The Glade 4.0

*Fistbump*



You assume a great deal - most notably that there's anything unintentional about Khross's similarities.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

No, the problem actually is what our government has done. The problem is people like who you sit around and say, "The United States does it too, and always has."

We have a hard time appreciating this today because it's gone away in recent generations, mostly since the Cold War, but there was a time when we really were better than other nations. The "international law" that prohibits certain behaviors such as torture? That exists because of the United States. There are families in the United States that are here because Grandpa or Great-Grandpa was captured by American soldiers and sent overseas as a POW to a farm owned by German immigrants who taught him English. He met a girlfriend, saved up money, became a U.S. citizen, and bought land of his own. That wasn't what was supposed to happen to you back then when you were a POW. You were supposed to be tortured and used as slave labor.

We are the reason Europeans today think torture is a terrible crime. They didn't invent the idea by themselves. We are the ones who told them. Europeans were happily torturing each other until the United States showed them otherwise. The United States army set an example for Europe during the first half of the twentieth century that the nation has failed to measure up to ever since. The Greatest Generation left their country in the hands of lesser men.

The problem, Khross, is that we don't have the cajones to follow in the footsteps of our grandparents. When confronted by our failure and cowardice, we make excuses about how it's too hard, too dangerous, and how the world is a different place. Yes, the world is a very different place today. It's not at war. Today we don't have the courage to face the ugly truth about ourselves, admit it's a problem, and fix it.

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Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Not going into much discussion on the actual topic, just wanted to say that I find this statement incredibly sad if you actually mean this.

I am against torture completely. I can imagine myself on the other end, or one of those I care for. I can imagine if I were born in the different area of the world and found myself being detained by someone, tortured.

Or is there some other meaning behind your statement I am unaware of?

Corolinth:

I actually think we should hold ourselves to a higher standard and am ashamed that our government has stepped away from values and standards it once held. Don't confuse my acknowledgement of the realities as endorsement. There's nothing in the report we didn't already know.

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You identified that the problem is perception and lying not that the problem is that the acts occur. That is absolutely not a condemnation of the actions but merely their cover.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

On the one hand, I agree with you. Don't take my next statement as disagreement. However, the world is not black and white, good and evil. Those things don't even exist except as constructs of our collective opinions.

While I absolutely decry allowing our government the power to do these things, I could envision a scenario where I not only would endorse torture, but gladly be the one to perform it. Similar to your ability to imagine yourself or those you care for "on the other end," I could imagine those I care for being held captive or endangered and me having power over someone who is complicit in their situation. Worse yet, I could imagine the revenge I would take upon those complicit and everything and everyone they hold dear if given the opportunity. The protectiveness of most mammals toward their offspring is a natural, beneficial instinct, and there is nothing I wouldn't do to protect ... or avenge them. I have no moral qualms about that.

But that's academic - in reality i see it more problematic that a government is permitted by its citizens to engage in these practices. My odds of being targetted by my own government are far greater than the odds that such practices could ever help protect myself or someone I love.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

No, we didn't because we had complete penetration of Japanese and German encryption via Enigma and other programs.

We interned tens of thousands of our own citizens out of fear of their ethnicity, we firebombed cities, and deployed nuclear weapons to obtain complete surrender.

Despite all this, we were the good guys. We were the good guys because we were better than our enemies, and not by just a little - although we did have an ally that was hardly better than they.

Good is not perfect. We are far from perfect today too. We are still the good guys, no matter how much Europeans might like to whine about it. Our enemies are still appalling by comparison to us.

The difference now is that in WWII your grandpa and my grandpa went. Even my grandma went; I still have her records. She outranked my grandfather when they got married. Those that didn't go either couldn't, did something at home that was indispensable, or were publicly shamed.

That's not the way it is now. Unlike your grandpa, you do not have to go. You will not be shamed, nor drafted.

that's why it doesn't mean a whole lot when you complain about torture. It meant something coming from your grandpa. It meant something coming from John McCain. It doesn't mean a whole lot coming from you. It doesn't even mean a lot coming from me. My war was cake compared to Grandpa's or Senator McCain's. We live in the luxury built by doing the ugly when necessary.

If you want to argue "It wasn't necessary", go ahead; there's probably a case to be made there. Just sitting there and piously acting appalled at it though is pretty spoiled.

By the way, it's "cojones". There's no "a".

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

You're worrying about "government" again. The odds are vanishingly lower that you would ever be subjected to this than that it would benefit you, not higher.

Even if you were an Islamic militant, the odds are vanishingly low that you would be subject to these techniques if captured. Even at it's greatest extent, very few detainees were ever even considered for this - for most, it wasn't worth it.

Also, I'm only 20 pages into the report, but it already indicates that much of this was unauthorized behavior even with the program that WAS in place. "Government" didn't do it; a certain section of the CIA did it while deceiving their superiors and the President as to what they were getting into.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It would benefit you by getting some really useless information out of people? By pursuing bad leads that were corroborated under torture just to get it to end? Yeah that is efficient. The CIA's own report states it cannot produce a case where torture provided actionable intel.

Once the government finds it can get away with something it will expand the use of it. She may not have an equal risk but her grandkids might.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Where does any report by the CIA state this?

The dispute over this report stems from the fact that the CIA maintained this program gave information that led to Bin Laden's killing.



