Obama Might Open a "Torture Commission"

[RI Bills Fan]

Point One - Torture is effective when the torturer already knows the answers that he or she wants the torturee to give to the questions being asked. That is why torture was used so successfully in midevil times and by totalitarian regimes.

 

"We know you are a terrorist! Just confess and the ______________ will stop!"

 

Point two - The idea is to defeat the terrorists, not to become them. We can either hold the "Moral high Ground" or dive headfirst into the cesspool. Doing the right thing is the American Way. It is supposed to be what separates us from them and makes us better than them. But if we only do it when it's the easy thing to do then we are on our way to becoming them.

 

Point Three - Treating prisoners in a humane fashion and using proven psychological incentives to gain their trust and confidence is a vastly superior method of interrogation when compared to torture when getting truthful answers to the questions is the goal. I'm not saying it's 100% effective because it isn't I'm just saying you're more likely to get truthful answers.

 

Point four - 24 is a television show, not real life. Jack Bauer doesn't exist. Get over it.

[Kelly the Dog]

Okay, so I am against most forms of torture. And I really don't wish much harm to come to people that aren't trying to kill Americans. But, there is something to be said for justice.

[Johnny Coli]

Okay, so I am against most forms of torture. And I really don't wish much harm to come to people that aren't trying to kill Americans. But, there is something to be said for justice.

 

Where'd they attach the tube that allows them to drain her of bile?

[Gene Frenkle]

 

Where'd they attach the tube that allows them to drain her of bile?

She may actually have to start expelling sh-- from a more traditional orifice.

[The Dean]

Okay, so I am against most forms of torture. And I really don't wish much harm to come to people that aren't trying to kill Americans. But, there is something to be said for justice.

 

 

Oh. my!

 

 

BTW, am I mistaken, or are some people in this thread actually arguing that a Torture Commission, and a strong stand against torture, are BAD things?

[ExiledInIllinois]

Actually, that reflects less any intentional ambiguity, and more that I fretted over the structure of the second sentence. ("Torture intended to confuse..." just seemed clumsy to me.)

 

 

Probably why you had molsen and me all in a tizzy...

[ExiledInIllinois]

Parenting 101:

 

The more you scream and yell... Stomp you feet and act like a clown parent... The more the child's "power antenna" goes down and the station turns to "static." In my best Peanuts: "Waw, waw waw, waaaaaw."

 

It is a hard trap not to fall into as a parent though! Sometimes you just want to beat the information into or out of them!

 

I would assume, interrogation methods fall into a similar situation? Especially with relgious zealots.

[Johnny Coli]

BTW, am I mistaken, or are some people in this thread actually arguing that a Torture Commission, and a strong stand against torture, are BAD things?

You are not mistaken. I believe some are even taking the position that torture is perfectly acceptable, even though it doesn't work.

[Gene Frenkle]

You are not mistaken. I believe some are even taking the position that torture is perfectly acceptable, even though it doesn't work.

Stats are for losers!

[ExiledInIllinois]

I still remember my father saying when he was in the Army... He went to "escape and evasion school." He joked about it because they asked him: "What are you going to do when they start pulling your finger nails out?" My father said: "I am going to tell them everything I know under the Geneva Convention... Name, Rank, Serial #... And secondly, if they capture me, I am not going to no anything, I am just a private... You are the person that knows who is going to know something!"

 

And you wonder where I get it from...

 

[erynthered]

We should give all our enemy combatants free legal advice , and free shelter. Free Health care too. Freakin retards

[The Dean]

We should give all our enemy combatants free legal advice , and free shelter. Free Health care too. Freakin retards

 

 

Indeed. Apparently, the only two available options are torture, or exquisite treatment.

[ExiledInIllinois]

Why don't we just put a chip in them and don't tell them... Set them free and watch where they go and what they do...

 

We are taking about the international rhelm and not domestically?

[erynthered]

Indeed. Apparently, the only two available options are torture, or exquisite treatment.

 

 

You forgot government bailouts. Thats torture for our children.

[PromoTheRobot]

That will do WONDERS for our security and effectiveness of the agencies that carry out these operations. Next, in the spirit of cooperation, the DoD can release to China the blueprints to the JSF and F-22 weapons systems!

 

Even if youre against the Bush's policies vis a vis interrogation, anybody with even a PEA for a brain has to admit that "making as much of our conterterrorism operations public" has to be one of the DUMBEST ideas on the planet.

Same arguments that were made after Apartheid fell in South Africa. Same arguments as in Chile after Pinochet. Funny how the guilty never want to look back on "mistakes" made.

 

PTR

[Chef Jim]

Confess, Confess, Confess!!

[RkFast]

A liberal would rather give comfort to an American enemy than an American Citizen. They would rather see Sarah Palin or Ann Coulter destroyed and "silenced" than Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

 

Disgusting.

