrogate suspected terrorists isn't torture, does that make those methods of interrogation acceptable to use on US citizens?

 

[The Rabbi]

If what the CIA did to interrogate suspected terrorists isn't torture, does that make those methods of interrogation acceptable to use on US citizens?

Fallacy.
Totally different contexts.

 

[Staidhup]

Is it a war crime or just a misunderstanding of international treaty obligations? Maybe it's both things at once......

War crime? how can it be a war crime when the act of terrorism is not an act of war but rather a radical spontaneous act resulting in shock and fear designed to extract coercion for ones minority opinion? The next thing you will be stating is that the Geneva accords and US Justice system apply s to terrorists. Terrorism is not conventional war, want proof, ask yourself why they hide behind innocents and cover their faces. Or is it maybe terrorists are cowards and unwilling to disclose their identity and ware identifying uniform. Why is it they send women and children with bombs strapped to their bodies to do their acts of terror? Misunderstanding of international treaty? So that must be the justification for be-headings, confusion. Sad sad sad.

 

[ClosedCaption]

What is torture?

For our politically correct, idealist, progressive left wing friends......even "bullying" no doubt is considered a form of torture.

You are not allowed to speak harshly, give orders in a strong tone or admonish someone without being accused of causing mental anguish...which demonstrates the mindset of those who oppose the necessary firm interrogation methods of the CIA.

When it comes to terrorists, torture is a necessary and valid device, to retrieve information which will save lives , when all other methods have failed.

Claiming well-defined words are vague or ill-defined. This is a mirror image of #30. It is a favorite of those who do wrong but seek to avoid the consequences or responsibility by asserting that what is wright or wrong is merely a mater of each individual’s opinion. Try that in court and see how far its gets you. This is also akin to #22: rejecting facts or logic as mere opinion.

Rejecting facts or logic as opinion: It is true that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But everyone is not entitled to their own facts or logic. Nor is anyone allowed to characterize a factual/logical argument as merely the opinion of the opponent. Facts are facts. 2 +2 = 4 is not my opinion. It is a fact.

 

[tosacco]

If what the CIA did to interrogate suspected terrorists isn't torture, does that make those methods of interrogation acceptable to use on US citizens?

Fallacy.
Totally different contexts.

So where is the line?

 

[The Rabbi]

If what the CIA did to interrogate suspected terrorists isn't torture, does that make those methods of interrogation acceptable to use on US citizens?

Fallacy.
Totally different contexts.

So where is the line?

There certainly is one. The question in any case is vague. IF the US captured a US citizen working for ISIS in Yemen or something could we subject him to the same treatment for interrogation? I would say yes, absolutely.

 

[Discombobulated]

I think torture may be having to put with this lying lazy incompetent fraud in the White House for 2 more years.

But, as to how Americans react to these matters...it pretty much depends on the exigencies of the circumstances. A Democrat President put American Citizens of Japenese descent in jail during WWII without any semblance of due process...and the pinhead liberals & hypocrite politicians didn't think to go all squishy on that until after the great danger ended.

Abe Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus during the Civil War....which let him arrest anybody....any American citizen, and not charge him, and keep him in jail for as long as he wanted...just like the Tudor and Stuart Kings used to do.

Exigent circumstances existed then, & they existed on 9/11 after we were savagely attacked by very committed soldiers fighting a new kind of war...which we had to learn how to fight against....to write new rules of combat for a stateless enemy while we did what we could to fend of another such attack. It was o. k. to fear a dirty bomb.

And you could not have found even the worst left-wing loon wandering on the streets of New York City who cared what the hell our CIA did to stop the Lunatic Muslims.

Now, for reasons I don't understand, it is reactionary to fear a dirty bomb; and progressive for our President to negotiate with Mullahs in Iran to see how much longer we will let them lie to us while they finish up work on a nuclear bomb.

We are in a War with people who think and behave like animals. I realize it ain't shiek in New York just now...but I STILL don't care with they do when they catch one, if it will help stop the next attack on the United States.

But, I do wonder how the Pinheads can go soft on waterboarding but they are just fine with droning a terrorist and blowing up all the women and children standing in his general direction.

The answer is that Pinheads are capable of a hypocrisy which normal Americans can not conceive.

Warterboarding a terriost is now bad because Republicans once did it....and blowing up a terrorist along with associated women and children is now good, because Barak Obama, a Democrat....is doing it.

You live on very shallow equivalencies.

