YOU’RE ALIVE!!!!!

MY HEART CAN START BEATING AGAIN. Also, I watched “Black Narcissus” tonight and I am trying to think about a convent full of neo-cons high in the Himalayas where everyone goes crazy. Hadley will be there. Condi can be the dancing girl.

Oi, man — where’ve you been? 3Bulls had a… ..A bit of a celebration. Sort of.

You back in effect?

Hey, I saw where you forgot to close the italics tag — nice work!

Did not.

Ok, where?

C’mon, man, the Canadians beat you to this one.

Three Bs in the house, but now everyone else is in rehab. Or should be.

Oh Vladi G, that was awesome. Seriously, what an amazing idea. We’ll use the same techiniques on Scooter. How can they be wrong? and besides, one mans torture is another man’s pleasure. Scooter may like the nipple clams.

I mean clamps.

The torturer screaming the question just reminded me of Sebastian Bach screaming “who threw the bottle???!?!?!” after being nailed at some show (MTV Awards??). Or maybe just my friend’s impression of said event. Ahh, Skid Row, good times.

I wholeheartedly endorse your idea. Outers of CIA agents must be punished to the full extent of the law, and then some. None of that candy-assed librul “presumption of innocence” and “torture is bad” crap when there’s a war going on! But judging by Scooter’s book “The Apprentice,” Pinko Punko may well be right in suggesting that he likes nipple clamps. Scooter sounds like one kinky dude.

But definitely sic dogs on Libby, Rove, and probably Hadley himself, stack ’em in naked pyramids, hood ’em and hook ’em up to electrodes, suspend ’em from the ceiling, leave ’em outside naked overnight — whatever it takes to get them to confess their crimes.

We should also consider reviving the old Puritan practice of drowning them and seeing whether their corpses float. If they do (Karl’s probably will with all that blubber), that proves they’re innocent — and no doubt they’d be smiling down from heaven witnessing their exonerations, so there’d be no real harm done. As Justice Scalia (sorry about the oxymoron there) says, “If you’re a Christian, then death is no big deal.”

NOTE TO FBI: The above is tongue-in-cheek. I don’t actually advocate killing anyone. Only the Preznit and those acting at his direction get to wantonly slaughter people for fun!

I must have read this post like four times yesterday, and I just noticed “Hadley, No.” That’s pretty funny…

The only way such a scenario will really work is if the music from every season of 24 is played in the background. If the scrotal electrodes don’t break them, the bombastic repititive music that would put Dr. BLT to shame will do the trick.

Enhanced interrogation techniques? Would that be good-cop-bad-cop… and a pony?

It’s the other way around. If they float, they’re such big sinners that even the water hates them. If they drown, they’re innocent.

“Enhanced interrogation techniques” is a’ight, but I think they need a slicker buzzowrd, like “Interogation Plus.”

Aren’t conservatives the ones who get worked up over vague terminology, calling it “political correctness” and such?

C’mon fellas, say whatcha mean, don’t mean whatcha say.

how about:

inTERRORgation!!!!

How about InterroGO!

InterroBlast! Now with twice as much electricity!

I’ll have you know that some of us pay good money to be humiliated and have electrodes attached to our genitals.

Interrogade: Is It In You?

I think it should be:

Interrogade: Is It Up You?

And there can be a mascot: InterroGus, the German Shepherd

I’ll be the first to acknowledge that safeguards must be established that would prevent overly zealous interrogators from going too far. But does anyone who thinks current U.S. interrogation policy is too rough for terrorists want to offer a realistic alternative? Or all of you content to sit back and mock this administration and their approach to fighting terrorism?

