If we could turn back time… (II)
Remember, Newsweek is liberal! Writing about a new friendship between President Clinton and Richard Mellon Scaife, Newsweek lets this Christopher Ruddy quote go by unchallenged:
He said they [Scaife and Ruddy] never suggested Clinton was involved in [Vince] Foster’s death
Such as when Scaife said:
Richard Mellon Scaife, the right-wing billionaire who bankrolls the anti-Clinton efforts, will say in 1995, “The death of Vincent Foster: I think it’s the Rosetta Stone to the whole Clinton administration.”
Here’s our pal Ruddy not suggesting other things in a 1996 radio interview:
Well, any law enforcement will tell you that when you have a death that is staged, made to look like a suicide, almost all the time in this country it’s related to narcotics trafficking, that somehow the person had some knowledge or some involvement. And there’s all sorts of diverse aspects to that which could be money laundering, etc. […] Well, Arkansas is a very strange place in a lot of ways. That’s a good question considering their whole history of having all of these questionable suicides that have dogged then Governor Clinton, now President Clinton. It didn’t start with Vince Foster. You know about the boys on the tracks. […] You know about the Kathy Ferguson case. You know about, um, there was a girl that was a student of Clinton’s that died of a suicide while she was carrying a pregnancy. […] Well, that’s [that she was pregnant with Clinton’s child] what the rumor mill said. I don’t know if there’s evidence of that, but certainly it is a death that has dogged him somewhat.
Ruddy goes on to suggest other totally serious things:
The real danger in this country is that we’re probably like a half a centimeter away from losing any possibility of having a free press in this country because they’re [the IRS acting as Clinton’s attack dogs] not operating as they should. And that, again, poses a significant danger to all our civil liberties.
Ruddy also showed a firm grasp of reality:
Well, as somebody pointed out to me, can you remember in the past four years or longer the TV networks doing one major expose on the Clintons? One major negative story about some negative involvement?
No, we can’t remember a single negative story that came out before 1996.
What’s the point of being a conservative if you can’t dribble out transparent nonsense all the time?
Right, BLT?
That’s a trick question, otherwise I would be happy to answer it.
It’s like those Nixonian tricks Romney accused McCain of using.
Dude, did you just call me Nixonian?
That’s just mean. What happened to the civility in public discourse?
I was going to call you Clintonesque, but I save the “c-word” for those I really detest.
In a real way, Scaife was right. The wingnut frothing-at-the-mouth over Foster’s death (and how do you froth over such a tragedy, anyway?) was the Rosetta Stone of the wingnut frothing-at-the-mouth over the Clinton Administration…
Jumping to conclusions, false equivalences, ignoring hard evidence, inflammatory rhetoric, false accusations, emotional manipulation, making mountains ranges out of molehills, the neocon noise machine in hyperdrive, using religious figures, going right to the base (with “fact-based” videos, internet postings and emails) — These techniques were used over and over and over and over again during the entire 8 years of the Clinton Administration.
Hey, thanks for providing an example of that transparent nonsense I was talking about.
I knew it wouldn’t take long.
You guys are starting to sound a lot like Hitler. Hitleresque even.
Reowrrr. I want to see claws!
Why the hell would Clinton be friends with RM Scaife???
I’m really starting to wonder if they stand for anything.
Ahh yes, wasn’t that “Hey, those kids died within Arkansas state lines, it must have been….(thunder clap)…The Clintons!”
I’ve seen Clinton Death Lists that include Buddy. What did that poor dog know?
“I’ve seen Clinton Death Lists that include Buddy. What did that poor dog know?”
It’s not what he knew, it’s what he didn’t know.
But [Scaife’s] lawyer, Yale Gutnick, says Bill Clinton and Richard Mellon Scaife are now members of a “mutual admiration society.”
Pardon me while I go puke my guts out.
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Ah,, that’s better.
Why the hell would Clinton be friends with RM Scaife???
Because; no one can withstand the power of the Clenus!
Hell, Alexander Cockburn did a story about Mena Airport back in 1989!
That’s a trick question, otherwise I would be happy to answer it.
This statement is funny on so many levels, I can’t begin to list them.
God damn, BLT, but you are fucking stupid.
Be nice, kiki.
Oh. You are being nice.
SInce we’re quoting Ice Cube today: “I respect the respectable.”
of course the quote goes on challenged! the job of teh reporter is to report what people say! that’s all.
or, more accurately, “unchallenged”
That’s ‘Clenis’, GD. Otherwise, you are absolutely correct.
Also, reports by Scaife’s lawyer about who is friends with whom are highly suspect. C’mon people!!
