An Observation I have made on Cons and Torture. Anyone else notice it?

[booley]

Why is it that when people try to justify torture, the best they can do is hypothetical situations? They always bring up "Well what if a bomb was about to go off and you had to torture a terrorist to get the the location of the bomb?"

I mean, the Israeli Supreme Court was presented by this same "logic' and they rejected it.

They give hypothetical "what if" situations but meanwhile in the real world, we already know from past experience that torture not only is immoral, illegal and creates a spiral of worse and worse abuses..but it doesn't even give any reliable information. Apparently a lot of the people who the US has detained (and tortured) aren't even members of Al Queda.

And those that are AL Queda now have an extra incentive to lie to US interrogators.

Does anyone else recall that the "damning links" between Saddam and AL Queda, that intelligence which ended up being a bunch of crap, was provided by an Al Queda DEtAINEE? Even innocent people will lie to stop torture. I doubt Al Queda has any problem giving the US false intelligence. And that's not hypothetical.

Hey, here's another question that keeps bugging me too.

Why do cons who support the Shrubbery on this talk out of both sides of their mouth's? I mean, one minute they are parroting the Shrub line that "we don't torture"

But then they also defend Shrub's actions to justify torture and create legal cover out of the other side of their mouth's.

I mean, COME ON! If the torture is moral, necessary and legal, then why hide it? Why twist or ignore the law to provide legal cover? Why put people on trial for doing it? You don't need to create legal cover to do something that is legal.

And if the US isn't torturing people, then again, why try to justify it and provide legal cover for something that's supposedly not happening?

This double speak just doesn't make any sense... unless one concludes that even you guys know how full of shit you and the Shrubbery are on this.

I actually posted this on another board in response to yet another C&P trying to justify torture. But then i realized that this tactic occurs not just on freeper haunted boards but on TV by pundits and in think tanks and television shows and in think tanks and by the Shrubbery itself. It's almost as if there is a Con Borg Hive Mind.

Anyone else notice? Do you agree?

[whatelseisnew]

1. seen it,

right on

[booley]

2. thanks

reading it back to myself, i suddenly realized i sounded like Andy Roony

[gratuitous]

3. And even their hypotheticals fall apart

It doesn't take much to totally destroy their hypothetical rationales. Let's go with one of their favorites, culled from popular fictional television programs and action movies: The ticking time bomb and the just-captured terrorist.

You know the guy's a terrorist, and that he knows where the ticking time bomb of doom is and when it's going to go off. But somehow, the authorities know he's a terrorist, but they don't know what he's been up to recently or who his associates are? Then how do they know the guy’s a terrorist? The idea that the authorities know this guy’s a terrorist but nothing else just beggars belief.

Okay, so they know the guy’s a terrorist, and they know about his ticking time bomb. Hw do they know all this, but not where or when the bomb is going to go off? How do they know the terrorist has planted a bomb, but they don’t know where the guy’s been recently? Did he just wander into FBI headquarters and announce his identity and intentions?

So, the guy’s a terrorist and they know he has some dastardly plot hatched. The time element also works against the authorities. If the bomb is going to go off at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning (remember, we have to torture because we’re on a time crunch), then the bad guy knows all he has to do is hold out through the night. Or, if he feels like he’s about to break, then he just sends the good guys off on a wild goose chase: The plot is a bomb planted in New York. He says that it’s a plot to poison Los Angeles’ water supply. Are you going to keep torturing the guy to make sure he really broke, or are you going to dispatch your guys to New York? That would be pretty hard core to keep torturing – you know, just to be sure.

[booley]

4. Good point

How does the US know that some one is a terrorist? I mean, there were plenty of innocent guys at Abu Ghraib. A lot of the detainees at Gitmo apparently aren't AL Queda. They have 'renditioned" (kidnapped) inncoent people to be tortured and interogated in other countries.

And it's just as obviouse that the people looking at the "intelligence" from the torture can't tell when it's probably false (or at least they will be ignored by people higher up the command structure)

It's as if cons think reality is optional.

[booley]

5. kick