OK, I'm convinced. Let's take off our gloves and get to the bottom of this torture story.

[struggle4progress]

Forget that liberal bullshit about rights and proof. The hell with rules of evidence. Let's round up all the suspects in the torture conspiracy, starting at the top and going right on down the chain of command, without our usual pansy-ass qualms. Break out the scalpels. Shackle these bastards naked in icy rooms with "Happy Times are Here Again" playing on an endless loop at 120 decibels. Once a day or so, they can have a brief social recreation period, during which their faces get shoved under water in toiletbowls until they black out. We deserve the truth, and we have their word that this is the best way to get it: why not believe them? Surely if a face or two is beaten into a splintery pulp, with a eye dangling from the socket, the suspects will have more incentive to come clean about their crimes

Better still, why don't we they just volunteer for six or seven years of such treatment? If John Yoo, for example, sincerely believes crushing testicles is an acceptable way to discover the truth, he cannot mind his own being smashed to help the country to sort this mess out -- and similarly with the rest of the gang. They know that most of us are too conscientious to just seize them and beat confessions out of them, so if they really want the truth to come out, they should make their dedication to these methods clearer by begging us not to spare them in our dispassionate quest for honest answers

[EFerrari]

1. It should work Cheney says it will.

:shrug:

[winyanstaz]

2. hear hear! If torture is alright with them..then I am sure they wont mind.

[JonLP24]

3. Count me out. We can get to the bottom of this with the appropriate methods

The question is are we willing to do it? We know who authorized it, we have an idea of who complied, and with that we can get to the bottom of this the appropriate and legal way.

[struggle4progress]

5. Y'know, I myself held that view right up until the very moment that I wrote the OP

But a wo/man with a conscience is always at a disadvantage when dealing with a sociopath, and the disadvantage is this: the sociopath, who has no conscience, is perfectly willing to manipulate the person who does has a conscience

The proponents of torture are willing to torture, and willing to advocate torture, precisely because they are certain that most people will not take the pro-torture arguments seriously enough to turn the arguments against the proponents. When Cheney or Yoo claims that torture is necessary to obtain the truth, neither one of them has any reason to fear being tortured: they both know that their arguments will not actually be taken that seriously. Their arguments are thus, in some sense, the dishonest manipulations of sociopaths. If they believed their own arguments, and had the moral integrity, they would beg us to torture them so that we could be sure of getting to the truth. But they don't believe their own arguments, and they don't have that moral integrity; so their arguments really reduce to this -- since you weenies wouldn't have the guts to torture me, so I'll claim torture is the only route to the truth, and now STFU!

[RandomThoughts]

4. If you did that, you would not be fighting them, you would be joining them

and that is one of the biggest hidden reasons people do evil, to get others to join them...

you only fight evil, by being honest, and good, not by doing the same things evil does.

[struggle4progress]

6. The course of honesty and goodness, like that of any other true love, never did run smooth.

There is a pretense at debate here, in which the manglers claim the truth cannot be had, except by mangling men. That they are not infallible in their choice of whom to mangle, is shown by repeated example, for they have had no qualms to mangle the innocent -- and cases such as that of Maher Arar or Khaled al-Masri demonstrate their unwillingness to apologize. As a rational matter, one might wonder: Suppose we took seriously their claim, that truth comes only through torment -- how far should we take this claim? But those who make the claim do not seem to be offering to have their own bodies broken in the quest for truth: they are merely willing that others be broken -- and perhaps this casts some light on how seriously we should take their claim

[RandomThoughts]

7. ahh I understand better what you are saying

You are not saying they should be tortured, you are pointing out there claim to use torture is in itself flawed since it does not include them in the set of people it is used on.

I understand your point, you are pointing out how there empathy circle creates ideas of how people can be treated, and from that bias, they act as hypocrites.

I think that is the argument, why don't we torture all people who testify, or may know something in courts and in congress. It points out a different view of people of some groups.

The whole Rove/Libby thing (according to Cheney logic) could have found the truth by torturing Bush,Cheney,Rove,Libby, why didn't Cheney advocate that?

I think I better understand your point.