Jumping to conclusions, false equivalences, ignoring hard evidence, inflammatory rhetoric, false accusations, emotional manipulation, making mountains ranges out of molehills, the neocon noise machine in hyperdrive, using religious figures, going right to the base (with “fact-based” videos, internet postings and emails) — These techniques
werewill be used over and over and over and over again during the entire 8 years of the Clinton Administration.ammended
Milk Solids Council is good, but I’m thinking that a think tank connection would also be highly desirable… perhaps the Kenneth Lay Foundation for Economic Freedom?
… as a good conversational gambit, you could always mention that Conrad Black’s fraud trial was a complete travesty.
It’s okay, Hoosier X, I appreciate you coming to my defense as one who has a high regard for blog protocal, blog ethics and blog etiquette. But being called stupid, no matter how many profane adjectives are piled before it, is something I don’t get my feelings hurt over because I am confident about being fairly intelligent. I’m not saying I’m the sharpest tool in the shed, but the “stupid” shoe doesn’t fit, so I don’t agonize over it being too tight.
As I’ve said before, I have very few fans (obviously kiki is not one of them), but what my fans lack in numbers, they more than make up for in IQ. Thanks again, for coming to the defense of a moderate conservative. I’ve now officially got your back.
Removing “recovering troll” from your name seems to be a step in the right direction, Doc.
Replacing it with “Total, obvious, bog-standard troll” would be more honest.
Well, no, he’s not really a troll. Hideously unfunny, maybe, but not a troll.
I guess it depends on your definition. I believe the generally accepted meaning is a poster who wants attention of any kind, arguably especially negative, but I think the broader meaning of “Any douchebag who shows up on an internet forum where he is clearly not wanted and won’t fuck off despite repeated implied and specific requests to do so” is also valid.
Actually, both of these apply to BLT, as much as they apply to the GarySaulStJamesBooger creature. So I guess it depends on nothing.
I really only apply the definition of “troll” to the GarySaulStJamesBooger-esque creatures. BLT just thinks he’s much, much funnier than he actually is.
Ain’t nothing wrong with that. The Mellon-man frequently drops by my place – we repair to the verandah, fire up some of that potent Newsmax skunk weed, and discuss our charitable work. Good times.
Off topic, but I spent much of the day in physical therapy for my not-entirely-healing fractured ulna (and a nice woman called Jen thinks she can cure my headaches with PT too, sure, Jen.) and the rest on the bus. I get home, take some Imitrex, and turn on the TV, and uh…
Could someone explain to me why I shouldn’t be irritated with Obama for apparently thinking it would be more democratic to give Michigan and Florida–both states which willingly gave up their democratic primary votes for the sake of, I dunno, timing–another shot at influence rather than waiting to see if some of the later states have, you know, any sort of opinions whatsoever on who our candidate should be? I’m having a hard time seeing this memo as anything other than “Fuck states with late primaries, why should they count anyway?” Christ, we need a rational primary system.
Seriously, someone explain to me why I shouldn’t be as pissed off as I am.
Siddhe – say whuuuut? Obama is lobbying to seat MI and FL?
Clinton took FL and, as I recall, beat Uncommitted in MI.
Clinton said weeks ago they should be seated.
So again, huuuuh? Linky please.
Seriously, someone explain to me why I shouldn’t be as pissed off as I am.
I’ve got a few, Sidhe.
Because McCain is a fucking lunatic full of hate and institutionalized industrial violence.
Because Barack Obama is a good man, and you won’t EVER agree with everything that any candidate believes, can you honestly say you prefer either of the other two?
Because Hillary Clinton is probably the most accomplished professional ever to be this close to Executive Office, and would run the most efficient, effective executive branch in history, and while we may not be particularly enamored of her foreign policies, she’d do more to move good domestic legislation than any president since FDR.
Because the stupidity and waste of war and industrial – scale violence has sapped all the remaining honor and stature out of American culture, and if we try to go on another few years killing innocent people in other countries to cover up our own paranoid helplessness we’ll be reduced to nothing more than a criminal outfit selling hits to the highest bidder….
mikey
Good ones, mikey.
But I still can’t find anything on teh internets about Obama moving to seat MI and FL. The DNC is urging a “do over” wherein they could hold caucuses. But I don’t see Obama in it anywhere.
mikey, all of this granted. And of the two left, I’m leaning towards Obama anyway, and will probably caucus for him. I’m ot likely to hold it against him politically, but it’s just one more little thing that makes me wish like fuck we could get an actual candidate I actually liked, rather than one I’m sort of settling for.
