The Glade 4.0

Fair enough. I don't read DailyKos for that exact reason, so I don't want to inadvertently align myself with the childish vitriol.



I take the opposite approach in that I fault Cheney and Congress. I'd like to see Pelosi in the dock right next to Cheney when the war crimes charges are brought. That said, I hold Cheney in particular contempt because he was the driving force behind it all, whereas Pelosi et al were passive accessories.

What's your point? As far as the administration claimed, it was all perfectly legal, and a review of the laws in question, especially the one defining torture, reveals it to be so vague as to be of questionable Constitutionality; a topic we covered in detail during your absence on the previous edition.

"Legal maneuvering" is just a predjudicial term for someone making legal arguments you don't like. As for "abuse", that's similarly using predjudicial language to beg the question of whether something was improper. The distasteful nature of something to some people doesn't make it inherently illegal, improper, or even ill-advised.

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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."

I don't think Obizzle has changed much of those things in the year or so he's been HDIC.

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Holy shitsnacks!

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DE,

I've learned from experience that this is one issue I find too infuriating to argue piecemeal. There's a ton of misinformation out there, and people are (understandably) invested in refusing to see how terrible the things our government did really are. As a result, it takes an enormous amount of time to counter each individual point as it comes up, and the conversation inevitably bogs down in side-arguments.

One of these days, when I have the time, I plan to put together a longish post that summarizes the abuses that were committed, the improper means by which they were authorized, and the speciousness of the legal arguments attempting to justify them. For now, though, let's just agree to disagree.

RangerDave:

And there is just as much misinformation from your point of view as the other. The fact is the government did what the government did, and Obama is continuing pretty much whatever it was the government did.

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With all due respect, do you think you have some source of information comprehensive and authoritative enough to change beliefs folks now hold after the volume and years of exposure to information that have formed whatever position one may now hold on this subject?

I'd not want you to think I'm saying this to discourage you from doing so, but I would not want you to go to any great effort to try to persuade me to your position, mainly because the deeds are done and the past is behind us...and I don't think you'll be able to present the evidence necessary to influence me.

Unless you have a personal reason for doing so, then I say "go for it"!And my opinion is, the government did what it did because it felt it necessary to do to fulfill what it believes are it's obligations to the people.

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In time, this too shall pass.

Very true, though it appears Obama has discontinued the use of torture techniques (i.e. EITs) for the time being. Of course, he and his Justice Department are doing everything they can to retain the authority to commit similar actions in the future, so he gets virtually no points from me on that score. Indeed, Obama is currently in violation of our treaty obligations for refusing to investigate and prosecute the credible allegations of torture that exist. In my opinion, it's an abysmal failure of morality and leadership on his part, and I hope history will judge him very harshly for it.

Ave Bossa Nova! Similis Duci Seneca!

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Holy shitsnacks!

Probably not, Taskiss, but I generally find comprehensive reviews helpful in identifying the biases and errors that tend to accumulate in my own thinking over the years. Who knows, maybe in putting together the review, I'll find out my own perspective on the subject is excessive.

As for personal reasons, I feel very strongly about this issue and it comes up fairly often in conversation, but I don't really have the details committed to memory, so I'd like to have a concise but comprehensive summary of things for my own reference.

As opposed to those who are invested in seeing things as somehow terrible and awful?

One of these days, when I have the time, I plan to put together a longish post that summarizes the abuses that were committed, the improper means by which they were authorized, and the speciousness of the legal arguments attempting to justify them. For now, though, let's just agree to disagree.[/quote]

No, let's not agree to disagree. We've been hearing this horseshit for ages. The entire thing comes down to a pesumption that things are abuses and then simply dismissing any argument that they're legal as "specious" or whatever. It always comes down to simply being outraged that there's any legal argument at all.

The fact of the matter is that things don't magically become illegal in this country because some people find them abusive, wrong, distatseful, or whatever. Nor do legal defenses of them suddenly become "specious" or anything else. This is exactly the same line of crap that we see in rape cases, where we've got activists loudly screaming that the defendant is guilty because they just can't grasp that the victim might be lying, and on occasion we've been treated to the spectacle of these people claiming that the burden of proof ought to be on the defendant in sex cases, and even in child support cases.

