Dubb-Ya and waterboarding

[DeepIron]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/08/bush.torture.ap/index.html

"The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror," Bush said in his weekly radio address taped for broadcast Saturday. "So today I vetoed it," Bush said.

He makes me sick... I'd love to get his a** on a interrogation waterboard...:nope:

[Dowly]

Oh well, this only means that we will see less "OMG OMG OMG AL QAIDA JUST TORTURED OUR SOLDIERS" threads here, because America just lost it's right to condemn torture by allowing it.

[DeepIron]

Oh well, this only means that we will see less "OMG OMG OMG AL QAIDA JUST TORTURED OUR SOLDIERS" threads here, because America just lost it's right to condemn torture by allowing it.

Too true...:nope:

[bradclark1]

Oh well, this only means that we will see less "OMG OMG OMG AL QAIDA JUST TORTURED OUR SOLDIERS" threads here, because America just lost it's right to condemn torture by allowing it.
I didn't even know we had any. Where are they?

[Dowly]

Oh well, this only means that we will see less "OMG OMG OMG AL QAIDA JUST TORTURED OUR SOLDIERS" threads here, because America just lost it's right to condemn torture by allowing it. I didn't even know we had any. Where are they?

Now, let's not start nit-picking. ;) Just ignore that line.

[bradclark1]

Now, let's not start nit-picking. ;) Just ignore that line.
Oh, Ok. :)

[Dowly]

Now, let's not start nit-picking. ;) Just ignore that line. Oh, Ok. :)

;):up:

[Letum]

Oh well, this only means that we will see less "OMG OMG OMG AL QAIDA JUST TORTURED OUR SOLDIERS" threads here, because America just lost it's right to condemn torture by allowing it.

That is a tidy way of putting it.

[Platapus]

Well one thing is for sure. George W Bush's place in history is established.

This was a bad decision.

"No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expediency." Theodore Roosevelt, 'The Strenuous Life,' 1900

[Zayphod]

Oh well, this only means that we will see less "OMG OMG OMG AL QAIDA JUST TORTURED OUR SOLDIERS" threads here, because America just lost it's right to condemn torture by allowing it.
That is a tidy way of putting it.

Allow me to add the obligatory <AOL>Me Too!</AOL> to that statement.
Bush can't have things both ways. If it's wrong for other, third-world countries to resort to torture of another country's soldiers, then it's wrong for everyone. Can't use a case of "Oh, we know how much to torture and we know when to stop." crap. If its wrong for one, it's wrong for everyone. Sorry, Bush, you can't be selective in who can and cannot torture people.:shifty:

[August]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/08/bush.torture.ap/index.html

"The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror," Bush said in his weekly radio address taped for broadcast Saturday. "So today I vetoed it," Bush said.
He makes me sick... I'd love to get his a** on a interrogation waterboard...:nope:

Pilots normally have to attend SERE school and they do that kind of stuff there.

[Brag]

Oh well, this only means that we will see less "OMG OMG OMG AL QAIDA JUST TORTURED OUR SOLDIERS" threads here, because America just lost it's right to condemn torture by allowing it.

A sad and shameful event. In Nurenberg they tried Nazis for less

[d@rk51d3]

He makes me sick... I'd love to get his a** on a interrogation waterboard...:nope:

Yeah, but would you get any intelligible or coherent information.:hmm:

[Ducimus]

http://www.esoterically.net/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/lame-duck.gif
Are we there yet?

[DeepIron]

:lol: I wish we were D! However, somewhere I read a quote from Dubb-Ya that he's going to sprint all the way to the finish line... :damn:

Where he'll hand the Presidential baton to yet another elected idiot...:damn:

[bookworm_020]

I guess it's duck season!

[baggygreen]

Im gonna go out on a limb and play a bit of devil's advocate, but we've got a lot of people saying it makes us as bad as them, ra ra.

I wont necessarily argue that, but i'll come a little bit from huntington's angle. For those who don't know, hes the author of a paper predicting a clash of civilisations between the western world, the eastern world, and the islamic world.

At the moment were at war with extremists who steadfastly believe that if you're not muslim you must be killed. to their eyes, this war has been ongoing since the 7th century CE, not since sept. 11 like many in the west think. unfortunately, they aren't overly fussy when it comes to killing civilians etc either - they take the view that if you're not muslim you're the enemy. This is contrary to the western view that civilian casualties must be kept to a minimum.

What im getting at is that we're trying to defeat using morals an enemy that simply doesnt share the same values and in doing so making things so much tougher (or are we causing less harm than we could be if we stooped to their level? Another issue..). we're fighting with one hand tied behind our backs. Is it even possible to win a fight that is so polarised? ww2 isnt a great example, we wouldnt have won without the soviets and they weren't too far removed from the deprivations of the nazis.

So, in this terribly lopsided fight, is it really that unreasonable to take measures such as non-disfugiring torture, ie waterboarding? Purely hypothetically, what if we knew a nuke was going to go off in NY and we needed the location, and torture was the only way to get it? Where can and do you draw the line?

Like i said at the start, im only playing devils advocate, and itd be nice if people played nicely:)

[Friedmann]

There is no justification for torture. The West lectures the world about our superior values, we should not discard them at the first sign of trouble.

In a war against militant Islam we cannot hope to win by force, by reacting with violence and torture against these people not only do we motivate them but our mistakes legitimise their message which aids their recruiting. Its a vicious cycle.

There are only two ways for the West to win this conflict.

a) Genocide, obviously not an option.

or

b) Removing the motivations and making the militants irrelevant.

The later option is the only viable course of action.

So that said, I think torture is not only wrong but in a battle of ideas our perceived barbarity would in the long run hurt our cause far more than help it.

An interesting read below regarding a different approach to this issue.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,22623960-28737,00.html

[Platapus]

Pilots normally have to attend SERE school and they do that kind of stuff there.

I wonder if that school was one of the duties bush "missed" during his "tour" in the Texas/Alabama ANG?

After WWII the United States tried Japanese military and civilians for waterboarding and gave them many years at hard labour. But that was different you see.

That was "bad" torture

We only do "good" torture

Gooses and Ganders, Pots and Kettles

[Letum]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/08/bush.torture.ap/index.html

"The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror," Bush said in his weekly radio address taped for broadcast Saturday. "So today I vetoed it," Bush said.
He makes me sick... I'd love to get his a** on a interrogation waterboard...:nope:
Pilots normally have to attend SERE school and they do that kind of stuff there.
I doubt they go as far as waterboarding.
It is not uncommon for people to suffer broken or dislocated limbs from the practice through struggling against the restraints.


Some short reading (http://www.mindfully.org/Reform/2005/George-W-Bush-Torture1nov05.htm)

[DeepIron]

To be honest, I'm so disgusted with being an American, I'm seriously thinking about a visa to Canada and renouncing my citizenship... (but I'll do legally, not like the unwashed hordes crossing the US border from the south).

I have friends in BC who will sponsor me and my wife and we both have job skills that would qualify us for permanent citizenship.

The America I grew up believing in no longer exists...

[Platapus]

DeepIron

I feel your disgust and shame.

We were supposed to be above this stuff.

What made America great was that we prevailed without sinking to the levels of our enemy.

It is always harder for a free country to fight a less free country. It appears that all the advantages are with them. But we used to choose to fight honourably despite the difficulty simply because it was the right thing to do.

Americans used to want to fight the right way not the easy way.

Recently this attitude has changed. And I sincerely hope it will change back

The United States is not licked yet. We still have a chance to repair our morals and international reputations.

But we will have to work at it and stop being so aggressive. It will take a long time. Our only hope is that other nations are more understanding to us then we have been to them. The good news is that the reputation of Americans is a lot higher than the reputation of America. Other nations can recognize the difference. It would be nice if we could also.

However, we can't rest on our personal laurels for long. The world is watching Americans to see if we can change America. If we don't, we will be sending a very clear message to the world that this is how Americans want America to be.

A little humility, while a blow to our national ego, might do wonders in rebuilding the United States that I feel we both want back.

I have faith in Americans to change America back. I hope this faith is not misplaced.

[August]

To be honest, I'm so disgusted with being an American, I'm seriously thinking about a visa to Canada and renouncing my citizenship... (but I'll do legally, not like the unwashed hordes crossing the US border from the south).

I have friends in BC who will sponsor me and my wife and we both have job skills that would qualify us for permanent citizenship.

The America I grew up believing in no longer exists...

Then go already.

Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.

[SUBMAN1]

Then go already.I agree.

-S

PS. In Quebec, they think exactly like you DeepIron - you would totally fit in.

[Tchocky]

He said he's thinking about it. Hasn't made up his mind. Would you take such a decision lightly?

[Platapus]

With all respect August, no

I won't leave the United States nor would I ever recommend any other citizen to leave.

As a citizen we retain the right to stay in this country AND complain about the way it is being run. Who else is in a better position to complain? A foreigner? Hardly. It is what is called freedom of expression and it used to be a good admired thing in this country.

If you don't like citizens of a country complaining about how their country is being run, I respectfully suggest that YOU leave. There are plenty of other countries where freedom of expression is restricted to "our country love it or leave it".

I hear that North Koreans like to speak highly of their national leadership.
The Saudi's are also expressive of their love for their national leadership.

Personally I prefer to stay in a country where I am able to not only complain but to vote in order to change the country from a direction I disagree with to a direction I do agree with.

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." Theodore Roosevelt

[DeepIron]

To be honest, I'm so disgusted with being an American, I'm seriously thinking about a visa to Canada and renouncing my citizenship... (but I'll do legally, not like the unwashed hordes crossing the US border from the south).

I have friends in BC who will sponsor me and my wife and we both have job skills that would qualify us for permanent citizenship.

The America I grew up believing in no longer exists...
Then go already.

Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.
Takes time dude. I'm not going to jump a fence or swim a river. And as Tchocky points out, thank you T, I'm considering it.

I applaud the efforts of those of you who evidently feel that no matter how insipid, illegal or immoral our govenment acts, it's always right. I'm having more and more trouble trying to "look the other way" and convince myself that "it's ok".

[SUBMAN1]

Why is everyone complaining about waterboarding? I mean, if journalists line up to try it so that they can report on it, it must be so terrible! :D

More wasted thread space on subsim.

-S

[Platapus]

Why is everyone complaining about waterboarding? I mean, if journalists line up to try it so that they can report on it, it must be so terrible! :D

More wasted thread space on subsim.

-S

I think trying a little torture is quite different from experiencing the real thing against your will.

I visited Alcatraz Prison and was locked up in the dark cell for about 10 minutes. It was not that bad as I knew I would be let out in 10 minutes. Does that mean that lightless isolation for weeks/months/years is not a problem? I don't think so.

The argument that water-boarding is not torture because a journalist "tried" it is spurious.

[Tchocky]

Why is everyone complaining about waterboarding? Because it is torture. Because the US (among other countries) uses it.

[DeepIron]

Why is everyone complaining about waterboarding? Because it is torture. Because the US (among other countries) uses it.
We haven't risen to our ideals, we're sinking and lowering them. We have the balls to critisize the Chinese for their Human Rights issues, and we support torture? Give me a break... :down: Such hypocrisy!

We are SUPPOSED to be the leaders in the Free World. Our President is supposed to set examples for others both home and abroad. And the man condones TORTURE?! Oooh, that's setting a great example. Might as well lump him in with the rest of the low life scum that condone and actualize it. If you heard of someone, say, in Darfur, torturing people, you'd be aghast! You'd scream about Human Rights and sanctity of life and al that.

But Bush says its necessary for the "War of Terror" and it's for the protection of the American people. Well, I call BS. He wraps his rhetoric in the Stars and Stripes and calls it Patriotism. Bull... It's nothing more than the justification of paranoid and delusional thinking.

[August]

With all respect August, no
I wasn't talking to you or about you, with all due respect of course...

I should amplify this. You are not talking about discarding your country like a torn shirt. I say that anyone who doesn't want to be here should quit wasting our time and leave. We'd all be better off for it.

I applaud the efforts of those of you who evidently feel that no matter how insipid, illegal or immoral our govenment acts, it's always right

So where did I say that the government is always right?