But considering I live in Washington State, where my primary vote hardly ever matters because it’s later, and where my general vote never matters at all because the East Coast has pretty much wrapped the entire fucking thing up by the time polls are even closing out here, it’s damned hard not to be annoyed by the suggestion that that’s all exactly as it should be because who gives a fuck about the rest of the states.
If the democratic party or any candidate wants to get a nominee as fast as possible for strategic reasons especially in years where that does not happen naturally, they could consider revamping the entire goddamned primary system so that every state has at least some say in it. We don’t have to get candidates from state to state by fucking stagecoach anymore, and there’s no reason to have the primaries so impossibly spread out. But here we are in a year when all those primary voters who are ignored might actually matter a little bit, and they’re going around acting like we crashed their party and pissed in the punchbowl. The elitism pisses me off.
PeeJ, I heard it on Olbermann. Apparently the Obama campaign “accidentally” released a memo suggesting a do-over. I may very well have heard wrong, being drugged in several ways, but if so I hope someone will explain it to me.
I used to bitch about not having any influence because Pennsylvania voted so late. Now I hear the campaigns are strategizing over Ohio and PA.
I moved to OR 15 months ago. We’re dead last. With KY. Wow. Oh Boy.
Grrrrrrrrr
Dude, don’t complain. The other 1,465 days of the election cycle you get to live in Oregon and not PA or OH. I’d say you win this round.
True. James Carville famously said “In Pennsylvania you got Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Alabama in between.”
Even though I was lucky to live in the far and away best place in PA, that being State College, smack-dab in the middle of “alabama.” But still, this is better sportbike territory and the weather is far better so I get to ride mroe. Can’t complain about that.
It’s a New Moon and Boy, the trolls are lively tonight. I think they mated and produced a new one, called Derrick. Take away the err andy you have a dick. Tho that’s not necessarily bad, he did compare Sadly Nosians with Goldberg because… I’m not sure why, except we hardly ever read books. Not as many as DerrICK anyway. Or something.
I’ve been in Ohio two long years.**
Supported Edwards, leaning Obama.
** I voted for Ted Strickland (Governor), Jennifer Brunner (Secretary of State), and Marc Dann (Attorney General) in 2006. And they all won! So that was pretty excellent.
I’m so glad that BLT is a pie afficionado. You should be, too.
D. Sidhe–
I read about this yesterday. As I understand it, it is rumored that the DNC, and not Obama, is pushing for a causus in MI and FL to get the delegates seated. It’s still pretty frustrating no matter how you slice it. It’s like the party is just trying to split itself in two before the convention. The original report I saw was at wwwdotwoodtvdotcom.
At least the DNC finally decided that Lieberman is really a republican and stripped him of his super delegate status…
“BLT just thinks he’s much, much funnier than he actually is.”
The fact that people are even putting my initials in the same sentence as the adjective, “funny,” is hilariously funny to me. I’ve never considered myself funny—not in the least bit.
No, pathetic, that’s what I’m going for. If anyone finds me pathetic, I will feel it has been mission accomplished. Pathetic people win sympathy over time. At that point, the “underdog” status generally begins to take root. It’s uphill from there because there’s no place else to go.
Dr. BLT, I have a serious WWJD question for you.
Who Would Jesus Waterboard?
Uh-hunh.
“Dr. BLT, I have a serious WWJD question for you.
Who Would Jesus Waterboard?”
First of all, let me say what an honor it is that somebody here actually trusts my judgment sufficiently enough to ask me a question.
I was tempted to be a smart ass and say something like, “No, but I’m sure he’d enjoy snowboarding,” but that would involve being a smart-ass.
Seriously, I don’t think Jesus would recommend this. About the most threatening act he committed was tossing a few tables around. Now I have given some serious consideration to the idea of whether or not Jesus would judge those who engage in occasional waterboarding in the interest of protecting children and family members that terrorists are planning on blowing up or decapitating. The honest answer is, I really don’t know.
I honestly don’t know where I stand on this issue. I know that sitting around holding hands and singing around a campfire with those who want to wipe us off the face of the earth in very cruel and unusual ways. I know that tough measures are required. I’m not sure how tough is too tough.
What I meant to say:
I know that sitting around holding hands and singing around a campfire with those who want to wipe us off the face of the earth in very cruel and unusual ways just won’t do as a protective measure, or as a sufficient means of securing valuable information towards that end.
I suppose I wouldn’t be surprised to discover this is some idiotic DNC plan. God knows I’m used to being amazingly pissed off at those fuckwits for pretending people like me don’t matter a bit.
