Gitmo, Cuba

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: palehorse74

Originally posted by: miketheidiot

Originally posted by: palehorse74

Face it, the American justice system is not set up or prepared to handle the prosecution of foreigners picked up by the military and intelligence professionals in the war against terrorists.

I can see no reason why this should be the case, unless you mean that it is not setup to provide easy conviction with questionable evidence and allow inhumane torture of people for no real concrete reason other than it makes fools feel good and safe.

Do you think you could squeeze a few more lines of bulls*t rhetoric in your next reply? I bet you can!

U.S. courts are not prepared to handle cases involving foreign terrorists caught on foreign soil involved in foreign terrorism! That is simply fact.

There are many reasons, but clue number one is a complete lack of judicial jurisdiction... duh.

Clue number two being the highly classified "evidence" - which cannot even be revealed to the defendants themselves! If the detainees learn of the methods and sources used against them, our operatives and sources would soon be killed.

How would you propose getting past these two hurdles?!

1) why does it need to be classifed, other than on the arbitrary authority of the government. Certainly the pre-established systems in say, the usmc would allow for such a situation.

2) If the information is classified, how do we know there is information? What if the classified information is that there isn't information?

 

[Sinsear]

Originally posted by: miketheidiot

Originally posted by: Pabster

Originally posted by: miketheidiot
way to bring hitler into a completely random topic. The only people trying to rewrite history here are you and your ilk

Well, the left-wing nuts here have a habit of comparing GWB to Hitler on a pretty regular basis, so I'd call it fair game.

Unfortunately for them, history won't be kind. And the records will remain.

so you complain about 'lefties' using hilter all the time, but then find it justified to do it yourself? If history won't look kindly on the democrats for their votes 'for war,' which they now clearly regret for the most part, what does this say about people like you, who still are diehard supporters. If history will look unkindly on anyone, it will look unkindly on us, who fell for it and bought it hook line a sinker. At least some of us have opened our eyes though.

Originally posted by: Sinsear

Originally posted by: miketheidiot

Originally posted by: Sinsear

Originally posted by: The Green Bean

Originally posted by: Pabster

Originally posted by: Rainsford
Are those the only two alternatives you guys can come up with?

There is no alternative. Gitmo is running just fine. Why fix what isn't broken?

50 years from now the tortures by Americans will be looked down upon with disgust.

This coming from the guy whose country is harboring Osama Bin Laden?

does that make it any less true?

Do I care? No. We need a place to cage the animals; Club Gitmo is a fine place for it.

cool i'll buy your ticket, since you come across as an animal to me.

Thanks, but I'll pass and leave you to your terrorist hug-a-thon.

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: Sinsear



Thanks, but I'll pass and leave you to your terrorist hug-a-thon.

because clearly supporting basic human rights and basic concepts of proper law and order are the same as humping terrorist leg.

I think its funny that you right wing 'conservatives' throw around all this bs about small government, but then have no problem with the government being as draconian as the government feels that it needs to be. I sense a disconnect there, or perhaps that the small government bs is just a cover.

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: palehorse74

Originally posted by: miketheidiot

Originally posted by: palehorse74

Face it, the American justice system is not set up or prepared to handle the prosecution of foreigners picked up by the military and intelligence professionals in the war against terrorists.

I can see no reason why this should be the case, unless you mean that it is not setup to provide easy conviction with questionable evidence and allow inhumane torture of people for no real concrete reason other than it makes fools feel good and safe.

Do you think you could squeeze a few more lines of bulls*t rhetoric in your next reply? I bet you can!

U.S. courts are not prepared to handle cases involving foreign terrorists caught on foreign soil involved in foreign terrorism! That is simply fact.

There are many reasons, but clue number one is a complete lack of judicial jurisdiction... duh.

Clue number two being the highly classified "evidence" - which cannot even be revealed to the defendants themselves! If the detainees learn of the methods and sources used against them, our operatives and sources would soon be killed.

How would you propose getting past these two hurdles?!

I can't speak for anyone else, but I think you have a point. There is nothing wrong with your logic here.