[SUBMAN1]

Locking one up in a cell would be considered just as much torture.

Its BS. Its not a big deal. The definition of torture in my mind means physical harm. none of that is going on here. Its just a physch job.

And now the shocker!!!! It isn't even the target of the Veto!!!

I went looking for the bill, and guess what? Every damn journalist that is reporting the story is 'hiding' the name of the bill so you don't really figure out what is in question. When journalists hide the name of the bill or the actual line in question, it starts raising red flags in my mind that a hyped story is going on. Pretty typical.

The actual statement that got Vetoed was one the only talks about interrogation in Army field manuals. Here is the particular line:

(Sec. 327) Prohibits any individual under the custody or control of an IC element, regardless of nationality or physical location, from being subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation not authorized by the U.S. Army Field Manual on Human Intelligence Collector Operations.
That is the line everyone is jumping on. Nice. Talk about leading a story.

That is not the only reason why it was vetoed. These lines also fall into why it was Vetoed:

(Sec. 444) Requires the directors of the NSA and NRO to be appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate.
Apparently this will aggravate delays in the intelligence community due to delays in the confirmation process caused by this line.

(Sec. 413) Codifies under the National Security Act of 1947 the authority of the DNI to establish an Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community. Outlines required duties. Requires semiannual Inspector General reports to the DNI (and to the head of any other federal department, with respect to portions of the report involving that department) summarizing Office activities. Directs the DNI to submit each such report to the intelligence committees. Requires an immediate report from the Inspector General to the DNI whenever the Inspector General becomes aware of serious or flagrant problems, abuses, or deficiencies relating to matters within the authority and responsibility of the DNI. Directs the DNI to submit each such report to the intelligence committees. Allows an IC employee or contractor who intends to report to Congress a complaint or information with respect to an urgent concern to report such complaint or information to the Inspector General. Requires the Inspector General to then determine whether such complaint or information appears credible, and to forward such findings to the DNI, who shall forward it to the intelligence committees. Directs the Inspector General to report to the Attorney General information relating to violations of federal criminal law that involve a program or operation of an IC element, or in relationships between IC elements. Requires the DNI to include in the National Intelligence Program budget a separate account for the Office of the Inspector General. Repeals superseded authority under the Inspector General Act of 1978.
THe above is apparently creating a duplicate office. Nice.

(Sec. 326) Requires a report from the DNI to the defense and intelligence committees on measures taken by the DNI and each IC element to comply with provisions of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and related provisions of the Military Commissions Act of 2006.
This line would require the office of the president on a time deadline to release all interrogation techniques used by the CIA for AL Qeida to browse at will. SHouldn't this be kept secret from your enemy? Guess Congress thinks not.

If I were president, I would not sign this either.

-S

[DeepIron]

I say that anyone who doesn't want to be here should quit wasting our time and leave. We'd all be better off for it.
Yeah, dissent in a Free Speech society is such a waste of time...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/washington/09policy.html

He unflinchingly defended an interrogation program that has prompted critics to accuse him not only of authorizing torture previously but also of refusing to ban it in the future. “Because the danger remains, we need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists,” he said.

Call it what you will, torture is torture. Because it's packaged up with a number of "other" interrogation methods doesn't make it any less..

[Letum]

Its BS. Its not a big deal. The definition of torture in my mind means physical harm. none of that is going on here. Its just a physch job.
"just"?! If you think a "physch job" warrants a "just", then you have not seen enough PTSD cases.

That aside, it is not only psychological. Aside from causing broken/dislocated bones on
occasion as well as drowning and brain damage...
...it causes severe physical pain as well as the traumatic distress.

And this is to people who have not been convicted of any crime and are in the eyes of
the law, innocent.



*edit*
I say that anyone who doesn't want to be here should quit wasting our time and leave. We'd all be better off for it.
Yeah, dissent in a Free Speech society is such a waste of time...



Pffft! I do not oftern agree with you DI, but that is well said.

[August]

Yeah, dissent in a Free Speech society is such a waste of time...

Threatening to leave is not dissent. It is surrender or abandonment but not dissent.

And you didn't answer my question.

[SUBMAN1]

Threatening to leave is not dissent. It is surrender or abandonment but not dissent....Well said.

-S

[Letum]

Well, it's an end product of dissent.


but certainly not the most constructive or helpful.

The better option would be to change what you do not like, but we are all guilty of not doing that as much as we should attempt to.

[August]

Well, it's an end product of dissent.


but certainly not the most constructive or helpful.

The better option would be to change what you do not like, but we are all guilty of not doing that as much as we should attempt to.

Hence my Stephen Decatur quote. You'll notice he didn't say "my country ALWAYS right". What he said is you don't divorce your country because you disagree with some of it's current policies.

[SUBMAN1]

"just"?! If you think a "physch job" warrants a "just", then you have not seen enough PTSD cases.

That aside, it is not only psychological. Aside from causing broken/dislocated bones on
occasion as well as drowning and brain damage...
...it causes severe physical pain as well as the traumatic distress.

And this is to people who have not been convicted of any crime and are in the eyes of
the law, innocent. Hardly. In the eyes of the law, they should be shot - Geneva convention. AN enemy combatant outside of uniform is to be treated as a spy and put before a firing squad to be shot and killed. Innocent my *ss! :D

And who had their bones dislocated? Never heard of that myself. Link please.

-S

[Letum]

Take your pick (http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=50&hl=en&safe=off&q=waterboarding+%22broken+bones%22&btnG=Search&meta=)

[SUBMAN1]

Take your pick (http://www.google.co.uk/search?num=50&hl=en&safe=off&q=waterboarding+%22broken+bones%22&btnG=Search&meta=)Seems more like a bunch of people complaining about being suppresed to me without any proof that I can see.

I'm all for our god given right to firing squad solution though. I'm tired of hearing how people say we are torturing them when we have the legal right to simply excute them without trial right now.

-S

[Letum]

That looks a little like dismissing off-hand evidence that does not fit your point of view Subman.

Furthermore, saying it's ok because you have a legal right, doesn't mean much when
you have made it a legal right. that's just saying "it's ok because I say it's ok".

Lastly, I suspect you would not apply the same principles when advising Iran how to
deal with any American combatants it might find straying across the boarder.

[The WosMan]

All I will say is I support waterboarding. If I were to freely express my opinion and say what I am really thinking of some of you folks and your comments here I would likely be banned.

[Tchocky]

Saying that torture only begins with a physical act is A) Wrong, and B) inapplicable to waterboarding.
It's an intensely physical act.

Oh, and the idea of a god-given right to shoot enemy combatants. Nevermind which god yer talking about, but doesnt this idea of enemy combatants become a little shaky when many of those taken prisoner by US forces were bought from the Northern Alliance?

- only 5% of the Guantanamo detainees were captured by the Americans themselves
- 440 of 517 detainees appeared to have been captured by bounty hunters, in return for a $5,000 reward.

[SUBMAN1]

That looks a little like dismissing off-hand evidence that does not fit your point of view Subman.

Furthermore, saying it's ok because you have a legal right, doesn't mean much when
you have made it a legal right. that's just saying "it's ok because I say it's ok".

Lastly, I suspect you would not apply the same principles when advising Iran how to
deal with any American combatants it might find straying across the boarder.Evidence of what? Shooting at US Troops? I don't need anymore evidence. Shoot them already.

Good thing no government cares of your opinion on the subject. We'd have a bunch of terrorists running around blowing up buildings constantly.

-S

[Tchocky]

Good thing no government cares of your opinion on the subject. We'd have a bunch of terrorists running around blowing up buildings constantly.

Yes, because torturing suspected terrorists works as a deterrent.

[August]

Good thing no government cares of your opinion on the subject. We'd have a bunch of terrorists running around blowing up buildings constantly.
Yes, because torturing suspected terrorists works as a deterrent.

Only if you get them to drop a dime on their confederates I guess.

[The WosMan]

Good thing no government cares of your opinion on the subject. We'd have a bunch of terrorists running around blowing up buildings constantly.

Yes, because torturing suspected terrorists works as a deterrent.

Killing them sure does.

[SUBMAN1]

And here is the real problem - act like this, and you give up all rights. Case closed:

In separating lawful and unlawful combatants, the Third Convention creates a basic bargain for those engaged in an international armed conflict. Engage lawfully in combat and, if captured, you will receive the comprehensive treatment protections of the Convention. Ignore the laws of war, and you cannot seek the status given to lawful combatants. POW status is perhaps best seen then as an incentive to follow the rules in armed conflict. It also is a way to protect civilians more effectively: when combatants masquerade as civilians to mislead the enemy and avoid detection, civilian suffering increases as a tragic consequence of the failure of these combatants to adhere to the fundamental law of war principle of distinction between combatants and the civilian population.

[Tchocky]

Good thing no government cares of your opinion on the subject. We'd have a bunch of terrorists running around blowing up buildings constantly.
Yes, because torturing suspected terrorists works as a deterrent.
Killing them sure does.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/martyr

[Letum]

Yes, because torturing suspected terrorists works as a deterrent.
Killing them sure does.
Yup, I bet the thought of death scares the crap outta suicide bombers.

[Letum]

And here is the real problem - act like this, and you give up all rights. Case closed:

In separating lawful and unlawful combatants, the Third Convention creates a basic bargain for those engaged in an international armed conflict. Engage lawfully in combat and, if captured, you will receive the comprehensive treatment protections of the Convention. Ignore the laws of war, and you cannot seek the status given to lawful combatants. POW status is perhaps best seen then as an incentive to follow the rules in armed conflict. It also is a way to protect civilians more effectively: when combatants masquerade as civilians to mislead the enemy and avoid detection, civilian suffering increases as a tragic consequence of the failure of these combatants to adhere to the fundamental law of war principle of distinction between combatants and the civilian population.

That only applies to members of the opposing army. Not civilian combatants and more importantly, not people who are not combatants at all, but have been bought from a 3rd party.

It does not condone torture either and has no moral backing whatsoever.

Finally, saying it's ok because you have a legal right, doesn't mean much when
you have made it a legal right. that's just saying "it's ok because I say it's ok".

[The WosMan]

Yes, because torturing suspected terrorists works as a deterrent.
Killing them sure does.
Yup, I bet the thought of death scares the crap outta suicide bombers.

Who cares about scaring them. I meant killing them like an exterminator solves a cockroach infestation.

[SUBMAN1]

That only applies to members of the opposing army. Not civilian combatants and more importantly, not people who are not combatants at all, but have been bought from a 3rd party.

It does not condone torture either and has no moral backing whatsoever.

Finally, saying it's ok because you have a legal right, doesn't mean much when
you have made it a legal right. that's just saying "it's ok because I say it's ok".
Well, I guess if you had some innocent third parties, then you mgiht have a point. Too bad we don't have any of those. As close as we got to innocent was Bin Ladens driver and I don't even buy that he was innocent completly.

And might I point out that we have no civi people here, only ones dressed as civi's, but happen to also have an AK-47 and shooting at our innocent troops.

-S

PS. I'm convinced if your country were over-run, you still be telling me that its not happening. Do you work for comical Ali or soemthing? :D

[Letum]

Yes, because torturing suspected terrorists works as a deterrent.
Killing them sure does.
Yup, I bet the thought of death scares the crap outta suicide bombers.
Who cares about scaring them. I meant killing them like an exterminator solves a cockroach infestation.

Wanna know how many cockroaches we kill ever year? Billions!
How many are still around? Billions!

The way to stop something is to stop it's means of creation. The thing that creates
anti-American sentiment amongst Muslims is firstly a set of beliefs and ideas and
secondly the fact that Americans keep trying to kill them.

Neither of these things will be helped by killing more of them!



That only applies to members of the opposing army. Not civilian combatants and more importantly, not people who are not combatants at all, but have been bought from a 3rd party.

It does not condone torture either and has no moral backing whatsoever.

Finally, saying it's ok because you have a legal right, doesn't mean much when
you have made it a legal right. that's just saying "it's ok because I say it's ok".
Well, I guess if you had some innocent third parties, then you mgiht have a point.

I was refering tho the bounty hunters that America bought the G.Bay prisioners from.

