Fair. Edited to attack the words rather than the person. I imagine this thread is all sorts of "fun" for you right now....
You know, the thread is not as bad as it could easily have been. It's problematic, of course, but not off the scale. Thanks for respecting the guidelines. It matters a lot for established users to set good examples.
Maybe it's because it's such a big issue. The more minor something is, the louder the arguments seem to get.
Anyway, thanks for your work in keeping the place in line.
Let's not forget, not all the detainees were terrorists. US promoted a reward program in middle east asking locals to turn in anyone with ties to terrorists. All they had to do was tell a name to US military, and collect reward for every name. Many locals turned in thousands of innocent people just to collect a reward. These people were immediately arrested and shipped off to Guantanamo Bay without any investigation.…
What is your source? Both because I have always heard about the "rewards program" and am interested in reading more, and because wherever you got the information that thousands of people were ever sent to Guantanamo Bay is simply wrong [1]. I see a trend of people rehashing things about Guantanamo Bay that they've heard somewhere else and just putting it out there. It doesn't help the progressive agenda of understand…
I saw this in a documentary (I guess it was PBS or BBC). It also had testimonies of innocent people who were detained & tortured for 5+ years, then released by US.
> and someone needs to be held accountable. The citizens of the United States need to be held accountable. Sorry, someone has to start looking at the root of the problem.
I don't understand, how can you blame the citizens for this, when they were ignorant, against their will, about this? When the institution that is performing these acts out-and-out lies about the impact and severity, how can random citizens be held accountable? That honestly makes no sense to me.
At best, the citizens are ignorantly complicit by lack of attention. What did the people do about MK ULTRA? Who was punished? Oh, that's right, the CIA got off with paying their victims off and no-one was held "accountable". The republic has been dead. What's left is just the populace of the most financially successful country, and those people don't want to be told how complacently evil they and their country have become. I've argued with enough people that will reject the truth up until it's completely ill-refutable, the reason being, they like their lifestyle and make-believe country.
> You're being disingenuous here. It's like the difference between a police officer shooting an armed criminal on the street (which may be a matter of necessity, though recent examples highlight just how problematic such a standard can be) and beating them up in jail when they're already in a custodial situation and thus present no threat to the public. In war, we justify things a lot more morally ambiguous than a po…
Is waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed worse than blowing up some sap who just showed up to work on the wrong day? Yes. Waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is viewed by the vast majority to be morally far much worse than bombing a munitions factory. That is why doing it costs the tremendous political capital.
> Interrogation techniques such as slaps and "wallings" (slamming detainees against a wall) were used in combination, frequently concurrent with sleep deprivation and nudity. Records do not support CIA representations that the CIA initially used an "an open, non-threatening approach," or that interrogations began with the "least coercive technique possible" and escalated to more coercive techniques only as necessary.…
Let's not forget, not all the detainees were terrorists. US promoted a reward program in middle east asking locals to turn in anyone with ties to terrorists. All they had to do was tell a name to US military, and collect reward for every name. Many locals turned in thousands of innocent people just to collect a reward. These people were immediately arrested and shipped off to Guantanamo Bay without any investigation.…
A program similar to this was employed in Vietnam war , however after thousands were assassinated and killed by said,South Vietnam and the program having had diminishing returns the program was halted, they believe many innocents were turned in due to localized revenge minded regional authorities.
> These same detainees were subsequently placed in rooms with temperatures ranging from 59 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Oh the horror of room temperature.
Is there a name for the argumentative tactic of singling out the weakest thing a person said, then exaggerating it into a straw man and arguing against it, while ignoring everything else? Whatever it's called, you're not fooling anybody.
> Is there a name for the argumentative tactic of singling out the weakest thing a person said, then exaggerating it into a straw man and arguing against it, while ignoring everything else?
> These same detainees were subsequently placed in rooms with temperatures ranging from 59 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Oh the horror of room temperature.
Is there a name for the argumentative tactic of singling out the weakest thing a person said, then exaggerating it into a straw man and arguing against it, while ignoring everything else? Whatever it's called, you're not fooling anybody.
I've seen this rhetorical strategy before and I don't know if it has an "official" name, but I like the term "weak man" (in contrast to "straw man"). Straw man means inventing a weak position for your opponent and then attacking that; Weak man means deliberately selecting your opponent's weakest argument and ignoring the rest. It would be kind of like if atheists' entire argument boiled down to "Look how dumb the Westboro Baptist Church people are."
"Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner] I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause, for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country."
George Washington (1775)
I hope someone burns this carcass of the "United States of America" soon, I'm weary of the stink from it's rotting flesh.
I have a family member who was hooked on the TV show "24" which featured torture. I think that it is quite possible that there is some purposeful desensitization going on.
I've heard this theory. It's not really consistent with the fact that "24" was a torture-fest from the first season, aired before the enhanced interrogation stuff really got going. I was in college at the time, and we loved the show. You don't need much "purposeful desensitizing" to convince a bunch of 20-something guys it's okay to torture terrorists.
I've assumed this theory prima facie for a while. Further examples are movies glorifying war (Homefront, Lone Survivor). As coldtea mentions, it could be considered a form of moving the Overton window.
The friends we've chosen in the region also don't help us. Neither Saudi Arabia nor Israel are particularly well-liked in the region (and that's putting it lightly), but both are seen as US puppets. Honestly I don't think we really care much anymore what the Saudis think; the regime has fantastic wealth but very little real power beyond holding the purse strings for hyper conservative terror groups. I think eventuall…
"The friends we've chosen in the region also don't help us" The recent OPEC decision declining to reduce production in the face of falling oil prices, thus screwing over Russia hard, means that Saudi Arabia is most certainly a useful US ally.
All allies are useful, even backstabbing frenemies like Saudi Arabia. But Saudi Arabia (or more specifically, the ruling regime in Saudi Arabia) needs us more than we need them these days.
I mean, I realize the prime reason they fund Islamist terror groups is to cause regional instability that drives up the price of Saudi oil...