Carter: America tortures
 

CNN Story

On the other hand, don't forget it's an election year (and a half)

Well, he does have a point.

Americans have certainly tortured prisoners in the recent past.

Not to mention the Extraordinary Renditions process.

Is there even a question? When the Bush administration lists all the tortures that they've classified as not officially torture, that's pretty much an admission of guilt.

Look, if the price of freedom is secret imprisonment and torture we should all be willing...

Carter is: a) a modern-day Democrat, with all that implies, and b) the guy whose Administration couldn't win at the Iranian hostage rescue.

I didn't vote for him either, but -- full disclosure -- mostly out of apathy. Enthusiasm for politics didn't develop until later.

To bad that does not qualify as torture or you might actually have a point.

But of course we could talk about the treatment of the Irish by the British if you want to look at a country in the western world who set the standards in modern times for the treatment and torture of prisoners.

Not in itself, but it is only done in order to enable torture.

Says who? you?

Everybody. There's no other reason to do it.

Everybody who?

Why of course there is, for interrogation. I fully support it.

don't tase me bro!

But we are not talking about the British - are we. We are talking about Americans who love, endorse, and advocate torture. TheMercenary loves torture? Or does TheMercenary oppose torture by Americans? Based upon a political agenda that supersedes ethics, my bet is that TheMercenary loves Americans doing torture. It is synonymous with those who love and support Cheney - who also publically advocated torture. So which is it, TheMercenary? Do you love torture or do you oppose torture? ... not that I believe he has the balls to answer without being elusive.

I love for us to do whatever it takes to win. We don't torture. Although we do have some people who went over the line in the forms of abuse of detained persons, and many of them were punished. Some were not punished. Now tw, define torture. List all of the things you think are torture that you know the US has used on detained persons in an effort to extract information. I bet you don't have the balls to do it. Do you?

Water-boarding is torture.

Oh hell yes. We treated them appallingly.

Doesn't in any way alter the fact that America has given up its moral highground on torture, 'disappearances' in the form of extraordinary renditions, and indefinite imprisonment without legal process.

Interrogation by torture.

Says who?

Nawwww... :p

Says the fact that they're taking people to secret prisons in torture-friendly countries.

More fraternity pranks being called torture. Puh-leeze. :rolleyes:

Well here's what actual torture is, so that we remember the difference between this and turning the thermostat down.

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive...2torture1.html

http://cellar.org/2007/aqtorture1.jpg

http://cellar.org/2007/aqtorture2.jpg

http://cellar.org/2007/aqtorture4.jpg

http://cellar.org/2007/aqtorture5.jpg

Just because our techniques aren't as brutal as Al-Qaeda's methods doesn't make it any more right or justified.

I totally disagree.

We're so firmly in semantics-land here, that just to say what we do is "torture" puts us in moral equivalence with, you know, actual torture, things that nobody disagrees is torture.

And that's where the argument is now: Carter says "America tortures", by his definition of torture, which he has expanded as wide as he can because then we don't have an argument about whether it's ok to slap somebody. Stuff your mama did to you as a kid is now "torture". Stuff you would do to win a $100 bet is now "torture". Stuff weaker than any 15 second segment of Jackass is now "torture". And why. Because it's the only way to win the argument.

Right on -- we can even do more than that. Some people have been able to fast for as many as thirty days or more and they did it willingly. Imagine what kind of great information we could extract if we withheld food for even longer periods of time! Bring them right to the edge of death and make them talk. In the end it isn't torture -- not a mark on 'em! They'll live. We never ratified -- never even signed -- the Inter-American Convention, so we can do everything from beat someone "less-than-severely" everyday for months on end to perform mock executions so often the prisoner suffers cardiac arrest or embolism from stress. Again: not torture! Death by natural causes, people pull pranks worse than this, etc etc.

On a parallel, I once had a neighbor with a husband who screamed, insulted, mocked, and called her worthless everyday for years while they were married. She had the nerve to call these non-physical events "abuse" and ended up saying she needed prescribed medication to keep the panic attacks away to function normally in society and sleep at night. Guy never laid a finger on her and now she says she's having trouble with relationships because someone yelled at her. Whatever. Geeze. My mom yelled at me when I was a kid and I turned out just fine. :rolleyes:

You've got it wrong. "Things that nobody disagrees is torture" is essentially the set of things that Al Qaeda does that we don't. You're the one in semantics-land, Mr. "Stuff your mama did to you as a kid".

Yay us that we aren't as bad as Al Qaeda, but it doesn't excuse the things that we do.

As long as you are ok with Americans being treated that way, then fine.
I'm not.
If we adopt the tactics of the enemy we ARE the enemy.

How is that not what's what I said. What AQ does, everybody agrees is torture. What we do, not everybody agrees is torture. The definers, such as Carter, call it torture in order to make the moral equivalency case.