[SUBMAN1]

Bushes statement on the Veto:

Message to the House of Representatives

I am returning herewith without my approval H.R. 2082, the "Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008." The bill would impede the United States Government's efforts to protect the American people effectively from terrorist attacks and other threats because it imposes several unnecessary and unacceptable burdens on our Intelligence Community.

Section 444 of the bill would impose additional Senate confirmation requirements on two national security positions the Director of the National Security Agency and the Director of the National Reconnaissance Office. The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9/11 Commission) observed that the effectiveness of the Intelligence Community suffers due to delays in the confirmation process; section 444 would only aggravate those serious problems. Senior intelligence officials need to assume their duties and responsibilities as quickly as possible to address the pressing requirements of national security. Instead of addressing the 9/11 Commission's concern, the bill would subject two additional vital positions to a more protracted process of Senate confirmation. Apart from causing such potentially harmful delays, this unwarranted requirement for Senate confirmation would also risk injecting political pressure into these positions of technical expertise and public trust.


Section 413 would create a new Inspector General for the Intelligence Community. This new office is duplicative and unnecessary. Each intelligence community component already has an Inspector General, and the Inspector General of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has been vested with all the legal powers of any inspector general to carry out investigations on matters under the jurisdiction of the Director of National Intelligence. There is no reason to commit taxpayer resources to an additional inspector general with competing jurisdiction over the same intelligence elements. Creating duplicative inspectors general, who may have inconsistent views on the handling of particular matters, has the potential to create conflicts and impede the Intelligence Community from efficiently resolving issues and carrying out its core mission. In addition, the creation of a new inspector general would add yet another position in the Intelligence Community subject to Senate confirmation, contrary to the 9/11 Commission's recommendations.


Section 327 of the bill would harm our national security by requiring any element of the Intelligence Community to use only the interrogation methods authorized in the Army Field Manual on Interrogations. It is vitally important that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) be allowed to maintain a separate and classified interrogation program. The Army Field Manual is directed at guiding the actions of nearly three million active duty and reserve military personnel in connection with the detention of lawful combatants during the course of traditional armed conflicts, but terrorists often are trained specifically to resist techniques prescribed in publicly available military regulations such as the Manual. The CIA's ability to conduct a separate and specialized interrogation program for terrorists who possess the most critical information in the War on Terror has helped the United States prevent a number of attacks, including plots to fly passenger airplanes into the Library Tower in Los Angeles and into Heathrow Airport or buildings in downtown London. While details of the current CIA program are classified, the Attorney General has reviewed it and determined that it is lawful under existing domestic and international law, including Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions. I remain committed to an intelligence-gathering program that complies with our legal obligations and our basic values as a people. The United States opposes torture, and I remain committed to following international and domestic law regarding the humane treatment of people in its custody, including the "Detainee Treatment Act of 2005."


My disagreement over section 327 is not over any particular interrogation technique; for instance, it is not over waterboarding, which is not part of the current CIA program. Rather, my concern is the need to maintain a separate CIA program that will shield from disclosure to al Qaeda and other terrorists the interrogation techniques they may face upon capture. In accordance with a clear purpose of the "Military Commissions Act of 2006," my veto is intended to allow the continuation of a separate and classified CIA interrogation program that the Department of Justice has determined is lawful and that operates according to rules distinct from the more general rules applicable to the Department of Defense. While I will continue to work with the Congress on the implementation of laws passed in this area in recent years, I cannot sign into law a bill that would prevent me, and future Presidents, from authorizing the CIA to conduct a separate, lawful intelligence program, and from taking all lawful actions necessary to protect Americans from attack.


Other provisions of the bill purport to require the executive branch to submit information to the Congress that may be constitutionally protected from disclosure, including information the disclosure of which could impair foreign relations, the national security, the deliberative processes of the Executive, or the performance of the Executive's constitutional duties. Section 326, for example, would require that the executive branch report, on a very short deadline and in accordance with a rigid set of specific statutory requirements, the details of highly classified interrogation techniques and the confidential legal advice concerning them. The executive branch voluntarily has provided much of this information to appropriate members of Congress, demonstrating that questions concerning access to such information are best addressed through the customary practices and arrangements between the executive and legislative branches on such matters, rather than through the enactment of legislation.


In addition, section 406 would require a consolidated inventory of Special Access Programs (SAPs) to be submitted to the Congress. Special Access Programs concern the most sensitive information maintained by the Government, and SAP materials are maintained separately precisely to avoid the existence of one document that can serve as a roadmap to our Nation's most vital information. The executive branch must be permitted to present this information in a manner that does not jeopardize national security. The executive branch will continue to keep the Congress appropriately informed of the matters to which the provisions relate in accordance with the accommodation principles the Constitution contemplates and the executive and legislative branches have long and successfully used to address information sharing on matters of national security.


GEORGE W. BUSH
THE WHITE HOUSE,
March 8, 2008.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/03/20080308-1.html

[The WosMan]

No, I am pretty sure you can kill enough of these guys to end the problem whereas cockroaches have had millions of years to perfect their survival. I think the reduction of violence in Iraq is testament to the fact that if you kill enough of them the problem can be reduced greatly.

[Letum]

Thats just absurd!

You cant kill ideas with guns.
even if I killed every Catholic in the world, you can bet that there will be a pope in 20 years time.

This is because the circumstances that cause people to become catholic would still be there.

[SUBMAN1]

Wanna know how many cockroaches we kill ever year? Billions!
How many are still around? Billions!

The way to stop something is to stop it's means of creation. The thing that creates
anti-American sentiment amongst Muslims is firstly a set of beliefs and ideas and
secondly the fact that Americans keep trying to kill them.

Neither of these things will be helped by killing more of them!Well, now I can see why you don't get it. The problem? You CAN'T satisfy them. They think its their right to put you under Sharia law - and they intend to take over your country and mine and any means to that end is justified. You cannot appease them. You cannot appeal to them. You can only obey them. So I hope you like the way things are since they aren't 'ever' going to get any better. The only way to stop it is to contain them back to the Middle East and not let any of them out. THis is the only way to go with your cockroach theory. There is no alternative.

You didn't have this problem 75 years ago since they were all tribe like and never left. Now they have the world to travel and plan to make it their own at your expense.

Now the big point - they chop your head off by sawing it with a knife back and forth while you sit in a jump suit and scream while you pee your pants. Don't worry though, you will probably be diapered. And you are worried about a little waterboarding? I hope they come for your head. It will be a lesson well deserved.




I was refering tho the bounty hunters that America bought the G.Bay prisioners from. If they were given bounties, then I'd have to say they were wanted for a crime, probably the killing of innocents.

Good luck man. It won't be long till the UK falls. There are already places you can't even travel in your own country because of this. They will be for your head in due time, and your ideas of appeasing them are simply going to make it happen all the faster. ;)

-S

PS. Why don't you go to some of these areas and see what happens to you? http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=539_1200249626&c=1

[Tchocky]

You forgot to tell him to take his head out of the sand.

[Ducimus]

Glossing over this thread, i can't help but think how funny it is that the man who said, "I’m a uniter not a divider", turned out to be the exact opposite where the American people are concerned.

[Letum]

Wanna know how many cockroaches we kill ever year? Billions!
How many are still around? Billions!

The way to stop something is to stop it's means of creation. The thing that creates
anti-American sentiment amongst Muslims is firstly a set of beliefs and ideas and
secondly the fact that Americans keep trying to kill them.

Neither of these things will be helped by killing more of them!Well, now I can see why you don't get it. The problem? You CAN'T satidfy them. They think its their right to put you under Sharia law - and they intend to take over your country and mine and any means to that end is justified. You cannot appease them. You cannot appeal to them. You can only obey them. So I hope you like the way things are since they aren't 'ever' going to get any better. The only way to stop it is to contain them back to the Middle East and not let any of them out. THis is the only way to go with your cockroach theory. There is no alternative.



Give me one historical president for a widespread idea that was refuted by the killing of it's holders.

I am not saying that rational argument is going to change many minds.
Only total removal of the circumstances that have given rise to the idea is going to have any effect.

This is how all ideas and belief systems have died out, from Zeus to Feudalism.

[Tchocky]

Well, now I can see why you don't get it. The problem? You CAN'T satisfy them. They think its their right to put you under Sharia law - and they intend to take over your country and mine and any means to that end is justified. Replace "Sharia" with "democracy" and imagine an Afghan talking to an Iraqi.
Anyway, Letum is not talking about "satisfying" anyone, least of all anyone connected with Al-Qaeda. He's talking about removing the support for such ideology, which torture does not do. Torturing suspects confirms everything Al-Qaeda says about the United States, and the West in macro. The "appeasement" argument is easy to run to, if AL was still around I'd say we'd have seen a picture of Chamberlain by now. Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with the matter at hand.

You didn't have this problem 75 years ago since they were all tribe like and never left. It wasn't a problem 75 years ago because this kind of violent Islam is a relatively new phenomenon. Sayyid Qutb and all that. I do hope that the "they" doesn't refer to all of Islam.

And you are worried about a little waterboarding? I hope they come for your head. It will be a lesson well deserved. Classy.

[baggygreen]

Letum, tchocky, DI,

you guys are clearly in the never torture camp - so i'll ask again, hypothetically, if there was a nuke in NYC or London and one of the terrorists in captivity, time running out to find and defuse the device, and torture was deemed the only to save a million or so civilians because more regular interrogation methods hadnt worked, would it be acceptable then? a necessary evil? or would it be better for bush or brown or rudd or sarkozy or whoever to say no, torture is wrong and cant be done...

I know its a tough hypothetical but thats all it is... particularly when both choices can be called morally wrong...

[joegrundman]

baggy green,

this is not the situation that exists, not even remotely, and nor is that the situation that torture is expected to be used under, and nor is it the situation that torture has already been used under. You are trying to make a case such that if torture is suitable under extreme condition A, it must logically be reasonable to use it also in situations B,C,D.....x

Secondly you are failing to see the difference between keeping it illegal and doing dirty things in the dark at times of emergency, and making it a legal part of your government apparatus.

To have it as a legal structure is to give it a normative effect on the moral structure of the world, and is to say something about who you are as a people and what you stand for. It also shows how very far the US is moving away from the trajectory of the rest of the West, and more in line with countries like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and even Iraq under Saddam (but i believe that even these countries officially deny it happens).

The US makes a lot of noise about being the moral light of the world, and this is part of your moral package that you will be projecting. As a result of this new projection of what Americans and the US ultimately stand for, you are also making it more difficult for other western countries to support you in your adventures.

I believe US policies have already made it much more difficult for your most important ally (UK) to follow you, and that this is the ultimate message of the British withdrawal from Basra.

Down this path, that Bush and co have defined for you over the last decade, lies not a world "moving together under US leadership and inspiration" (which is more-or-less the theme since WW2), but simply the US asserting it's will on everyone else in the world through military dominance. Is that a path you really want to go down?

For sure it's possible if you really do want it, but i don't believe Americans really want to be a naked imperial power.

This is what i think is at stake in this issue of legalising torture.

[baggygreen]

Hey joe,

mightnt exist remotely, but great possibility of it doing so in the future.

I do like the way you put things though:up:

Im just interested if other people feel that there can be a grey area..

[joegrundman]

Glad you liked it:D

[antikristuseke]

Hey joe,

mightnt exist remotely, but great possibility of it doing so in the future.

I do like the way you put things though:up:

Im just interested if other people feel that there can be a grey area..

As far as im concerned, there is allways a gray area. there are times when actis I find completely distasteful and acording to my own morality unacceptable are the nessesary evil. As far as i know history, this has been the case for all of recorded history.

[Letum]

Letum, tchocky, DI,

you guys are clearly in the never torture camp - so i'll ask again, hypothetically, if there was a nuke in NYC [...]
hehe, the olde ticking bomb eh?

