How about there is a ticking bomb planted somewhere and the military caprtures the terrorist that is responsible and he is willing to tell us the code do disarm the bomb, but he doesn’t speak English, and the Arabic translator that was assigned to that unit was discharged for being openly gay… I know it is far fetched, why would any armed forces deprive themselves of valued service based on personal sexual preferences… oh, wait…

http://www.google.com.au/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2006-07,GGLG:en&q=homosexual+translator+arabic

Stealing must be made legal; to think otherwise is to condemn families to death by starvation.

Wait…conservatives don’t give a shit if someone starves to death…I had gold with the Hitler one but this is a lead balloon.

Let’s say you’ve invented a time machine, and can go back in time and kill Hitler. But wait, murder is illegal! OH NOES!

Murder must be made legal; to think otherwise is to side with Hitler!

Well then, he has nothing to fear from vampires.

And we already knew he has nothing to fear from zombies.

Oh, SNAP!

mikey

Why do I picture Dwight Shrute every time I read a Gary post, real or imaginary?

Can we have a law where anyone who cites Jack Bauer or another fictional character

Jack Bauer’s not real???!!!

Bastards!

I’m with g.

Congress breaking the law? That’s unpossible!!

What if, let’s say, they could bench press 360 pounds and had an entire faith-based arsenhole? Then they wouldn’t be weak fags anymore, now would they?

mikey

The ticking time bomb works on the assumption that all the pieces have been put together already – that there IS a bomb that can somehow be disarmed; that it’s a TIME bomb; what time the bomb will go off; and that the suspect in custody knows where it is.

Of course it’s a time bomb. Don’t you watch 24? Though – thinking out loud here – what if the baddies programmed the time bomb to go off, say, with two and a half minutes still left on the LED clock? That would fuck things up real swell for the good guys, wouldn’t it? Shit – I’ve just told the baddies how to make a REALLY GOOD time bomb. How do I delete this fucking post…

Yeah! Pass the popcorn!! Dollar a show, and ladeez get in free!!!

(Hell, this is better’n the Hog Rodayo I saw’t the las’ Counny Fair…)

But seriously: D. Sidhe nailed it, but El Cid made me see that any immoral act “justified” by a hypothetical situation is ogus-bay.

The Ticking Time Bomb scenario is so made-up, so artificial, it’s useless. “Oh yeah? Well what if it could save a million lives!” Well what if it could save half a million? 100,000? 10? 1? The discussion inevitably degenerates into nonsense. It HAS to. The hypothetical neutralizes the principle, and then school is out.

D. Sidhe’s scenario–make/keep torture illegal, and force those who think it’s justified IN EACH CIRCUMSTANCE to step up and assume responsibility for it–was put forth in some op-ed thing I read months ago and it was persuasive. The illegality preserves and codifies the principle. It defaults to the moral, not the immoral. Imagine every inept, pissed off, drunk, or bullyish interrogator *starting* with permission to torture. Imagine where it would go from there.

Yes. Yes, Congress broke the law (Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions). Any more stupid questions?

I used to play that in high school. My best character was an11th-level Islamic Neutral Ninjihadist.

Just wondering where that’s written into the contract.

If, on the other hand, the hero pats the villain on the back and says, “Hey, no hard feelings: you were just trying to get needed information!” then that technique is probably OK.

See, there’s a reason that “torture” is something that’s always done by the villains: committing torture makes you a villain.

Wally Whateley said,

October 31, 2007 at 16:11

I still say, if we prosecuted the Nazis for it, and if Solzhenitsyn wrote about the Soviets doing it to him, it’s torture, and the people who do it now — and the people who approve its use — should be tried for war crimes.

Your problem is that you think laws and standards are written to apply equally to all people.

Reasonable people look at the prosecutions of Nazis for certain acts and conclude that the acts were wrong because they were wrong, and the Nazis were prosecuted because they performed those acts.

Right wingers look at the prosecutions of Nazis for certain acts and conclude that the acts were wrong because they were committed by Nazis, and the Nazis were prosecuted because they were Nazis.

For the right wing, Nazi torture or tyranny or whatever wasn’t wrong because it was wrong, it was only wrong when the Nazis did it.