February 01, 2009
It's the "anti-torture" crowd that is promoting torture...
Apparently the Obama Administration is banning "harsh interrogation techniques," but preserving the option of rendition!
The twisted logic of this just stupefies me. It's like chopping off a painfully injured limb to avoid the danger of becoming addicted to painkillers.
The simple fact is that waterboarding someone is a thousand times more humane than shipping them off to Jordan to be tortured. Am I right? Any liberals reading this, am I not right? Hmmm? People undergo waterboarding voluntarily. We use it on our own troops in training.
But "liberalism" is about making liberals feel good, not about actually helping human beings.
LAT: Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool The role of the CIA's controversial prisoner-transfer program may expand, intelligence experts say.
The CIA's secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.
But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool.
Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.
Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism -- aside from Predator missile strikes -- for taking suspected terrorists off the street...
"...taking suspected terrorists off the street." Jeeez. That's what Guantanamo was for. Gitmo is in fact a far more humane facility than ordinary American prisons. European penologists have visited it and reported that it is better than anything they have back home. A thousand times better than what a prisoner will get if shipped to Egypt. But since the evil Bush started it, it has to go. And who cares how much people suffer. Not liberals.
And liberals care nothing about the suffering of the victims of terrorism. In Iraq al-Qaeda has set off powerful bombs in pet markets, where people take children to see the animals. Think about it, you leftists who despise America for extracting information that can stop terror attacks.
Posted by John Weidner at February 1, 2009 04:38 PMAnother problem is you ship some jihadist over the Falastin branch of the Syrian Mukharabat, and there's no guarantee that there wouldn't be some sympathetic official might let them lose, and send
them to Iraq, or wherever else they want to strike
Here's a flaw in the logic -- you say that waterboarding is 10,000 times better than shipping off to Jordan to get tortured. The thing is, that would be exchanging U.S. torture for Jordanian torture.
Torture is torture, no matter how it's worded or how it's done. That being said, it doesn't really help much in relieving torture and suffering there.
And by the way, any torture for a human being is unacceptable, whether for a baby, a suffering cancer patient, or even the worst of criminals that have not even been led through due process. These guys haven't been led through due process! Let us be fair and non-contradictory on this subject, for we must support all legitimate human rights.
And the subject of torture is one of them.
I will have more on this argument with my weekly update this weekend or so at katholikos13.blogspot.com. God bless you.
Katholikos,
I don't feel that your moral reasoning (or prose) is very clear here.
1. The "torture is torture" argument leads to muddle. It ends up with calling anything unpleasant "torture," destroying the meaning of the word, thus making clear debate impossible.
And it allows you to avoid moral responsibility. The fact remains that one thing IS far worse than the other, and you have a responsibility to draw clear distinctions.
2. "any torture for a human being is unacceptable." Why, precisely? Just your assertion? What is the moral law here? I suspect you are going by personal sentiment and whim, rather than the teaching of the Church.
3. One problem with you anti-torture people is that you still want to be protected by the state. You want to renounce torture while still expecting its benefits. I doubt that there are many anti's who, while some al-Qaeda guy is sawing their head off, will refrain from complaining and wondering why they aren't being rescued.
4. Likewise, you want other people to be protected. If a child has its legs blown off in a terror-bombing, you aren't going to stand up and take responsibility, as logically you should. The word for this is hypocrisy. You live your life in peace and security because brave people are fighting (and sometimes torturing) for you. You suck up the benefits while sneering at the things that need to be done to get them.
5. It is morally much worse to push ugly jobs off where we don't see the suffering, rather than do them ourselves. Obama is looking at YOU, and thinking, "He won't complain as long as I have someone else do the work."
6. "Due process" is not germane to this discussion. No one is being tortured as a punishment for criminal acts.
Posted by: John Weidner at February 2, 2009 06:21 PMKatholikos,
Everything is torture under a loose enough definition and nothing is torture under a strict enough one. The sine qua non of torture is pain and waterboarding inflicts panic not pain....
Posted by: anon at February 2, 2009 08:05 PMMy uncle Cletus was a firm believer in the old Bibical saw: "Spare the rod, spoil the child". Especially bad children might warrant an upgrade.
Posted by: Mr. Bubba at February 3, 2009 05:36 AMHey, I would mostly agree with you for once, except that this article seems to be inaccurate. The executive order says that the US must comply with, among other things, the Convention Against Torture, which bans rendition.
Also, the order establishes a commission that would study how best to ensure that rendition doesn't happen.
All stolen from here: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2009_02/016703.php
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