The problem is that the explicit argument you're making isn't as important as your implied argument is. Yes, there are a number of legal and national security hurdles to trying terrorism suspects in a court of law. I don't think many people would debate that. But here's the problem...your argument ISN'T that there are issues with trying them, your argument is that because it's difficult, we shouldn't do it at all. That national security should be the one and only consideration when discussing our treatment of detainees. Now maybe you don't see the danger in that kind of thinking, but it seems like a pretty major concern to me. The idea of "secret evidence" is particularly bad, since it opens the system up for abuse, and could easily be extended to US citizens by the same logic you just used.

In any case, those hurdles aren't completely insurmountable. The legal problems are fairly easy to solve, change the jurisdiction. I happen to think that crimes against Americans should be within our jurisdiction no matter where they happen or who committed them. And if the suspects in question WEREN'T planning or didn't commit a terrorist act against Americans, what the hell are we holding them for?

The second problem is tougher, but there are ways around it. One obvious way is to have secret judicial review of the evidence, if there were unbiased judges involved, I think that could be made reasonably fair. It could even be done with a cleared appointed advocate for the defendant present to make sure nothing bad was going on. There are a lot of ways to have secret evidence without having to trust unaccountable people that it says what they claim it says.

And that's the real problem. Of course there are issues, no one is arguing that point. But what you want to do is use those issues as an excuse to just avoid the system all together. The argument you're using is that there are new rules, but the argument you're really making is that there should be NO rules.

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: Fern

Originally posted by: Rainsford

Originally posted by: Pabster

Originally posted by: Jhhnn
The govt has certain obligations, including speedy public trial and confronting the accused with the evidence against them, neither of which seems to matter at gitmo...

That's because the U.S. Constitution doesn't apply to enemy combatants.

We don't know what applies to who, because "enemy combatants" is a bullshit legal term that was invented so we could claim that NO laws covered our treatment of prisoners. I don't think the US Constitution should apply, but I think SOME set of laws and standards should be. We have a reasonable model in the Geneva Conventions, but we're not even willing to apply that.

Yeah, since they are outta uniform we could execute them as spies according to the GC.

GC doesn't require trials for POWs either.

GC doesn't require POWs to be released until the conflict is over, either.

The GC is ill-eqiuped to deal with this situation. It was never designed to do so in the first place.

Fern

No shit. I said it's a good model, not a perfect solution. I agree with the idea that terrorists are a new kind of problem that require changes to the rules. I just don't think "no rules" is an acceptable solution, especially when the spirit of the old laws make it pretty obvious what the new laws should be.

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: Nebor

Originally posted by: Rainsford

Originally posted by: Nebor
If they're not Americans, or in America, then they don't benefit from the American legal system.

The American man they found fighting for the Taliban though, he should have come back to the US to stand try before a real court.

As for ANYTHING that happens at Gitmo, it is outside the jurisdiction of this country's legal system. There's nothing that can be done about it.

That's ridiculous, a facility run by the US, with actions taken by American citizens, is not "outside the jurisdiction of this country's legal system". You can claim that the prisoners are outside of our jurisdiction (although if that's the case, how can we hold them?), but our military and civilian folks certainly aren't. And I'd contend that their behavior is governed by a set of standards that don't change no matter who they are keeping prisoner.

I suppose you're right. Things were better back in the days before Gitmo, when we just turned people like those over to friendly regimes like Saudi Arabia or Egypt. They follow way less rules than the soldiers at Gitmo anyway. Plus we avoided the international attention of being one of those countries that tortures people.

You know, there's something I can't quite put my finger on that makes the Jack Bauer approach to fighting terrorism a lot less manly than you people seem to think it is.

 

[fskimospy]

Uhmm, just so everyone knows the Supreme Court ruled that US courts do in fact have jurisdiction over those we are holding in Guantanamo for offenses committed abroad. They did so in Rasoul v. Bush. So jurisdiction is not a very good argument, as US courts have agreed to at least minimal jurisdictional involvement there. I also see no reason why the US Constitution should not apply, as per the lease agreement with Cuba it says that the US will "exercise complete jurisdiction" over Guantanamo.

