Phan In Phlorida wrote:I would not be surprised if Joe Lieberman landed a substantial role in a McCain administration. Wouldn't be surprised if McCain chose Lieberman as VP as a means to distance himself from Bush (look, it's Gore's running mate). Yeah, I'm familliar with the Lieberman of the last 4 years, but still...

That move would do quite a bit to appeal to the independents, but it would alienate the base. There's a wing of the GOP that does not like or trust McCain, and they must be placated.

TomatoPie wrote:

drsmooth wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:This is where we can make meaningful distinctions between "members of the same party" and "personal friend, spiritual advisor, and mentor for 20 years." See?

so then make the truly meaningful distinction, see (you condescending ..... person)?

Obama <> Wright.

It is very. very. simple.

this form of politics you cling to, suckle from, will never go away, but it is in eclipse just now.

see?

Not really clear on how you infer 'condescending' from a POV that calls out Obama for humoring the racist Reverend for two decades.

{sigh}

because you're deigning to inform all of us unwashed what a "meaningful distinction" is in this instance, when in fact the whole thing is the basest sort of misdirection; barely an issue, dry-humped into something Rushville can salivate over.

drsmooth wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:

drsmooth wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:This is where we can make meaningful distinctions between "members of the same party" and "personal friend, spiritual advisor, and mentor for 20 years." See?

so then make the truly meaningful distinction, see (you condescending ..... person)?

Obama <> Wright.

It is very. very. simple.

this form of politics you cling to, suckle from, will never go away, but it is in eclipse just now.

see?

Not really clear on how you infer 'condescending' from a POV that calls out Obama for humoring the racist Reverend for two decades.

{sigh}

because you're deigning to inform all of us unwashed what a "meaningful distinction" is in this instance, when in fact the whole thing is the basest sort of misdirection; barely an issue, dry-humped into something Rushville can salivate over.

Oh, OK!

glad we have that cleared up

Maybe it's just me, but I don't think when black people get pissed off at white people it's racism.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuRHRRYHKIY[/youtube]

Dashing to the center.

I'm trying to stay out of this thread for awhile, but it's worth pointing out to my friends who've been as baffled and angry as I have these last eight years just how much better McCain is than the monsters he hopes to replace.

dajafi wrote:I'm trying to stay out of this thread for awhile, but it's worth pointing out to my friends who've been as baffled and angry as I have these last eight years just how much better McCain is than the monsters he hopes to replace.

Oh boy. There won't be a meeting of the minds on this issue! I like McCain, he was my first choice among the GOP contenders, and I will of course vote for him.

I disagree with him on torture.

We deceive only ourselves if we try to think of niceties of war. The very concept of war is the use of lethal force against your opponent. If I am trying to kill you on the battlefield and I can sleep nights knowing that, why then would I be troubled by using physical persuasion on captured combatants in order to avoid casualties for my side?

McCain makes a decent argument, but I don't think any nation that would torture US POWs will decide to refrain just because we promised to. If we are the forces of good, we must be fighting against evil, no?

War is hell. There's really nothing gained in pretending that there is a noble way to wage war.

TomatoPie wrote:We deceive only ourselves if we try to think of niceties of war. The very concept of war is the use of lethal force against your opponent. If I am trying to kill you on the battlefield and I can sleep nights knowing that, why then would I be troubled by using physical persuasion on captured combatants in order to avoid casualties for my side?

B/c torture isn't proven to work, and often times produces false information

The Dude wrote:

TomatoPie wrote:We deceive only ourselves if we try to think of niceties of war. The very concept of war is the use of lethal force against your opponent. If I am trying to kill you on the battlefield and I can sleep nights knowing that, why then would I be troubled by using physical persuasion on captured combatants in order to avoid casualties for my side?

B/c torture isn't proven to work, and often times produces false information

Whatever dude.

I wish we could torture Pedro Feliz into taking more pitches

Woody wrote:I wish we could torture Pedro Feliz into taking more pitches

I don't get too fired up about the torture issue one way or another, but I could really get behind this.

TomatoPie wrote: If we are the forces of good, we must be fighting against evil, no?

War is hell. There's really nothing gained in pretending that there is a noble way to wage war.

If we're torturing, how are we sure that we're the good guys?

torture is like beating your dog, it does little to nothing to correcting his behavior but it makes you feel good while youre doing it

I probably should get out of this thread and stay out of it forever.

But I'll try this once, and then just hope I can refrain from breaking things in my office.

TP, just consider that everything you said could have been, and probably was, said by the Inquisition, the Nazis, Stalin's secret police, the Japanese in WWII, the Khmer Rouge, and of course John McCain's captors. Those are your intellectual allies in this debate. Their logic is yours.

Then consider the vast, vast preponderance of expert opinion that says it simply doesn't work. And it's counterproductive in two ways In the case of Abu Zubaydah, a madman who didn't know much of value, his torture-extracted confessions did lead to god knows how many man-hours wasted, at a cost running into the many millions, tracking down the incoherent stories he told.

The monetary and opportunity cost is the first way. The second is what I think jeff and TRT are getting at: it's hard to claim that you're "the good guys" when you're torturing innocent people. But that is a great way to create more terrorists (or, as they'd have it, freedom fighters/jihadis, keeping in mind that "jihad" doesn't mean to a Muslim, even a moderate one, what it means to you).

Now, the O'Reilly side of this argument maintains that we only torture the guys who deserve it. I was initially sympathetic to this argument; if you do a search on the old board, you'll find posts of mine to the effect that I'd be happy to join in torturing 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammad--which, of course, they did. I was shamefully wrong about this.