What Bono said in an Ovation cable televised interview this weekend really rings true: He said something to this effect: “The left, which is where I come from, loves to mock the right, to make fools of conservatives, to make them out to be idiots, as a way of reducing them.” After acknowledging that there is probably nobody he would disagree with more on so many fronts as Bush, he went on to refer to Bush as “smart,” and “very much in charge,” evidence that he looks for the good in people, even people he disagrees so profoundly with. He summarized his comments on politics by saying that if we want positive change to take place, we must stop demonizing those we have disagreements with. Those who have been following the comments here know that I would like to see a Bono/Mary Bono ticket in ’08. Of course first the law would have to change as it concerns foreigners running for president. Furthermore, I don’t think Bono has accomplished all he can in the world of rock ‘n roll yet. But I wouldn’t be surprised if he ran for president in 2012. If he ran, no matter which party he ran under, I would vote for Bono. For this country to work together in the fight against terrorism, the left and the right must unite, like most of us did immediately following 9/11. I would hope it took good leadership and not another 9/11 to bring us all back together. Among those figures who have been international advocates, Bono is the one with the greatest potential in showing that sort of leadership. It’s time to put the “United” back in The United States of America.

I can’t believe that any person in the military could support a policy of torture. Do they not realize that if they fall into enemy hands that the U.S. will have not a leg to stand on with any protest it might lodge against the inhumane treatment of prisoners? Yes, bad things may happen in the future if we don’t torture. Bad things may happen if we do. Who can say? Is it worth losing our identity to hysteria? This is just one more example of why we must trim the shrubbery at the White House in ’06.

Ummmm That’s retarded BLT. We have been using the same interrogation methods for decades, abiding by the Geneva conventions, since about the fifties I think. That was working fine.
Suddenly we decide that these large numbers of people that we are detaining without charge and without due process are enemy combatants and get no protections whatsoever? America has secret prisons all over the eastern world now, for the sole purpose of torturing detainees without having to adhere to US law.
As if that wasn’t enough, they are suspending the right of Habeas corpus, the roots of which go all the way back to the Magna Carta (1297 AD). This isn’t a question of “What’s the alternative?” We ALLREADY WERE using the humane alternative, and Cheney (the apperent S&M fan that he is) has actually rolled us back centuries in that respect. To the chagrin of the United Nations and other human rights groups, I might add. Which begs the question, if we aren’t going to listen to the UN about pre-emptive wars and human torture, what gives us the right to condemn Saddam for doing essentially the same thing? How many times did right wing asshats get on tv and spout off: “Saddam is ignoring the UN, Saddam is violating human rights!” Yeah, well apperently he’s in good company.
And the results of this sort of inhuman policy are far too apperent. Naked prisioners stacked in piles, prisoners dead from “enhanced interrogation” (beating the shit out of them), report upon report of abuse, mistreatment, murder, degredation. It’s sickening, and to see you defend it BLT, is just as stomach turning.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – CIA interrogators apparently tried to cover up the death of an Iraqi “ghost detainee” who died while being interrogated at Abu Ghraib …The death of secret detainee Manadel al-Jamadi was ruled a homicide in a Defense Department autopsy, Time magazine reported, adding that documents it recently obtained included photographs of his battered body, which had been kept on ice to keep it from decomposing, apparently to conceal the circumstances of his death.
After some 90 minutes of interrogation by CIA officials, he died of “blunt force injuries” and “asphyxiation,” according to the autopsy documents obtained by Time.

A forensic scientist who later reviewed the autopsy report told Time that the most likely cause of Jamadi’s death was suffocation, which would have occurred when an empty sandbag was placed over his head while his arms were secured up and behind his back, in a crucifixion-like pose.

Blood was mopped up with a chlorine solution before the interrogation scene could be examined by an investigator, Time wrote, adding that after Jamadi’s death, a bloodstained hood that had covered his head had disappeared.

Photos of grinning US soldiers crouching over Jamadi’s corpse were among the disturbing images that emerged from the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in 2004, prompting international outrage and internal US military investigations.
That story is fresh, dated nov.13, and more come out every day. And those ones, it seems only because we have pictures of it. Irrefutable proof, one can only imagine how many they successfully covered up.

Doc, there is one solid alternative to the administration’s interrogation policy: don’t torture. That’s it. Torture has never been proven to be an effective device to obtain information. But that should really be an afterthought. The real issue is how we perceive ourself as a nation and how the world perceives us as a people. I’m quite flummoxed by the fact this is even a discussion. Don’t torture. End of story.
And while I, too admire Bono on many levels, you’re fixation with his non-existent presidential bid is getting a little creepy. Besides, everyone knows Larry Mullen, Jr. is much more versed in parliamentary procedure, and don’t get me started on the Edge’s knowledge of Keynesian economic policy.