As for the torturing thing, there's a great segment on NPR on how effective handing people over to Saudi Arabia for torture, or torturing themselves is. Pretty much the opinion of the Colonel who is a veteran US army interrogator and teaches at the army school for it, was that torture and such things are just flat out worthless. He says its for amateurs.

Listen to it here

 

[blackangst1]

Originally posted by: Rainsford

Originally posted by: palehorse74

Originally posted by: miketheidiot

Originally posted by: palehorse74

Face it, the American justice system is not set up or prepared to handle the prosecution of foreigners picked up by the military and intelligence professionals in the war against terrorists.

I can see no reason why this should be the case, unless you mean that it is not setup to provide easy conviction with questionable evidence and allow inhumane torture of people for no real concrete reason other than it makes fools feel good and safe.

Do you think you could squeeze a few more lines of bulls*t rhetoric in your next reply? I bet you can!

U.S. courts are not prepared to handle cases involving foreign terrorists caught on foreign soil involved in foreign terrorism! That is simply fact.

There are many reasons, but clue number one is a complete lack of judicial jurisdiction... duh.

Clue number two being the highly classified "evidence" - which cannot even be revealed to the defendants themselves! If the detainees learn of the methods and sources used against them, our operatives and sources would soon be killed.

How would you propose getting past these two hurdles?!

I can't speak for anyone else, but I think you have a point. There is nothing wrong with your logic here.

The problem is that the explicit argument you're making isn't as important as your implied argument is. Yes, there are a number of legal and national security hurdles to trying terrorism suspects in a court of law. I don't think many people would debate that. But here's the problem...your argument ISN'T that there are issues with trying them, your argument is that because it's difficult, we shouldn't do it at all. That national security should be the one and only consideration when discussing our treatment of detainees. Now maybe you don't see the danger in that kind of thinking, but it seems like a pretty major concern to me. The idea of "secret evidence" is particularly bad, since it opens the system up for abuse, and could easily be extended to US citizens by the same logic you just used.

In any case, those hurdles aren't completely insurmountable. The legal problems are fairly easy to solve, change the jurisdiction. I happen to think that crimes against Americans should be within our jurisdiction no matter where they happen or who committed them. And if the suspects in question WEREN'T planning or didn't commit a terrorist act against Americans, what the hell are we holding them for?

The second problem is tougher, but there are ways around it. One obvious way is to have secret judicial review of the evidence, if there were unbiased judges involved, I think that could be made reasonably fair. It could even be done with a cleared appointed advocate for the defendant present to make sure nothing bad was going on. There are a lot of ways to have secret evidence without having to trust unaccountable people that it says what they claim it says.

And that's the real problem. Of course there are issues, no one is arguing that point. But what you want to do is use those issues as an excuse to just avoid the system all together. The argument you're using is that there are new rules, but the argument you're really making is that there should be NO rules.

Well...

I think the idea of secret councils and such in theory is a good idea. In practice, it wont work. Who appoints them? Or are they elected? How would you guarantee partiality, especially when their rulings are kept behind closed doors? How do you get around the political side of so and so was appointed by a democrat...so and so was appointed by a republican...we already have that quagmire with our SCOTUS. In short, how do you put them in place, and more importantly how do you monitor whether or not they are being judicial? Another secret council to monitor the secret council?

The next thing...this statement: "I happen to think that crimes against Americans should be within our jurisdiction no matter where they happen or who committed them"...is just fantasy and absurd. Lets say, for example, I travel to China. Lets say I decide to make a picket sign saying Christ is the answer, and walk back and forth in front of some government building. I *would* get arrested. Christians have been documented as being shot on the spot for displaying their beliefs. So, a Chinese officer shoots me. You really think that officer should be extradited to the USA for trial? Trial for what? For enforcing the laws of his country? Are you kidding or did I misinterprate what you said? Something that is legal here is illegal somewhere else, but you know that. How about the reverse? Lets say some russian guy comes to the USA on a visitors visa. He's 39. He has sex with a 15 year old, and we arrest him. Do we extradite him back to his home country to be tried for something that is legal in his own country? Or does American law apply while he's here? If thats true, why wouldnt the reverse be true?

