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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Classy.

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...

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.

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..

Glad you liked it:D

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.

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.

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:

Well said.

: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.

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.

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.

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