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2005-11-22 Home Front: Politix

Earth to John McCain -- The Israelis Use Torture

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Posted by Gluper Thager2969 2005-11-22 00:00|| || Front Page|| [1 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 piss poor propaganda, if you ask me. Yawn.

Posted by 2b 2005-11-22 01:43|| 2005-11-22 01:43|| Front Page Top

#2 I don't condone torture. On the other hand, to get any kind of information out of an unwilling suspect there has to be some type of coercion allowed. The Left is doing its damnedest to make certain that we have absolutely no options, violent or non-violent, with which to deal with these terrorists. The only logical assumption I can draw from that is that they want our side to lose and are waging "lawfare" against us. I don't believe we can allow this to continue and still win this war.

Posted by mac 2005-11-22 05:53|| 2005-11-22 05:53|| Front Page Top

#3 Historical revisionism and anti-semitism wrapped up in a wad of bile.

(Finkelstein is a Holocaust denier and Chomskyite. But I repeat myself.)

Posted by Robert Crawford">Robert Crawford 2005-11-22 07:26|| http://www.kloognome.com/]">[http://www.kloognome.com/] 2005-11-22 07:26|| Front Page Top

#4 Earth to those bastards. Jane Fonda supported torture. When exerted by commies. Earth to those bastards. You supported torture. When exerted by Saddam or the islamo-nazis. Earth to those bastards: Suicide.

There is plenty of solid evidence to demonstrate that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were known in adequate detail to high officials of the U.S. government

Last time I have seen "solid evidence" provided by those people it was the documents about Bush service: documents written in 197x with MS-Word and fonts who didn't exist before 1990.

Posted by JFM">JFM 2005-11-22 09:00|| 2005-11-22 09:00|| Front Page Top

#5 hey dont f*ck with his talkin points. McCain is a victim of torture. Victims of crimes are not allowed to sit on jury's of such crimes becuase it is just humanly impossible to be impartial and non-biased. McCain has no buisness talkin about torture and should be considered biased from the start. Whatever happended to common sence and seeing the obvious in this Country.

Posted by C-Low 2005-11-22 09:20|| 2005-11-22 09:20|| Front Page Top

#6 Perhaps that is the point.

Posted by Curt Simon 2005-11-22 09:23|| 2005-11-22 09:23|| Front Page Top

#7 In this day and age, just what the F*** IS torture?

Seems to be in the moral relativism category along with everything else the scum-sucking Anti-american weasles touch.

Posted by AlanC">AlanC 2005-11-22 09:43|| 2005-11-22 09:43|| Front Page Top

#8 There is plenty of solid evidence to demonstrate that the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 were known in adequate detail to high officials of the U.S. government (and to others) prior to those attacks and the attacks could have easily been thwarted. Even Mayor Willie Brown of San Francisco knew enough to avoid flying on that day, and he cancelled a trip to New York and avoided risk by his knowledge.

Wow, even Willie Brown? I'm sold!
Stan Moore sounds like he might be a big Larouche guy.

Posted by tu3031 2005-11-22 10:45|| 2005-11-22 10:45|| Front Page Top

#9 "Even Mayor Willie Brown of San Francisco knew enough to avoid flying on that day, and he cancelled a trip to New York and avoided risk by his knowledge."

Wow, so Willie Brown had better intel than the Solicitor General of the USA? The dude's got some serious juice.

Posted by Xbalanke 2005-11-22 13:49|| 2005-11-22 13:49|| Front Page Top

#10 The writer is a member of several falconry and ornithological clubs and organizations.

Earth to Stan Moore-the falcons are coming to peck out your eyes! Tin foil shield...UP!

Posted by tu3031 2005-11-22 13:58|| 2005-11-22 13:58|| Front Page Top

#11 And as another point, FDR did NOT have information to prevent Pearl Harbor -- that's an old revisionist lie peddled by disreputable people ever since the end of WWII. We had broken the Japanese code 'Purple' but did not have enough info to know where the Imperial Fleet was or what they were planning. The writer of this piece is a moonbat, pure and simple.

Posted by Steve White 2005-11-22 14:18|| 2005-11-22 14:18|| Front Page Top

#12 IIRC, FDR did expect an attack, but thought it would be at the Phillipines, and was flabbergasted it was at Pearl.

