Where fools rush in.. (Dem's & hearings)

[Aramike]

Originally Posted by Tchocky

Aramike, I'm not laying any sort of trap. I want to know if August would approve of torture. Simple as.

That you think there is a semantic trap here is, I think, illustrative of the Bush Administrations attempts in this area, whether you meant it or not.
"We want to torture people, but we're not allowed. Let's find a way to torture someone while calling it something else. Lawyers, write us a definition please."

The US Gov't signed the Convention Against Torture, you can take the definition therein to be tacitly accepted by almost every nation on Earth.

You are correct - I do believe that the Bush administration did try to redefine torture so that the methods that needed to be employed were legal.

And I agree with that.

Look, we're talking about innocent, civilian lives and people who are hell bent in taking them. Those people will use any method - including torture - INDISCRIMINATELY to cause terror and disrupt/destroy our way of life.

We're not talking about tank formations on a battlefield. This is about one guy with a backpack containing a dirty bomb walking into NYC. The game has changed, along with the rules. The Bush Administration realized that. Obama along with the very left-leaning UN does not.

The fact that they wish to gamble with the lives of civilians in order to attempt to make a political statement is wrong.

Waterboarding someone who knows information that can save lives, and will not disclose it, is not wrong. Preventing the extraction of such information, especially for mere political gain, is MORALLY DEPRAVED.

[AVGWarhawk]

Waterboarding someone who knows information that can save lives, and will not disclose it, is not wrong. Preventing the extraction of such information, especially for mere political gain, is MORALLY DEPRAVED.

I would buy this line of thinking.

[heartc]

BTW, they can really stop doing it now anyway. Many of the techniques were psychological in nature in that they were suggestive to the detainee that there is worse to come. Shock and surprise. Now that the formerly TOP SECRET documents have all been disclosed to the public, those techniques are useless now. Yeah, guess why they were TOP SECRET. Not just because it is a difficult subject and the evil Bush admin didn't want you to know - the Bush admin / CIA didn't want THEM to know that the techniques are not just the beginning, but in reality the last resort.

So just scrap the whole thing now and "hang" a few people for political effect, at least that will be funny to watch.