_____________________________

I swear, is that all you've got? How Pinhead is "....live on very shallow equivalences". Did you get that off MSNBC? Sounds just like Jon Gruber.

If you were as smart of a pinhead as you think you are, you would have dispensed with such an anemic response...therefore leaving yourself the option to pretend you did not read....that for which you have no response.

But, all Pinheads think they are smarter than they really are. It is much of what being a Pinhead is all about.

And, by the way, I don't think Groucho is your Marx. I think its Karl. I'll bet Karl Marx used to use "shallow equivalences"....sounds just like him.

Hey guess what dummy.....water boarding is a war crime. Japanese officers were hanged for doing exactly that.

 

[Mad_Cabbie]

TORTURE REPORT
7 Key Points From the C.I.A. Torture Report
By JEREMY ASHKENAS, HANNAH FAIRFIELD, JOSH KELLER and PAUL VOLPE DEC. 9, 2014

The report released by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence discloses new details about the C.I.A.’s torture practices.

More coverage: Related Article | Does Torture Work? | A History of the Program
1. The C.I.A.’s interrogation techniques were more brutal and employed more extensively than the agency portrayed.
The report describes extensive waterboarding as a “series of near drownings” and suggests that more prisoners were subjected to waterboarding than the three prisoners the C.I.A. has acknowledged in the past. The report also describes detainees being subjected to sleep deprivation for up to a week, medically unnecessary “rectal feeding” and death threats. Conditions at one prison, described by a clandestine officer as a “dungeon,” were blamed for the death of a detainee, and the harsh techniques were described as leading to “psychological and behavioral issues, including hallucinations, paranoia, insomnia, and attempts at self-harm and self-mutilation.”

• Waterboarding is called “a series of near-drownings” (Page 86)
• Detainees with psychological and behavioral issues (Page 114)

2. The C.I.A. interrogation program was mismanaged and was not subject to adequate oversight.
The report cites dissatisfaction among intelligence officers about the competence and training of interrogators. Those found to have violated agency policy were “rarely held accountable.” The architects of the program had never carried out a real interrogation. The report states that the C.I.A. resisted congressional oversight, restricted access to information, declined to answer questions about the program and “impeded oversight” by the agency's inspector general by providing false information.

• An officer with no previous experience conducting interrogations (Page 50)
• C.I.A. officers were "rarely held accountable" for death, injury or wrongful detention. (Page 14)

3. The C.I.A. misled members of Congress and the White House about the effectiveness and extent of its brutal interrogation techniques.
The report says that the C.I.A. provided false and misleading information to members of Congress, the White House and the director of national intelligence about the program’s effectiveness. It asserts that a review of cases, in which the agency claims to have collected “actionable intelligence” it would have been unable to obtain by other means, calls into question the connection between the information and any “counterterrorism success.”

• How the C.I.A. represented the program’s effectiveness (Page 172)
• Examples of inaccurate C.I.A. testimony (Page 462)

The report includes dozens of examples from C.I.A. Director Michael Hayden's April 12, 2007, testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that highlight how his statements directly contradicted internal C.I.A records.
Hayden’s Testimony
“Now in June, after about four months of interrogation, Abu Zubaydah reached a point where he refused to cooperate and he shut down. He would not talk at all to the FBI interrogators and although he was still talking to CIA interrogators no significant progress was being made in learning anything of intelligence value. He was, to our eye, employing classic resistance to interrogation techniques and employing them quite effectively. And it was clear to us that we were unlikely to be able to overcome those techniques without some significant intervention.”
C.I.A. Records
C.I.A. records do not show that Abu Zubaydah stopped cooperating with interrogators. He had provided information on Qaeda activities, leadership and training, but had not given information about future attacks on the United States, which the C.I.A. believed he was witholding. He was put into isolation for 47 days when the interrogation team traveled, and during his next interrogation, the team used enhanced techniques, including waterboarding.


4. Interrogators in the field who tried to stop the brutal techniques were repeatedly overruled by senior C.I.A. officials.
C.I.A. personnel reported on multiple occasions to being “disturbed” by waterboarding and concerned over its legality. Officials, including the program’s architects, described the interrogation as a “template for future interrogation” of detainees. In one instance, a senior official pushed back against concern over the “legal limit” of brutal interrogation techniques by stating that the “guidelines for this activity” had been “vetted at the most senior levels of the agency.”