Posted by liberalhawk 2005-11-22 15:06|| 2005-11-22 15:06|| Front Page Top

#13 So, was the main point to deconstruct McCain's demand for a no-torture policy, or to come up with a surreptitous means of planting the discredited meme that top US officials knew of 9/11 ahead of time?

This guy talks a big talk about secrets, but even he is aware that there are secrets, and there are SECRETS. Secrets are classified by level: our knowing that the Japs were going to attack Midway was definitely a secret worth keeping so we could get the drop on them. HOW we knew they were going to attack Midway was also a secret, but MORE worth keeping. Some battles are not worth fighting because they would use resources essential to win the battles that ARE worth fighting. Clearly, this guy wants morals to triumph over long-term strategy, because he knows that it is long-term strategy, not morals, that will DEFEAT the causes HE SUPPORTS in the long run.

Another thing to point out is the typical Liberal "some=all" mis-argument: the fact that SOME secrets were kept rather than used to protect human lives does not mean that ALL secrets of this sort will be kept and NO human lives protected. Some secrets have limited life-times and are simply not strategic, so acting on them to save lives is a moral imperative. Allowing the bombing of Coventry in order to preserve the secret that we knew how to crack the German military codes was justified because it was a STRATEGIC secret. There is NO long term value in keeping secret the secret location of where a car bomb assembly factory that was extracted from a terrorist.

And that's ANOTHER thing: the moral equivalence issue. The guy is so intent on equating us to terrorists that he ignores the fact that the secrets kept by a terrorist to enable an attack against civilians is NOT AT THE SAME LEVEL as the secrets kept by us to maintain our ability to track down said terrorists.

Dr. Victor Davis Hanson has amply documented the fact that Western armies fight fiercely and devastatingly, and I do not support any call to make OUR army less so. However, he also has documented the fact that Western armies, being so dangerous, need to be held accountable. Despite his ass-itude, Aris DID touch the other day on what I feel IS a solution: we should keep assiduous, detailed, and complete records of who we capture, interrogate, and "torture", with some sort of two-level decision making structure that analyzes the circumstances of capture and the initial interrogaton (no "torture"), with some reasonable guidelines that indicate when "torture" is NOT appropriate. I would further recommend the use of Voice Stress analyzers during the initial interrogation: they have been shown to have no false negatives, so passing a VSA would qualify one for release, although failing a VSA should not be automatic permission to use "torture".

Detailed and assiduous records should be kept not only over what we do, but the outcomes: we need to know what works and what doesn't, and be able to credit good interrogators/"torturers" and eliminate the bad ones. They should be allowed to pick from an approved menu of methods, AND be allowed to propose personal additions to the menu that only THEY would use and only after multi-level review and approval. If a guy thinks a 20 amino acid diet may work, let him at it. If a guy thinks that being made to watch 50's beach boy movies starring Elvis with their eyes lashed open for 20 hour stints will do the trick, by all means let him conduct the experiment. Let the Supreme court decide whether listening to "Puff the Magic Dragon" for 50 hours straight at 88.67 decibels is Cruel and Unusual punishment after reviewing the documented success rate. Let's keep track of this information, figure out who's good enough to crack who within how many hours, and let's just get RID of what doesn't really work. If we have a sadist who keeps pushing the limits and isn't getting anywhere, we shouldn't let his job rating be determined by his bullshitting, but by his lack of success, and get rid of him. If a late blooming 60's flower child can make Al Qaida lieutenants crack in less than 88 minutes flat, then give that man a raise.

There are several aspects to the use of "torture" that we CAN demonstrate to ourselves and to our descendants if we use some form of accountability: We "tortured" only when we were reasonably sure the stakes were high enough, that we were careful in making sure we "tortured" the right people, and that we made active and vigorous attempts to abandon methods that were not productive.

Posted by Ptah">Ptah 2005-11-22 16:14|| http://www.crusaderwarcollege.org]">[http://www.crusaderwarcollege.org] 2005-11-22 16:14|| Front Page Top

#14 Darn, I forgot to explain why I put "torture" in quotes: I have no respect for people who deny the existance of absolute morals that arbitrarily and without due announcement, rip up the goal posts, move them, plant them down, and THEN assert the violation of a sacred moral principle. They damn well know what were acceptable interrogation techniques in the past THEY, and THEY ALONE, are declaring as "torture" today.

Posted by Ptah">Ptah 2005-11-22 16:19|| http://www.crusaderwarcollege.org]">[http://www.crusaderwarcollege.org] 2005-11-22 16:19|| Front Page Top

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