Comments on: The “Logic” of Torture: Can we take a life to save a life?

By: The TRUTH

The TRUTH — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:21:08 +0000

To Mark:

Get off medicalizing and psychologizing 9-11. it was an act of war like any act of war in thousands of years of human history. If you think there were no reasons for it and it was the result of mental imbalance, you have to attribute the same to all combatants even in your own country, but you cannot do that. You had better study history again and get more real-world experience in the area of warfare before you start taking the “Us all good and them all bad” mentality. If you cannot conceive of the fact your government and its military provoked those attacks and they had it coming, it’s too bad you allow your emotions to color your judgements and your intelligence is so limited, but in Amerika that is no handicap. You have plenty of company.Jingoism: it’s not becoming.

By: The TRUTH

The TRUTH — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:11:00 +0000

Beating the pants off so many white house boys in the old days served as a deterrent. It reminded of what was in store for them if they attacked and hurt others, and I assure you, many WHBs were budding violent criminals honing their terrorist skills against their so-called brothers in pain. At FSBO the beatings reached a frenzy of psycho-sadistic paraphilia; it was a blood orgy out of control. Who knows better than I do? I witnessed it for seventy days, and I have no reason to lie, and good reasons to conceal all of this. It was unbeliavably cruel. Many times I counted the exact number of lashes given to single individuals,e.g., 40, 60, 80, 100, more, but telling coddled, middle-class Amerikans brought only answers of incredulousness such as, “You must be mistaken. Nobody could do anything like that and get away with it.” Long before the WHBs organization I had placed short comments about the systematic abuses of children by the state, but only to be denounced and called a liar. After the WHBs released their own versions on the WWW, and I was proven right, the forums refused to admit any more of my articles because it showed I again was right and everyone else was wrong.

By: mark

mark — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 09:06:57 +0000

No I don’t work for the pentagon and I’m a hoser on the torture score, as I’ve never put myself in the position where I might have to make the decision to hook someone up. I’m just a bit tired of hearing that torture doesn’t work when applied and analyzed throughly and seized your soapbox to rant against the blindness of the media. That torture never works is just a falsehood.
If we agree on anything, it is that facts that are reported as trueisms by the media and accepted blindly, when historical examples show the opposite to be true. Yeah, torture is a really bad method to obtain information. Torturing even the worst cretin, drags down the person committing the act and the society which justifies same.
Neither of us can answer the question (well, maybe you can) but I can’t put a value on a thousand or even a million lives versus the life of one. Without due process, of course. Stalin and Hitler being exceptions to my mind and morals. I quess, I’m a cynical Malthusian and see that war is a necessary evil. I’m selfish enough to think that torture could keep my loved ones safe in the face of the never ending struggle. I have to admit, I envy your solution with your endavours on the farm. Thanks, I’ve spent the better part of an hour with this reply and gained a certain amount of peace along the way.

By: Nancy Reyes

Nancy Reyes — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 06:57:02 +0000

Mark, you have a good essay but you say that “The Bush admin tried to play the game, but the problem was they didn’t have the cross check information available and in the end, the information gained didn’t provide any real time news.”

Unless you work for the Pentagon you may be wrong.

My point is that torture is wrong even if it brings us information, the same way that abortion is wrong even when it helps a woman or killing embryos for stem cells is wrong even when it might cure people.

The “slippery slope” argument is enough to stop us from using torture, allowing abortions/destroying early human life to benefit people.

But too many of the arguments are from those who never had to make such hard choices.

By: The TRUTH

The TRUTH — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 05:42:15 +0000

If you give people the power to torture, even if the proposed reasons for it might justify it to to some degree, I guarantee you the torture will spread from cases of absolute necessity, to those of less necessity, and eventually it will become a common practice for just about anything and nothing at all. Torture is common practice in some countries. The state of Florida tortured children to bloody pulp for decades. It really was sadistic, cruel, and completely out of hand. I might have started with limited cases, but it became a form of inflicting pain and humiliation on a routine, systematic basis for infractions so small and insignificant most would have been laughed off in the rest of the world. Nobody who is safe from the prospect of being tortured himself or herself is qualified to make favorable decisions about torture.

By: mark

mark — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 03:30:20 +0000

Sorry my above post didn’t receive the quote from the post. Try this version

I see your point and through it a glimpse into the problem. Myself, I’m not into God’s will as it applies to everyday life. If I should contract a cancerous tumor, I might consider his will (and I’m more of a lapsed Catholic) however, I’ve smoke for years and am willing to consider my own actions as a more likely disease vector. I’m careful crossing the street, however, I ride a bicycle these days, certainly not god’s will if I don’t pay enough attention. Still, life can blind side us now and then.
To the point of torture and one life versus many. Give me some water and point out the positive and negative terminals on a battery. I choose to obey the laws of the society I live in and the guidance of my religion. That doesn’t make me a saint, but I would like to think that planes falling out of the sky for a reason other than poor maitanance or bad luck or a bird strike or somewhat different than a plane falling out of the sky while under the control of another human being bent on some warped guidance is not god’s will, but a failure of society to coddle my belief in the right to walk down the street in a more or less safe manner without worrying about some zealots who desires to spread their version of whatever. Just give me some conducting liquid and point me to the A and B terminals please. Any other grievance can be settled in the world court.
Did you catch this quote from the Wash Post Thursday edition?
“We can provide the ability to exploit personnel based on how our enemies have done this type of thing over the last five decades,” Joseph Witsch wrote in a July 2002 memo.

That is from the man. Why should we be shackled by the rules of an enlightened society to the point where we are at the mercy of a somewhat barbaric interpration of another? That is my read on the situation.

We can fall to the level of those we torture, but torture does work when we can cross check. The Bush admin tried to play the game, but the problem was they didn’t have the cross check information available and in the end, the information gained didn’t provide any real time news. Too late, too bad, so sad. At least, they did keep the opposition running hard enough, long enough to gain some breathing space and so we (on the mainland) can walk the streets without feeling the need to look up. Looking around for the corner bandit is another story.

By: mark

mark — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 03:24:19 +0000

I see your point and through it a glimpse into the problem. Myself, I’m not into God’s will as it applies to everyday life. If I should contract a cancerous tumor, I might consider his will (and I’m more of a lapsed Catholic) however, I’ve smoke for years and am willing to consider my own actions as a more likely disease vector. I’m careful crossing the street, however, I ride a bicycle these days, certainly not god’s will if I don’t pay enough attention. Still, life can blind side us now and then.
To the point of torture and one life versus many. Give me some water and point out the positive and negative terminals on a battery. I choose to obey the laws of the society I live in and the guidance of my religion. That doesn’t make me a saint, but I would like to think that planes falling out of the sky for a reason other than poor maitanance or bad luck or a bird strike or somewhat different than a plane falling out of the sky while under the control of another human being bent on some warped guidance is not god’s will, but a failure of society to coddle my belief in the right to walk down the street in a more or less safe manner without worrying about some zealots who desires to spread their version of whatever. Just give me some conducting liquid and point me to the A and B terminals please. Any other grievance can be settled in the world court.
Did you catch this quote from the Wash Post Thursday edition?
We can fall to the level of those we torture, but torture does work when we can cross check. The Bush admin tried to play the game, but the problem was they didn’t have the cross check information available and in the end, the information gained didn’t provide any real time news. Too late, too bad, so sad. At least, they did keep the opposition running hard enough, long enough to gain some breathing space and so we (on the mainland) can walk the streets without feeling the need to look up. Looking around for the corner bandit is another story.