 

[Pabster]

Originally posted by: eskimospy
Uhmm, just so everyone knows the Supreme Court ruled that US courts do in fact have jurisdiction over those we are holding in Guantanamo for offenses committed abroad. They did so in Rasoul v. Bush. So jurisdiction is not a very good argument, as US courts have agreed to at least minimal jurisdictional involvement there. I also see no reason why the US Constitution should not apply, as per the lease agreement with Cuba it says that the US will "exercise complete jurisdiction" over Guantanamo.

You are making a ridiculously liberal interpretation of the ruling. USSC has not found that the enemy combatants in Gitmo are subject to protections afforded under the Constitution; They've merely established that US Courts have jurisdiction over detainees there.

 

[fskimospy]

Originally posted by: Pabster

Originally posted by: eskimospy
Uhmm, just so everyone knows the Supreme Court ruled that US courts do in fact have jurisdiction over those we are holding in Guantanamo for offenses committed abroad. They did so in Rasoul v. Bush. So jurisdiction is not a very good argument, as US courts have agreed to at least minimal jurisdictional involvement there. I also see no reason why the US Constitution should not apply, as per the lease agreement with Cuba it says that the US will "exercise complete jurisdiction" over Guantanamo.

You are making a ridiculously liberal interpretation of the ruling. USSC has not found that the enemy combatants in Gitmo are subject to protections afforded under the Constitution; They've merely established that US Courts have jurisdiction over detainees there.

No I'm not, you didn't read my post very well.

I made no interpretation whatsoever of the supreme court's ruling. I merely stated that palehorse was not correct earlier when he said that US courts didn't have juristiction as shown in Rasoul v. Bush, and then I stated that my personal opinion of whether or not the US Constitution should apply there was rooted in the lease agreement between the Cuban government and the US back in 1907, which states that the US shall have complete jurisdiction over Gitmo. Considering the constitution necessarily applies over all areas that the US has jurisdiction over, it seems reasonable to me. The supreme court has not spoken on that issue though.

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: blackangst1
...

Well...

I think the idea of secret councils and such in theory is a good idea. In practice, it wont work. Who appoints them? Or are they elected? How would you guarantee partiality, especially when their rulings are kept behind closed doors? How do you get around the political side of so and so was appointed by a democrat...so and so was appointed by a republican...we already have that quagmire with our SCOTUS. In short, how do you put them in place, and more importantly how do you monitor whether or not they are being judicial? Another secret council to monitor the secret council?

I don't think it should be a special group of people. We trust judges with quite a bit, I honestly don't see a problem with exposing them to bits and pieces of intelligence, the importance of which I think is often greatly overstated.

But you do make a good point, it certainly has problems...and the fact that judges have to operate in public is probably a big reason our justice system works so well. So the other alternative is to just make it a choice...either we can use intelligence to stop an attack, or we can arrest the guy. Honestly, I don't think the choice is as likely to come up as people might think. I have a hard time believing there is no way to convict most of these people without resorting to extremely sensitive intelligence. I think either it can be revealed in a general enough way to not cause major problems, or we can find a way not to need it.

The next thing...this statement: "I happen to think that crimes against Americans should be within our jurisdiction no matter where they happen or who committed them"...is just fantasy and absurd. Lets say, for example, I travel to China. Lets say I decide to make a picket sign saying Christ is the answer, and walk back and forth in front of some government building. I *would* get arrested. Christians have been documented as being shot on the spot for displaying their beliefs. So, a Chinese officer shoots me. You really think that officer should be extradited to the USA for trial? Trial for what? For enforcing the laws of his country? Are you kidding or did I misinterprate what you said? Something that is legal here is illegal somewhere else, but you know that. How about the reverse? Lets say some russian guy comes to the USA on a visitors visa. He's 39. He has sex with a 15 year old, and we arrest him. Do we extradite him back to his home country to be tried for something that is legal in his own country? Or does American law apply while he's here? If thats true, why wouldnt the reverse be true?

