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InvisibleBlack -> RE: Waterboarding Pride (6/6/2010 9:27:26 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Owner59
We are signatures to treaties outlawing torture.
The US Constitution requires that we abide by the treaties we`ve signed.
bushcheneydick broke those treaties while simultaneously urinating on our Constitution.
As I recall, they went and got a legal opinion stating that waterboarding wasn't torture. They then brought in the relevant members of the appropriate Congressional committees and got their sign off on what their interrogation plans were. They then began conducting these operations and brought in a number of psychological and legal experts to review the operations and declare them as within acceptable guidelines.
It's not some big revelation when Bush says he waterboarded an alleged terrorist. This was already all over the news and has been reported on for years. He's never denied it.
Personally, I'm not sure whether waterboarding is "torture" per se, it's not as clear cut as attaching electrodes to someone's testicles or shoving bamboo under their fingernails or whatever - I'd have to be waterboarded to really say and, were I someone whose job it is to make these determinations I would volunteer to be waterboarded so I'd know. However, that's neither here nor there - waterboarding someone one hundred times is clearly torture. Punching you once in the face might not be torture but punching you in the face one hundred times is.
However, I don't care what some treaty says or how cleverly a law was written to allow certain practicies or that you can find a batch of people who will blithely agree with whatever your plans are. Right is right and wrong is wrong and a piece of paper saying otherwise dosn't matter worth a damn.
The United States of America I want to live in does not torture prisoners. I don't care what sort of justification you put around it.I don't care how "necessary" you claim it is. If what you're saying is that there's no way to survive in the modern world without the use of torture - that we're doomed without using torture - then what you're saying is, basically, that evil is stronger than good, that the dark path is superior to the light path, and that our core values are wrong because when things get tough they don't really work. I don't believe that for a second. I believe that in the long run the moral choice is the correct choice. I believe that knowing that you're doing the right thing is a powerful motivator and leads you to successes beyond what is ordinarily possible. I believe that allowing the sort of ethical decay that overlooks "unfortunate incidents", that allows "discepancies" to occur, and then turns a blind eye when compromising our own beliefs and values is convenient creates a contagion of rot and gradual corruption that spreads throughout the entire system and in the end brings everyone down. I believe we're seeing the fruits of that in almost every aspect of American life right now.
Beyond that and while I'm on a tear - one of the most repulsive things I've ever heard is that "torture doesn't work anyway". This implies that if it did work, it would then by okay. It doesn't matter if it works or not (and, actually, I strongly suspect that it does), it's wrong and it's evil. The fact that it's only wrong because you're not benefitting from it is a truly vile concept.
Lastly, they are never going to pursue this because, quite simply, once the can of worms was open and all the records came into the light of day, not only would the Bush administration go down, but so would several very prominent and key Democrats. Neither party has any interest in a thorough investigation and so one will not be pursued. President Obama started to go down the path of an investigation and as soon as the CIA and Military Intelligence reports started seeing the light of day, dropped it like a hot potato. They named too many of the wrong names. They won't go there again. Fifty or a hundred years from now when everything gets de-classified or becomes public, people will finally know but by then everyone involved will be safely dead.
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