Torture is a tool of fear and societal repression — it sucks for getting INFORMATION. You hurt someone so bad they will tell you anything, that’s what you’ll get: anything.

Real interrogators don’t torture, because they know it doesn’t work for shite.

mmm…lemmonheads. OK, I’m getting the do-not-torture part, but you still haven’t offered an alternative. How would you motivate a terrorist to reveal information that could help you save hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives?

Oh, on Bono’s non-existent presidential bid, it’s not a fixation, and it’s not creepy. Observe Bono’s skillful handling of world
affairs and his tactful diplomacy over the past decade or so in particular. The more you observe the way he handles himself in such matters as AIDS in African, forgiving poor countries of their debts, and worldwide hunger and poverty, the more it makes sense that he should be one of the next U.S. presidents.

It’s the other way around. If they float, they’re such big sinners that even the water hates them. If they drown, they’re innocent.

Quite so, Hysterical Woman. Thanks for refreshing my (quasi-senile) recollection.

A realistic alternative? How about NOT TORTURING PEOPLE? Dang, is this so hard?

Dr. BLT, with few exceptions, it is not the military nor the CIA people who advocate the use of torture. Colin Powell, Wesley Clark, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Larry Johnson, and many, many other people currently or formerly in the military and CIA oppose torture. It doesn’t work; it makes convictions impossible to get; it disgraces us in the eyes of the world, making our enemies hate us more and alienating our erstwhile friends; it debases our people who are called upon to torture others; and it ensures that our enemies will use the same tactics against us. As you may recall, a couple dozen or so high-ranking ex-military people signed a statement opposing torture, which was influential in obtaining the 90-9 vote in favor of the McCain Amendment. It’s the chickenhawks like Bush, Cheney, Hadley, Gonzales, Yoo, etc. who are pro-torture. From George Washington on, our country’s leaders have rejected the use of torture — until this war criminal piece of shit stole his way into the Presidency. Forsaking torture, we won the Revolutionary War (many of the captured Hessians were so impressed with our treatment of them that they switched sides and fought for the colonies), the Civil War (Lincoln also emphatically rejected the use of torture, and adopted what became the precursors of the Geneva Conventions), WWI, and WWII. Bush has disgraced us in the eyes of the world and has unwittingly acted as the greatest recruiter Al Qaeda has ever had.

Jesus, you can’t seriously be this dense sandwich. As if the only real option interregators had to fall back on was torture. Lemme try and spell this out nice and simple for you.
in?ter?ro?gate ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-tr-gt)
tr.v. in?ter?ro?gat?ed, in?ter?ro?gat?ing, in?ter?ro?gates
To examine by questioning formally or officially. See Synonyms at ask.
Computer Science. To transmit a signal for setting off an appropriate response.

Please note that nowhere in that definition is “shit-kicking”. Interrogation is a delicate pyschological effort. (You, who claim to be a psychologist should know this) This effort attempts to get good, actionable intelligence, not the nonspecific bullshit that we have been getting that’s caused the terror scale to jump around like a kangaroo on crack.
If you really are so desperatly lacking in knowledge of the psychological aspects of interrogation and how non-coerceive interrogation works, here’s a rundown. Read it and stop being disengenous. And for the love of christ stop talking about Bono.
PS: If you take the time to read that and then continue on to the next chapter “Coercive methods” you might notice this little blurb about pain as a method: “Intense pain is quite likely to produce false confessions, concocted as a means of escaping from distress. A time-consuming delay results, while investigation is conducted and the admissions are proven untrue. During this respite the interrogatee can pull himself together. He may even use the time to think up new, more complex “admissions” that take still longer to disprove. KUBARK is especially vulnerable to such tactics because the interrogation is conducted for the sake of information and not for police purposes.”

HERE’S THE LINK

But does anyone who thinks current U.S. interrogation policy is too rough for terrorists want to offer a realistic alternative?