Perhaps I was too general, but clearly that's the basic principle we're operating on here. Otherwise we'd have no authority at all to go after anyone, as long as they are safe in another country, we can't touch them. I don't think we should try to punish a Chinese police officer for enforcing Chinese law, but at the same time I don't think we should let terrorists go just because they might hide in a country like Iran, where such actions are legal and even encouraged.

This is the problem, you can't have it both ways. Either we have the authority to go after terrorists, or we don't. We can't have a system where it's perfectly legal to go around kidnapping people in other countries and shipping them off to Gitmo, but somehow they are outside our legal system and the courts have nothing to do with it. Either they are part of the legal system, or we have to let them go. Otherwise we end up having a large part of the US government operating completely outside of any legal authority...which doesn't seem like a good idea to me.

 

[palehorse]

Originally posted by: Jhhnn
Magnificent display of circular logic, Palehorse. By your standards, then, anybody could be declared a Terrarist! and locked up indefinitely- the accusation itself being sufficient for the double-super secret purposes at hand. Whoever they are, they're guilty simply because the Admin sez they are, right?

Kafka would be proud.

wrong.

I only challenge you to explain an alternative method of prosecution; because our US court system, as it exists now, is not prepared to try them. Our civil laws and processes are not designed to handle their cases.

So what do you propose?

 

[palehorse]

Originally posted by: miketheidiot
1) why does it need to be classifed, other than on the arbitrary authority of the government. Certainly the pre-established systems in say, the usmc would allow for such a situation.

USMC? What does the Marine Corps have to do with this?

The bottom line is that the intelligence methods and sources can never be released to the public, or the defendants themselves. The lives of Americans and their greatest allies are on the line. this is a point that is simply not up for debate. I asked you to present an alternative in light of this fact, and you gave us nothing.

2) If the information is classified, how do we know there is information? What if the classified information is that there isn't information?

At this stage in the conflict, we go out of our way to vet the prisoners - ensuring that those we keep are of high intelligence value and/or they pose a grave threat to coalition forces or US citizens. Those who make it all the way to Gitmo have been through several stages of the vetting process. The information regarding most of their captures is so highly classified that it may never see the light of day.

So again, what do you propose as an alternative to Gitmo and/or the military tribunals we currently use to try and convict them?

Should we create an International Terrorism Court stacked with clear judges, as Rain suggests, with jurisdiction over everyone we capture? If so, how well do you think that would go over with Congress? How about the rest of the world?

We could model it after the courts in Hague, but we'd need to vet the judges and create some sort of fair process wherein none of the sensitive intelligence is ever leaked...

I believe it's possible, and would love to see the Dems in Congress actually try to make it happen. That said, given their track record and inability to accomplish anything meaningful, I don't see this happening... especially before the election! After all, eliminating this problem now might get them some kudos, even from me! But, they'd be giving up one of their major talking points in their "Anyone but Bush" campaign for '08...

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: palehorse74

Originally posted by: miketheidiot
1) why does it need to be classifed, other than on the arbitrary authority of the government. Certainly the pre-established systems in say, the usmc would allow for such a situation.

USMC? What does the Marine Corps have to do with this?

The bottom line is that the intelligence methods and sources can never be released to the public, or the defendants themselves. The lives of Americans and their greatest allies are on the line. this is a point that is simply not up for debate. I asked you to present an alternative in light of this fact, and you gave us nothing.

2) If the information is classified, how do we know there is information? What if the classified information is that there isn't information?

At this stage in the conflict, we go out of our way to vet the prisoners - ensuring that those we keep are of high intelligence value and/or they pose a grave threat to coalition forces or US citizens. Those who make it all the way to Gitmo have been through several stages of the vetting process. The information regarding most of their captures is so highly classified that it may never see the light of day.

So again, what do you propose an alternative to Gitmo and/or the military tribunals we currently use to try and convict them?

