B.C.

[tw]

From today's comics-
Teacher: Who can tell me what the Geneva Convention was about? Johnny?

Johnny: They worked out a civilized way of hurting and maiming people.

[BigV]

/wipes coffee from display/

Thanks, that was funny!

[glatt]

B.C. is one of the worst comics. Unfortunately, it is drawn well, so my eye often lands on it. It's not until I read half way through the thing that I realize what I'm doing and force myself to stop. What a waste of comic page space.

Today's was amusing though.

[BigV]

This on the heels of numerous reports on what qualifies as "torture".

I can understand the difficulty in the intellectual exercise of trying to find the bright line of what is and isn't torture. Is putting a hood on a prisoner torture? No... What if the hood is left on for three days? How about standing with arms outstretched? No... for hours. Loud noise, bright lights, sleep deprivation... What about all these combined? Wait. Stop.

You know, I can remember having conversations way (waaay) back with my pals, and one of the unanswerable questions was "Is this love?" Girls on the brain at the time.... The best answer we came up with is that if you have to ask, then the answer is probably "no". Now my understanding of love has matured and deepened considerably since then, but the deja vu here is powerful.

If I have to ask "Is this torture?", then I probably have crossed some threshold in my psyche, my conscience has alerted me to something important, and in this case wrong. If I have to ask, then the answer is probably "yes". Any more than a little noodling around with that question and a dangerous transformation has taken place. The question morphs from "is it.." to "how can I justify my actions...", a much sadder and easier question to answer.

You want a bright line? Fine. Try this on. Imagine the roles were reversed--picture an image of one of our team hooded, stressed, deprived, held without charge and beyond the law, in the hands of the enemy. Same conditions, but the positions are reversed. Now ask the question--is my guy being tortured, or merely being subjected to "extreme interrogation techniques". (I swear to G-d I heard that on the radio today.) Is it torture? I thought so. Any double-standard double-talk is just rationalization, justification, *NOT* a change in the truth about whether it's torture or not.

And this goes for the (stupid disgusting self serving fear mongering) hypothetical situation of the "ticking timebomb or ticking terrorist". What level of physical (or mental--still possible to torture and leave physically intact) is acceptable in the case of a prisoner who is suspected of having information about an impending attack on (fill in a sufficient number of people to scare yourself here) nnn people. Maybe it's possible to justify it. But that doesn't make torture something else.

And the saddest part is, if we torture, how are we different? In what way are we better? What, besides words, distinguishes us from "them"?

[Happy Monkey]

Under Gonzales' definition of torture, John McCain wasn't tortured in Vietnam.

[mrnoodle]

If an enemy has information that you need to keep your own people alive or help them win the war, at what point do you stop trying to extract that information? Can we only question the willing? If we catch someone planting a roadside IED and want to know where he got it, who from, and how many more there are, what are our options? Ask once (nicely, don't verbally assault the poor man), then shrug our shoulders and leave when he tells us to go fuck ourselves?

I think it may depend on who you're torturing. Sounds barbaric, but in every otherwise civilized nation, there are people who work as blunt instruments, who use unsavory methods to get information that that country needs. That, to me anyway, strikes a different moral tone than a militia group who breaks the fingers of anyone who doesn't like them.

[jaguar]

pity it's so ineffective & sometimes counterproductive.
Good article I read a while back here

hy·poc·ri·sy:

That, to me anyway, strikes a different moral tone than a militia group who breaks the fingers of anyone who doesn't like them.

Long as only the good guys are doing it. Only baddies torture people, goodies only put them in stress positions. Everyone knows that. Goodies would never torture people and if they did it would be for a good reason, which makes it ok. Craven apologist.

[tw]

Originally Posted by mrnoodle

If an enemy has information that you need to keep your own people alive or help them win the war, at what point do you stop trying to extract that information?

Someone always uses common sense conclusions to assume torture will get the answer. Guess what. Torture gets lies. Again, why did Powell go before the UN to declare Al Qaeda and Saddam were in cahoots? Because they tortured people and got the answers they wanted; reality be damned.

Torture not only gets lies. It makes even more enemies and results in more American deaths. Why did so many US troops survive WWII? The Germans knew Americans did not torture; were civil people. Germans fought to the death against the Russians - causing increased Russian deaths.

Eliminate the knee jerk reaction that torture does good. Instead apply lessons of history and psychology. You want the truth. Don't torture. Spend that time using other sly methods - so that what they confess has merit. Torture is why we wasted so much money on fictional Orange Alert threats. Where were those terrorist attacks on the Golden Gate Bridge and Prudental Building? Torture also explains 800 prisoners, in Guantanamo where the actual number of guilty may be as small as 14. So what did all this torture accomplish besides many phoney Orange Alerts? It made more enemies. More reasons to attack Americans - even by others who were once Ameircan allies. More confessions that were fiction. Torture only gets from him what you want him to say. That's the reality so proven by history.

[mrnoodle]

I'm not saying it's the answer. I'm asking for an effective way of getting information from an ENEMY (you can look that up if your dictionaries are still out). I'm not sure where the hypocrisy accusation comes from.

Yes. It's ok to be mean to bad guys. Their feelings don't count. People who take up arms against us will be shot, beat, or otherwise subdued until they stop doing it. If they want a holy war, they'll get it. I don't understand the disconnect here. The army is not there as a social engineering study. It's there to win a war. Putting them on a short leash because someone decided to let civilian lawyers dictate military procedure is a travesty.

Craven apologist? I didn't even like Nightmare on Elm Street.

[mrnoodle]

tw, your security clearance must be stratospheric for you to not only know which terrorist threats were real and which were imagined, but to know from what source we got the information, and how many of our prisoners were being held without merit.

I buy the "torture only yields lies" theory though. Still, what's a viable alternative for day-to-day field intelligence in a war zone?

[Elspode]

I like BC...I've been reading it since I was in the sixth grade, and that was a very long time ago...

I do note that it has trended in a decidedly more religious direction over the years, though. Mostly, it remains secular, and at least somewhat amusing.

[jaguar]

read the article I linked to and you might understand.

[mrnoodle]

i got as far as the word "french" and had to quit reading. I'll go back to it tonight when i'm in less of a snarky mood.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by mrnoodle

I buy the "torture only yields lies" theory though. Still, what's a viable alternative for day-to-day field intelligence in a war zone?

Wow. Did you realize that your question assumes that torture is the current method for day-to-day field intelligence in a war zone?

[Happy Monkey]

And as for B.C., here's an amusing site.