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View Full Version : Why Conservatives Should Oppose Torture. Becoming evil to defeat evil is un-American




William Tell
12-10-2014, 10:53 PM
Great article from Infowars, covering some sick stuff.


he Senate Intelligence Committee’s release of the CIA torture report Tuesday has caused a divide among Americans. The debate, currently between all ends of the political spectrum, consists of those who vehemently oppose torture, those who support it, and those who base their decisions on political dogma.
According to many mainline conservatives, torture is a necessary tool in the global war on terror – a tool which has and will prevent another terror attack on American soil.
Setting aside preconceived notions, facts surrounding the morality and effectiveness of torture should easily move conservatives to reexamine their viewpoint.
To put things lightly, becoming evil to defeat evil doesn’t work.
The first conservative icon to decry torture was also the first American president – George Washington.
http://hw.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/070214george.jpg (http://hw.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/070214george.jpg)George Washington – Credit: Wikimedia Commons

During the struggle for independence, Washington defied calls to treat captured British soldiers inhumanely despite some of his men being tortured to death while in the British Monarchy’s custody.
“Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause… for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country,” Washington said in 1775.
Washington’s goal was to found a Republic that valued the rule of law and rejected tactics used by authoritarian empires. America’s first president understood the danger in violating another human’s rights in the name of protecting one’s own.
“While we are contending for our own liberty, we should be very cautious of violating the rights of conscience in others, ever considering that God alone is the judge of the hearts of men, and to Him only in this case are they answerable,” Washington said the same year.
Moving forward to the modern era, a man considered by conservatives to be one of the country’s strongest ever leaders was also steadfast in his opposition to torture. So much so that he even gave his full support the United Nations Convention against Torture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_against_Torture).
Similar to Washington’s viewpoint, Ronald Reagan opposed all forms of torture in all circumstances no matter how dire.
http://hw.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Reagan.jpg (http://hw.infowars.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Reagan.jpg)Ronald Reagan – Credit: Wikimedia Commons

“No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture,” the convention states. “An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture”
Reagan aide Paul Bremer expanded on the President’s belief in 1987, arguing that even the most heinous of international terrorists deserved to be tried in accordance with the rule of law.
“A major element of our strategy has been to delegitimize terrorists, to get society to see them for what they are – criminals – and to use democracy’s most potent tool, the rule of law, against them,” Bremer said.
Torture opponents have long recognized the slippery slope that is “enhanced interrogation.” Although the media has mainly focused on waterboarding, which itself has produced convulsions and vomiting as suspects and non-suspects are subjected to “near drownings (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/12/09/world/cia-torture-report-key-points.html),” the most vile of torture techniques are the direct result of the departure from original conservative values.

In 2003, pictures taken at the Abu Ghraib (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/exposing-the-truth-of-abu-ghraib/) jail in Iraq were released for the world to see. Unabated torture of Iraqi prisoners by military police eventually led to the darkest of techniques – the rape of woman and children. Former Army Major General Antonio Taguba, an investigator into the Abu Ghraib scandal, spoke with The Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5395830/Abu-Ghraib-abuse-photos-show-rape.html) in 2009 to report on what the media had ignored (http://www.infowars.com/us-military-investigator-confirms-women-and-children-were-raped-at-abu-ghraib/) for the nearly five years.

