[Jill]

Originally Posted by classicman

No I won't. I'm done with this discussion for now. As tw pointed out my opinions are irrelevant since they disagree with his.

I'm not really interested in what tw thinks of your opinion. Since I'm the one engaging you in this discussion, it should only matter that I don't think your opinions are irrelevant.

What I believe is that you've formulated your opinions based on erroneous information that you have relied upon as being factual. It is my hope that pointing you to the sources from which I've formed my opinion, you might come to a different conclusion than the one you currently have.

Originally Posted by tw

Lying is routine: demonstrated when Jill challenged you to support your accusations with facts.

tw, much as I appreciate your support, you have (probably unintentionally) misrepresented my response to classicman. He didn't make any "accusations", he said that there were cites here that contradicted the ones I provided. So I went back to look for them. What I found did not seem to support his contention, so I asked him to point me to what I might have missed.

Then I took those cites I thought he might have intended as countering mine, read them thoroughly and pointed out what I consider to be unreliable and contradictory accounts. It is now incumbent upon him to consider my assessment of those cites and either acknowledge that they don't, after all, support the argument he was making, or counter my assessment of them. He's not likely to do either when the peanut gallery is shouting 'LIAR' from the bleachers.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

How exterminating the savage and the brutal diminishes us in any moral dimension quite escapes me, Jill. Performing damage control is simply sensible.

In some circumstances it very well might be. What my cites support, is that in the case of torturing people we've rounded up and imprisoned, it is not sensible in any way to torture them.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

We won against Germany, Italy, and Japan by showing the hard visage of war and outfighting them -- outcontending them in the field they themselves chose. Did this turn us into fascists of any description? It did not.

You conflate two entirely different sets of circumstances and attempt to draw parallels that don't exist. I have no problem "outfighting" the enemy on the battlefield. Especially since I'm a Jew, you can be damn sure I have no complaints about beating the crap out of Hitler in the war he started.

And I sure as hell have no sympathy for terrorists, either. But what I have attempted to show you, is that the methods our government and its agents used against them while they were in our care, custody and control, does not produce the results you claim it does.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

As Hannity puts it, "Let not your heart be troubled" on that score. Countervailing violence is defensible violence, and I for one defend it, and I think I can overwhelm all your arguments against it. Don't mistake the distasteful for the unnecessary. Remember it is distasteful to be murdered.

No, I'm afraid you'll never overwhelm any of my arguments against it, though you're certainly free to try.

I do not mistake the distasteful for the unnecessary. There are many necessary aspects of war that I find distasteful, yet fully support. Torture is not one of them. It is not only distasteful, but it is, in point of fact, unnecessary. That I believe I have proven with my cited evidence; torture does not produce reliable results. The FBI, who knew more about Al Qaida than anyone in the world, obtained that information by non-violent interrogation methods long before the CIA and outside agents stepped in and took over with their "enhanced" interrogation methods.

The kind of abuse inflicted upon our prisoners is not the kind that produces good intelligence, but the kind that produces more terrorists.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

I am happy to agree their ability to actually damage us is small in the grand scheme of things. Nonetheless, that does not mean they should be allowed to damage. They are the transgressors thereby.

On that we completely agree.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Their transgressions must be kept bootless and fruitless, that they may cease to transgress. Or become too dead to manage a transgression. This is what those who are clear on the matter want.

If those methods actually provided the result of keeping them bootless and fruitless, you might have an argument to make in its favor. As it doesn't, the only thing I've been able to glean from your points is that you just want revenge. You simply like the idea of beating the crap out of these guys, tough luck if it kills them. Somehow that makes you feel bigger, better, stronger. The reality is that it does only diminish us.