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If a genius baby is born from rape, does that make it good?
If a cop beats a prisoner with a rubber hose to get a confession, is that legal?
There are three arguments being proposed in the torture debate:
1. It wasn't really torture. This is clearly disproved by the fact that Japanese and German soldiers, doctors, and lawyers were sentenced to jail and execution for using these very techniques.
2. It was all legal because the Justice Department said so! What's interesting here is how the debate has moved from "We didn't do it", to "OK, we did, but only a few times", to "Well, so we did it a lot, but only to get answers", to "Yeah, we did it a lot and planned on doing it from the start."
The fact they got their torture techniques from SEAL training showing soldiers *how to resist torture* should have been the first clue that this was - yes, you have it, torture.
3. It got results. This is the latest argument. "Well, even if it *was* torture, it got good results!"
You know what - I'm going to give this one to Cheney. Ignore every report that said that all of the details from KSM came out *before* waterboarding was used. Throw out that every WWII interrogator of Nazi's said that torture never worked and the Army Field Manual did.
*Just because something works doesn't make it right or legal.* If it's torture, it's illegal. I don't care that harvesting child brains cures cancer, and I don't care if police beatings catch the bad guys. There are things you don't do because their effects upon the souls of people are so bad, society decided that you could be killed for using them (aka - Geneva conventions and Nuremberg trials).
Imagine these soldiers who were taught to use "enhanced interrogation techniques" now working as your cops in your town. Oh, hey - it's legal, right? And I'm *sure* that guy they picked up is really a child rapist - so its OK to use these techniques to get him to confess - oh, whoops, they were innocent after all? Oh, well! They'll just shake it off!
If its torture, it's illegal. This was no "ticking time bomb" scenario people like Cheney get an erection over considering so they can think about doing as many horrible things to a person as possible. This wasn't the eve of some attack - these were some guys who evidently didn't give the wanted answers to questions regarding Iraq and bin Laden - so out came the torture techniques. Until, finally, they got people to say "Oh, sure - Saddam Hussein and bin laden are totally in together to kill the world!"
Turns out to have not been true, but hey - why let the truth get in the way of a good torture session?
At that moment, the Bush Administration was involved in conspiracy to commit torture, from the people who requested it, to the people who approved it, to the people who carried it out. It's a crime, and if there's any justice in the world, it will be prosecuted as such.
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3 comments:
I wouldnt say that its torture because the Justice Department says so. JD is nothing more than a partisan political department...justice hasnt been around in ages lol
This is very good and absolutely correct. I now completely understand your twitter query from yesterday.
Torture is wrong and I had hoped our nation was better than that. I guess I still believe that we are collectively better than that, but there are a lot of Dick Cheney's running around that make me feel significant amounts of concern.
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