Well, its not very original and neither is my reply, but I'm happy to go over it again:

The "ticking bomb" argument attempts to justify torture by utilitarian and
consequentialist means.
i.e. it is based on the premise that an act can be justified if the good it brings about
is greater than the evil needed to cause it.
Now that is severely, if not terminally, flawed to begin with. There are the problems
of predictability, intention, the various arguments ad absurdum, etc most of which
are as old as Mill and Bentham.
For example, you could use the same rational to kill one innocent person to use his
7+ Organs to save the lives of 7 other people because the good (7 innocents saved)
outweighs the evil (one innocent killed).
Now I would be satisfied that I had answered you if I launched in to a critique of
Bentham, Mill, etc. but to be frank, I would get bored, so I am going to take all that
as given and continue.

The ticking bomb argument relies on several premises that at first appear to be part
of the ceteris paribus, but are not.
Perhaps the most obvious is the assumption that the person to be tortured knows
where the bomb is. This is not part of the ceteris paribus because it is practically
impossible to know such a thing with anything approaching a good degree of
certainty. This was illustrated dramatically with the shooting of the innocent
Brazilian in London. Error it unavoidable. In fact, studies show that the innocent are
more likely to confess under torture than the guilty. This makes torture as
indiscriminate and as likely to succeed as shooting into crowds. It also means that it
will falsely appear to justify torturing more and more people as you will keep getting
more and more confessions.
However, I shall put the problem of torturing the innocent aside and continue.

The second premise is that torture is an effective method of extracting information.
This is not part of the ceteris because it is false. If we where to claim that it was
accurate, we would have to believe that there where thousands of witches in
medieval Europe because that is the information that torture has given us.
A more contemporary example is the 4 IRA bombers that admitted to planting bombs
when under police torture, despite being totally innocent.
However, I shall put the problem of torture being ineffective aside and continue.

Even if torture was effective, the problems it causes would mean that there could be
no overall gain. When the French systematically tortured members of the Algerian
insurgency of 1950-'60 it helped turn a small uprising of 500 or so into a unwinnable
terrorist and guerrilla war against French. The same strategic disaster happened
when allegations of the South Vietnamese and Americans torturing the Viet. Cong
surfaced.

The "ticking bomb" argument makes use of flawed reasoning, piled upon flawed
reasoning. This is disguised in it's appealing rhetoric and appeal to those who have a
shallow knowledge of the subject and are prone to knee-jerk reactions without
proper understanding of the concepts being used.

Torture can not be justified this way, even in such an apparently clear cut case
as the ticking bomb argument; let alone in the reality of the world.

[baggygreen]

thanks!:D

its precisely this sort of thinking response i was hoping for :D

I dont necessarily agree with it all but theres thought there and arguments to consider:up:

[DeepIron]

Torturing suspects confirms everything Al-Qaeda says about the United States, and the West in macro.
Well said.

Well, now I can see why you don't get it. The problem? You CAN'T satisfy them. They think its their right to put you under Sharia law - and they intend to take over your country and mine and any means to that end is justified. You cannot appease them. You cannot appeal to them. You can only obey them.
:rotfl:Since when, prior to Bush's Iraqi War, did Muslims ever demonstrate their desire to "take over the country", referring to the US or Britain? Never. What I see is a group of people who are tired of the US butting in and meddling in their affairs. The fact that they are Muslim is secondary. The US has for decades meddled in the affairs of other nations and THIS is the price... 9/11 was a certainly a tragic event, but when you take off the "American Patriotism-colored glasses" it's hardly worse than what as been done to others in the name of "freedom" and democracy.

No, Mr. Bush created a convenient "war on terror" that was NOT in least justified and if he gives an inch or a single concession, his illusion will vaporize and the American people may come to know just how lied to and misled they've been.

[GlobalExplorer]

9/11 was a certainly a tragic event, but when you take off the "American Patriotism-colored glasses" it's hardly worse than what as been done to others in the name of "freedom" and democracy.

Just google for "iraqi death toll" and see that it IS already worse.

The topic is disgusting. Thank god you will have an election soon.

And God Bless America. It's a great country but it needs to wake up soon.

[Platapus]

The US has for decades meddled in the affairs of other nations...

I can highly recommend Stephen Kinzer's "Overthrow" as a good historical examination of this.

Be warned,it is not an easy book to read. He is very date/name heavy (but that's how he gets credibility) and it paints a history of our international relations that many may not know...and many would prefer not to know.

Since this subject pertains to my doctoral studies, I am about 1/2 way through verifying and checking the references and, so far, he has been spot on.

People may not like this aspect of our history, but in order to understand how our actions affect how other nations/cultures perceive us, it is important to know all the history... not just the good.

The United States is no different from the majority of the countries of the world. In our history we have our good, bad, and ugly sides.

[August]

Just google for "iraqi death toll" and see that it IS already worse.

Why are you implying that we killed all those Iraqis? You know that isn't true.

[GlobalExplorer]

The United States is no different from the majority of the countries of the world. In our history we have our good, bad, and ugly sides.

Sure. And America will recover from this as it did from vietnam. But it's going to be a lot of work.

Why are you implying that we killed all those Iraqis? You know that isn't true.

No comprende.

I did not say who killed how many - because I don't know it - the research on that will probably begin after the hostilities - but for me every human live in Iraq counts as much as every american one on 9/11.

What I'm saying is a lot of people will open their eyes when they see the numbers and compare them to the event that actually caused it, i.e. 9/11.

[Konovalov]

Well, now I can see why you don't get it. The problem? You CAN'T satisfy them. They think its their right to put you under Sharia law - and they intend to take over your country and mine and any means to that end is justified. Replace "Sharia" with "democracy" and imagine an Afghan talking to an Iraqi.
Anyway, Letum is not talking about "satisfying" anyone, least of all anyone connected with Al-Qaeda. He's talking about removing the support for such ideology, which torture does not do. Torturing suspects confirms everything Al-Qaeda says about the United States, and the West in macro. The "appeasement" argument is easy to run to, if AL was still around I'd say we'd have seen a picture of Chamberlain by now. Unfortunately, it has nothing to do with the matter at hand.

You didn't have this problem 75 years ago since they were all tribe like and never left. It wasn't a problem 75 years ago because this kind of violent Islam is a relatively new phenomenon. Sayyid Qutb and all that. I do hope that the "they" doesn't refer to all of Islam.

And you are worried about a little waterboarding? I hope they come for your head. It will be a lesson well deserved. Classy.

You've said everything that needs to be said IMO Tchocky. :up:

[DeepIron]

I can highly recommend Stephen Kinzer's "Overthrow" as a good historical examination of this.
Thx for the recommendation! I'll have to give it a go...:up:

[GlobalExplorer]

Ditto. Will head over to amazon for the book.

[August]

The United States is no different from the majority of the countries of the world. In our history we have our good, bad, and ugly sides.
Sure. And America will recover from this as it did from vietnam. But it's going to be a lot of work.

Why are you implying that we killed all those Iraqis? You know that isn't true.
No comprende.

I did not say who killed how many - because I don't know it - the research on that will probably begin after the hostilities - but for me every human live in Iraq counts as much as every american one on 9/11.

What I'm saying is a lot of people will open their eyes when they see the numbers and compare them to the event that actually caused it, i.e. 9/11.

So you think 9-11 caused the Iraq war? Not 12 years of violated cease fire agreements, not Saddams own declarations that he had wmd and intended to use it, not correcting the wrong done to the Shiites and Kurds when we encouraged them to to revolt against Saddam in '91 and subsequently abandoned them?

You can play the blame America game all you want but you cannot ignore the fact that the great majority of violent Iraqi deaths before AND during this war have been at the hands of other Iraqis.

[SUBMAN1]

One thing is great in society though - the stupid get weeded out of the gene pool. I can see this is going to happen here too. :D

-S

[GlobalExplorer]

So you think 9-11 caused the Iraq war? Not 12 years of violated cease fire agreements, not Saddams own declarations that he had wmd and intended to use it, not correcting the wrong done to the Shiites and Kurds when we encouraged them to to revolt against Saddam in '91 and subsequently abandoned them?

You can play the blame America game all you want but you cannot ignore the fact that the great majority of violent Iraqi deaths before AND during this war have been at the hands of other Iraqis.

I never said that Saddam did not kill people or that all these people were directyl killed by americans. I didnt even say if I believe the number 600.000 isn't inflated by at least a magnitude of ten.

But the cease fire argument is your last straw. I'm finding it obvious that 9/11 was causal to the war in Iraq, which was causal to the death of tens of thousands Iraqis. Which makes 9/11 quite a minor incident.

[DeepIron]

So you think 9-11 caused the Iraq war? Yep. Or at least, added impetus to it on the American side... Hmm, we get attacked on 9/01 and we "declare war" on Iraq in what, 03/02? Five months?

Not 12 years of violated cease fire agreements, not Saddams own declarations that he had wmd and intended to use it, not correcting the wrong done to the Shiites and Kurds when we encouraged them to to revolt against Saddam in '91 and subsequently abandoned them? We encouraged the Iraqis to revolt and then left them in the "dust" in '91. So, junior goes back to "finish the job" based on US Patriotic furor over 9/11, his "Axis of Evil" pronouncement, "terrorists are hiding in Iraq" lie, and unconfirmed intel regarding WMDs...

You can play the blame America game all you want but you cannot ignore the fact that the great majority of violent Iraqi deaths before AND during this war have been at the hands of other Iraqis. I would certainly agree. Too bad ol' Dubb-Ya didn't have the forethought to see how Islamic factional violence would blossom once the main deterrrent, Saddam Hussein and the Baathist party were nullified...

BTW, I'm not arguing that Hussein should not have been tried in the World Court. I'm saying the Bush Administration, with it's brainless "Shock and Awe" tactics, have created a much more "lethal" situation than if we had patiently moved forward through diplomatic and economic channels.

[GlobalExplorer]

I would certainly agree. Too bad ol' Dubb-Ya didn't have the forethought to see how Islamic factional violence would blossom once the main deterrrent, Saddam Hussein and the Baathist party were nullified...

This was exactly what people with first hand experience in the region had predicted, like the French-German foreign expert Peter Scholl-Latour. I am sure the CIA gave ample warning to Dubb-Ya, as it did to his father.

[August]

But the cease fire argument is your last straw. I'm finding it obvious that 9/11 was causal to the war in Iraq, which was causal to the death of tens of thousands Iraqis. Which makes 9/11 quite a minor incident.


You can "find" whatever you want but 9-11 didn't cause the war in Iraq. We'd been on the path to war with Iraq ever since the end of the first Gulf war.

[Letum]

But the cease fire argument is your last straw. I'm finding it obvious that 9/11 was causal to the war in Iraq, which was causal to the death of tens of thousands Iraqis. Which makes 9/11 quite a minor incident.

You can "find" whatever you want but 9-11 didn't cause the war in Iraq. We'd been on the path to war with Iraq ever since the end of the first Gulf war.

I would go back a little further than that.
England has been at war with or occupying Iraq for over 45 out of the last 90 years.

[August]

[quote]Hmm, we get attacked on 9/01 and we "declare war" on Iraq in what, 03/02? Five months?
We invaded Iraq in March 20th 2003. You are an entire year off.

We encouraged the Iraqis to revolt and then left them in the "dust" in '91. So, junior goes back to "finish the job" based on US Patriotic furor over 9/11, his "Axis of Evil" pronouncement, "terrorists are hiding in Iraq" lie, and unconfirmed intel regarding WMDs...
Quite the selective memory you have there. Have you already forgot how in 2000, Iraq shielded Abu Musab al—Zarqawi, who was killed in a June 2006 American strike in North Baghdad. How in September 2002, Zarqawi returned there from Syria, via Jordan, to lead the terrorist insurgency that now continues without him.

As for "unconfirmed intel regarding WMD's" What, 12 years of intelligence reports, commissioned by both parties and Saddams own statements, let alone his history of using chemical weapons isn't good enough for you?

Oh that's right. This is about making Bush look bad, not about discussing the truth right?

Too bad ol' Dubb-Ya didn't have the forethought to see how Islamic factional violence would blossom once the main deterrrent, Saddam Hussein and the Baathist party were nullified...
Right, keeping the murderous dictator and his henchmen in power is always preferable to taking a chance by liberating an oppressed people. Is that what you're saying?

