Outed CIA operativesFollow

Well, excuse me!

Ok. I'll rephrase.

He's a **** who justifies his horrible prejudices and his feelings of superiority over anyone who doesn't look, think, dress and **** like him to himself, by professing a belief in 'the Bible' as though that in itself could justify his twisted small-minded views on the world and the rest of the people in it.

I give as much validity to his opinions and views on how the world should work as i do to a bearded dropkick from Islamistan who thinks the Koran gives him a valid excuse for blowing people up.

Varrus =Sorry excuse for a christian.

Bearded dropkick with an explosive belt = Sorry excuse for a muslim.

Let's leave the word "torture" out for the moment. It's charged with a lot of emotional baggage. Intel gained from an "enemy" is *always* trash. Doesn't matter if we obtained it by bribery, handing over 72 virgins, chocolate, breaking down via legal interrogation, or the use of torture.

How it's gained really doesn't increase the likelihood of it being accurate much. Different methods get different people to talk though, which is the objective here. You want to get past the "name, rank, and serial number" response.



Corroboration is kinda relevant. If you query a half dozen sources, and regardless of technique` or type all of them separately give you the same or very similar information, it's a good bet that information is correct. Whether that's information gained from signal intelligence, human intelligence, or pulling fingernails off people until they talk, that's how you determine if something is likely to be true or not.

It's not like we've just been taking whatever someone at Gitmo says at face value and not corroborating it at all or anything...



Not torture, and not Trash. Again. Different techniques will work on different people. And you *never* trust the information unless you can corroborate it.



Really? How exactly does that deter or prevent the next dozen terrorists from attacking you? Look. We can debate the degree of danger posed at any given time by terrorist organizations, but let's assume for the sake of argument that a determination has been made that they're dangerous and we want to do something to prevent them from attacking us.

A whole lot of rhetoric is tossed around about how detaining people doesn't deter anyone, and how invading this country and/or occupying that one doesn't help, and just increases recruitment and other bad things. Cause after all, these guys are willing to die for their cause, right? So none of that works on them, right?

Does charging them with a crime and imprisoning them work either? Why?


Let's get back to the objective here. It's not about applying criminal justice. Remember, we've decided we want to stop the next terrorist attack, not just punish those responsible for the last one. We agree that no detainment, imprisonment, interrogation, torture, bribery, etc is going to make the next crop of terrorists not attack us. So while we can (and should) certainly be aware of the techniques being used, some form of interrogation system designed to help us locate and destroy terrorist organizations and cells would seem to be the most useful thing to do with those we capture.


We can decide that some forms of interrogation are too harsh. We can label them torture if we want. But let's not go overboard and insist that there's no value to interrogation at all so we just shouldn't do it. Let's not toss out these simplistic platitudes like "We should just charge them with a crime and give them a fair trial"... It's a childishly simplistic argument which wholly misses the objectives at hand.

Aren't things better when we say what we mean?

Intelligence Science Board report on torture where one of the things they decided was



And really, if there is a happy acceptance amongst the people of the practice of your govt. torturing your enemies, then at the end of the day, you are no better than your enemies. You have conceded any notion of 'moral high ground and admitted that there are no rules that you are willing to abide by, and if that is the case, then you're citizens or soldiers should not look to treated by any rules also.

In other words, your spiral into the abyss has become mutually acceptable.

Good luck with that.

Oh my @#%^ing god. The irony. The irony.

You're not only terrifying; you're a terrifying douchebag who is attempting to argue an ethical matter by posting descriptions of president Bush.

1) You are not allowed in any sane context, according to any thinker, to argue ethics using descriptions.
2) Double that for descriptions of someone who is clearly an example of ethical repugnance.



He doesn't care. Apparently our government doesn't have to concern itself with petty and insignificant notions like the "law."

I..I really want to puke when I hear people attempt to justify anything of that matter. They could at least have the decency to stop being craven cowards and admit that what they are doing is evil, instead of attempting to cobble together some ridiculous ad hoc morality to appease the average person. I mean ********** or get off the pot" couldn't be any more descriptive of that. At least varrus is honest with me when he tries to justify torture. He doesn't have to make up some preposterous story about how we've moved past the rules and that our objective not on is not, but should not be, the justice of punishing crimes.

Edited, May 4th 2009 10:37pm by Pensive

The Gospel of Rush Limbaugh, what else?

Um... Common sense? An understanding of human nature? Space alien mind probes? Truth is true Joph. Doesn't matter who says it...


Lets start with some givens. Assume two otherwise identical guys. Both of them are involved with a secret terrorist organization and have information about their cell members, locations, contact methods, and operational plans.

You take guy number one and wine and dine him and otherwise build up trust and friendship. I'll take guy number two and pull his fingernails off one by one until he talks. In 6 weeks, we'll get a bunch of information from both of them, and odds are almost none of it will be accurate.

But if, during one of your friendly conversations involving fine wine and cigars, your guy, in the midst of a dozen other statements says something that happens to exactly match one of the dozens of random statements my guy says (in between the screams of course), and that statement jibes with some signals we've been intercepting, we've got a good bet that that one particular piece of information is correct.


We can't know which information is true. Even if your guy is telling us all true stuff, and my guy is making up everything he can, we can't know that. We can only guess. The best way to determine what is true and what is false is via corroboration of information from multiple sources.


Do you have any reason to think that this isn't the best way to figure out what's true and what's not? I'm not making any statements at all about which techniques are "best", just that none of them are going to give us anywhere near 100% reliable information by themselves. I mention this only to point out that the whole "Torture doesn't get reliable information" argument is mostly red herring. No single source is reliable. Not from an intelligence standpoint.

Edited, May 4th 2009 9:01pm by gbaji

Again, I don't care.

I don't care what we did or do; the only thing that is relevant to this discussion is what we should have done, or should do. Do you get this yet? Whether or not torture is evil does not depend on whether or not it is effective, whether or not it serves its "purpose" nor whether or not it stops terrorism. It does. not. matter.







According to what? Your own @#%^ing jerry rigged rules that allow you to best come out in an argument? I don't have to capitulate with your idiotic demands. I am under no obligation to assess the value of the process in the way that is most likely to give it credence among republican apologists, simply because that's the way you want it to be judged. You're going to be judged according to the laws of ethics, and if you don't like it, then you should present some ethical arguments for why the assessment is incorrect, not attempt to change the parameters of the entire damn question to work in your favour. It's intellectually fraudulent, and it pisses me off that anyone, including you, can be so ridiculously blinded by partisan ideology that you are not willing to examine an ethical question by the rules of @#%^ing ethics.

Edited, May 5th 2009 12:32am by Pensive

True. Other countries don't start wars with the wrong country.

"Suspected" for reasons ranging from pretty solid evidence to tips by paid informants. Many of which have since been released and many others who are being held without a trial or presentation of the evidence against them.That'd be the simple way of looking at it for those who don't want to hurt their heads with thinking, sure.