Ok...They cut Americans heads off on national TV and we are prosecuting our boys for putting panties on a guys head....Unless the panties were that bad I don't see the sense...Yes We should be better than our enemies but throughout the years the Police, FBI, CIA, Military have saved millions of lives by using means in which you call torture...Do you understand the mentality of Islam fascism..You protect them..they kill you.. It's sad but true.

These forms of "torture" have been in place and used behind closed doors for hundreds of years. Even if they say they won't do it anylonger, the fact is that it will continue. Countries, and not just ours will do whatever it takes to extract the information they are looking for. Like its is some suprise this has been going on, and like G.W.Bush invented it or something. Come on, get a grip people.

I agree Milhouse601

Those people go to work and do these things to protect us, not cuz they enjoy it. and people thank them by calling them vile names and belittling what they do

These people are not evolved as humans...They are still living in the times of the crusdaes..That's how sad it is...The funny thing is the people who run these countries and terrorist groups don't do anything themselves...They just collect more and more power and money. Islamic Fascism is a great threat to this country...We sound so decadent like the Romans..It makes me sick.

I missed the press conference where they were outlawing marriage. When did this happen?

It's not the marriage. It's the Divorce negotiations that will hurt.

No Torture. No Exceptions.
The Washington Monthly | Editorial

January/February/March 2008 Issue

In most issues of the Washington Monthly, we favor articles that we hope will launch a debate. In this issue we seek to end one. The unifying message of the articles that follow is, simply, Stop. In the wake of September 11, the United States became a nation that practiced torture. Astonishingly - despite the repudiation of torture by experts and the revelations of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib - we remain one. As we go to press, President George W. Bush stands poised to veto a measure that would end all use of torture by the United States. His move, we suspect, will provoke only limited outcry. What once was shocking is now ordinary.

On paper, the list of practices declared legal by the Department of Justice for use on detainees in Guantanamo Bay and other locations has a somewhat bloodless quality - sleep deprivation, stress positions, forced standing, sensory deprivation, nudity, extremes of heat or cold. But such bland terms mask great suffering. Sleep deprivation eventually leads to hallucinations and psychosis. (Menachem Begin, former prime minister of Israel, experienced sleep deprivation at the hands of the KGB and would later assert that "anyone who has experienced this desire [to sleep] knows that not even hunger and thirst are comparable with it.") Stress positions entail ordeals such as being shackled by the wrists, suspended from the ceiling, with arms spread out and feet barely touching the ground. Forced standing, a technique often used in North Korean prisons, involves remaining erect and completely still, producing an excruciating combination of physical and psychological pain, as ankles swell, blisters erupt on the skin, and, in time, kidneys break down. Sensory deprivation - being deprived of sight, sound, and touch - can produce psychotic symptoms in as little as twenty-four hours. The agony of severe and prolonged exposure to temperature extremes and the humiliation of forced nudity speak for themselves.

Then there is waterboarding, a form of mock execution by drowning, a technique that has been used in so-called "black sites." In addition to the physical pain and terror it induces, long-term psychological effects also haunt patients - panic attacks, depression, and symptoms of post-traumatic-stress disorder. It has long been prosecuted as a crime of war. In our view, it still should be.

Ideally, the election in November would put an end to this debate, but we fear it won't. John McCain, who for so long was one of the leading Republican opponents of the White House's policy on torture, voted in February against making the CIA subject to the ban on "enhanced interrogation." As for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, while both have come out strongly against torture, they seldom discuss the subject on the campaign trail. We fear that even a Democratic president might, under pressure from elements of the national security bureaucracy, carve out loopholes, possibly in secret, condoning some forms of torture.

Over the past decade, voters have had many legitimate worries: stagnant wages, corruption in Washington, terrorism, and a botched war in Iraq. But we believe that when Americans look back years from now, what will shame us most is that our country abandoned a bedrock principle of civilized nations: that torture is without exception wrong.

It is in the hopes of keeping the attention of the public, and that of our elected officials, on this subject that the writers of this collection of essays have put pen to paper. They include a former president, the speaker of the House, two former White House chiefs of staff, current and former senators, generals, admirals, intelligence officials, interrogators, and religious leaders. Some are Republicans, others are Democrats, and still others are neither. What they all agree on, however, is this: It was a profound moral and strategic mistake for the United States to abandon long-standing policies of humane treatment of enemy captives. We should return to the rule of law and cease all forms of torture, with no exceptions for any agency. And we should expect our presidential nominees to commit to this idea. - The Washington Monthly Editors



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The Washington Monthly thanks the American Security Project for its assistance in coordinating this project.


Amen

Moral test:

"The person you love most in this world is being held hostage. Authorities have captured a man who knows where they are being held but those doing the holding are going to execute them in 12 hours (pending agreement of some unrealistic demands that cannot be honored.) Do you use torture on the man you are holding in hopes of discovering their location?"

So........


Is "torture" simply torture no matter what the circumstance or is it different when it becomes personal? And if you convince yourself that if it is acceptable to engage in when it is personal then how is it not OK for everyone to feel the same? If on the other hand you would sacrifice your loved one to a monster standing on the moral objection to torture, how would you justify that to yourself?

Me, I believe that type of pacifism sets a new mark for immorality.

-Drew

Even in this case, you are not guarenteed no lose of life, just as torture stands. A person who is tortured may have told you what you wanted to hear without the torture, how are you to know that the torture was justified, ever????

Nice way to sidestep the question.....Great point Drew. These people will give you a dog and pony show to make it sound right for their side. No use even having the conversation. I take my hat off to you though.

Even in this case, you are not guarenteed no lose of life, just as torture stands. A person who is tortured may have told you what you wanted to hear without the torture, how are you to know that the torture was justified, ever????

Hilyf,

To be fair, my question was hypothetical. It was the nature of the premise that I reject because that isn't far off from saying "killing is always wrong." Again, if someone breaks in to my home and means to kill me I don't just have a choice/option but I believe I have a moral obligation to defend myself up to the point of taking a life. I don't have the right to shoot the same intruder in the back once the cops show up and cuff the individual because the nature of the threat would have changed. But as with most things, we measure in degrees. Those who deal in absolutes both amaze and trouble me.

Drew

Understand and agree with you totally.