BTW, I'm not arguing that Hussein should not have been tried in the World Court. I'm saying the Bush Administration, with it's brainless "Shock and Awe" tactics, have created a much more "lethal" situation than if we had patiently moved forward through diplomatic and economic channels.
Yeah i've read about those diplomatic and economic channels. UN officials lining their pockets with payoff money from Saddam so that he could refit his military with funds diverted from the "food for oil" program. Now that was a recipie for success...

[DeepIron]

We invaded Iraq in March 20th 2003. You are an entire year off. Yup. Your right. My bad...

As for "unconfirmed intel regarding WMD's" What, 12 years of intelligence reports, commissioned by both parties and Saddams own statements, let alone his history of using chemical weapons isn't good enough for you? Did they find them? No... good enough for me. And according to a CIA source that interviewed Hussein, he said "there were no WMDs. It was a ruse to keep the Iranians at bay". Now how can more than a decade of intelligence miss that little fact? We scratched around in the sand and when they weren't brought into the light of day, someone said, "they moved them". What a lot of horse manure... Really good intelligence would have known the most likely hiding places IF the stuff had ever existed...

Right, keeping the murderous dictator and his henchmen in power is always preferable to taking a chance by liberating an oppressed people. Is that what you're saying? To quote Bush senior: "Better the devil we know." He saw what would happen back in '91. And I guess you're somehow satisfied that thousands have died, and continue to die, in this ongoing conflict. Hooboy! Gotta say the quality of life in Iraq is right up there these days! Hundred of thousands displaced, even more living on the edge of their existence, huzzah! Give me occupation!

Yeah i've read about those diplomatic and economic channels. UN officials lining their pockets with payoff money from Saddam so that he could refit his military with funds diverted from the "food for oil" program. Now that was a recipie for success...
Yeah, well bud, you'd better look around the good ol' US of A if you don't think defence and other American contractors ain't doin' the same.

So, be rest assured, this violent and senseless war WILL go on. Bush's legacy to all of us and our children will be not only the war, but the fiscal burden, and the "police state" that will surely rise to "protect us from the terrorists".

[August]

Yup. Your right. My bad...

So in other words you have no clue of what you are talking about. 5 months indeed. How old were you at the time that you would forget an entire year like that?

Did they find them? No... good enough for me. And according to a CIA source that interviewed Hussein, he said "there were no WMDs. It was a ruse to keep the Iranians at bay". Now how can more than a decade of intelligence miss that little fact? We scratched around in the sand and when they weren't brought into the light of day, someone said, "they moved them". What a lot of horse manure... Really good intelligence would have known the most likely hiding places IF the stuff had ever existed...

Please, the Japanese sailed an entire fleet right up to our doorstep in Hawaii without our intelligence finding out about it and that's even with being able to read some of their codes. Our intel gathering capabilities had increased 100 fold by Vietnam but we were unable to discern an entire NVA underground installation with miles of tunnels, workshops, barracks and hospitals just below our base at Chu Chi. You act like gathering intel is like looking up a definition in the dictionary. Sorry that just isn't reality.

Saddam went out of his way to make the entire world, not just the Iranians, think he had WMD's. Indeed he had the capability to quickly restart those programs just as soon as we stopped keeping him under the magnifying glass. You threaten a cop with a gun its not his fault if he shoots you even if the gun turns out to be a toy.

To quote Bush senior: "Better the devil we know." He saw what would happen back in '91. And I guess you're somehow satisfied that thousands have died, and continue to die, in this ongoing conflict. Hooboy! Gotta say the quality of life in Iraq is right up there these days! Hundred of thousands displaced, even more living on the edge of their existence, huzzah! Give me occupation!

You wouldn't be saying that if you were a Kurd or Shiite, but I guess the term "give me liberty or give me death" isn't a creed you would subsribe to.

Yeah, well bud, you'd better look around the good ol' US of A if you don't think defence and other American contractors ain't doin' the same.

Paying off Saddam? Why would you pay off a dead man? :roll:

So, be rest assured, this violent and senseless war WILL go on. Bush's legacy to all of us and our children will be not only the war, but the fiscal burden, and the "police state" that will surely rise to "protect us from the terrorists".

Hey there is always Canada right?

[Letum]

Yup. Your right. My bad...
So in other words you have no clue of what you are talking about. 5 months indeed. How old were you at the time that you would forget an entire year like that?


oh, common, thats hitting a little low. :shifty:

[DeepIron]

Have a good day August. Sophomoric wittisism and cynical remarks don't add anything to this discussion.

[SUBMAN1]

oh, common, thats hitting a little low. :shifty:About as low as the arguments against the waterboarding on this thread.

The intelligence here is pathetic sometimes. About that of cattle comes to mind. :roll:

-S

[DeepIron]

oh, common, thats hitting a little low. :shifty:About as low as the arguments against the waterboarding on this thread.

The intelligence here is pathetic sometimes. About that of cattle comes to mind. :roll:

-S
Maybe it's cause you're talking to the wrong end...

http://www.northrim.net/jhouck/images/sm_cow_butt.jpg

[SUBMAN1]

Maybe it's cause you're talking to the wrong end...

I only wish that was the case. Thanks for trying to give me back some hope. :nope:

-S

[GlobalExplorer]

Have a good day August. Sophomoric wittisism and cynical remarks don't add anything to this discussion.

Don't worry. When he brought that thing up it was clearly because he ran out of arguments.

The topic was torture. Precisely how the president of the United States moves heaven and earth to prevent a law against torture.

[DeepIron]

Thx. GE. I don't worry too much... I think the topic can be very polarized and it is, after all, just discussion. However, I do take some exception to being referred to as "cattle" obliquely or otherwise... :lol:

[SUBMAN1]

Thx. GE. I don't worry too much... I think the topic can be very polarized and it is, after all, just discussion. However, I do take some exception to being referred to as "cattle" obliquely or otherwise... :lol:Feel free to substitute sheep if it makes you feel any better! :D

-S

[DeepIron]

Thx. GE. I don't worry too much... I think the topic can be very polarized and it is, after all, just discussion. However, I do take some exception to being referred to as "cattle" obliquely or otherwise... :lol:Feel free to substitute sheep if it makes you feel any better! :D

-S I didn't feel bad then and don't feel bad now. Save your bile and rudeness for someone who cares...

[GlobalExplorer]

Ok I hope you all had a laugh.

[antikristuseke]

One thing is great in society though - the stupid get weeded out of the gene pool. I can see this is going to happen here too. :D

-S

If this only were the case, just look at bible literalists, or tohra literalists or qur'an literalists or white supremacists or blak supremacists or any other ****ing retarded extremist movement. They havent gone anywhere in the past centuries and some have grown at an alarming rate in the past few decades. Stupidity is not going anywhere.

[August]

Yup. Your right. My bad...
So in other words you have no clue of what you are talking about. 5 months indeed. How old were you at the time that you would forget an entire year like that?

oh, common, thats hitting a little low. :shifty:

And you don't think it's a valid point? Oh well "my bad"... I should have gone with one of the other possiblities to explain such a huge mistake.

Seriously how do you forget an entire year like that? This ain't some dry ancient history that happened long before any of us were born, it is just 5 years ago. But oh that don't stop him from pronouncing his theories like he's some kind of expert on the event.

So yeah let him play the outraged card. Its a grand way of covering ones retreat from an embarrassing display of ignorance on the subject he's so stridently opinionated about.

[DeepIron]

I should have gone with one of the other possiblities to explain such a huge mistake. And that's all it was, a simple miscalculation in dates, a mistake you pointed out and I readily admitted to. Thanks for being so gracious August...

[August]

I should have gone with one of the other possiblities to explain such a huge mistake. And that's all it was, a simple miscalculation in dates, a mistake you pointed out and I readily admitted to. Thanks for being so gracious August...

It's more than a simple miscalculation, it makes your entire argument invalid.

[DeepIron]

It's more than a simple miscalculation, it makes your entire argument invalid.
Hey August, you win! I'm beaten, crushed, destroyed. I'm throwing in the towel... congratulations... well done... see ya... :up:

[Tchocky]

oh, common, thats hitting a little low. :shifty:About as low as the arguments against the waterboarding on this thread. You must be joking..

And you are worried about a little waterboarding? I hope they come for your head. It will be a lesson well deserved.

[Friedmann]

Quite the selective memory you have there. Have you already forgot how in 2000, Iraq shielded Abu Musab al—Zarqawi.

Shielded? According to whom?


As for "unconfirmed intel regarding WMD's" What, 12 years of intelligence reports, commissioned by both parties and Saddams own statements, let alone his history of using chemical weapons isn't good enough for you?

Wouldn't be good enough for me especially considering what the weapons inspectors were saying.


Oh that's right. This is about making Bush look bad, not about discussing the truth right?

And you're on the flipside of the coin, tyring to make a cluster**** look rational and measured.


Right, keeping the murderous dictator and his henchmen in power is always preferable to taking a chance by liberating an oppressed people. Is that what you're saying?

It was such a selfess act, it had nothing to do with an ocean of oil.

[Skybird]

Not commenting on wether torture can be justified or not, just on the procedure of weaterboarding itself: if waterboarding really is so harmless and not torture - I wonder why it is said to have such a high efficiency. anyone here believing that suspects or offenders all of a sudden are in a mood to talk, maybe because they wish to express their thankfulness for getting a wet shave for free? Waterboarding inflicts physical and psychological fear of death, and fear of death is terror in it's purest form. That is what torture is about.

PERIOD.

One really needs to be a blind lying hypocrite to talk it down and say it is harmless. Man, even McCain admitted that it is, and compared it to holding a loaded weapon to your head - i think he knows what he talks about. If it would all be harmless, nobody would tell anything when being exposed to this procedure.

[Tchocky]

So you think 9-11 caused the Iraq war? Not 12 years of violated cease fire agreements, not Saddams own declarations that he had wmd and intended to use it, not correcting the wrong done to the Shiites and Kurds when we encouraged them to to revolt against Saddam in '91 and subsequently abandoned them? K, none of those are in any way irrelevant, but you can't deny that the guys in the White House were itching to attack Iraq from day one. And 9/11 provided a major boost - public support for overseas military action.
Remember what Rumsfeld said on the day? Is there any way we can pin this on Iraq?
9/11 did not cause the 2003 war, but I doubt the war would have gone ahead otherwise.

You can play the blame America game all you want but you cannot ignore the fact that the great majority of violent Iraqi deaths before AND during this war have been at the hands of other Iraqis. It's very easy to blame America for the deaths during and after the war. It's just not very helpful.
Oh look (http://blogs.abcnews.com/rapidreport/2008/03/pentagon-report.html#foo)

[mrbeast]

I can't help thinking that if we accept the use of torture as a tool then we simply place ourselves on a par with people like Stalin or Pol Pot; that is accepting that the ends always justify the means whatever they may be.

[Platapus]

Mr. Beast brings up the core of the original discussion.

It is a conflict between two essential elements of human ethics:

Consequentialism and Deontological ethics. Both these concepts have strengths and weaknesses and have been debated for many years by people way smarter than I am.

To drill down through the philosophical mumbo-jumbo, it boils down to this:

Do you believe the end justifies the means?

Consequentialists believe that if the end is "good" it can compensate if the means are "bad". Some Consequentialists forgo the evaluation whether something is "good enough" or "bad enough".

Deontologists believe that the means need to be evaluated morally/ethically independent of the anticipated ends. Deontologists believe that the argument "the ends justify the means" can only be evaluated post facto and in that case it is too late, the deed is done! The Argument of the Deontologist is that "will the uncertain anticipated end justify the certain means?".

For further information, consider researching "Principle of Permissible Harm"
http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=9763. It is complex and complicated concept.

No one can say whether Consequentialism and Deontological ethics are either correct or both incorrect. There is much academic debate on these concepts.

Emotional responses abound when Consequentialism and Deontological ethics are debated. Especially more when the concept of ethical torture come up.

This is one of the many reasons why this and other administrations (foreign and domestic) used to shy away from "torture is allowed" and instead redirect the debate to "This technique is not torture". This way a specific technique could be ethically justified because it was "not-torture".