The problem is that once you start down that path, gravity takes over. If it's okay to torture a "mastermind" who knows something worth knowing, then isn't it prudent--heck, morally compulsory--to torture other guys who might know something? For that matter, how are you supposed to know exactly who is the planner? The cell leader? Would the name "Mohammad Atta" have meant anything to anyone on September 10, 2001? Better use "enhanced interrogation" on all twelve men and women the patrol picked up.

The gradations of monstrousness are at issue here too. If you restrict waterboarding to "high-value detainees," then surely there are less horrifying tactics you can use on the shlubs: sleep deprivation, extremes of heat and cold, "stress positions." Hey, it's not as bad as waterboarding; no doubt, when you release them after figuring out that they don't know anything, they'll be cool about it and won't hold it against us.

The American tradition of rejecting torture goes back to Washington in the Revolutionary War. We prosecuted Japanese soldiers after WWII for the same things we're doing now. There's absolutely no reason to put all that aside--it's the definition of all gain and no risk. And it's a devastating commentary on just how debased American conservatism has become that its adherents are the loudest voices cheering on the torturers.

If you want to read something truly horrific, pick up one of my favorite books, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Murakami. He tells a story about the war crimes in Manchuria, one of them involving a group of people skinning a man alive simply because the guy wouldn't talk.

Torture of any kind is not only wrong, its heinous and a crime against humanity.

What Would Jesus Torture

dajafi wrote:I probably should get out of this thread and stay out of it forever.

But I'll try this once, and then just hope I can refrain from breaking things in my office.

TP, just consider that everything you said could have been, and probably was, said by the Inquisition, the Nazis, Stalin's secret police, the Japanese in WWII, the Khmer Rouge, and of course John McCain's captors. Those are your intellectual allies in this debate. Their logic is yours.

Then consider the vast, vast preponderance of expert opinion that says it simply doesn't work. And it's counterproductive in two ways In the case of Abu Zubaydah, a madman who didn't know much of value, his torture-extracted confessions did lead to god knows how many man-hours wasted, at a cost running into the many millions, tracking down the incoherent stories he told.

The monetary and opportunity cost is the first way. The second is what I think jeff and TRT are getting at: it's hard to claim that you're "the good guys" when you're torturing innocent people. But that is a great way to create more terrorists (or, as they'd have it, freedom fighters/jihadis, keeping in mind that "jihad" doesn't mean to a Muslim, even a moderate one, what it means to you).

Now, the O'Reilly side of this argument maintains that we only torture the guys who deserve it. I was initially sympathetic to this argument; if you do a search on the old board, you'll find posts of mine to the effect that I'd be happy to join in torturing 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammad--which, of course, they did. I was shamefully wrong about this.

The problem is that once you start down that path, gravity takes over. If it's okay to torture a "mastermind" who knows something worth knowing, then isn't it prudent--heck, morally compulsory--to torture other guys who might know something? For that matter, how are you supposed to know exactly who is the planner? The cell leader? Would the name "Mohammad Atta" have meant anything to anyone on September 10, 2001? Better use "enhanced interrogation" on all twelve men and women the patrol picked up.

The gradations of monstrousness are at issue here too. If you restrict waterboarding to "high-value detainees," then surely there are less horrifying tactics you can use on the shlubs: sleep deprivation, extremes of heat and cold, "stress positions." Hey, it's not as bad as waterboarding; no doubt, when you release them after figuring out that they don't know anything, they'll be cool about it and won't hold it against us.

The American tradition of rejecting torture goes back to Washington in the Revolutionary War. We prosecuted Japanese soldiers after WWII for the same things we're doing now. There's absolutely no reason to put all that aside--it's the definition of all gain and no risk. And it's a devastating commentary on just how debased American conservatism has become that its adherents are the loudest voices cheering on the torturers.

Well argued.

But if we are going to take the "Nazis and Ghengis Khan did it too" approach, you can easily extend it to war as a whole, not just the ugly little torture part.

The best argument is the one that "torture doesn't work." I don't feel that case has been made. Those who offer that view are happy to publish their findings -- those with a different view don't find much reward in sharing. I can't claim to know, but I suspect that the people with the most experience in interrogation have an idea.

Of course, the definition of torture matters, too. Are waterboarding and sleep deprivation torture? Not like skinning a man alive, are they?

Either your cause is just or it ain't. If I can justify bombing your cities and killing you on the battefield to further my cause, I can justify the use of physical persuasion. It's absurd to think that waterboarding is somehow worse than the application of lethal force. Both are techniques to further one's cause in war.

Because the thought of torture is so horrific, I think we may be eager to accept evidence that it doesn't work and reluctant to recognize when it does.

But the "it doesn't work" is the only real argument against it, and I'm all ears to that. The rest is moral hair-splitting.

The point of torture is to torture. Its advocates are evil.

We don't know when it works. If they're being tortured people will say anything to make it stop. They'll exaggerate, embellish, and lie to give the torturer what he wants. So how do you know what's true and what's not?

John McCain knows this. He's seen it first hand. I'd bet he made things up to get the torture to stop. After being tortured some might want retribution. Yet McCain says no. Shouldn't we listen to a person who has seen the effectiveness of torture and experienced?

O'Reilly interrupts McCain a few times in the interview. It's nice to know that the man who might be President still doesn't have something more important to say than Bill.