Comments on: It’s Not Torture When We Do It

By: personal021

personal021 — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:53:19 +0000

wow ))
its very interesting article.
Good post.
realy good post

thx

By: Ged

Ged — Sat, 10 Nov 2007 14:33:18 +0000

Claude, as I stated over at TCA, beheading isn’t torture, it’s a form of execution. In addition, captives never get to “choose” what’s done to them, that’s why they are the detainees and not the detainers.

Yes, waterboarding is less horrible than beheading, but that is not the argument here. I suggest you go back and read the post again because you’ve obviously missed the point.

By: Claude

Claude — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 19:12:37 +0000

I bet you anything that our brave soldiers would rather be water-boarded than beheaded if captured by the seventh century dwellers they’re tasked with fighting.

What’s more ironic, this week Ted Kennedy was describing in detail how someone feels when they think they’re drowning. I wonder if he felt the same about poor Mary Jo Kopechne.

By: Christopher

Christopher — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 19:12:24 +0000

Ged, thank you for continuing to ask the questions that more people should be asking.

It continues to disappoint me that the mainstream media seem to be reluctant to discuss these sorts of issues, but I can only hope that blog postings such as this one prompt more people to think about what the US Government is willing to sanction.

It’s hard to believe that, when a U.S. citizen was waterboarded by a Japanese officer, he was later sentenced to 15 years hard labor as it was considered a war crime.

I can’t believe anyone can justify it now.

By: David

David — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 13:33:54 +0000

Thanks for posting Ged! I’m glad you’ve got my back on politics since I try to stay out of it on my blog. Anyway, when we choose to toss out the Geneva Conventions or split hairs with it, then we need to be ready to accept the results of our actions. We need to ask ourselves if torture or almost torture is worth the *potential* for saving American lives. I, for one, don’t know. I also think we need to shift our thinking from the “us vs. them” mentality and realize that “we” and “they” are all “us.”

Okay, now a link for you that you may have already seen over at Max Blumenthal’s site:

http://maxblumenthal.com/archives/171#comments

I thought of it when you said the TCA commentators wouldn’t say yay or nay on the torture issue.

By: Roch101

Roch101 — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 12:38:40 +0000

“If you believe that waterboarding is okay when we do it, then it has to be okay when they do it to us…”

You would think. But here is the simple truth you must grasp, people who support waterboarding for people in our custody have adopted something for which they’ve long criticized “liberals:” situational ethics. It’s okay for us, not okay for them. A double standard. It’s really that simple. (And it is, of course, the reason why you will not get a straight answer to your question.)

By: Sebastiaan de With

Sebastiaan de With — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 10:40:48 +0000

Perhaps this goes to prove how incredibly influenced people are by the media today. A proverbial wall of ‘terrorism’ coverage has conquered most news bulletins, mostly instilling fear, which in turn convinces most people it’s in order that basic rights are relinquished.

What’s so scary about your post is that it shows how little thought people are giving it; what if your brother / mother / niece-in-law gets tipped off as a ‘terror suspect’ and you see them being shipped away to a facility without any form of fair trial? Even in Europe, where I live, we’ve seen a real change in the political landscape, mostly inspired by the legislative changes in America. Germany has even accepted a law outlawing several software products as being ‘hacker tools’ that can be used for potential ‘e-terrorism’. Things are becoming a bit crazy.