One thing that is known is that Consequentialists and Deontologists will probably never agree nor convert the other. But each sure does like to try :D

[SUBMAN1]

If this only were the case, just look at bible literalists, or tohra literalists or qur'an literalists or white supremacists or blak supremacists or any other ****ing retarded extremist movement. They havent gone anywhere in the past centuries and some have grown at an alarming rate in the past few decades. Stupidity is not going anywhere.I didn't say it was perfect, but even if it doesn't get one early, it will at least hamper ones ability to reproduce.:D

-S

[SUBMAN1]

Well, what seems to be in question here as I read these threads is the idea of the 'perfect world'. Last I checked, we live in a greedy self motivated for personal profit world. It would be worse if we were all pure Darwanists since any helping of the sick or poor would be right out the window and it would be worse, though Darwanist theories are under attack right now anyway since there are little snails that defy Darwins logic, but thats another story.

Anyway - we live in a world that has disease, people die, people get whacked out, people want to kill other people over crazed ideas, and crazed personal profit motivations. We live in a world where guns are neccesary, torture is ill defined, and a world where one needs to defend their values and life.

Is sitting there thinking you are going to die in a jail cell any different than thinking that physical harm is going to come to you via water boarding? Come on! Only the time line is changed! :nope: The phych factor the same. Even the hope of survival is the same.

The only way to get to the world that you utopians dream of is to re-program the human mind physically. So go home and deal with the world you are in already, or start destroying parts of your brain and become a robot. Any other talk of such minor things is pointless and pathetic. :down:

-S

[DeepIron]

Anyway - we live in a world that has disease, people die, people get whacked out, people want to kill other people over crazed ideas, and crazed personal profit motivations. We live in a world where guns are neccesary, torture is ill defined, and a world where one needs to defend their values and life.
So... when I defend my values by not condoning torture... what? An exercise in futility because "the world is the way it is" and my personal values don't mean squat? Well, you might as well throw out stuff like "human rights" then because it's the individual that makes THAT happen.

Any other talk of such minor things is pointless and pathetic.
I'm confused... If I DO defend my personal sense of values it's "pointless and pathetic"?
If so, then there really isn't any point to living because we're always going to find ourselves failing to improve and our efforts to do so, pointless...

[kiwi_2005]

Anyway - we live in a world that has disease, people die, people get whacked out, people want to kill other people over crazed ideas, and crazed personal profit motivations. We live in a world where guns are neccesary, torture is ill defined, and a world where one needs to defend their values and life.

Is sitting there thinking you are going to die in a jail cell any different than thinking that physical harm is going to come to you via water boarding? Come on! Only the time line is changed! :nope: The phych factor the same. Even the hope of survival is the same.

The only way to get to the world that you utopians dream of is to re-program the human mind physically. So go home and deal with the world you are in already, or start destroying parts of your brain and become a robot. Any other talk of such minor things is pointless and pathetic. :down:

-S

Can't argue with that. Torture is torture but i see your point.

[antikristuseke]

Well, what seems to be in question here as I read these threads is the idea of the 'perfect world'. Last I checked, we live in a greedy self motivated for personal profit world. It would be worse if we were all pure Darwanists since any helping of the sick or poor would be right out the window and it would be worse, though Darwanist theories are under attack right now anyway since there are little snails that defy Darwins logic, but thats another story.

While this is going grossly off topic social darwinism has nothing to do with the theory of evolution and so far i have yet to hear any coherent challenge of said theory. Other than that I agree, the world is far from perfect, but then again, what isnt.

[Tchocky]

a world where one needs to defend their values and life. Any comment to make on your hope that Letum has his head cut off?

Is sitting there thinking you are going to die in a jail cell any different than thinking that physical harm is going to come to you via water boarding? Come on! Only the time line is changed! :nope: The phych factor the same. Even the hope of survival is the same. Are you having a laugh?
Fear of death != Fear of immediate death.
I can only refer you to Skybird's post on the matter.

The only way to get to the world that you utopians dream of is to re-program the human mind physically. So go home and deal with the world you are in already, or start destroying parts of your brain and become a robot. Any other talk of such minor things is pointless and pathetic. :down: Disliking torture is not a utopian ideal. You know that.
Gotta love the transition, though. You started off with decent arguments (founded on a false notion of torture, mind, but well argued), then after calling for Letum's head to be cut off you went away for a while.
Now you're back, calling everyone stupid cattle/sheep, and now a treatise on how nasty the world is, and any argument against torture is some sort of utopian daydreaming.
Bleh.

[SUBMAN1]

While this is going grossly off topic social darwinism has nothing to do with the theory of evolution and so far i have yet to hear any coherent challenge of said theory....You can start here - http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/09/home/gould-magazine.html

[SUBMAN1]

a world where one needs to defend their values and life. Any comment to make on your hope that Letum has his head cut off?

Is sitting there thinking you are going to die in a jail cell any different than thinking that physical harm is going to come to you via water boarding? Come on! Only the time line is changed! :nope: The phych factor the same. Even the hope of survival is the same. Are you having a laugh?
Fear of death != Fear of immediate death.
I can only refer you to Skybird's post on the matter.

The only way to get to the world that you utopians dream of is to re-program the human mind physically. So go home and deal with the world you are in already, or start destroying parts of your brain and become a robot. Any other talk of such minor things is pointless and pathetic. :down: Disliking torture is not a utopian ideal. You know that.
Gotta love the transition, though. You started off with decent arguments (founded on a false notion of torture, mind, but well argued), then after calling for Letum's head to be cut off you went away for a while.
Now you're back, calling everyone stupid cattle/sheep, and now a treatise on how nasty the world is, and any argument against torture is some sort of utopian daydreaming.
Bleh.Did you say something?

-S

[Konovalov]

Did you say something?

-S
Another telling contribution, not. :zzz:

[antikristuseke]

While this is going grossly off topic social darwinism has nothing to do with the theory of evolution and so far i have yet to hear any coherent challenge of said theory....You can start here - http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/09/home/gould-magazine.html

Where exactly was the challenge to the theory of evolution?

[SUBMAN1]

While this is going grossly off topic social darwinism has nothing to do with the theory of evolution and so far i have yet to hear any coherent challenge of said theory....You can start here - http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/09/home/gould-magazine.html
Where exactly was the challenge to the theory of evolution?Read the whole article. You will find the challenge is to the way things evolve for one. The whole theory needs to be re-written.

-S

[mrbeast]

The link just sends me to a member log in page.

Besides Darwinism has been discussed ad-nausiem elsewhere. If you want to start a new thread about how much you don't like Darwinism then be my guest, I'm sure it will be an interesting discussion.;)

[SUBMAN1]

If an article becomes too popular, the NY Times starts requiring people to log in. That is the problem. Sorry, but I have no control over that.

Breaking Tradition With Darwin
By JAMES GLEICK

http://www.nytimes.com/images/e.gifVOLUTION has prepared the Bahamas land snail for a simple life. It hangs upside down from the leaves and grasses, climbs down in the damp nights to nibble at fungi and crawls across the terrain at the sober rate of perhaps a meter per year. Over the ages, merely by struggling to survive and reproduce, it has managed to adapt itself exquisitely to its various Caribbean habitats. On the coasts, where wind and crabs might kill the less fit, natural selection has left snails with thickened shells for protection. In the sun-dappled interiors, shells have grown mottled for camouflage.


But no means of adaptation known to Darwin could have prepared these snails for a predator as ruthless as a certain Harvard professor of geology. When January comes, the scattered islands of the Caribbean find him scrabbling at the ground with his fingernails, a plastic bag dangling from his mouth, barely aware of the clouds of sand flies or the 90-degree heat. He carries away specimens by the hundreds and maps their geographic distribution. It is his way of staying in touch with the stuff of evolution.


To a scientist like Stephen Jay Gould - an evolutionary theorist with a special love for patterns of growth and form - these snails make perfect subjects. For one thing, their life histories are calcified for all to see in the delicate whorls of their shells. For another, they turn up in a wild variety of shapes - so wild that species-happy collectors a century ago gave names to what they thought were more than 600 different kinds (Gould thinks there are fewer than 20).


A traditional Darwinian would ask how these many snails adapted to their local habitats over the course of millenniums. What are all those different shapes for? Gould is asking a different question, and it amounts to a kind of heresy in the already conten- tious world of evolutionary theory. He wants to know whether all those different shapes, all those elegant histories of growth, might have little at all to do with adaptation. Like some other evolutionists in the United States and Britain, he is challenging some of the most basic tenets of how species originate and change. And he is proposing a broadened theory, giving greater roles to the laws of internal development, the necessities of organic architecture and the vagaries of chance.


''There's more diversity of form within this single genus of Bahamian land snail, Cerion, than within any other family of land snails,'' Gould says. ''You get these pencil-thin snails. You get these golfball-like snails. A colleague of mine once gave as an example of an impossible animal a square snail, and I pointed out to him that there's a square Cerion. Everything happens with Cerion.''


Gould used to see the snail hunting as a sideline, to be indulged the way an architect might enjoy an occasional bout of carpentry. ''If you just did theory all the time you'd feel like a whore, trading on ideas and not building up the data of the field.'' But this summer, after interminable hours at Harvard spent staring at his pages of data, he also realized that the fieldwork had something to contribute to his grander theories. More orthodox evolutionists would assume that the many changes of form represent adaptations. Gould denies it and finds explanations in the laws of growth. Snails grow the way they do because there are only so many ways a snail can grow.


There is a paradox here, and Gould and his colleagues are all aware of it. Publicly, Gould is the foremost exponent of Darwinism in our time. His monthly column in Natural History magazine over the last decade, collected in three engaging and successful books, has explained the wonders of evolution to an increasingly devoted corps of readers. His prolific writing and his teaching - barely slowed by a painful struggle during the last year against a deadly form of cancer - have made him a popular focus for honorary degrees and other awards, including a five-year John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation prize fellowship.


One collection of essays, ''The Panda's Thumb,'' won the 1981 American Book Award, and his study of human intelligence and biological determinism, ''The Mismeasure of Man,'' won the National Book Critics Circle Award last year. His undergraduate course, Harvard's basic course on ''The History of the Earth and of Life,'' drew more than twice as many students this fall as could be accommodated. His outspoken campaign against the creationist notion of species placed here by divine and immutable design may not have converted many fundamentalists, but it gave the lay public the most forceful defense of evolution to come from the scientific community.


Yet within the field, this 42- year-old paleontologist is putting himself more and more at odds with orthodox Darwinism - the body of evolutionary thought grandly known as the ''modern synthesis.'' He accuses it of hardening of the arteries. In a major address before the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in October, as in several recent scholarly papers, he has taken a stand against some of the basic principles of the modern synthesis - primarily the idea that the great trends of evolution can be explained purely in terms of Darwin's ''war of nature,'' the struggle of individual organisms to survive and reproduce.


The struggle of the evolutionists has already begun to bear heavily on the questions that have always made this such a contentious subject: Where did we come from and where are we headed? Darwin stands with Freud and Marx as one of the modern era's great bearers of bad tidings precisely because his revolution overthrew so many cherished answers to such questions. Those who wished to see humanity as the appointed captain of a divinely arranged parade of life got no comfort from biology after Darwin's time.


Yet the vision he put in its place was in its own way a vision of harmony, of order, of progress. Are we not evolving, slowly but steadily, toward some smarter, healthier, longer-lived race of the future? Of all the images of evolution that have taken hold in Western culture in the century since Darwin, this one is the most basic, and it may simply be wrong. For Homo sapiens, Gould and some of his colleagues believe, biological evolution is already over.


''We're not just evolving slowly,'' Gould says, ''for all practical purposes we're not evolving. There's no reason to think we're going to get bigger brains or smaller toes or whatever - we are what we are.''


His challenge reflects a lively turbulence in the field, and more turbulence is sure to come over the next few years as discoveries from molecular biology flood into evolutionary theory. Gould himself is molding the pieces of the debate into a unified, hierarchical view of evolution that he believes will give scientists a framework for talking about the interplay of great events at the levels of species, populations, individuals and genes.