“At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee,” the article states. “Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.” “Among the graphic statements, which were later released under US freedom of information laws, is that of Kasim Mehaddi Hilas in which he says: ‘I saw [name of a translator] ******* a kid, his age would be about 15 to 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then when I heard screaming I climbed the door because on top it wasn’t covered and I saw [name] who was wearing the military uniform, putting his **** in the little kid’s ***…. and the female soldier was taking pictures.’”
Not only is there no excuse for such deplorable and anti-human behavior, such acts, which were already known among many Iraqis, have put U.S. troops at extreme risk.
“I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo,” military veteran Matthew Alexander wrote in the Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/28/AR2008112802242.html?hpid=opinionsbox1). “It’s no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse.”
“The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me – unless you don’t count American soldiers as Americans.”
Not only does torture put our soldiers at risk, but it also produces false intelligence, as anyone under such conditions will say anything to end the abuse.
“I don’t know how you could say we’re safer and more secure. If you torture somebody, they’ll tell you anything,” Major General Thomas Romig said in 2007 (http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/torturingdemocracy/interviews/thomas_romig.html). “I don’t know anybody that is good at interrogation, has done it a lot, that will say that that’s an effective means of getting information… It has not made it safer for our soldiers when they’re captured.”
One of the main points from the Senate’s report was the fact that torture did not provide legitimate intelligence (https://news.yahoo.com/cia-torture-report-why-didnt-help-hunt-osama-205516257.html), exposing movies such as “Zero Dark Thirty” to be nothing more than propaganda pieces.
With the U.S. government currently arming, training and supporting (http://www.infowars.com/syrian-rebel-commander-yes-were-still-collaborating-with-isis-and-al-qaeda/) admitted jihadists all across Syria, can it really be claimed that torture is being used to keep us safe?
Given the fact that Americans can now be kidnapped and placed in military prisons without trial or charge under the National Defense Authorization Act’s indefinite detention provisions (http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/congress/item/17248-ted-cruz-indefinite-detention-retained-in-ndaa-2014), can you be certain that this power wont expand to darker realms in the future?


http://www.infowars.com/why-conservatives-should-oppose-torture/

oyarde
12-11-2014, 01:43 AM
I oppose torture .

William Tell
12-11-2014, 08:29 AM
I oppose torture .

So do I.

fisharmor
12-11-2014, 08:58 AM
Did you know that police forces in the United States regularly used waterboarding to extract confessions prior to 1940? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding#By_U.S._police_before_the_1940s)

This is the problem. Certain liberals and certain conservatives are going to get their panties in a bunch about this again, and might actually stage some protests, and all the while they're not going to realize that torture is something which has always existed - even during the reigns of St Washington and St Reagan.

Nobody's having honest discussions about this. They're toying around with the idea of whether the entity which is explicitly blessed to torture people and get away with it should actually be using that power, or whether we should ask them nicely not to do it.

Nobody is ever going to start asking the hard questions, like whether we really have a need for an entity which is explicitly blessed to torture people and get away with it.

But if you take away its explicit blessing to torture people and get away with it, it stops being what it is, doesn't it? And nobody is going to go there, so we're going to continue to have torture right here in the good ol' USA. God bless America, land of torture, because I literally can't envision anything different.

otherone
12-11-2014, 09:32 AM
Nobody is ever going to start asking the hard questions, like whether we really have a need for an entity which is explicitly blessed to torture people and get away with it.

But if you take away its explicit blessing to torture people and get away with it, it stops being what it is, doesn't it? And nobody is going to go there, so we're going to continue to have torture right here in the good ol' USA. God bless America, land of torture, because I literally can't envision anything different.

Hard questions have hard answers that demand personal responsibility.
The horror at the bottom of the rabbit hole is that the state is evil and illegitimate, and by extension it's supporters are as well.

cajuncocoa
12-11-2014, 09:40 AM
Whatever you do, don't let this get anywhere near Rand's FB page. Potential voters might start dropping like flies and some here will have to go into damage control mode :rolleyes:

donnay
12-11-2014, 10:02 AM
I vehemently oppose torture of any kind. A tortured person will say anything not to be tortured. We should have continued to hold the moral high-ground on this. And since we are talking about silly left/right paradigm stuff, our slogan, as activists should be: "Two WRONGS do not make a RIGHT."

phill4paul
12-11-2014, 10:12 AM
I'm not gonna hold my breath that any C.I.A. operative or their handlers will be charged with any offence. As always those who work for the government have qualified impunity. They'll get a raise, a medal and retire with a nice pension.

moostraks
12-11-2014, 10:21 AM
Whatever you do, don't let this get anywhere near Rand's FB page. Potential voters might start dropping like flies and some here will have to go into damage control mode :rolleyes:

:D On a similar note have been arguing this FOX news torture support stupidity with someone I know. An association of hers responded thusly to me:

... it is clear you entertain the delusional idea that if we are simply NICE to everyone, then they will leave us alone and let us live in peace. It would be all sunshine, lollypops, and rainbow farting unicorns. Never mind that those who want to kill us share NOTHING of our belief system and will only rest when they have killed every last person who does not believe as they do. Live and let live is a concept unknown to them. Period.