At the moment, my partner is arranging a points system to determine for whom we will caucus.
-1 point for each call from a candidate’s campaign.
-1 additional point if it’s a robocall.
-1 additional point if we have to say “Hello” repeatedly before the asshole on the other end of the line decides to put down the fucking soda and answer the call they fucking made in the first place.
-3 additional points for improper volume control or obvious speakerphone use.
-1 additional point if the call is after eight PM.
-3 additional points if the call is before eight AM.
-1 additional point if the caller justifies this by explaining they’re in another time zone.
-1 additional point if the caller pretends they care how we’re doing today.
-5 additional points for inability to figure out the voicemail resulting in repeated calls.
-5 additional points for telling us bullshit about the other candidate.
-1 additional point for pleas for contributions.
Lowest score loses.
I know that sitting around holding hands and singing around a campfire with those who want to wipe us off the face of the earth in very cruel and unusual ways just won’t do as a protective measure, or as a sufficient means of securing valuable information towards that end.
Have you ever read the New Testament, Dr. BLT?
No, pathetic, that’s what I’m going for. If anyone finds me pathetic, I will feel it has been mission accomplished.
D’you suppose if we all loudly agree that BLT is pathetic, it will go away and stop bothering us?
Dr. BLT is pathetic. He is the most pathetic thing on Sadly, No! if not the entire blogosphere. He could not be more pathetic if he
were actually getting paid to trolltried.(Yeah, I know better. Us liberal fascists — always the dreamers!)
I know that sitting around holding hands and singing around a campfire with those who want to wipe us off the face of the earth… just won’t do as a protective measure, or as a sufficient means of securing valuable information towards that end.
———
Have you ever read the New Testament, Dr. BLT?
Dr BLT would also do well to read the accounts from British interrogators during WW II, of how they extracted valuable information from high-value Nazi captives. Shorter version — waterboarding was not involved.
I’m sorry, I can’t resist feeding the troll. Forgive me…
Doctor, why do you say this? Who on God’s green Earth says such a thing? Please point to a liberal who says these things? Honestly, these strawliberals only exist in your imagination.
Trying to parse this, I’m not sure whether you are trying to imply that there’s a strand of liberal thought that advocates sitting around campfires with:
(i) captured terrorists, or
(ii) Jihadi muslims, or
(iii) any muslims of any persuasion
You might have a point with (iii), that there are liberals might suggest trying to get along with muslims in general. I’d suggest to you that the bulk of the muslim polity are neither animal nor barbarian and an accommodation can probably reached with them. I’d also suggest that Jihadi nutters are a minority, albeit a dangerous one. That said, it’s not only a reach to suggest that liberals think the West should make nice with these terrorists, it’s a calumny.
What I’d like to know is why do you believe in these straw men? Why is it that when I talk to real-life conservatives about torture, as I do, they end up making a cognitive leap from ‘torture is necessary’ to ‘if you are against torture you are a Jihadi sympathiser’. I mean, it really does not compute. When conservatives suggest such things they jump the shark.
Why can’t liberals be against terrorists and Jihadis and at the same time be against torture? Can you not see this is a consistent statement of humanitarian principle?
Why, Doctor, do you insist on sliming good people because they are simply not as vicious as you?
There’s a discussion to be had about the effectiveness of soft interrogation techniques versus torture. But I didn’t want that to derail this post. I’m just interested as to why, in the Doctor’s universe, opposition to torture instantly makes a liberal a Jihadi camp follower. To my mind that’s just screwed up thinking.
Or look at German interrogation of British PoWs in WWI. (Read ‘Through German Eyes: The British and the Somme 1916, by Christopher Duffy.) Here, the Germans achieved all their intelligence goals by giving the prisoners coffee and cigarettes and providing a sympathetic ear. The Tommies sang like canaries. There are similar recent accounts from Afghanistan and Iraq where substantive humint gains were made by dressing a prisoner’s wounds and being hospitable. I’d have to dig out links to this stuff, but you can find references to it around.
No doubt BLT will parse this as the happy clappy campfire-singing approach, and reject that it works. I suspect that in his worldview, a good kicking and touch of the Chinese water treatment is all that the wogs understand.
If you missed it, I was deliberately being as unkind to BLT here as he is to us.
I’m just trying to make a point about jumping to conclusions.
There are two arguments against torture. First, there’s the two-pronged utilitarian argument: in the opinion of most police and intelligence officials, it doesn’t work, and in addition, it threatens to rebound onto our troops and relief workers.