''We need a different structure of evolutionary theory,'' he declared, ''an expanded kind of Darwinism but one that looks very different from the reductionistic version that has been our orthodox theory for the last 40 years or so.'' It is a new chapter being written by Gould and other biologists in the modern history of evolution - what is, after all, our story of genesis.


''Steve has been the major intellectual input into the debates in evolutionary biology,'' said John Maynard Smith, professor of biology at the University of Sussex, England, and himself one of the great theoreticians of Neo-Darwinism. ''I say that even though I think he's often quite wrong-headed, and I'm sure he thinks the same of me. But his is the intellect that stimulated this whole thing.''


As the debates go on, the heart of Darwin's message will surely remain intact. Individuals within a species vary. Those best fitted to their environment survive to pass their favorable traits on to their descendants. Nature's selection of the fittest acts as the engine of change over the generations.


But if Gould prevails it will no longer be quite as easy to explain every character, every trait, every bit of behavior in terms of how it helps an organism survive or reproduce. That has become a common habit of thinking not just in evolution but also in fields like anthropology. Why do mammals have four legs? Because it's the most efficient number for walking. Why do people have chins? To facilitate speech, or eating. Why do some cultures practice human sacrifice? To compensate for shortages of protein.


Here are the nonadaptationist explanations: We have four limbs because we evolved from fishes with four fins - ''we had to make do with that,'' Gould says, ''and we've done a good job.'' Chins don't even exist, morphologically speaking - they are just an accidental result of the interplay between two growth fields in the receding jaw of Homo sapiens (the tooth part receded more than the lower part). And human sacrifice could have arisen for any number of cultural reasons, but the use occasionally made of the resulting flesh was an afterthought.


Gould and some of his colleagues call the adaptationist habit Panglossian, as in Voltaire's joke: Why do people have noses? To hold up spectacles.


To many practicing evolutionists, this view is a caricature and a straw man. They have a staggering fact of nature on their side: that so many animals and plants do seem superbly adapted to their habitats. That, after all, is what Darwin set out to explain.


Still, Gould's heresies have been productive before. A decade ago, he and Niles Eldredge, a fellow paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, broke with orthodox Darwinism by proposing a new model for the pace of evolutionary change. The traditional view was, and is, that big changes are made gradually, by the accumulation of many tiny changes over eons. Gould and Eldredge, joined now by many other American and British paleontologists, argue for a theory of fits and starts. Most important change, they believe, takes place in the geological instant when a new species is born - a long instant, to be sure, lasting perhaps 5,000 to 50,000 years, but virtually no time at all compared to the millions of years most species survive. After that first burst of change comes a long period of stability.


The fits-and-starts theory - known as punctuated equilibrium, or, familiarly, as ''punk eke'' - addresses one of the great nuisances of evolutionary theory, the fossil record. As creationists love to point out, the evidence preserved in the earth's rocks shows many species virtually unchanged throughout their histories, with precious few transitional stages between them. Darwin and his successors have had to argue that the fossil record is incomplete by its very nature, preserving only a tiny fraction of organisms and preserving them at unreliable intervals. Gould and Eldredge ask whether the rocks might not after all be telling a true story. Perhaps transitional stages rarely appear because their existence really was brief.


This initial break with Neo- Darwinism, now accepted by many in the field, gave the modern debates their shape, but its implications have remained poorly understood except by specialists.


One piece of evolutionary theory that has firmly established itself in the way we think about human origins is the idea that we descended from our primate ancestors by continuously improving features such as brain size. Gould and Eldredge challenge that, suggesting that the important history of human ancestors is not a matter of gradual improvement, but of new humanlike species splitting off from the old. Our evolutionary history is more like a copiously branching bush than a ladder toward perfection. The new species probably formed quickly in small, geographically isolated populations and from then on, Gould and Eldredge argue, they remained more or less static. ''So that at any one time,'' Eldredge suggests, ''you might have two or three species of various brain sizes, and the long-term winners of their competition would be the bigger-brained species. It's an analogue of natural selection at the species level.''


A major area of contention to flow from punctuated equilibrium is just this suggestion - that individuals are not the only players on the evolutionary stage. Perhaps species or local populations or even genes can be targets of natural selection. That is the basis of the hierarchical model of evolution that Gould and others are building - a model meant to explain the great events, the birth and death of species and the reshaping of ecosystems.


Whether natural selection is sorting individuals or species, it is still a process of adaptation - and the traditional view remains that what we are, what we have made ourselves, arises from usefulness in survival and reproduction. Gould challenges that as well.


''I don't doubt for a moment that there was a conventional selective reason for our large brain,'' he said. ''That reason's probably complex - there are a whole host of interrelated advantages of large brains. What I do want to say very strongly is that most of what our brains do - most of what is essential to our considering of ourselves as being human - is not directly selected for, is not a product of natural selection, but arises as a nonadaptive structural consequence of building a computer so powerful as the human brain.


''To give just one example: The most terrible fact that the evolution of the large brain allowed us to learn is the fact of our personal mortality. Think of how much of the architecture of human culture and cultural traditions, how much of human religion, for example, arises and attempts to deal with that terrible fact, which we have come to learn as a result of the complex structure of our brain. You can't argue the brain became large so that we would learn the fact of our coming personal mortality.''


Even Gould's allies sometimes part company with him on the question of adaptation. ''He's trying to redress the balance, as he sees it,'' Eldredge says. ''The modern synthesis has tended to throw out the caveats and just take natural selection and extrapolate the whole thing up the board and explain the whole history of life with it. He's quite right to point that out, but I think he's infatuated with the notion. There is tremendous design in nature, and species are adapted to an amazing extent.''
Gould tends to look instead to organisms that adaptation seems to have left behind, organisms that seem imperfect or jerry-built. Where orthodox Darwinism stresses the movement of evolution toward perfection, toward harmony, his view leaves more to the accidental and the unforeseeable. ''It does emphasize the quirkiness, the unpredictability of evolution,'' he said. ''I've never seen that as a negative or despairing message. I know some people don't like it. To me it only teaches that you won't passively read the answer to moral questions in nature. And that just throws the challenge out to humanists: It's up to us to struggle and find that meaning ourselves.


''That's no threat,'' he added. ''To me that's a promise and a challenge more than a counsel of despair.''


A minor dogma of evolutionary theory, firmly held by geneticists and paleontologists around the country, is that Steven Jay Gould sleeps only three hours a night. ''Look, no normal person doing a normal day's work could possible accomplish what he's accomplished,'' said Sherwood L. Washburn, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, an evolutionist who has often differed from Gould.


Actually, Gould says, with the help of the Winston Churchill catnap technique, he used to manage on four or five hours. But that was before he discovered he had cancer.


He canceled last winter's trip to the Bahamas but kept writing his monthly column and teaching his Harvard classes, wearing a hat, by the end, to cover the baldness that came with intense radiation treatment and chemotherapy. ''It speaks to an inner strength that is intimidating,'' says David S. Woodruff, an ecologist and geneticist at the University of California at San Diego and Gould's longtime partner in the Bahamas fieldwork. ''The man has such incredible self- drive, motivation and control.''


Woodruff gets the snails first, to study 20 to 30 different genes in each, and then he ships the shells east to Harvard. Gould makes a set of complicated measurements and writes the numbers in rows and columns on immense pads. Then he searches for patterns in the measurements. It was one kind of work the cancer made impossible for a while.
But Gould's schedule is already nearly back to its precancer level. His major work in progress, already known to most of his colleagues as his ''macroevolution book,'' will detail his expanded version of evolutionary theory. He is writing a series of five technical papers on the snails and planning a Caribbean trip with Woodruff in January. He sings in the Boston Cecilia Society and often joins the substantial corps of Yankee rooters at Fenway Park. He also spends a great deal of time with his family: his wife, Deborah, an illustrator; his 14-year-old son, Jesse, who suffers from a learning disability, and his 10-year-old son, Ethan.


Gould was born on Sept. 10, 1941, in Manhattan and grew up in Forest Hills, Queens. The legend - and he swears it is true - is that he determined to become a paleontologist at the age of 5, when his father, a court stenographer, took him to see Tyrannosaurus Rex at the American Museum of Natural History. He never wavered, attending Jamaica High School in Queens - just before Sputnik brought a flurry of science courses into the curriculum - Antioch College in Ohio and graduate school at Columbia University. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1967.


Besides his undergraduate lecture course, he teaches a small seminar with his graduate students - often beginning the class with a ritual reading of his hate mail. He gets plenty, because of the active part he took in the creationism debate, writing articles and testifying in a well-publicized trial in Arkansas. ''There was one particularly nasty one from a woman who identified herself as a nurse, a preserver of life, you see. She said I was going to die - which I'm not, damn it, I'm going to be a survivor - and that I was sure to burn in hell.''


Gould discovered his cancer by accident, and the accident saved his life. He went for a physical examination in July 1982 before a trip to Europe. ''It's one of those funny things - I still don't know to this day why I asked him to do it - but I realized as I was about to leave that he hadn't given me a prostate exam, and I remembered that my old doctor used to. So I asked him, 'Well, what about a prostate exam.'
''He said, 'I don't usually give them to men your age because prostatic cancer is essentially unknown in men in their early 40's, but since you ask I'll give it to you.' So he did and he found this little bump - it's not prostatic cancer because indeed that is unknown in men my age.''


It was mesothelioma - the asbestos-related cancer that forms either in the lung or the abdomen. Gould can think of no exposure to asbestos, but it can take extraordinarily little. If the discovery had come a few months later, he might have had no chance. ''The problem is,'' he said, ''the general statistics on mesothelioma - you don't even want to read them.''


He read them. He went straight to the library at Harvard Medical School, punched mesothelioma into the computer and got the latest literature. Then he decided the statistics did not apply to him. Most victims were older. Most lived farther from a major medical center. Most only discovered the cancer after it produced noticeable symptoms. ''That's what's rare, to discover it in its presymptomatic state. It's the only reason I had a chance at all.''


Gould and I sat alone in his office at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. It is a cavernous room in the museum's original wing, built in 1859, the year Darwin published ''The Origin of Species.'' Gould shares it with 20,000 trilobites in glass cases and with an extraordinary personal book collection, including rare tracts on evolution from before Darwin's time. Not long ago, painters uncovered lettering on the old walls - ''Synthesis of the Animal Kingdom,'' ''Sponges and Protozoa'' - and Gould realized that the room had once been a main exhibition area of the museum. He left the lettering exposed.


While I sat at a table covered with snails and microscopes, Gould finished some yogurt and rose from a rattan chair. In his own mind, he sometimes says, he is a fat man. He used to be, but these days, of course, the reality is that he is just small, wearing his new gauntness like a battered overcoat. When he speaks, his energy seems to channel itself in his eyes and in his enormous hands - he flares them, locks them, kneads them as he paces back and forth. But in the afternoons he often gives way to his fatigue, and this was one of those times. He began sorting slides for his lecture that evening. ''It's funny,'' he said. ''You can't really predict how you're going to react to something like that until it happens. I never would have known what my reaction would be to, you know, a threat on one's life of that magnitude and sort. I might have thought that I would get very scared and very angry, but I just didn't. And I gather that's not an uncommon reaction among cancer patients - when you're threatened you just sort of reach back and you say, 'Oh, well, there it is, what am I going to do.' You deal with it.''


Doctors could reach one tumor surgically the month it was detected. Another could not be touched until it had been shrunk by radiation. ''It turned out that it was one of these - you see, the problem with mesothelioma is that it - .'' He held a slide up to the gray light of the window, and dropped it into a box. ''It never forms a single solid tumor, it unfortunately always forms the tumor and then undergoes this local spreading where you get these little dots of disease all over the - .'' Another slide. ''It tends not to metastasize distantly, and that's the one, if you will, somewhat favorable feature, that it does not have this tendency to spread throughout the body. But because it forms all these dotlike spreads, it's essentially uncurable under older techniques. There was not a whole hell of a lot you could do.''


Gould underwent surgery again last December and began an experimental form of chemotherapy. High doses of chemicals were applied directly on the cancer through a tube in his abdomen. It was successful, but infection from the tube caused peritonitis last spring, and the peritonitis nearly killed him.


