I don't think any other nation uses torture in the scale that US does. France? Where does France torture today? Algeria was a long time ago. Japan? Germany? Out of the nations you mention maybe Russia and China are iffy when it comes to their own domestic situation and treatment of prisoners but even they don't wage global wars let alone have global systems for torturing people. Also even if both Russia and China are becoming more wealthy I would not count them as rich nations like the US that could afford not to use torture, that is torture isn't due to bad condition in prisons or something like that. If US tortures, it's deliberate.

Blaming the US tires you? Oh I'm so sorry, have a cup of coffee or something.

All you do is, just to prove how narrow minded you and your agenda is. Now you are making excuses for China, Russia and the like, just so you can keep the blame on the US. While I comment that you seem to be comfortable enough to voice your opinion and stand by it, it also seems to become clear that all you realy want to do is stirring the pot and cause trouble.

All I see here is bunch of crap so you can keep on your track. Do you have any data on backing up your claim that the US is the biggest torturer out there? And don't come with that 'richest nations' stuff. That artificially narrow your selection like a bad poll does. Either you torture or you don't. Circumstances do not matter.

Data about what? The secret rendition flights? History of US torture and connections to other nations that used torture, like for example South Africa during the apartheid era? I don't know how many centuries of torture is needed for people to be able to critizise the US.

Also, could you explain how torture somewhere else makes US torture ok? Would torture say in the Philippines make it ok for Finns to use torture?

Letum,

don't make this an abstract complication again. I denied that a demand for zero faults in a legal system is realistic and I said that any moral argument insisting that it should be that way (zero mistakes) is an unreal demand. We should try to minimise faults, without ever hoping to avoid them alltogether and without rejecting the reality we live in in an attempt to avoid situations where we could fail, eventually. Deciding we must, even if we must decide on two options we both do not like. Just saying "I cannot do that, I do not like both choices", is not good enough, and a society doing that is doomed to suffer paralysis. The interesting thing is what consequences we will to accept, and what consequences we do not will to accept - that difference determines the individual treshhold for what we accept in measures, and what not. Just demanding a zero tolerance for faults being made, is unrealsitic, and could only be accieved by refusing to adress reality as it is, and replacing it with unproductive mindgames only (like dreaming of an utopia where no faults take place by the very nature of things).

I also said that since you can judge a legal system only by it's general justice being achieved in summary of all it's individual cases, not by the one and single individual case that shows a fault, the deciding issue is the treshold at which you claim it to be a working system, or not.

How you assume by that that no effort should be undertaken in an attempt to minimise errors and faults in legal proceedings, is beyond me. >> In fact I warned against accepting too many wrong-goings too easy-mindedly. <<

I argued in favour of morals who are adressing the reality we have to deal with - not for morals fixiated on philosophic abstractions disconnected from realities (and by that easily doing more harm than good, like they have throughout history: many of the greatest crimes anc cruelties have been conducted in the name of totally disconnected morals, which especially includes formalised, institutionalised religions)).

We can wish as long as we want that the world just should not be the way it is, and just should be something different. But still we need to deal with the issues of the world as it is, no matter what we desire it to be. Thinking in absolutes therefore is not working well in 19 out of 20 cases - especially in the field of politics, as this forum has given evidence of time and again.

I need to leave now, I am currently staying with friends in Wismar, and we are about to launch for Berlin this evening, staying there over the coming week. I doubt I have time and opportunity to answer in the next days.

Nobody is saying that critizing is not ok. Putting the sole blame, like you do, is what people have a problem with.

Nowhere I said that it is ok to torture. You where the one that started to make excuses for other countries uses of those methods just to keep the focus on a single entity. So, either pay up or shut up, as the saying goes. Provide proof that the US is biggest contemporary global torturer.

How can you square that with thinking there "are are no morals of any value"?

Isn't the US the only 'global' torturer in so far as no other country is reported to be carrying out torture in several continents.

Where have I put the sole blame for torture on the US? How can that even be done?

I would say that it is you who is trying to find a way for the country that you live in to use torture. How does it feel to try to excuse the use of torture that your country uses?

Again, wrong. It is the strawman that you created and you have a problem with. Read the thread again if you have problems in understand what it is about.

Then why are you actively trying to defend US torture? Be my guest and create threads about torture in other nations. Since you are pro-torture I don't think that you will actually do that. So who is condoning torture...?

Again, wrong. I said my opinion when comparing countries like Russia, China and US when it comes to torture. Or do you claim that they are all fighting wars? That they are equally wealthy? And most importantly, which ones are considered 'western civilized nations'?

I don't have to prove you anything. From what you write you are like a religious person, facts don't work on religious people.

I can square that by correcting your quote and reminding you of what I actually said:

Morals that are having no fundament in reality, are no morals of any value, Letum. They are ficton only.

Have a nice day. ;)

...so you disagree with the statement "there are no morals of any value"?

Anyhow, it reads the same quoted in full:


How can you square that with thinking that "Morals that are having no fundament in reality, are no morals of any value, Letum. They are ficton only. "?

Now.. now.. you are trying to distract from the issue. I do not defend the use of torture nor do I make excuses for certain countries. You are the one that is making them.
And you are still making excuses to narrow down your selection.

You are of course right, you do not have to prove anything. But it would give your side more leverage in an argument if you could back up claims. But since you referr from doing that, it seems all you want to is baiting people and 'stirring the pot.


Now, that is just too funny. Is the pot calling the kettle black here?

I do not defend the use of torture in any case, please, do yourself a favor and brush up on your reading comprehension.

You are just like other Americans although you claim not to be one, you defend your nations use of torture. And it makes perfect sense to me, I think where a person is, physically, matters a lot. Even more so when a person lives in a place, a country for a long time. To choose to live somewhere is a very big political statement. Love it or leave it, isn't that what the Americans say, no?

Again, you are free to make threads about torture in Russia or China. In fact I'll support your points in those threads.

You mean the CIA is 'baiting people' by admitting the use of torture.

Of course you are. The fact that you are blind to it yourself is kind of scary, really. But I guess that's what living in the US does to a person. First you become fat then you condone the use of torture. :)

Really? Do you want a chance to research and ammend that comment before I show the concept to be complete rubbish?

Not only do SEVERAL nations (in the double digits, btw) apply torture regularly, but EVERY SINGLE ONE of them use methods that are physically disfiguring.

This argument, as you presented as a response to my earlier post, makes no sense.

Why exactly would the CIA use of enhanced interrogation methods (limited applications of mental torture) result in an entire nation abandoning its Constitutional laws as applied to its citizens? You left out the middle part there and just assumed a slippery slope, even though the CIA isn't at the summit of the hill, as it were.

Well put, Skybird. I agree and this rings of the argument I've been making for quite some time regarding torture.

That makes it ok for the US to use torture? Maybe you and everyone in the world should stop referring to the US as 'civilized' from now on.

Nice euphemism. But the CIA and several other branches of the US use torture and not just mental but also physical. They have used it and encouraged using it in other countries ever since the US was founded. Torture is as American as apple pie.