411–420 of 579 posts
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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.
"rayiner" is a lawyer: it's called "legal argument".
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The difference, of course, is that those in the internment camps were Americans, while most of these guys are terrorists captured on the battlefield. I do think the comparison is inappropriate, but internment was the atrocity, not this.
More legal argument. Given that the current US legal system doesn't apparently protect me, a US citizen, from administrative assassination, I'm worried that I can be administratively shipped off for torture. That is: the actions outlined in this summary of a report, and in other tacit admissions by US elected leaders, go way beyond arguing that the actions are "legal" or "illegal". The actions outlined in the summary…
To the contrary. I think you have to have a very legalistic dedication to procedural due process to assert that people abroad advocating the violent overthrow of the United States should have the same rights as ordinary accused in the United States.
I do not understand how torture can be an effective tool for extracting accurate information. If I am being tortured, I would likely be so quick to tell my captors whatever they wanted to hear to make the pain stop.
The French 10e division parachutiste arrested and interrogated around 24,000 suspects during the battle of Algiers, often using electrical torture, rape, etc., of which an estimated 3,000 were summarily executed. This effectively put an end to the FLN presence in Algiers. Which, I suppose, gets to show that it can be effective in some circumstances, if you are willing to show the appropriate degree of ruthlessness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior
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We haven't apologized, we haven't made restitution, and we sure as heck haven't prosecuted the guilty (as required by the convention against torture). I'm struggling to see any saving grace.
Right. And the only one sitting in prison so far is former CIA operative John Kiriakou who blew the whistle on the torture program. Go figure. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kiriakou
Kiriakou was charged with using numerous forms of classified information about foreign intelligence operations in order to promote a book, and, in doing so, outing a still-undercover foreign operative involved in the Zubaydah case. That operative had allegedly been under cover for over 20 years.
If you read the filings, you'll also see that Kiriakou claims to have outed the program accidentally --- in other words, that the leak didn't occur because he was deliberately blowing the whistle on the program, but instead by accident (or, as the USG would have it, negligence).
However terribly Zubaydah was treated by the CIA, we should probably remain clear on the fact that he was believed by everyone involved, including Kiriakou, to have been an integral part of the Al Qaeda network.
The case files are not themselves dispositive; I merely comment to suggest that it's harder to judge the Kiriakou case than it immediately seems.
I share the prevailing sentiment that our failure to prosecute CIA employees at all levels for torture is frustrating, and a miscarriage of justice. Though I'm not particularly interested in discussing that on HN.
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Not sure who said, maybe it was Slavoj Zizek, about how if we are even debating "is torture right or what advantages it might have" we have already lost. It was, and I think his point is borne out in the fact that numerous films and TV shows have depicted torture that would formerly have been the preserve of pure villains to tools available to heroic protagonists in sufficiently urgent circumstances. Never do you see…
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.
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You're probably too morally outraged by all this to appreciate the humor in the phrasing of that sentence.
> You're probably too morally outraged by all this to appreciate the humor in the phrasing of that sentence. How about the humor in sentences about raping?
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It's a step... It's worth something but it's not like there wasn't a ton of resistance to it. The question on my mind, were their CIA operatives that refused to comply with orders? Take the various police brutality cases, what's lost in the echochamber about it all is that these guys volunteer to be police, nobody is forced to, some of them want to carry guns, that really changes the situation a bit when an unarmed p…
Remember Abu Ghraib? there was only ONE guy not ok with what was happening. It usually takes only one man https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OsFEV35tWsg in case of US concentration camps there also was one man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kiriakou he is still in prison, because ratting on your fellow men is against the law There usually are no 'good cops' either, because doing something in the face of evil marks y…
"Funny coincidence": We had Andrzej Lepper, opposition leader in government of Leszek Miller, commit "suicide" in 2011. Whats so weird about that? Lepper was famous for announcing TALIBAN presence in village Klewki at the end of 2001. Klewki is 50km from Stare Kiejkuty and Szymany - locations of US concentration camp.
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>The list goes on. It sure does. > At DETENTION SITE COBALT, detainees were often held down, naked, on a tarp on the floor, with the tarp pulled up around them to form a makeshift tub, while cold or refrigerated water was poured on them. Others were hosed down repeatedly while they were shackled naked, in the standing sleep deprivation position. These same detainees were subsequently placed in rooms with temperatures…
This is our government, and these acts are done in the name of our safety. If you are not interested in someone torturing on your behalf, you need to speak out, and loudly.
The common man is even more detached from the powers that be than previously assumed (which was already low).
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* I would never support the use of these techniques against soldiers of a legitimate state or other criminal actors. * The perpetrators of the 9-11 attacks to me represent a completely different sort of threat than has ever been encountered - which legitimized the use of torture (though to be honest, the sorts of techniques outlined in the report don't really sound like what I would classify as "torture"; i.e., the i…
What is different about the 9/11 attacks that legitimizes the use of torture, when you would not support it against soldiers or other criminals? Do keep in mind that 9/11 doesn't even register on the atrocity scale when compared to what's been done by "soldiers of a legitimate state." If you would endorse torture to prevent another 9/11, why wouldn't you also endorse torture to prevent, say, another Hiroshima?