 

And yeah...sorry..Id like to see the masterminds of 9/11 and ALL the enemeies of this Nation who plot to kill us strung up by their balls and destroyed. If that makes me "sink to their level" then so be it. BTW...there is one person who agrees with me....

 

OUR NEW PRESIDENT.

[RkFast]

Same arguments that were made after Apartheid fell in South Africa. Same arguments as in Chile after Pinochet. Funny how the guilty never want to look back on "mistakes" made.

 

PTR

 

I never said dont do that. I like the suble comparison of the Bush Administration to Apartied and dictators, though. Very realistic, that.

 

I said dont make our entire counterterrorism operation public knowledge. Why is it that liberals feel our enemeies will "play nice" and wont use this divulged information to their benefit?

 

How about this:

 

The US carries out its interrogation practices to the same exact standards as the rest of the so-called "civilized world?" The same as Germany and Europe. Russia. And yes.....China.

 

Whats good and "works" for them should be just fine for us?

 

Seems fair to me.

[GG]

Never mind that most of this is a cya political ploy to ensure that when they don't change the current policies, they'll have cover of the commission's exoneration.

 

btw, Mr. Gates, nice to have you back.

[RkFast]

www.michellemalkin.com

 

Playing games at Gitmo

by Michelle Malkin

Creators Syndicate

Copyright 2008

 

The human rights crowd is right: Life is hard for a Guantanamo Bay detainee. The deprivation is unspeakable. Their brains have not been “stimulated” enough, according to the facility’s “cultural advisor.” Which is why this Thanksgiving, America is drawing up plans to provide the 250 or so suspected jihadists at the “notoriously Spartan” detention camp with basic sustenance including movie nights, art classes, English language lessons, and “Game Boy-like” electronic devices, according to the Miami Herald.

 

Next up: Wii Fit, Guitar Hero, Sudoku, People magazine, and macramé. Anything less would be uncivilized.

 

On a deadly serious note, the detainees aren’t the only ones playing games at Gitmo. Some top legal advisors and supporters of Barack Obama, whose name detainees chanted on election night, are now rethinking the President-elect’s absolutist campaign position on shutting the center down and flooding our mainland courts with every last enemy combatant designee. Yes, reality bites – and Democrats must now grapple with the very real possibility that an Obama administration could potentially release a Gitmo denizen who would turn around and commit mass terrorist acts on American soil or abroad.

 

Nothing clarifies the mind like a jihadi boomerang. Never before have an administration and its followers matured so quickly in office – and they haven’t even taken office yet. While Obama paid lip service to the “Close the Gitmo gulag!” agenda on 60 Minutes over the weekend, his kitchen cabinet is proceeding more pragmatically. Believe it or not, the Obama crowd is now contemplating a preventive detention law and an alternative judicial system for the most sensitive national security cases involving the most highly classified information. Information that has no place being aired in the civilian courts for public consumption.

 

Listen to relentless Bush critic David Cole, who told the New York Times last week: “You can’t be a purist and say there’s never any circumstance in which a democratic society can preventively detain someone.” Added Ben Wittes of the Brookings Institution: “I’m afraid of people getting released in the name of human rights and doing terrible things.”

 

Moreover, Obama transition team members have suggested to the Wall Street Journal that despite his campaign season CIA-bashing, “Obama may decide he wants to keep the road open in certain cases for the CIA to use techniques not approved by the military, but with much greater oversight.”

 

Next thing you know, they’ll start arguing that the world has been fooled by years of sob-story propaganda about the Gitmo detainees — funded by Kuwaiti government-subsidized lawyers who cast them all as innocent potato farmers and schmucks dazed and confused on battlefields.

 

Next thing you know, they’ll rediscover the facts that detainees have systematically lied and exaggerated stories about mistreatment at Gitmo and that interrogators and military personnel have bent over backwards to accommodate their personal and religious needs and wants.

 

Next thing you know, they’ll start reminding us that dozens of former Gitmo detainees have been released and recaptured on the battlefield while committing acts of terrorism.

 

Funny, when President Bush and his homeland security team realized these very realities seven years ago, they were branded terrorists and hounded relentlessly by Congress, the media, and the Left. When Attorney General Michael Mukasey eloquently defended these administration’s counter-terrorism policies at the Federalist Society before he collapsed, he was heckled as a “tyrant.” And when I wrote my second book expounding on this very thesis, I was branded a racist and fascist whose ideas exploring the proper balance between security and civil liberties had no place in public discourse.

 

Now, at long last, some liberals have realized that the sacred goal of “regain[ing] America’s moral stature in the world,” as Obama put it, may be less important than ensuring that al Qaeda killers don’t strike on American ground again.