''I can't complain,'' he said. ''It's true that everything was going along so well, and then to be struck with these two crosses, first one of your kids turns out to have deep problems, and then to come down with this life-threatening condition in your early 40's - .Well. Everything else had gone so well.


''The further difficulty that I live with is the knowledge that the mesothelioma statistics are pretty daunting. But look - I'm an individual. That's the essence of taxonomic biology, after all: the irreducibility of the individual. The general statistics may not mean a lot.


''The important thing is just to keep active. The main way to fight it is to just keep telling yourself you're not going to let it stop you. Then if it gets you eventually, O,K, you lose. But I'm not going to let it stop me.''


Even now, as the day wears on, the pain sometimes gets to be too much, and Gould goes off to give himself an injection of a narcotic painkiller.


When Gould ran his evolutionary challenge up the flagpole of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the chief architects of the modern synthesis, Ernst Mayr, was sitting in the front row, furiously scribbling notes. Mayr, a longtime Harvard professor and author of ''The Growth of Biological Thought,'' rose afterward to offer a quick response and elaborated on it the next day.


''It's a brilliant tour de force that Steve has produced,'' he said. ''Presumably I am to defend the old antiquated ideas of evolution, and let me just say it wouldn't be too difficult for me to do that.'' Like many evolutionists, he rejected the notion that natural selection operates on species or populations or genes. And he doubted that constraints of development or architecture could be as useful as adaptation in studying the Bahamas land snail. ''That's where we are on thin ice,'' Mayr said, ''and there is no thinner ice than Steve's ice.''


Mayr and other traditional Neo-Darwinists often suggest, quite reasonably, that Gould is recycling old ideas. They also argue that he is exaggerating their importance. John Maynard Smith, for example, does not think punctuated equilibrium will prove quite as pervasive as Gould thinks. ''And I don't think we were as na'ively gradualist as you would think to hear Steve talk about it.''


He also notes that as long ago as the 1950's he was talking about some of the issues Gould now stresses - but he agrees that just about any idea in evolutionary theory can be traced back to the literature not just of the last generation but of the last century. It's a question of emphasis. When he claimed priority for one idea at a recent conference, a colleague interrupted and said, ''Yes, John, we all know you invented the bloody bicycle, but you didn't get on and ride it anywhere.''


''We get this in science all the time,'' Mayr said, ''that the first glimmer of a new idea turns up very early in the literature, and gradually it becomes brighter and brighter until finally somebody makes a term for it, or somebody makes a big noise about it, and finally it penetrates people's awareness.'' As sharply as he disagrees with Gould's expanded theory, he expects it to be a force to reckon with, particularly when the macroevolution book is finished. ''It's going to be taken seriously and it's going to have a tremendously stimulating influence on the field.''


When Mayr and other Neo- Darwinists resolved the early struggles of evolutionary theory by blending the discoveries of Mendelian genetics, they settled firmly on one of the many conceivable agents of change: natural selection. Scientists by then had no use for mystical notions of change directed from within, and the new understanding of genetics ruled out the idea, known as Lamarckism, that traits acquired by an individual could be passed on. A weight-lifter's children just don't start life with bigger muscles, as nice as that might be for the progress of evolution.
Natural selection not only seemed to work, it also - just as important - provided a program for doing science.


''For the first time,'' as Gould says, ''what Darwin says is that what you can study are these small-scale changes occurring within populations - artificial selection and breeding of sheep and plants and pigeons, small changes that you can observe in the timescale of a generation. That these are the stuff, through extrapolation, of all evolutionary change.''


This was the happy state of scientific life that Gould and Eldredge began to disrupt a decade ago by suggesting that those tiny, slow changes may not account for the major events of evolution - that gradualism has become a bad habit.


Gould loves to display examples from modern anthropology: drawings of progressively more human-looking creatures walking in line, getting less and less stoop-shouldered as the eons wear on - even though the supposedly intermediate stages walked perfectly upright, according to pelvic reconstructions. He also points to the so-called McGregor busts, which used to be a favorite of college anthropology departments.


''He's given us a supposed gradual transformational sequence of Homo erectus,'' Gould said, ''a Java man on the left, to Neanderthal in the center, to Cro-Magnon on the right. The problem is that it's not an evolutionary sequence.


''Neanderthal is not an intermediate form - it's us. It's a Western European race of Homo sapiens, presumably. But look what McGregor has done to reinforce that impression of intermediacy - he's given Neanderthal a three-day growth.''


Punctuated equilibrium changes everything. Instead of looking at the daily war of individuals to survive, evolutionists have to shift their focus upward to the levels of populations and individuals, just as molecular biology is looking downward to discover important patterns at the level of genes. Gould believes that the next great conceptual gains will come from the study of how these levels interact. There, he argues, lie explanations for long-term trends that have mystified paleontologists and for many other pieces of the evolutionary puzzle.


One such piece - the kind of natural oddity that fills Gould's columns and makes his books so much fun to read - is what biologists call overspecialization. In the animal world, overspecialization leads to features like the peacock's tail or the huge antlers of the Irish elk. ''The organism is doing what it ought to do as a Darwinian agent,'' Gould said, ''trying to win more copulations to pass on more of its genes to future generations. It does that by developing a highly precise specialized organ which limits the flexibility of the species with respect to future evolutionary change, eventually guaranteeing the extinction of the species.'' Good for the individual, bad for the species. In the orthodox view, that is a contradiction in terms, awkward to deal with. In the hierarchical view, it is a kind of negative feedback between levels.
As the picture broadens, as evolution becomes a history of abrupt change when new species are born and when old ones die, it may be that the important trends will owe more to the necessities of architecture, as in Bahamian land snails, or in developmental constraints that will only be understood when embryology explains more of how genes control the timing and direction of growth. Gould's major scholarly work, the 1977 ''Ontogeny and Phylogeny,'' was devoted to the importance of viewing evolution as a change not in final products but in histories of development. ''If there are only a few potential pathways of evolutionary change,'' Gould says, ''if those potential pathways are set by the structure of the organism, then, even if natural selection is doing the pushing, in a sense the organism pushes back. Its inherited structure exerts very strong constraints on the possible pathways of change.''


Even when natural selection is the driving force, it may not be as universally effective as orthodox Darwinists suppose. Some traits may hitchhike on the backs of others. For example, in a cataclysmic event like the great extinction of 60 million years ago, when dinosaurs gave way for good, the explanation for the triumph of mammals may lie not in their bigger brains, but in the good fortune of their small size. It was the big creatures that died, regardless of how smart they were. The little creatures survived, and their brains came along for the ride.


Darwin encouraged the notion of human evolution as a march toward perfection in passages like the famous peroration to ''The Origin of Species,'' from which Gould drew the title of his Natural History column, ''This View of Life.'' It's a picture with a sense of purpose: ''As natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress toward perfection. . . . Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object of which we are capable of conceiving, namely the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life.''


There is indeed. But Gould loves to show a picture of a little fish, complete with eye, fins and tail, that turns out to be the rear end of a clam. The clam has evolved a highly specialized decoy. ''In what sense can you say this is a 'better' clam?'' he asks. ''Is it better than an oyster? Is it better than a scallop?'' It's just one adaptation among millions to particular ways of living.


The history of life is full of creatures that became more and more complex, only to shed their complexity when a changing environment demanded simplicity. Some ecological niches favor organisms that live long lives, producing few offspring but devoting great energy to their protection and development. Others favor organisms that rely on sheer reproductive force, maturing as quickly as possible, breeding by the thousands and then dying. Which approach is ''better''? It depends on the environment.


For one organism alone, the environment has become a thing to shape, rather than a thing to be shaped by. And in some small ways, our interference with our environment has already had the power to affect our own genetic legacy. Medical science, by curing some diseases, can allow unfavorable traits to remain in the gene pool, an effect known as dysgenic. But genes are complicated. They rarely restrict their effects to one particular disease, and they almost never correspond in any neat way to the parts of the finished animal. As for less visible and more interesting traits, if an object as simple as the chin has no clear genetic existence, there is no reason to think qualities like intelligence are directly coded either.


A few diseases seem to have simple genetic triggers, but even the simplest cases can have unexpected consequences. No genetic disease is better understood than sickle-cell anemia, a blood disorder affecting blacks.In its rare, homozygous form, it is deadly. But the mild, heterozygous form, much more common, has a beneficial side effect: It provides protection against malaria. That is why the gene spread in Africa, wherever the malaria was present. Natural selection favored it, as long as it stayed rare enough so that few people would be unlucky enough in the genetic draw to get the deadly form. By tampering with nature and wiping out the malaria, science has not weakened our genetic stock - on the contrary, it has accidently strengthened the selection pressure that is now eliminating sickle-cell anemia.


For humanity, biological evolution is reserved for such oddities. The message of punctuated equilibrium is that only cultural evolution matters now. ''Think of Cro- Magnon people 50,000 years ago,'' Gould said. ''They were us. There's no difference in the brain capacity and intellectual abilities. What's happened is all cultural evolution.''


Cultural evolution is powerful and fast because, unlike the biological kind, it is truly Lamarckian. What is acquired in one generation can be passed on to the next. Its engine of change is learning. Its genetic code is language. In the century since Darwin, many students of social trends have tried to find parallels in natural selection, and some have succeeded. But because it is Lamarckian, cultural evolution does not need to wait for the slow and savage weeding out of the unfit.


In the meantime, where could biological evolution take us? Even given hundreds of millions of years, there is no reason to think nature would craft eyes that could see molecules, legs that could carry us hundreds of feet per second, brains that could sort or calculate as rapidly as computers. Even in matters of sickness and health, the time is long past when our bodies' best hope lay in evolution. Until recently, none of nature's creations could guess the future or change it - yet suddenly there is, as Gould says, one interesting and imperfect exception.

[GlobalExplorer]

Is there a way to filter posts by username?

[Skybird]

Is there a way to filter posts by username?
Click on User CP, to the left in the small light-blue bar above, then at the bottom of the list, click buddy/ignore list.

I am used to use it in rare cases.;)

[mrbeast]

Interesting article Subman:up:

[GlobalExplorer]

Is there a way to filter posts by username?
Click on User CP, to the left in the small light-blue bar above, then at the bottom of the list, click buddy/ignore list.

I am used to use it in rare cases.;)

Wow, cool feature!! This will come in handy ..

[TheSatyr]

Any one who condones torture in any form should be hanged for crimes against humanity.

Or should we turn around and apologize and pay restitution to the families of the Japanese and Germans that were executed after WW2 for torturing prisoners since torturing prisoners is suddenly "good"?

It's sickening to see that some of the people on this board have become so morally bankrupt as to believe that torture is not only a good thing,but usefull as well.

To me,the people on this board that support torture are no different than the terrorists themselves.

"We have met the enemy and it is us"

[Platapus]

TheSatyr

Look. It is pretty clear and logical

If we do it, it is good
If they do it, it is bad

Americans waterboarding in 1900 = good - Isolated instances, part of war, who really cares about the Filipinos anyway? No charges.

Japanese waterboarding in 1940s = bad - war crimes, can not be tolerated. Death or years at hard labour for anyone committing this atrocity.

Americans waterboarding in 2003 = good - Not torture but "enhanced interrogation" necessary part of GWOT. No charges

Now you know the logic :doh:

[GlobalExplorer]

In all fairness it must be said that the Japanese went much further with torture and human rights violation. EDIT: And the Germans.

But the whole question wether the USA should condone torture is still ridiculous. Some years ago I would have never thought to ever have to discuss this.

"We have met the enemy and it is us"

Or as was said elsewhere, on the day you have become like them, they have won.

[Zayphod]

In all fairness it must be said that the Japanese went much further with torture and human rights violation. EDIT: And the Germans.

But the whole question wether the USA should condone torture is still ridiculous. Some years ago I would have never thought to ever have to discuss this.

"We have met the enemy and it is us"

Or as was said elsewhere, on the day you have become like them, they have won.

Or as someone else is quoted: "Yessssss, your hate has made you strong."

"Is the dark side more powerful?"
"No, quicker, more seductive."
But: "Once you start down the dark side, forever will it guide your destiny."

One has to decide if you want to use the Dark Side or not.