• C.I.A. personnel concerned over waterboarding (Page 44)
• Counterterrorism official pushes back on questions of legality. (Page 43)

5. The C.I.A. repeatedly underreported the number of people it detained and subjected to harsh interrogation techniques under the program.
The report states that the C.I.A. never produced an accurate count or list of those it had detained or subjected to brutal interrogation techniques. The agency said it detained “fewer than 100 individuals,” but a review of agency records indicated that it held 119. It also underreported the number of detainees who were subjected to torture.

• C.I.A. director “instructed me to keep the detainee number at 98” (Page 15)

6. At least 26 detainees were wrongfully held and did not meet the government’s standard for detention.
The report found that at least 26 detainees “were wrongfully held,” including an “intellectually challenged” man who was used as “leverage” to obtain information from a family member, two former intelligence sources and two individuals identified as threats by a detainee subjected to torture. Agency records were often incomplete and, in some cases, lacked sufficient information to justify keeping detainees in custody.

• Of 119 detainees, at least 26 were “wrongfully held.” (Page 14)

7. The C.I.A. leaked classified information to journalists, exaggerating the success of interrogation methods in an effort to gain public support.
The report found that the C.I.A. provided classified information to journalists but that the agency did not push to prosecute or investigate many of the leaks. C.I.A. officials asked officers to “compile information on the success” of the program to be shared with the news media in order to shape public opinion. The C.I.A. also mischaracterized events and provided false or incomplete information to the news media in an effort to gain public support.

• Overview of representations to the media (Page 401)

More on NYTimes.com

 

[Mad_Cabbie]

So the Dems, using the only vehicle they have left, are trotting out allegations of torture against the Bush Administration. We've been here before. In 2008 the administration released the "Torture Memos", papers detailing the Bush Administration's legal reasoning for their policies (similar papers for Obama's illegal amnesty are lacking).
Jay Bybee wrote the memo and :

It concludes that torture is only: extreme acts according to the Convention Against Torture; that severe pain (a requisite for this definition of torture) is "serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death"; that prolonged mental harm is harm that must last for "months or even years";

So merely inflicting pain is not torture. Merely threatning someone is not torture.
The Bush Administration and the US did not torture anyone. There were legal guidelines in place based on statute.
As usual the Bush-haters toss all that aside and rely on their own flawed reasoning.

How about threatening to murder someones mother or feeding them exclusively through their colon???

 

[Discombobulated]

If what the CIA did to interrogate suspected terrorists isn't torture, does that make those methods of interrogation acceptable to use on US citizens?

Fallacy.
Totally different contexts.

So where is the line?

Nowhere....because despite all his dramatics to the contrary the Rabbi evidently doesn't really believe in the concept of American exceptionalism.

 

[Mad_Cabbie]

If what the CIA did to interrogate suspected terrorists isn't torture, does that make those methods of interrogation acceptable to use on US citizens?

Fallacy.
Totally different contexts.

So where is the line?

Nowhere....because despite all his dramatics to the contrary the Rabbi evidently doesn't really believe in the concept of American exceptionalism.

Only when used to score political points while flaming the POS POTUS.

 

[Judicial review]

Having to sit through an Obozo speech!

That's when I sleep the best.

 

[Carla_Danger]

If what the CIA did to interrogate suspected terrorists isn't torture, does that make those methods of interrogation acceptable to use on US citizens?

Fallacy.
Totally different contexts.

Really?

So we must torture some of our military trainees too, because they also get waterboarded.
dunce

 

[The Rabbi]

If what the CIA did to interrogate suspected terrorists isn't torture, does that make those methods of interrogation acceptable to use on US citizens?

Fallacy.
Totally different contexts.

Really?

So we must torture some of our military trainees too, because they also get waterboarded.
dunce

Was there a point you were trying to make that cut off somewhere?

 

[AntiParty]

So the Dems, using the only vehicle they have left, are trotting out allegations of torture against the Bush Administration. We've been here before. In 2008 the administration released the "Torture Memos", papers detailing the Bush Administration's legal reasoning for their policies (similar papers for Obama's illegal amnesty are lacking).
Jay Bybee wrote the memo and :

It concludes that torture is only: extreme acts according to the Convention Against Torture; that severe pain (a requisite for this definition of torture) is "serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death"; that prolonged mental harm is harm that must last for "months or even years";

So merely inflicting pain is not torture. Merely threatning someone is not torture.
The Bush Administration and the US did not torture anyone. There were legal guidelines in place based on statute.
As usual the Bush-haters toss all that aside and rely on their own flawed reasoning.

On title alone, torture is watching people who don't know what it is ask what it is....(Watching people try to justify oppression, racism, torture is a modern day phenomenon)