But we all have different coping mechanisms. If keeping your head plunged deep into the sand works for you, so be it. Just remember what portion of your anatomy remains prominently displayed, and know that sooner or later it's going to get serviced. Vigorously.

Which was in response to
Well, I think government should never be given the power to do anything it will not be anticipated to do within its own borders, to its own citizens, often for causes much less immediate than originally authorized. I also don't believe one should claim moral superiority while acting more barbaric than those that are supposedly a threat to civilization.

...It is not as though these "terrorists" are created out of thin air. My stance has a textual basis in Matthew and Luke for which I believe a nation that claims to be "Christian" should pay some heed to when blustering and invading other nations under the greater good claims of spreading civility to barbaric cultures. I don't appreciate my money being seized to fund behavior I find reprehensible and against my religious beliefs with a high probability for blowback, not to mention fairly ineffective. If folks want to support this type of behavior maybe it should be through a go fund me and the names of supporters can be given to the people so abused by these type of programs? Imo the wishing for all men to be saints is only practically achievable by raising the standards of ethics not by playing to the lowest common denominator of human aggression. The lack of empathy and respect for human life on the home front is a direct reflection of this type foreign policy behavior.

Smh...they share nothing of our belief system? Wth? And by looking at what has been done by the CIA and the cries for more by so called "Christian conservatives" what belief system would that be which "they" share nothing of (and don't include me in the damn collective fyi) and just what makes the U.S. beliefs superior so as any behavior, no matter how heinous, is reasonable? I cannot grasp how all people are not sickened by what has been done and that some can wrap themselves in their own religion all while claiming superiority of some sorts and entitled to behave so barbarically.

Brett85
12-11-2014, 10:30 AM
I oppose torture being legal. We should have laws against it.

fisharmor
12-11-2014, 10:51 AM
We should have continued to hold the moral high-ground on this.
Yeah, I'll just go ahead and quote myself here.


Did you know that police forces in the United States regularly used waterboarding to extract confessions prior to 1940? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding#By_U.S._police_before_the_1940s)

That's documented.

We had no moral high ground.

otherone
12-11-2014, 11:24 AM
:D On a similar note have been arguing this FOX news torture support stupidity with someone I know. An association of hers responded thusly to me:


Which was in response to
Smh...they share nothing of our belief system? Wth? And by looking at what has been done by the CIA and the cries for more by so called "Christian conservatives" what belief system would that be which "they" share nothing of (and don't include me in the damn collective fyi) and just what makes the U.S. beliefs superior so as any behavior, no matter how heinous, is reasonable? I cannot grasp how all people are not sickened by what has been done and that some can wrap themselves in their own religion all while claiming superiority of some sorts and entitled to behave so barbarically.

IT'S CALLED FEAR

otherone
12-11-2014, 11:44 AM
Moos:


... it is clear you entertain the delusional idea that if we are simply NICE to everyone, then they will leave us alone and let us live in peace. It would be all sunshine, lollypops, and rainbow farting unicorns. Never mind that those who want to kill us share NOTHING of our belief system and will only rest when they have killed every last person who does not believe as they do. Live and let live is a concept unknown to them. Period.

But we all have different coping mechanisms. If keeping your head plunged deep into the sand works for you, so be it. Just remember what portion of your anatomy remains prominently displayed, and know that sooner or later it's going to get serviced. Vigorously.


The irony is that this could have been said by a Muslim about the US.

moostraks
12-11-2014, 01:17 PM
Moos:




The irony is that this could have been said by a Muslim about the US.

:D Lol! It was my exact thoughts on this as well.

twomp
12-11-2014, 01:45 PM
"conservatives" are as stupid as the "liberals" they hate so much, it's a wonder why the 2 groups don't get along better seeing as how they have quite a few things in common... hypocrisy being the main characteristic they have in common