I’m not so sure that the problem is that torture is too rough for terrorists. It’s that torture is too tough for all of the people, probably more than half, that we pick up for being in the wrong place in the wrong time who AREN’T terrorists. Ya know, all of those people that we release from Gitmo and Abu Gharrumpf. The ones we just let go after torturing them because we realize they aren’t terrorists. Or rather, at least they weren’t terrorists before we tortured them and let them go.

Timmah420, I held Bono up as a mirror, but instead of looking into that mirror, you’ve pushed it away—in an extremely arrogant and condescending manner I might add.

Then you’ve persisted in something not too far removed from what Bono was talking about as it as it pertains to the mode of operation for liberals in response to conservatives—trying to portray conservatives as idiots and fools so that you will be able to perpetuate the myth that you are morally and intellectually superior to them. You may call the present administration’s tactics torture because perhaps you feel sorry for terrorists, but the fact is, we haven’t had an attack on American soil since 9/11 and that hasn’t been the result of kissing up to terrorists. These individuals want both of us dead and will go to any length to make that happen. What sort of specific intelligence do you think we’ll gather by sitting around drinking tea with terrorists?

How would you motivate a terrorist to reveal information that could help you save hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives?

How do you know he’s a terrorist? How do you know he has that information? Is it because his buddy down the cell block told you so when you hooked the electrodes up to his testicles?

And let us suppose that somehow you do know, with 100% certainty, that the man in your clutches is a terrorist and he knows about an imminent terrorist operation. Given what we know about the efficacy of torture, and given what we are told about how hardcore and uncaring terrorists are, what makes you think anything you could squeeze out of your guy would be reliable?

Now you’re just dodging the issue entirely. You obviously didn’t read what I sent, or your ARE stupid.

The absence of an attack does not indicate a causal relationship, that kind of thinking is inherently flawed.
And you do yourself no favours when you denounce me for trying to make you sound stupid when you do the exact same thing in an even more condescending manner, in the next sentence. Sweeping generalizations followed by a laughable oversimplification of my point. I smell a hypocrite.

Notre: second sentence of last post should read “You are stupid”
And yes i’m aware of the irony there. 🙂
At any rate, here’s another reference point for the good doctor not to bother looking at. Linky

Everyone who tortured anyone in history thought they only tortured terrorists, never the innocent.

As for the “why do you want to protect terrorists over americans” bs, 1) torture is only relevant in the national security of Schwarzenegger movies. 2)If this fantasy scenario ever develops that someone can DIRECTLY save the lives of people by torturing someone, hell yes do it. BUT know that you will have to explain why you did it afterwards. If making people put themselves on the line before they torture someone is too high a standard to keep us safe, then bomb me, please. i.e.anyone showing up with an abused terrorist and a disarmed nuke should be able to count on a presidential pardon.

Cannibalism, like torture, may warranted in extreme circumstances. But that doesn’t make it good public policy.

What sort of specific intelligence do you think we’ll gather by sitting around drinking tea with terrorists?

Drinking tea with terrorists would be far more effective, when you understand that would mean having covert intelligence agents embedded within their organizations.

And via Hullabaloo, this NYTimes article states that there is no proof torture works because the methods we now follow weren’t designed to get actual true information, but rather “to force compliance to the point of false confession.”

mmm…lemmonheads. OK, I’m getting the do-not-torture part, but you still haven’t offered an alternative.

…Not…torturing…people. One of the things which makes us better people than terrorists.

How would you motivate a terrorist to reveal information that could help you save hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives?

There’s a ticking time bomb. Someone is about to make a comment that will never become relevent. The premises are silly for two reasons: 1.) The vast majority of people being tortured have never been put on trial and so their usefulness is ridiculously questionable at best, especially in light of abuses against suspects not even vaguely considered to hold useful intelligence. 2.) Torture is ineffective at gaining useful intelligence.

I was so about to make a comment saying that I actually like you and that you seemed like a genuinely nice person and I find you’re not even subtle about being pro torture.

-Schmitt.

Shorter sandwich: “I’m still not convinced the table is there.”