There’s also the moral argument, irrespective of what the illegitimate son of a Nazarene carpenter would or wouldn’t do. The US could not do better than to tell the world, “We don’t torture, period. We refuse to compromise our values, and will not sink to the level of the forces that use violence and fear to manipulate their political opponents.”
There’s a reason that torturers have been reviled throughout history with the vitriol otherwise reserved for poisoners and traitors–and that’s where the US stands in international eyes, right now.
There’s also the very fair point that there quickly spirals a chain of moral logic which begins with permitting torture in situations in which large numbers of people are threatened, and ends with torture being required when a single individual may be threatened.
If torture is possibly warranted when a bomber threatens to attack a hundred or a thousand people, why is torture not warranted when one rapist on the loose threatens to attack one woman?
Not to mention who you torture. If it’s acceptable to torture someone you think may know something that can save lives, is it not acceptable to torture everybody you grab on the off chance they know something that may save lives? And even if it’s acceptable to torture someone to save lives, is it acceptable to torture their families in front of them to get them to give that information if torturing the potential informants themselves doesn’t work immediately? Even if we all accept that their families are innocent and do not themselves know anything useful?
Once you presume that torture is okay under certain circumstances, torturing someone innocent, torturing the innocent family of a terrorist, torturing the family of someone innocent, killing the suspect, killing someone innocent, killing the family of someone innocent, torturing and killing masses of innocent people, all of this becomes a simple mistake, at worst a “lapse in judgment”. It’s no longer a war crime, possibly not even a crime of any sort. Considering how willing we are to write off “collateral damage” and “friendly fire”, I have a hard time imagining that anyone will bother with real efforts to prevent “interrogation mishaps”.
Even if there’s nothing inside you that recognizes torture as inherently wrong, at that point you should be considering some self interest. You’d better hope that the government you consider incapable of administering taxes and environmental regulations properly doesn’t start making “mistakes” in your direction. You’d better hope the cops who give you speeding tickets when you’re positive you weren’t speeding don’t start accusing you of anything else.
And yet, I’m appalled that we even have to resort to arguments about *when* torture is wrong, and what torture means. I’m revolted that we have to resort to trying to convince some people that if nothing else torture is bad because they might torture *you*. The whole thing just genuinely baffles me. It’s like I woke up one day to discover that people who believe that child rape is warranted under certain circumstances are being carefully listened to and their opinions seriously discussed.
STFU porkbelly. The US prosecuted several Japaneses soldiers in 1946 for waterboarding. War crimes, we called it. 25 years hard labor. In 1902 several Phillipinos were convicted of same.
You’re not funny, you’re not pathetic, you’re not clever, provocative, or satirical, You are a moral coward, a vile bag of pus, excess human baggage. You are a walking argument for retroactive abortion.
But don’t you understand? If raping the child of a terrorist in front of him would persuade him to confess the location of a ticking time-bomb, then it is justified!
Yes, that’s the level of Jesuitical thinking we are dealing with here.
Robert M. nails it. BLT will no doubt quibble about whether torture ‘works’ or not–for the record I think it works, but generates unreliable information and is inefficient compared with softer interrogation techniques.
As Robert points out, even if you subtracted the moral dimension, torture’s unreliability and the blowback are powerful arguments against it. I’ve warned BLT before about the historical impact of atrocity. About how it is the best recruiting and financing tool you can gift a terrorist or insurgent enemy.
Furthermore, a nation’s reputation and honour are priceless things, too valuable to squander. If America becomes synonymous with torture–as it is slowly becoming–then nations will stop cooperating with it. What liberal nation will extradite terrorists to the US if there is a suspicion they will be tortured? This kind of poison ultimately hurts America’s cause.
As El Cid and D.Sidhe point out, once you accept torture on any basis, you are on a slippery slope. Your moral core will be hollowed out. Once you have crossed that line, there are almost no limits to your behaviour. Anything becomes possible. Any sick act becomes imaginable, like the child-rape scenario outlined earlier. If the threat is sufficient to justify torture, at what point does coercion become too much for Dr BLT? Does he draw the line at raping a terrorist’s child? If so, why stop there? If one paedophile rape could save millions, is it not justifiable in BLT’s world?
Slippery slope compromises such deomstrate how an ostensibly liberal idealist like Robespierre could become one of the great butchers of history. I have no idea who Dr. BLT is. He may think himself a good person. But his ramblings about torture only demonstrate how far his morals have come adrift.
I feel sad for him. What a terrible fate.
Everybody thinks he or she is a good person. Just look at the rationalizations of the Nazis, slaveowners, Klan members, Khmer Rouge, Townhall.com contributors, etc.
Bin Laden thinks he is doing God’s work.