But your line of thinking "we are not as bad as Al Qaeda" contains the notion that "we are bad", and now that is your starting point and you're working to prove it. You could just as easily start with "Al Qaeda does much MUCH worse things than we do, 999 times out of 1000, ordered and instructed from the top, motivated by inhumanity as a part of their very nature... and that is what makes Al Qaeda bad and us good. That said, we are overdue for discussions and instruction about where the limits are and why."

But you didn't, and that suggests to me that you are shooting at that moral equivalency notion and I don't understand why.

That is the beauty and curse, depends on which way you take it, of American media. President Carter can say what we do is torture and then someone else can look into it deeper, make a rebuttal, than someone else can take a different viewpoint, make an opinion, and so on. That is the best available way to take at this issue on a subjective topic such as this. It is also the best way to learn.

For my personal view on the topic, I can see how slapping can be considered torture since torture is so situational. If I am a guard and need to take a prisoner somewhere and he resists, so I pistol whip him, that will usually not be seen as torture. But, if I take two kids, this actually happened by the way in Greece, and force them to slap each other as hard as they can while all the guards chant and mock them without any greater purpose, I would definitely consider that torture because it is pointless entertainment for the guards on the behalf of the prisoners. Pistol-whipping is without a doubt considered more brutal than slapping, but when put in different situations, one comes out much worse than the other because of intentions.

When we look farther into the topic, we get a greater understanding and can then make a better judgment on how we should react.

I don't see how that makes us "good". I am not suggesting moral equivalency because the scenario can never allow it with such different environments, but Al Qaeda should not be a factor in this discussion at all. If your child is getting C's in math and he points out that he is doing better than his neighbor, who gets F's consistently, how would that make your child good at math? Whenever I brought up that excuse my father always said that what he is doing doesn't matter and looking back my father was right, and I believe that should also be applied to this situation. What Al Qaeda is doing should not determine how we treat our prisoners since we live in different environments and should strive for different goals, doing so only seems like a cop-out to me unless you can show me otherwise.

Only because it's us saying it's not. Before we were doing it we agreed that it was. That's why the Bush administration had to issue new definitions of torture.

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Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This
tor·ture /ˈtɔrtʃər/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[tawr-cher] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation noun, verb, -tured, -tur·ing.
–noun 1. the act of inflicting excruciating pain, as punishment or revenge, as a means of getting a confession or information, or for sheer cruelty.
2. a method of inflicting such pain.
3. Often, tortures. the pain or suffering caused or undergone.
4. extreme anguish of body or mind; agony.
5. a cause of severe pain or anguish.
–verb (used with object) 6. to subject to torture.
7. to afflict with severe pain of body or mind: My back is torturing me.
8. to force or extort by torture: We'll torture the truth from his lips!
9. to twist, force, or bring into some unnatural position or form: trees tortured by storms.
10. to distort or pervert (language, meaning, etc.).


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[Origin: 1530–40; < LL tortūra a twisting, torment, torture. See tort, -ure]

—Related forms
tor·tur·a·ble, adjective
tor·tured·ly, adverb
tor·tur·er, noun
tor·ture·some, adjective
tor·tur·ing·ly, adverb


—Synonyms 6. See torment.
Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1)
Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.
American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This tor·ture (tôr'chər) Pronunciation Key
n.

Infliction of severe physical pain as a means of punishment or coercion.
An instrument or a method for inflicting such pain.
Excruciating physical or mental pain; agony: the torture of waiting in suspense.
Something causing severe pain or anguish.

tr.v. tor·tured, tor·tur·ing, tor·tures

To subject (a person or an animal) to torture.
To bring great physical or mental pain upon (another). See Synonyms at afflict.
To twist or turn abnormally; distort: torture a rule to make it fit a case.


[Middle English, from Old French, from Late Latin tortūra, from Latin tortus, past participle of torquēre, to twist; see terkw- in Indo-European roots.]

tor'tur·er n.

(Download Now or Buy the Book) The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
Online Etymology Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This
torture (n.)

c.1495 (implied in torturous), from M.Fr. torture "infliction of great pain, great pain, agony," from L.L. torture "a twisting, writhing, torture, torment," from stem of L. torquere "to twist, turn, wind, wring, distort" (see thwart). The verb is 1588, from the noun. Tortuous "full of twists" is recorded from 1426.

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
WordNet - Cite This Source - Share This torture

noun
1. extreme mental distress [syn: anguish]
2. unbearable physical pain
3. intense feelings of suffering; acute mental or physical pain; "an agony of doubt"; "the torments of the damned" [syn: agony]
4. the act of distorting something so it seems to mean something it was not intended to mean [syn: distortion]
5. the deliberate, systematic, or wanton infliction of physical or mental suffering by one or more persons in an attempt to force another person to yield information or to make a confession or for any other reason; "it required unnatural torturing to extract a confession"

verb
1. torment emotionally or mentally [syn: torment]
2. subject to torture; "The sinners will be tormented in Hell, according to the Bible"

WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University.
Kernerman English Multilingual Dictionary (Beta Version) - Cite This Source - Share This
torture [ˈtoːtʃə] verb

to treat (someone) cruelly or painfully, as a punishment, or in order to make him/her confess something, give information etc
Example: He tortured his prisoners; She was tortured by rheumatism/jealousy.