First of all, most of you are missing the point. I never said that I was for the use of torture. I never said that there wasn’t room for improvement, even dramatic improvement, in the way the U.S. conducts interrogations against those suspected of being terrorists. Republicans and Democrats must work together to find the middle ground between holding tea parties for terrorists and becoming terrorists ourselves in the name of preventing further terror. My point was that most of you want to demonize conservatives and you feed off of this sort of stuff. It seems to me that most of you are not really interested in making the world a better place, you just want somebody to blame for everything that goes wrong. You seem happy if you find something that makes conservatives look bad or evil and you want to put us all in the same box. Let me ask you this: Do you think that interrogation under the Clinton administration was painless for would-be terrorists? Do you think that all of these “torture” techniques were invented by Bush, whom you want the world to see as Hitler II? Do you think that while Clinton was in power, interrogators were sitting around drinking tea with terrorists or would-be terrorists, or friends of terrorists? If you really believe that what you call torture was invented by Republicans, then you’ve been living with blinders on for too many years.

There he goes missing the point again, any torture commited under clinton’s reign would have been illegal and the tortureor would be subject to prosecution under international law. Bush on the other hand, through Alberto Gonzales, declared the Geneva conventions, which prohibit exactly those kind of pysical and mental abuses, “Quaint”.
Fucking… “quaint”, like a log cottage or a hummel figurine! These are prisoner treatment standards that we’ve agreed to since the 50’s! I don’t remember stacks of naked Iraqi’s or dogs tearing the flesh of prisoners during Clinton.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Clinton is kind of an asshole too, but standing next to bush, he’s mother Teresa. We are talking about torture advocated from the highest levels of government, that shit would have been unthinkable under Clinton. If you think otherwise, you don’t know much about Clinton.

We don’t need to “find” middle ground – we decided upon it when we (the US) signed the Gevena Conventions in 1949.

What Republicans want is to (apparently) redefine torture so they can practice it with a clear conscience, or at least excuse it by pretending it’s something else.

It’s not, your excuses are lame and disingenuous and you should be ashamed of yourself and your party.

Regardless, it’s just another example of the moral backruptcy of the American Right.

And if you think that we haven’t fundamentally changed how we treat prisoners, you haven’t been keeping up. This administration is arguing in favor of officially allowing techniques that have never before been given any sort of imprimatur.

Actually, I don’t think Clinton is, or was ever an “asshole.” An adult child? Narcissistic? Yes. Dishonest? Yes. Dead wrong on so many issues? Yes. Winking at “torture” while never being consistently engaged in what should have been a legitimate war on terror prior to 9/11? I believe so. But an “asshole”? No, in all honesty, even with all his faults, (and they are many), I kind of like the guy. You see, conservatives are not better than liberals, but we tend to look for the good, not only in those of our own ilk, but in those with whom we vehemently disagree with.

By the way, are we having fun yet? If we’re not having fun, then what’s the point of continuing this debate?

The point is, you’ve been a disengenuous asshole, jumping from false point to false point to misdirect from the central issue.

The point is that you’ve been utterly disengenuous, jumping from false point to irrelevant point to misdirect from the central issue, which is that you agree with torture advocates that would like to take us back into the last century. I’m not letting that sort of shit slide, not one bit.

Why don’t you spend less time whining about the semantics of torture and prettied up language, and more time discussing the issue. You might realize you’re helping hurt America’s safety and image.

*sigh* laggy cgi. Sorry for double post.

Baco boy, it’s pretty true, any opponent of yours’ lack of argument would never validate your lack of argument. Torture is

a) bad
b) unamerican (or should be)
c) immoral
d) doesn’t work
e) illegal

none of those can be argued. Not torturing is a legitimate technique. It’s hard for someone to ask what the Dems plan should be because we would have done everythign differently. More troops in Afghanistan, no invasion of Iraq, serious attempt at capturing bin Laden, etc. etc. Your boys put us in this shitty quagmire, they don’t deserve the right to try and fix the mess because they can’t be trusted, therefore any dem plan, regardless of its content is essentially more defensible than allowing cobags to run the show. GOT IT?

You seem to use the word conservative quite liberally. Where are the conservatives? Conservative about what? Conservative about the environment or spending or energy? That’s a joke.

