Quoted:
i am not for torture, but we do need to be a bit more heavy handed about this, be sure of this, the intelligence groups have ways of making you talk without too much pain, it can be done mentally

Quoted:
There will never be permission for torture, however useful it can be, because no one really wants terrorism to stop right now.

A war between Islamic and Western world is deeply desired by too many on both sides. Its clear from how the 2900 dead of the World Trade Center have been forgotten already buy so many Americans- and nearly all of the rest of the developed world- that a much larger incident is both inevetable and needed to enable a actual, perminent end to hostilities. Untill a half million or a million Americans die in a single incident the far left and the quivvering lasy masses of the middle will not accept the methods needed to bring about a end game.

Quoted:
P.S.

Am I the only one who thinks the US Constitution should only apply to 'We the People', and not foreign enemy agents (Weather here nor there)???

If you're not a citizen, you have no rights, only privledges IMHO...

Be grateful for your privledges, and keep them... Stab us in the back, and find yourself without a legal leg to stand on...

Quoted:


I disagree.  Apparently, you are assuming that I would condone torture for any crime against the state or our citizens.  Not true.  You opened the bandwidth wide where I was focused on terrormism and the threat of a WMD.  Further, I have a problem with your drug analogy since I personally consider illicit drug usage to be, at least at the outset, totally an issue of choice by the user.  We provide the market...the drug industry merely provides for our needs and wants.

Here is my scenario where I would condone torture:  A team of terrorists has successfully smuggled a nuclear weapon into the United States.  We are in possession of very good information that this is a fact, but we are unable to locate the weapon because the trail was too cold when we found out about it.  The weapon is in a large cargo container that was last traced being offloaded onto a truck which promptly dissappeared shortly after it departed the terminal.  That was 72 hours ago, so the truck and its cargo could be in any corner of the country by now.

If detonated in an urban area, the DOE/DoD folks and NEST estimate that upwards of 500,000 people my die.

We just caught two terrorists on the team.  They had irrefutable evidence of their complicity in the consiracy to commit this hideous crime, including clear and unambiguous evidence that they have knowledge of the target, the type of bomb, the IDs of the remaining terrorists, the projected path of the bomb carrying truck to it's destination, and when it is scheduled to go off.  These boys are tough, totally dedicated Al Qaeda terror boys with a strong desire to die for Allah.  NOTHING you or I can do is going to make them talk...at least in the short run.  The two are gloating in the interregation room that we have but 18 hours to find the truck...which we never will...then...BOOM!

Now...given what I say above is an accurate scenario...do you STILL say torture has NO place in our search for information?

Oh...I also think that private citizen or the state argument is moot here.  No private dude is going to make a difference here...only some very dedicated and tough people working for out government...you and me and all the rest of us.

Frankly, this is a no brainer for me.  I would most definitely use whatever methods and tools I had at my disposal to coerce info from the two terrorists.  I would get the informaiont I sought and they would be very miserable of they resisited.  Sorry...but I happen to believe that 500,000 Americans are far more important that two terrorists.

Quoted:


You said "I disagree.  Apparently, you are assuming that I would condone torture for any crime against the state or our citizens.  Not true."  Problem is (and correct me if I am wrong in any way), that no matter the good intentions (If you can consider torturing a person in any way good intentions) what the government uses on the really, truely, swear he is, bad guy today, they willb e using routinely on our children tommorow.

There is a long and well documented history of this Lwilde (RICO, Patriot Act, hell gun control in general).  I for one do not want to allow my government that kind of power, they are not trustworthy enough (you think bill clinton would have minded if he used torture to get back at his detractors?)  

I also do not want torture done in my name, I don't condone it for any reason (one look at my father and you might change your mind about it also).  It is morally corrupt and it corrupts any who participate in it.  Nope.  Not in my name.

As to your nuclear threat scenario.  Nope.  Not even if it were parked outside the largest orphanage/nunnery in the country.  I understand that you all want to be the "hard" men who would do the hard things, but that just ain't what this great civilization is all about.  We will come out of a nuclear blast hurt, but whole and we will go on and become an even greater nation for having done the right thing.  

We would mourn the 50k, 250k or 500k American citizens, then we would wreak a righteous vengance on those responsible, we woudl eradicate them (finally) and have clean hands at the end of the slaughter.

America would be better for it in the long run, then if it had spared herself the nuke by tortuing one person.

YMMV, mine doesn't.  (situational ethicists need not apply to my world ).

Originally by Lwilde:


I understand your ethics and your feelings in your posting.  I must disagree.  I can't see any rational reason to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans, men women AND totally innocent kids...then try to rationlize the massacre of the innocents as we mourn their deaths merely to take a strong moral stand.  In that case, I would opt for whatever brutal torture was necessary to illicit the necessary information from the terrorists in order to prevent the scenario I presented from happening.

I do understand your position and I do respect it...believe me in this.  I just disagree.  I also recognize the potential threat to all our freedoms if we somehow grant the state such powers.  That said...again, I choose the risk in order to stop the massacre.

I truly hope that I am right and you are wrong...IF there is a right and wrong here.  I also truly hope, as postulated in Clancy's book that there are hard men on the ramparts, guarding our freedoms with a readiness to do whatever is necessary to prevent such an incident from happening.  Again...if I were in such a position...I wouldn't like it...but I would most definitely do whatever was necessary to stop that nuc from detonating.

Quoted:
When is torture justifiable?

When you're sitting at a traffic light and your intestines are shaking from the bass coming from the car next to you.
When your neighbor calls the cops on you because they saw you carrying "illegal" guns out to your car namely a Rem 870 and Marlin 22.
When you're at a parade with your kids and a "guy" screams in your face that "We're here, we're queer...."
When someone tells you they think Hillary would make an excellent president.
When you are watching the news and some urban scumbag is saying in ebonics that he is owed slave reparations.