All examples fairly clearly state that the definition of torture includes mental pain or anguish.

How do you like them semantics?

And none of them includes the phrases "organ failure" or "shock the conscience", as per the Bush administration's redefinitions.

You can't think of any other reason why we might revisit the official definitions, other than there was a new administration?

If you have a suspect that's believed to possess crucial intelligence about a planned terrorist attack, do you waterboard him? What if his psych profile indicates that's the only way to get that information out of him in 24 hours?

Because we want do do something that was previously considered torture, or because we've already started doing something that was previously considered torture. Those are the two possibilities that I see.

This thread is torture. I'm suffering severe mental anguish just reading it. :alien:

That's a sure sign that the right wing is winning the war on torture, to see even poor Aliantha tortured like this.

I thought it was a war on terror? Oh hang on, it's about freeing Iraq. Oh no wait, we're still looking for that slippery little sucker Bin Laden.

Gosh, I'm so confused. I think I'll go have a tim tam!

As of 9/11, everything changed. We face a newly exposed enemy that has a quite different nature than any we've encountered before, requiring a different type of war.

The previous rules were set up for an enemy that didn't routinely use torture because we didn't want it used against us, and we wanted the strongest possible definition. The new reality is based on an enemy that routinely beheads people for their recruitment videos. There's no question that they'd torture, and our rules are not something they pay attention to.

Just one?

If they don't pay attention to our rules, why bother to change them then? Isn't that in effect giving them the power because we're obviously paying more attention to their rules.

Your reading of pre-9/11 wars must have been a lot less descriptive than mine. Vietnam and World War II, specifically.

Every war since the dawn of man has had this "new reality" and every culture in which torture has played a part in war found it fully justified. This time is no different, except that many in the US are turning a blind eye to the benefits history provides.

"The major means of getting intelligence was to extract information by interrogating prisoners. Torture was an unavoidable necessity. Murdering and burying them follows naturally. You do it so you won't be found out. I believed and acted this way because I was convinced of what I was doing. We carried out our duty as instructed by our masters. We did it for the sake of our country. From our filial obligation to our ancestors. On the battlefield, we never really considered the Chinese humans." -Uno Shintaro, former Japanese officer

The rules were written for the cold war.

Not everything. Torture is still wrong.The nature of the enemy is irrelevant. Torture is about the nature of ourselves. If that changed after 9-11, then we need to change it back.

So how many people here pontificating want us to win and al-Q to lose? Let's see those hands.

How many people think we're all losers for being in the situation we're in? Let's see those hands.

Sitting on mine, then: the reduction of the Non-Integrating Gap is a strategic necessity to reduce the world's troubles, which are much the likeliest to come from the Gap, compared with from the Global Functioning Core, Old or New.

Yes, Thomas P.M. Barnett has made quite an impression on me.

What our present Administration is doing is an actual attempt at this. Damned if I can see any legitimate objections to it, I can tell you. I see a lot of false, communisto-fascist-symp speciousness, but nothing any too legitimate by comparison with the goal of shrinking that Gap.

would you like to translate that to simple english UG. There are morons in the house.

Define "win" in the context of this "war".

That didn't change, just the definition did. The government defined it up... and you're defining it down.

Hearsay evidence.
Not proof.
No matter how much you want to believe it.

Good point. That is how we would win IMHO.

To late.

Not that it is happeing... that you feel it is how they should be treated, since it is how we treat their soldiers.

I'm leaving it where it was. The government "defining it up" is an admission of guilt.

Except that torture, or being put in fear of death and pain are notorious for producing unreliable information. Given how fucking pathetic our (US and USA) intelligence was on little matters like the WMD in Iraq, I don't trust them to have any real clue as to who they're torturing, and the likely result IMO is that innocent, or barely involved, individuals, with no real information to offer, will instead scream out whatever names they can come up with.

I don't know how much you trust your police and internal security personnel, but an innocent man was gunned down on faulty intelligence on the London Tube. In that instance the intelligence and surveillance led to a shooting: it could just as easily have led to an arrest and interrogation. If such methods as simulated drowing and sleep deprivation were employed with that innocent, and incorrectly identified man, what's the betting he'd have come up with something to tell them after a few weeks?

And now I'm wondering which was worse. Dying without being tortured or being tortured then spending the next however long in prison.

Yes well, the question has been asked, how do you define winning this conflict? When do you think enough is enough? How many more people have to be killed?

Knowing that your nation is no better than their enemy... that your pride is now misplaced.