I think about what Islamicist terrorists must tell themselves to justify to tehemsleves what they are doing. And I think of the guys in the “regular” army, pulling the trigger, dropping the bombs, releasing the missiles, giving the orders, and the justifications THEY must use, involving Mother, God and country, and I think these justifications must be very much the same.
(I would like to qualify this statement by saying that an insurgent in Iraq is much more likely to have seen his friends, family, home, life blown to pieces by the people he is fighting than the people he is fighting.)
One of the reasons I oppose the war is because I don’t want to see the US creating any more monsters, especially when you consider, at this point, that the only reason for this to go on is to keep conservatives from admitting they were wrong.
The horror!
Not the only reason, surely? Is there not profit to be made from this war?
Children should be left alone to be children. Adults should never mess with them for any reason whatsover. These very innocent children, our own innocent children are the very ones terrorists want to mutilate and destroy. So we must go to great lengths to ensure that our children are protected. And obviously they should not be involved, directly, or indirectly in any effort to get information out of terrorists or to circumvent a planned terrorist attack.
What is not clear to me, is that waterboarding, under certain limited conditions, is not warranted to protect ourselves, our neighbors, and our children. I have not declared this to be the case, but I am weighing it over in my mind. Be honest. Some of you have also struggled with the issue before making a decision.
If the threat were more real to you, if you had present, specific information that an attack were planned on you and members of your own family, and an agent of our government wanted to use the technique, would you be so quick to judge that agent and would you be so quick to judge our government? Please be honest. I think not.
“Have you ever read the New Testament, Dr. BLT?”
My parents paid me a dollar for every book of the Bible I read. By the time I reached the New Testament, I had carved out a whole new definition of speed reading. So by this time, all I could think about was the money. Hence, the Old Testament, and the eye-for-an-eye approach had a greater influence upon me.
When I became an adult, I got a BA in Biblical and Religious Studies, gaining just enough knowledge to render me a danger with the scriptures.
I never threw out my faith, but was “converted” to psychology when I realized that a strict interpretation of scripture contributed to many people in the church suffering from severe psychiatric problems.
There’s a difference between wholeheartedly embracing waterboarding, and weighing it over on the way to possibly condemning it or, at the very least, condemning it under most circumstances.
If the threat were more real to you, if you had present, specific information that an attack were planned on you and members of your own family, and an agent of our government wanted to use the technique, would you be so quick to judge that agent and would you be so quick to judge our government? Please be honest. I think not.
That’s called the “ticking time bomb” scenario, and there are several flaws with such a conceptualization. Among them is the fact that such a situation has many, many assumptions (that have, incidentally, yet to be realized in the real world) that would apply to the use of torture in one specific, extremely hypothetical situation, but is being used broadly to justify institutionalized torture.
Also, I’d like to point out, given your reluctance to involve children, that the people who have seriously argued in favor of the executive prerogative to torture, the same people you’d consider entrusting to torture, have said that it is A-OK with them to crush the testicles of a person’s child in order to obtain information from that person. That was John Yoo, by the way.
So, to answer the thrust of your question, yes, I would be very quick to judge the agent, because it’s unambiguously torture and, therefore, wrong. Our hypothetical agent would have to trust in the mercy of our justice system (there is such a thing as mitigating circumstances, after all, for a reason), but he should live with the consequences of his actions. Torture, like war, is rarely the expediency leaders think it is. The cost is always more than you think it’s going to be.
And I’ll tell you this: I would have more mercy for the agent making a snap decision in the field, even one that I find morally repugnant, than I would — and do — for any government that would systematically implement torture as a routine means of interrogation, or that would retain the legal option to crush the testicles of a child in order to get information from a parent. Conservatives supposedly value the lessons of history. If that’s the case then why, oh why, are they suddenly ignoring them in favor of playing with this kind of fire? There is ample record of what happens to regimes that let this in the door, and none of them end well. I mean, wasn’t one of the GOP talking points against Saddam Hussein that he was a torturing monster?
As a final note, and not directed at BLT necessarily, is that I can recall several times where liberals are accused of everything from “moral relativism” to “moral bankrupcy.” It’s usually pretty easy to ignore this, especially when accompanied by the thumping of Bibles. But when those same people start advocating torture, it’s the same old “those rules don’t apply to us” crap. Which is, in a wingnutshell, from pre-emptive military strikes, to torture, to the whole goddamned jingoist plutocratic war machine of the authoritarian right, what is exactly wrong with most modern so-called conservatives. If they don’t purge that toxin from their ranks in the next generation, they deserve every schadenfreude-rich implosion they get. Pass me the fucking popcorn.