Pinko, if that’s a multiple choice question, the answer is all of the above. I’m not for torture, I’m just against hypocrisy. You guys think that everyone who disagrees with you is evil.

What do you propose? How about sitting around singing Where Have all the Flowers Gone? with terrorists. How do you propose we put the fear of God in them so they won’t want to kill me, you, or either of our loved ones? “Not torturing is a good start, but it’s not a technique.” Let’s face it, none of us are experts in getting people to cough up clandestine information.

You would have us believe that all Republicans are inherently evil and all Democrats are inherently good. I readily acknowledge that in many cases the situation with prisoners has become out of hand, and that we must work harder to prevent things from getting out of control, but do you actually believe that none of this stuff went on during the Democrat’s watch?

You guys think that everyone who disagrees with you is evil…. You would have us believe that all Republicans are inherently evil and all Democrats are inherently good

Strawman. Anyone who argues torture is acceptible official policy fits several of the dictionary definitions of evil, no matter what party they’re in.

How do you propose we put the fear of God in them so they won’t want to kill me, you, or either of our loved ones?

I seriously wonder if that’s how the first war in humanity’s history got started.

Keep on using that Reptilian Brain, Dr. BLT! “You’re doing a heckuva job!”

BLT, I don’t think people that disagree with me are evil, but hypocrisy does not validate hypocrisy. The creation of equivalence, or as I would suggest, false equivalence, never legitimizes one side over the other, it can only suggest both sides have some degree of illegitimacy. I would suggest that torture and the defense of torture IS evil, and that because the torture is ineffective, a pragmatic case for it cannot even be made, thus the torture is ultimately useless, and this is why I consider it to be evil, and a greater evil than most of the sundry evasive finger pointing at various liberal herrings. Does that make sense?

In this debate, one side can legitimately claim moral outrage, don’t you think?

You guys are torturing me with your words because I’ve never bin Laden. You guys wouldn’t be treating me so bad if my name were Saddam. Instead of trying to mock me and ridicule me, you would be inviting me over for milk and cookies.

Whitewashed sepulchre.

OK, left-wingers, it’s time for a truce. Here’s a compromise between sitting around with terrorists and singing Where Have all the Flowers Gone? and those horrible torture techniques that only Hitleresque Republicans could have dreamed up:

Lock the terrorists up in a small room with big speakers and play this song over and over again for 24 hours at top volume: One-song soundtrack to the above blog entry:

I’ve Never bin Laden
words and music by Dr. BLT (c) 2005
http://www.drblt.com/music/BinLaden.mp3

So, correct me if I’m wrong, but it sounds like the story boils down to this.

President: We do not torture.
White House correction: We torture.

Sounds like tortured logic to me.

Not to interrupt mixing it hp with the good Doctor or anything, but Sthphen Hadley–uurggh! The former #2 NSA doofus, now the big enchilada national-security-wise. Ugh! He makes me sick. What a fucking, lying weasel of a man. It’d be nice if SantyFitz had a surprise stocking-stuffer for lil’ Steevie in the near future….

Dr BLT – on the one hand you claim that the democratic strategy for interrogation is “drinking tea with the terrorists”, and then on the other hand you state that similar things were happening under Clinton’s watch.
Well? Which is it?
I’ll tackle the two wildly contradictory claims one at a time.

First: the “drinking tea with terrorists” strawman. We are not arguing we should drink tea with terrorists, merely we wish to go back to the way the interrogation methods had been practiced for decades, under both Democratic and Republican presidents, until this cabal took over.
As for your second claim, that this was going on under Clinton, it is rather missing the point that even had this behaviour gone on under Clinton’s watch, it would have been ILLEGAL and could have been prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
Not so after 5 years of Republican leadership, which has taken great pains to ensure that actions which consist of torture are not only legal, but a matter of foreign policy.

You would have us believe that all Republicans are inherently evil and all Democrats are inherently good.

Where do you keep getting so much straw for all these strawmen you’re tossing around?