This is not actually true.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/cia-to ... ve-n264621


According to the Senate report, the CIA's own records found that seven of 39 detainees subjected to especially aggressive interrogation yielded no intelligence, and that others provided useful information without being subjected to the harsh techniques.

Other detainees who were harshly interrogated made up information, including about "the terrorist threats which the CIA identified as its highest priorities," the report found.

The Senate committee said that it had reviewed 20 of the most commonly cited examples of successes attributed by the CIA to enhanced interrogation. It found each of those examples wrong.

*drops mic*

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

That's the Senate's report, not the CIA's and the Senate report is the one under contention. Furthermore, 32 of 39 providing information without the use of these techniques does not mean they did not provide even more information under these techniques - and most importantly, there were more than 39 detainees.



The Senate report's accuracy is in dispute.



The Senate report's accuracy is the source of dispute.



It's very amusing that the liberal politicians you so distrust suddenly become trustworthy in your eyes when they tell you what you want to hear.

You don't even seem to know if you are making a moral or practical objection. Are these activities immoral, or are they simply ineffective? Or are they immoral because they are ineffective - in which case would they become moral if they were effective?

I don't think you know.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Sure, I can imagine those things as well. I am against torture in the sense that I am against murder; I don't want it happening to me or anyone I know, I think it's wrong, and there should be laws against it. Am I going to get all riled up because it's officially revealed that the US has taken part? No, not so much. At the end of the day I think a lot of what we do (or let happen via apathy) to our own people is just as morally reprehensible.

This. The conduct described therein is inexcusable, and has no place in our society. I don't care how many attacks this thwarted, or what the international community has to say about it, these actions should not be tolerated in any instance. This should be further investigated and prosecuted as appropriate.

Why? What is it about our society that makes it imperative that we don't do these sorts of things? As Khross pointed out, this is pretty much peanuts compared to what everyone else does, and those that don't are those that are beholden to us for their own defense.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

It's okay to rain hellfire on civilians if we kill one bad leader guy but it's not okay to beat some individuals up or make them think they're drowning.

Because reasons.

Re-read Corolinth's post. Do you want to step back into pre-american values? This isn't some lefty liberal european value-set being pushed onto good red-blooded americans. America came up with the ideals that it is now violating. America taught the world that these things are wrong. Now America seems to be abandoning the very ideals that made America (and eventually, most of the western world) different. You are advocating america should abandon those ideals.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

It's not ok to bomb the crap out of civilian areas either, but yes, many people (myself included) think torturing someone is morally worse than killing them.

There's a lot of shades of gray there.

Speaking from the point of view of the victim...I think it depends on the extent of the "torture."

If the torture will end, with me alive and in good health, and having a good chance of living out a normal life afterward, I'll take the torture.

Otherwise, a bullet is preferred.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I was replying to Arathain, not Coro.

America didn't teach the world that these things were wrong, either. Europe did not suddenly learn these things were "not a good idea" from America. Europe was just as much a part of the idea of developing concepts of humane prisoner treatment as America was, possibly more.

For the most part, we still do treat detainees better than anyone. We get ourselves into a tizzy if some detainee is mad that someone looked at his Koran the wrong way. We did a few things to a few detainees for highly specific purposes - and for the most part, it seems that the people doing it weren't following their own agency's guidance, weren't informing that agency, and that agency in turn was misleading the President.

Laying it at the feet of "America" is pretty much total nonsense - and frankly I really just do not care if the CIA abuses a few terrorists here and there. There is no slippery slope to widespread use of this sort of thing.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The trouble is, it wasn't "a few terrorists." it was anyone and everyone that was remotely suspect, even if they were innocent.

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Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

This concept to me is pants-on-head retarded. You cannot do something worse than taking someone's life. That's it, end of the line, no coming back from it.

If you try hard enough and believe all the right propaganda, you can come up with a problem for almost anything we do in our own defense.

Strangely, our enemies really do not care. In fact, they really don't even care about what we did to their people except insofar as it provides them with more of that propaganda.

When you come up with rules for how it's ok to fight, your enemy will just game those rules. He knows that you have political burdens because of them, and he doesn't.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Except for the fact that it wasn't. The vast majority of people detained never came anywhere near a CIA facility. There was never anywhere near the physical capacity to put that many detainees in secret facilities.

As for innocent, this is not a judicial proceeding.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Arathain:

I do not support or condone torture, but maybe I should be a bit more clear about my position. The Democrats' problem with the current situation is little more than an expression of their political expediency. The Detention, Rendition, and Interrogation Program started before Bush was President and ended after Bush was President. The investigation, however, was limited only to the period of time Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the White House. I take issue with this report for the reasons stated: it is partisan, it is political, and it is a national security threat. The Democrats' want something they can use to browbeat their opponents. They were trying to release the report before the elections, because of said politics. They failed to produce the report in time, but not before they heavily involved people below the clearance thresholds for subject matter being discussed.

So, while I do not condone torture, I am vociferously opposed to this report and its content. The Democrats' have put innocent soldiers, operatives, ambassadors, and other American citizens in harms way, because they want to make political hay. It's a partisan hatchet job, and that's at least as offensive and problematic as the behavior in the report; perhaps, from my point of you, it is more so.

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