Apologies for threadjacking the snark, but just when I think my anger reserves are tapped out, something like this comes up and gets my glands in a dander. Going back to lurkmode now. Hey! That Jonah! What a douche!
“Why so squeamish, Dr BLT? If raping one child could save the lives of millions, and your family, why not do it? If you are not prepared to rape a single child to protect your nation, you are objectively a supporter of the jihadis. You wish to sit around the campfire with them, holding hands and singing.”
You see, Doctor, when someone crosses that bright line that separates non-torturers from torturers, they shock my conscience every bit as vividly as the suggestion of child-rape shocks yours. And when someone insinuates that your dislike of torture makes you a terrorist sympathiser, I find that repugnant and vile. You have to be a special kind of scum to accuse someone so.
You still haven’t answered my earlier question. Who goes around holding hands with terrorists? Who are these imaginary strawliberals? Why on Earth do you trot them out as if they represent the true beliefs of the liberal polity?
You think wrong. And there lies the difference between men of conscience and spineless jellies who live in fear of the state enemy de nos jours. If a policy represents bad intelligence practice, if it hurts my country’s reputation and its ability to gain international support for counterterrorist action, if it becomes a rallying cry for the enemy, a recruiting slogan, creating blowback that ultimately puts my family in greater danger, then I would not condone it. In fact I would impeach my government to prevent it.
I believe you are being less than honest with us. Too much that you have said indicates that you have already made up your mind. Someone who was truly agnostic on the issue would not state: “I know that sitting around holding hands and singing around a campfire with those who want to wipe us off the face of the earth in very cruel and unusual ways just won’t do as a protective measure, or as a sufficient means of securing valuable information towards that end.”
Those are the words of someone inclined to approve of torture. I believe you argue in bad faith.
For the record, BLT, I lived in city that was under terrorist attack for decades. The threat was very real. I saw some disturbing things. People that I knew got hurt. And I still did not advocate torture for the terrorists and marched against my government when it appeared they did torture.
In other words, I have been there. Done that. Got the T-shirt.
Has it ever occurred to you that if I had such specific information my priority would be in improving my family’s personal security, not torturing some poor bastard. Christ! What fever dreams you people have!
“Poor” is an interesting choice of adjectives to describe someone plotting to kill you and your family. Such a choice of words speaks volumes.
It suggests that even though you have apparently lived under conditions that one would assume would ground you in reality, reality must not have fully taken hold of your senses.
In any case, I have never advocated for waterboarding, and have never recommended it. I have only admitted to thinking about the issue, mulling it over in my mind, if you will, which is what everybody should do before supporting it or condemning it.
As it should. It was a deliberate choice. Because right now I don’t know who the heck this torture victim is. How do I know he’s plotting to kill me? How do I know he knows anything about a plot? How do I know he’s a terrorist at all? How can I trust the information that comes out of him? How can I trust your characterisation of him as a plotter? How do I know he’s not the victim of some Kafkaesque profiling operation that has swept up some innocent? At present I only have your word to go on that he’s a bad guy at all, and frankly your word is suspect.
And even if I bought into all your assumptions I still wouldn’t torture. Because as AG pointed out above, the flaw of the ‘ticking timebomb scenario’ is that it assumes *a priori* knowledge. It is a situation so contrived that it assumes I must have knowledge of a threat sufficient to protect myself against it without recourse to torture. In such a circumstance, the only reason to torture would be out of revenge or pure sadism.
Or it suggests that like most people living in wartime I made a realistic assessment of the threat and decided that compromising principle was not worth the purported improvement in security. “Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither…” and so on.
I’m sorry, BLT, but I have to call bullshit. You have on more than one thread here clearly advocated for torture, time and again posing these little thought games about ticking timebombs, or insinuating that folks against torture are supporting jihadists. It is difficult for any observer not to conclude what your true inclinations are. What frightens me is that we appear to be able to see this clearer than you.
Yours are not the words of an agnostic mulling it over. They are the words of a spineless toad who doesn’t have the courage of his convictions to openly say what he believes, because he knows it would reveal him to be a monster.
Now I’ve had enough of you. Kindly go away.
Now that was just mean. It felt a little like psychological waterboarding. Just to be clear, I’m leaning towards your point of view on the issue, but I haven’t made up my mind 100%
What you’ve witnessed, and recklessly labeled as the behavior/rhetoric of a “spineless toad” is the evolution of thought. Some of my fellow conservatives are stubbornly defending the issue without even giving any consideration whatsover to the other side of the issue. So now that I am showing signs of flexibility and open-mindedness, I’m being psychologically waterboarded.