I don’t think anybody believes “all Republicans are inherently evil and all Democrats are inherently good.” I think many people, here for sure and in the U.S. populace at large, believe that a policy, crafted and implemented by Republicans, that not only condones but relies on torture and abuse of prisoners of war, is evil. And those Republicans who created the policy, who ought to be aware of the unsuitability of torture for the purported task — extracting useful information — fall within a reasonable definition of “evil.” Others who support those Republicans, by looking the other way or slicing and dicing the meanings of words to avoid admitting that the Administration has implemented torture as a policy, are either willfully ignorant, bone stupid or evil themselves. I’m willing to agree that the vast majority of rank and file Republicans (or conservatives, if you want to call them that) fall into the willfully ignorant or “too stupid to notice” categories. That doesn’t make the policy or the policymakers any less evil.

Now, where do you fit in the picture?

Hey BLT, I have in my custody a 6 year old whose father is a terrorist. We know he was told about his father’s plots but he’s not talking.

Should we torture him?

Dan, I would say I fall somewhere between stupid and evil. That being said, I’ll try to formulate as an intelligent a reply as can be expected from someone stupid and evil. The present policies, while designed to protect innocent Americans and to adjust to the realities of a post 9/11 world, need to be revisited by a bipartisan committee and, we need to abandon anything resembling torture. Furthermore, we need to institute safeguards that will prevent half-cocked individuals from taking the law into their own hands and taking liberties with prisoners that go well beyond the boundaries of a reasonable level/form of interrogation.

Jimbo, I’d recommend beginning with the least intrusive measures and gradually working your way up, stopping just short of torture. I’d begin with a time out. Then I would work up to forbiding the child from watching any Sponge Bob Squarepants for 3 weeks.

You may call the present administration’s tactics torture because perhaps you feel sorry for terrorists, but the fact is, we haven’t had an attack on American soil since 9/11 and that hasn’t been the result of kissing up to terrorists.

Or catching them, killing them, or stopping them. You are aware that Iraq wasn’t responsible for 9/11 right? And after the initial strike against Afghanistan and the Taleban which shielded al Qaeda, why were so many terrorists let go?

Republicans and Democrats must work together to find the middle ground between holding tea parties for terrorists and becoming terrorists ourselves

Dr why is half of this dichotomy entirely appropriate (pro torture White House,) and the other half a ridiculous exaggeration (anti torture decent people)?

Moreover had you bothered reading any of the sources linked by tigrismus and Timmah you’d know full well that existing, non torture interrogation techniques which were more effective already exist. You’re setting up an unbelievable number of straw men and setting them up against real White House strategies as if the comparison were reasonable, and you know full well that you’re doing it.

-The Reverend Schmitt.

But we need the info now Dr. BLT. See, his Dad hid an atomic bomb in a major US city. Millions may die and little Ahmed isn’t talking.

So it’s OK to hurt or kill this innocent 6 year old, correct?

Well, a dead kid is not going to yield too much in the way of useful intelligence, is he? And I wouldn’t recommend hurting an innocent child. If I were you, I’d pick on somebody my own size.

Good point Dr. We shouldn’t kill him because we can’t get anything useful from that. Very logical.

But you still haven’t explain why we can’t torture him.

Sitting around singing “Where Have All The Flowers Gone” isn’t going to save us you know.

Like I said, Jimbo, he’s a mere child. I would suggest picking on someone your own size, someone who knows more than the boy. Then, start with the least intrusive measures, and work your way up, stopping short of torture.

I say we start torturing BLT and find out what he knows.

Doc, you can’t just change the hypothetical because you don’t want to answer the question. In the situation as described, the 6-year-old knows something about where his father is or where he hid the bomb. You don’t know of anyone “more your size” to question, and you don’t really have the luxury of conducting a full-on investigation to round up more usual or unusual suspects.

So what do you do? Do you torture the child or not? What forms of “enhanced interrogation” are acceptable?

How can anyone who believes in an afterlife condone torture? If life is just the entrance exam, how can you possibly justify torturing another human being just to save lives? Wouldn’t we all rather be blown to Kingdom Come (literally) than be covered by proxy in the blood of torture victims, however nefarious they may be? Not religious myself, just askin’.