The way the legal system in this country works is that you have to have probable cause to charge someone with a crime, and proof beyond a reasonable doubt to convict them. You also can't get either of those things by simply dismissing any defense as "specious" or whatever, nor does anyone's belief about what should be legal matter.



This is precisely what I'm talking about. It's simply bare assertion that the techniques in question are torture, and presuming the illegality of what was done based on moral outrage. Indeed, we cannot be in violation of any treaty on torture until it has been established that any was committed, and any treaty or legal definition of "torture" I've seen, in an attempt to avoid a laundry list of "don't do's" has a definition of torture that is A) absurdly broad and vague and B) seems to be nothing more than the fantasy of euro-wankers at the U.N. who think anyone in captivity for any reason is entitled to be trated as a country club patron.

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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."

I meant "agree to disagree" for now, since I don't have time to engage you on the subject right now, but I promise I will do so as soon as I can. In the meantime, though, I can't pretend I don't believe our government systematically committed torture and used specious legal arguments to provide themselves with just enough political cover to get away with it. Saying "Enhanced Interrogation" feels like an Orwellian lie to me, and I can't bring myself to do it.

If you do have time to engage the subject a bit, though, I'd appreciate it if you'd specify what points you'd like me to address. For instance, based on what you just wrote, it obviously appears that you think the the vagueness of the legal standard is problematic. Anything else in particular? Do you question the facts (i.e. what we did), the characterization of those facts (i.e. was it abuse/torture in a moral or historical sense), the legal ramifications (i.e. whether it was against the law), etc.?

Yeah, those are both pretty appalling, but my (admittedly only semi-informed) impression of them is that they lacked the veneer of legitimacy and official sanction that the current detainee/interrogation policies have been given. They were classic spy-thriller abuses that everyone knew could never survive public scrutiny, whereas the Bush Administration (and now the Obama Administration in some cases) tried, very successfully unfortunately, to shift the official boundaries of how this country treats its prisoners.

Well, you can believe whatever you want to believe, but this crap about "Orwellianlies" is just that - crap. You can't just call it torture and then claim any argument or classification to the contrary is "Orwellian" or "specious legal arguments" or "political cover" - all you're doing then is begging the question which is poor logic at best and an attempt to circumvent legal burden to railroad a conviction at worst.



As far as I'm concerned there are 3 insurmountable problems with alledging "torture":

1) Every legal standard of torture, in an obvious attempt to avoid a laundry list of tortures (which would, of course, have its own problems) tries to create some catch-all. For example the UN definition:



could be read so as to prohibit imprisoning people, because it can cause "severe mental suffering". It attempts to get around this by claiming that things inherent in "lawful sanctions" are excepted, but then we're reduced to an absurd situation where all you have to do is legalize something and it meets the exception, or conversely where nothing is ever excepted because its cause of "severe pain or suffering" (itself highly subjective) prevents it being legalized.

I have seen no definition that has significant advantages over the UN definition in terms of usefulness or clarity.

2) I know of no technique that has been used that is not also used on trainees at variosu SERE-type courses - including waterboarding. In fact, we've seen people subject themselves to waterboarding for various public stunts; there is even pornograpghy that includes roughly similar acts. I consider this an insurmountable problem for the "torture" argument; torture refers in part to the severity of an act. Any act that is safe enough to be used on trainees really cannot be defined as torture without using definitions that suffer from the same open-ended uselessness as in 1) above.

3) Insofar as legal justification is concerned, the fact of the matter is that there have been legal arguments made that indicate whatever was done, was, in fact, legal, and so far the only arguments against them have been simply outraged spluttering that "ZOMG Bush Administration lawyers are justifying torture!!" Ok, well either they're saying yes, its torture legally, but there's such-and-such exception, or they're saying it isn't torture in the first place. Any argument that's it's A) torture or B) illegal can't be based on simple outrage that something "obviously" torture or "obviously" illegal is so.

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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."

Maybe we should just throw it all out and *really* torture people. Like real marquis de sade stuff ya know?

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Holy shitsnacks!

There was no need to apply any veneer of legitimacy because they were kept secret until people didn't care anymore.

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