I’m being psychologically waterboarded.
Yeah, those pixels just reach out and THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO TO STOP THEM FROM HOLDING YOU DOWN AND BRINGING YOU TO THE BRINK OF DEATH.
And then the toaster-oven dings. Nachos!
Your going to miss me when I’m psychologically gone.
AG, thanks. Of course he ignores you. There’s no honestly contrary response to your words that isn’t completely disingenuous. If I’d already made up my mind that torture was morally defensible as long as it provided a threadbare, urine-soaked security blanket against my ever being personally hurt by something I dreaded all out of proportion to its probability, I’d be refusing to answer you too.
Psychologically waterboarded? Oh, puh-lease! Spare us the victimhood, BLT.
If you are truly evolving your opinions, then you do so at a glacial rate, because I see little or no change. The same old ticking timebomb scenario trots off your tongue each time we go here, even though you have had many clear explanations as to the fallacy of the scenario. You appear to have ignored all the utilitarian and historical arguments presented to you. (Did you ever read up on the Portugese counterinsurgency experience as I suggested in a previous thread?)
Each time we discuss this you return to your favourite thought experiment. You will not give up your fixation on that damned timebomb. And in defiance of all the rules for winning friends and influencing people, you continue to make snide insinuations about the anti-torture brigade wanting to hold hands with terrorists.
Can you not see that this is not the behaviour of a person who is edging away from torture? Your obtuseness suggests someone who has gone the opposite way. It screams ‘troll’–someone who knows he is pushing our buttons and can’t resist jamming his fingers into them. Is it any wonder that I get irritated enough to lose my temper and give you a piece of my mind?
Look BLT, I lived for years under the threat of being blown to pieces by Irishmen every time I stepped on a train or walked through a public place. It was a clear and present danger. People lost their lives. And as a result I swam in a culture inured to security alerts. And yet despite my anger at the killers I was never so afeared that I was prepared to cross that line and advocate immoral acts.
Sadly, others were. I knew some people who desired that atrocities, such as torture, be meted out on terrorists. They were the same people who cheered on the Gibraltar executions. And every one of them was clearly more interested in exacting revenge than in justice. Whenever I see pro-torture arguments deployed, they always smell of reprisal. Is this what is holding you back from path of righteousness? Is it that you do cannot let go of the desire to retaliate?
Just read what you have written here and in other threads. One theme that is repeated time and again is that you can’t believe we haven’t seriously considered torture as a viable technique. That we haven’t seen the merits, the ‘appeal’ (for want of a better term) of waterboarding.
Well, we have, and it frightens us, for all the many reasons we have given, and for one more reason: I am more afraid of torture in the hands of my government than I am concerned about a legion of terrorists. You should be too.
It’s not enough to say you are ‘leaning’ to our point of view. These are dark days. Your government is actively torturing and trying to persuade the world it is not with lies and silky words. It’s time to shit or get off the pot. Get a spine, man, and make up your mind one way or the other. And do it before it’s too late.
And there, in a nutshell, is our trepid troll, BLT. He cannot respond because he has nothing, other than his fascination with that fearful timebomb. He is mesmerized by this fallacy; it has cast a spell on him.
We’ve tried our best to shoot down that scenario, but BLT’s dread of it is too great for us. And I suspect a desire for revenge has a grip on him too.
He’s just not honest enough with himself to come out and admit this: that the anxiety and anger are too much and that these are enough for him to forgive the unforgivable. That although he understands these are monstrous acts, there’s a part of his heart that will leap to excuse the torturer the moment he’s convinced that he is in danger. He has admitted as much.
What we see here is a form of evil, and I use that word advisedly. It’s not the twirl-moustache villainous kind of evil, but that banal, mundane, everyday kind that gradually eats good people alive. It is the evil of men who stand by and do nothing while others do bad things in his name.
Once you can justify and excuse atrocity in one limited and contrived set of circumstances then it is possible to expand that to other situations. Soon you are compromised and you have become another Robespierre–a one-time idealist who now excuses atrocity and promotes it with little restraint.
It is why we define torture as a bright line that we should not cross. Not even in the most contrived of circumstances. Once that line is crossed, there are no longer any limits.
Sorry, I should have said ‘almost admitted as much’. I don’t know of any other way to parse lines like: “What is not clear to me, is that waterboarding, under certain limited conditions, IS NOT WARRANTED,” or “possibly condemning it or, at the very least, CONDEMNING IT UNDER MOST CIRCUMSTANCES.” (My emphasis.)