Those are the breaks in the intelligence game. If you want to do something with the intelligence, you have to risk revealing it. It's a trade-off, but trying to have your cake and eat it too is just silly. The important thing to remember is to not get tunnel vision, in the world of intelligence, not revealing sources and methods is the goal...but intelligence doesn't exist for the sake of intelligence, it serves a higher purpose, and THAT has to be taken into consideration too. If you asked the average analyst, he'd probably not want to do anything, ever, with what he knows to avoid revealing how he knows it. But the world doesn't quite work like that.

In other words, your point isn't up for debate, but the argument you're trying to draw from it is. It may be a truth in the intelligence community, but as part of the bigger picture, it's a weak argument.

Edit: I'm not saying we should reveal the names of agents working for us in open court, I'm saying we have to take those secrecy problems and work around them towards our end goal...not treat those problems AS the end goal and modify the system to achieve them.

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: palehorse74

Originally posted by: miketheidiot
1) why does it need to be classifed, other than on the arbitrary authority of the government. Certainly the pre-established systems in say, the usmc would allow for such a situation.

USMC? What does the Marine Corps have to do with this?

The bottom line is that the intelligence methods and sources can never be released to the public, or the defendants themselves. The lives of Americans and their greatest allies are on the line. this is a point that is simply not up for debate. I asked you to present an alternative in light of this fact, and you gave us nothing.

2) If the information is classified, how do we know there is information? What if the classified information is that there isn't information?

At this stage in the conflict, we go out of our way to vet the prisoners - ensuring that those we keep are of high intelligence value and/or they pose a grave threat to coalition forces or US citizens. Those who make it all the way to Gitmo have been through several stages of the vetting process. The information regarding most of their captures is so highly classified that it may never see the light of day.

So again, what do you propose as an alternative to Gitmo and/or the military tribunals we currently use to try and convict them?

Should we create an International Terrorism Court stacked with clear judges, as Rain suggests, with jurisdiction over everyone we capture? If so, how well do you think that would go over with Congress? How about the rest of the world?

We could model it after the courts in Hague, but we'd need to vet the judges and create some sort of fair process wherein none of the sensitive intelligence is ever leaked...

I believe it's possible, and would love to see the Dems in Congress actually try to make it happen. That said, given their track record and inability to accomplish anything meaningful, I don't see this happening... especially before the election! After all, eliminating this problem now might get them some kudos, even from me! But, they'd be giving up one of their major talking points in their "Anyone but Bush" campaign for '08...

At least we agree on one point, I don't see it happening. It doesn't have the flair political types on both sides want, although for much different reasons. And "working together" doesn't play as well as it should on the campaign trail.

 

[Craig234]

For what it's worth, I'm in favor of not getting any information from torture, period. That's the real definition of torture, not the, er, tortured definition the administration cooked up.

There are legitimate ways to wage war, and illegitimate ways. You do the best you can with the legitimate ways and leave it at that, despite the potential cost to lives, which are the price for moral civilization.

If you don't think so, how are you going to argue against a long list of other things we could do that might save our troops' lives, but which we don't do, such as discouraging enemy soldiers from serving, by torturing all of them if caught, by torturing their families when we can, by beheading if that has any deterrent value, by using nuclear weapons without regard for non-American lives, installing dictatorships, and so on.

 

[Jhhnn]

So now I'm supposed to solve the Bush Admin's fuckups, Palehorse?

Isn't that special. Reminds me of how we can't leave iraq because of the violence we've instigated by toppling their govt, disbanding civil authority, throwing open the borders, handing out guns like candy on halloween.

How about this- let the admin either charge these people with an actual crime in open court, in accordance with our laws and customs, or turn 'em loose. If there's no acceptable country that will take them, give 'em a green card, resettle them in this country under close supervision, at least for a while...

Don't like that? Hey, there's a price for dishonesty and deceit, and people the govt can't make a case against shouldn't be the ones to pay it- the American people took on that responsibility when they put Bush in the Whitehouse, twice.

