Have We Softened Up On Torture?

once torture is legal thing , it will be done to you or your kids

Apologies about the previous post with formatting problems:

The premise of this piece is preposterous ??? that America was desensitized to torture by the Abu Ghraib nudity photos or America seems to have lost its capacity to be truly shocked by torture. What a skewed perspective!

There is no question that what happened to the low level detainees at Abu Ghraib was an abuse of power; it was an abuse of the basic dignity of fellow human beings. There is a world of difference between the Abu Ghraib detainees and the high-level terrorists with critical information about imminent strikes. The very fact that that you cannot discern the difference tells me our national security issues should not be under your influence.

On one hand you say we are not upset because we did not see any chilling images of the interrogation techniques like we had of Abu Ghraib; and on the other hand say that we have been desensitized by endless viewings of Jack Bauer on 24.

The National Review reports: According to two sources, both of them very well-informed and reliable (but preferring to remain anonymous), the 180-plus times refers not to SESSIONS of waterboarding, but to POURS ??? that is, to instances of water being poured on the subject.

We need to get back into the real world with this discussion and out of the political revenge these releases smack of.

Are the pro-torture commentators representative of the general population? I don't think so. because a nation of amoral rationalizers could not have elected Obama as President of the US. What I do think is that fear leading to hatred are the sleeper infiltrators of our society. I saw the face of the enemy for the first time in group grief counseling sessions after the 911 attacks. First I cried for the brutality of humans who could wreak such death and devastation. Then I cried because I saw hatred and brutality seeping into the psyches of my trusted friends and colleagues. Formerly warm, caring, and very moral individuals, their tears became frozen chunks of hatred directed toward Islaam and anyone Arabic. I voiced my distress during the sessions and their reply, like many of those below, rationalized hatred and brutality as being the only logical response. And so the rationalizers become hateful, like the enemy.

The premise of this piece is preposterous ??? that America was ???desensitized??? to ???torture??? by the Abu Ghraib nudity photos or ???America seems to have lost its capacity to be truly shocked by torture.??? What a skewed perspective!
There is no question that what happened to the low level detainees at Abu Ghraib was an abuse of power; it was an abuse of the basic dignity of fellow human beings. There is a world of difference between the Abu Ghraib detainees and the high-level terrorists with critical information about imminent strikes. The very fact that that you can???t discern the difference tells me our national security issues should not be under your influence.
On one hand you say we aren???t upset because we didn???t any chilling images of the interrogation techniques like we had of Abu Ghraib, and on the other hand say that we have been desensitized by ???endless viewing??? of Jack Bauer on ???24???.
The National Review reports: ???According to two sources, both of them very well-informed and reliable (but preferring to remain anonymous), the 180-plus times refers not to sessions of waterboarding, but to ???pours??? ??? that is, to instances of water being poured on the subject.???
We need to get back into the real world with this discussion and out of the politics of revenge.

American intelligence failures have not been due to the lack of torture, but the lack of competence. Torture is favored by shallow and incompetent people. We need to get rid of those people as well as getting rid of torture.

Quote:
"Once you are desensitized to nudity, is a little simulated drowning all that much worse?"

Nudity is something I (fortunately) encounter at least once a day, it certianly is not something comparable to torture.

The phrasing of that question gives insight into the twisted mind that poses it. Honestly, whoever you are, you're in need of a life altering dose of figurative nudity - honesty. Either that or you should crawl up and die on your own poison - don't try feeding it to the ignorant masses - with a pretext of patriotism and righteousness as the thnnest veneer over a morass of seething hate and anger at the unknown - at your flawed boxed world which you won't question.

Good day......

Quote:
"Once you are desensitized to nudity, is a little simulated drowning all that much worse?"

Nudity is something I (fortunately) encounter at least once a day, it certianly is not something comparable to torture.

The phrasing of that question gives insight into the twisted mind that poses it. Honestly, whoever you are, you're in need of a life altering dose of figurative nudity - honesty. Either that or you should crawl up and die on your own poison - don't try feeding it to the ignorant masses - with a pretext of patriotism and righteousness as the thnnest veneer over a morass of seething hate and anger at the unknown - at your flawed boxed world which you won't question.

Good day......

The only people I hear discussing whether or not this is effective are the people trying to whitewash their crimes by diverting the subject from the criminality of torture to the efficacy of it. The other crowd who don't "get it" are those people who easily rolled over and gave up their civil liberties and God given freedoms under the Bush Regime starting w/ the so called "Patriot" Act. The people who are framing the torture argument with false choice questions are irrational, ignorant, low information, high conspiracy theorists, OR they are the media pundits who refuse to stick to the sharp point of the issue. Torture is illegal by all standards, laws and treaties. What false choices you ask? The false choice of whether the "hard left" is pushing "too hard" for the DOJ to bring criminal procedings. SInce when is upholding the law a "hard left" issue? Torture is ILLEGAL. Our Constitution says no "cruel and unusual punishment". The other false choice is whether torture works or not. And all those guilty war criminals, from Bush to Cheney to Rumsfeld to Rice to congress (Republicans and Dems alike)... they are reframing the question and COUNTING on the U.S. citizens to spend our time arguing whether it worked or not so as to keep us away from the real issue. As for Abu Ghraib vs.GTMO. Do some reading folks. This was a torture PROGRAM brought to you Bush/Cheney/Rummy/Rice! Read the commitee reports and the torture memos and the Red Cross memos. These soldiers were FOLLOWING ORDERS just like the CIA interrogators were. If you follow the orders up both sides of this, civilian side and military side, they meet guess where? AT THE TOP. Wake UP America.

Torture "works" for getting the person to say whatever they think you want to hear. That has zero intelligence value. NONE. It's used to terrorize populations. We torture people to try to make them docile cows. An affront to the spirit of democracy we should be promoting across the world.

The notion that, in direct contravention of historical Judeo-Christian ethics, any means can be justified by an appropriate end has been discredited throughout human history. All major ethical theories from Socrates and Plato to Hume to Kant universally reject the horrors resulting from that concept. The Republicans leaders and their supportive followers in our government have been on the wrong side of ethics, on the wrong side of history and on the wrong side of common human decency. Theirs have been nothing but a series of pure rationalizations for embracing a lust for power through fear, torture and illegality. We are all indeed fortunate that these charlatans are no longer in power. Beware that we, as citizens, never repeat the error of putting them in such a position again.

The notion that, in direct contravention of historical Judeo-Christian ethics, any means can be justified by an appropriate end has been discredited throughout human history. All major ethical theories from Socrates and Plato to Hume to Kant universally reject the horrors resulting from that concept. The Republicans leaders and their supportive followers in our government have been on the wrong side of ethics, on the wrong side of history and on the wrong side of common human decency. Theirs have been nothing but a series of pure rationalizations for embracing a lust for power through fear, torture and illegality. We are all indeed fortunate that these charlatans are no longer in power. Beware that we, as citizens, never repeat the error of putting them in such a position again.

Does the US want to be part of the civilized world community or does its see itself on the level as North Korea, Egypt, Iraq, Uganda???.?

Maybe all YOU care about is whether torture works...I don't. It is morally wrong and against the law. Nixon wasn't above the law and neither is Bush. End of discussion.

What I find most disgusting is that we have troops in prison for these acts. But we now know that Congress ??? both parties ??? knew about it and by action or inaction, sanctioned it. They let those kids go to trial and now sit back and do nothing while they are imprisoned. Where???s the outrage over that? These kids deserve pardons.