Then raze the prison facilities at gitmo, abandon the place to the Cubans so that no american president can disgrace us in exactly the same way ever again...

 

[Rainsford]

Originally posted by: Craig234
For what it's worth, I'm in favor of not getting any information from torture, period. That's the real definition of torture, not the, er, tortured definition the administration cooked up.

There are legitimate ways to wage war, and illegitimate ways. You do the best you can with the legitimate ways and leave it at that, despite the potential cost to lives, which are the price for moral civilization.

If you don't think so, how are you going to argue against a long list of other things we could do that might save our troops' lives, but which we don't do, such as discouraging enemy soldiers from serving, by torturing all of them if caught, by torturing their families when we can, by beheading if that has any deterrent value, by using nuclear weapons without regard for non-American lives, installing dictatorships, and so on.

Well first of all, I'd say you're making the basic mistake of buying the premise of the argument as offered by the pro-torture folks. They claim that torture is an effective way to fight terrorism, and that the debate should be whether or not it's "worth it" and they draw people into arguments like the one you offered above.

Except by taking that stance and making that argument, you've effectively given up on what should be the FIRST argument in this debate...is torture an effective way to fight terrorism? The ideological ground THEY'D like to argue over allows for all sorts of misleading vividness (imagine a ticking time bomb in a major city!) and emotional rhetoric (don't you WANT to defeat terrorism?), and it neatly avoids having to actually prove that torture is an effective way to do things. Since most people who support torture (up to and including the Republican majority leader) evidently do so because it seems to work pretty well for Jack Bauer on '24', I can see why they'd want to avoid that particular debate.

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: Rainsford

Originally posted by: Craig234
For what it's worth, I'm in favor of not getting any information from torture, period. That's the real definition of torture, not the, er, tortured definition the administration cooked up.

There are legitimate ways to wage war, and illegitimate ways. You do the best you can with the legitimate ways and leave it at that, despite the potential cost to lives, which are the price for moral civilization.

If you don't think so, how are you going to argue against a long list of other things we could do that might save our troops' lives, but which we don't do, such as discouraging enemy soldiers from serving, by torturing all of them if caught, by torturing their families when we can, by beheading if that has any deterrent value, by using nuclear weapons without regard for non-American lives, installing dictatorships, and so on.

Well first of all, I'd say you're making the basic mistake of buying the premise of the argument as offered by the pro-torture folks. They claim that torture is an effective way to fight terrorism, and that the debate should be whether or not it's "worth it" and they draw people into arguments like the one you offered above.

Except by taking that stance and making that argument, you've effectively given up on what should be the FIRST argument in this debate...is torture an effective way to fight terrorism? The ideological ground THEY'D like to argue over allows for all sorts of misleading vividness (imagine a ticking time bomb in a major city!) and emotional rhetoric (don't you WANT to defeat terrorism?), and it neatly avoids having to actually prove that torture is an effective way to do things. Since most people who support torture (up to and including the Republican majority leader) evidently do so because it seems to work pretty well for Jack Bauer on '24', I can see why they'd want to avoid that particular debate.

It's that I disagree with you on what should be the first argument, when you say it's whether it's effective. For me, that's irrelevant.

If it DID work well, my position wouldn't change at all, so rather than debate the irrelevancy of whether it works, I discuss the issue I think is the first issue.

I think that to argue the issue on the grounds of whether it works well both misses the essential moral issue, and is also ineffective at convincing people not to do it.

If they aren't against it morally, it's a very tough argument to get them to agree not to try it just in case it has some payoff.

 

[Pabster]

Originally posted by: Jhhnn
How about this- let the admin either charge these people with an actual crime in open court, in accordance with our laws and customs, or turn 'em loose. If there's no acceptable country that will take them, give 'em a green card, resettle them in this country under close supervision, at least for a while...

How about this- let's throw all of them on an island with the crowd of lefties here who are so sympathetic to their causes. Nothing to fear...right? :laugh:

 

[colonel]

Gitmo is were we lost our allies in the fight against terror, we still dont know the other illegal prison around europe.