Suck it up and stop your whining ... he he. Easy to say from my cozy day shift hours, huh?
To your Klaus Barbie analysis (if you can call it that)....
Let me first address badboy's comments. He is part of a long list of military personnel - up to and including the president - that have borne personal witness to how effective these techniques are. The president went as far as to say it saved American lives in a 1:1 ratio, and that is partly why the Dems completely and utterly lost this argument and are no longer pursuing it politically.
Now to Titus - if you want to go on the record and say that those bullet points, which we now practice, are - no matter how many lives they save - unconscionable based on your definition of morality, then fine. I disagree wholeheartedly and I think you're dead wrong, but reasonable people can disagree within the context of that argument. HOWEVER - don't give me this shit about Barbie and the Nazi's. I'm sure the author of that article correctly did his research and those were in fact recorded and defined techniques of the Nazis, but that IS NOT the extent of their crimes, as you well know, and THOSE specific bullet points are NOT the reason the word Nazi is synonymous with evil. Whatever was their written, prescribed method of "enhanced interrogation", it went miles further in practice. And I repeat, those techniques are not why they epitomize what man is capable of at his worst. To go back and find a technique that Waffen/SS/Nazi officials prescribed, that is similar to ours, and then claim THAT is the reason we should abandon their use is a disingenuous argument. The Nazi's also ate breakfast, some of them were professed Christians, and they drank beer as well - should we forsake all of those too? No. And neither shall we forsake effective techniques just because Klaus and co had them in their military field guide. Bottom line - those techniques aren't why they define evil, and you said as much, Titus, when citing your numbers: Klaus couldn't have killed 4,000 with these measures, so by definition he (and Nazi's in general) went far beyond them. And THAT is why they were wrong (along with so many more reasons of course). So please, it was clever, but no more of these false comparisons for sport, okay?
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5 comments:
Give me a break!
I’m not now, nor have I ever said that it was “these” points that made the Nazis the evil people they were. All I said was that the US defined those very actions as “torture” and “war crimes” in 1945-46, and that those definitions remained the same until THIS Administration decided to re-write the definition to better suit their agendas.
I have no evidence that either torture or “enhanced interrogation” brings about fruitful and useful intelligence information on a consistent basis. All I know is that the United States of America has laid down some very specific definitions about what is LEGAL in the course of an investigation and what is ILLEGAL… and all those bulleted points are clearly and unequivocally ILLEGAL under current US law.
I underdstand that argument Titus - that's so wierd by the way, callig you that. It's a cool screen name, don't get me wrong, but sometimes I'm gonna just write "Tom" - anyway, as I was saying, I understand that argument: either change the law or don't do it. You think either are preferrable as opposed to doing it while it's clearly illegal. What I gleened from reading your post - and correct me if I'm wrong - is that you were making the case that if it was in the Nazi "hand book" then surely there is something wrong with it. Was I assuming too much when I read the following ...?
"These crimes were defined by actions laid out in inter-governmental documents written by the Gestapo... actually, authored by the office of Klaus Barbie himself, the "Butcher of Lyon", who is credited with having tortured and killed as many as 4,000 French, Romani (Gypsy), Jewish and Catholic men, women and children... by his own hands... in the years he was Station Chief of the Nazi Gestapo in Lyon ... "None the less, each of those bulleted-items listed above are now accepted forms of "enhanced interrogation", according to the Bush Administration. The author of the afore mentioned article even made this point: the German word used to define the "bulleted" procedure in official Nazi terminology is "verscharfte vernehmung"... literally, "enhanced interrogation".
It appeared to me that you were further making the case that these "techniques" were reprehensible for us to apply due to their previous application by Nazi's 60 years ago. Were you not inferring just that? If not, and you were simply stating where the genesis for outlawing them arose, via Nuremberg, then I withdraw my assumption and the subsequent tounge lashing. So, clarify for me ... were you not making that connection? The Nazi's did it so therefore we shouldn't? Weren't you trying to further besmeerch the argument in favor of there use by pointing out it was a staple of the Nazi's ... on paper anyway? Am I wrong in that assumption?
Let me add something ... you said, "I have no evidence that either torture or “enhanced interrogation” brings about fruitful and useful intelligence information on a consistent basis. All I know is that the United States of America has laid down some very specific definitions about what is LEGAL ... "
T, that is SERIOUSLY brushing aside the public testimony that the PoTUS and various military officials have made that in certain instances these techiques have proven VERY useful. Kalid Sheik Mohammad (Atta's uncle and #3 to Bin Laden at one point) is a documented case in which waterboarding was used to elicit detailed information about an ongoing, but yet hatched, plot to commit a major terrorist attck in this nation. The plot was subsequently averted. The president described this in detail and you can research these events for yourself. OF COURSE there is documented evidence that demonstrates this works - don't just brush these instances aside as if they didn't happen by saying "I have no evidence this works ... all I know is it's illegal." In fact that is NOT all you know, you know damn well that officials have gone on the record publicly to say it has worked in the past. What do you say to that?
Now, the question is about the net gain. Is it in our best long term inbterests to behave this way, even if it can clearly yield short term results? I say that those charged with our security and whom are on the front line are best in a position to make that call and I for one am sure as hell not going to second geuss them when there hasn't been a single attack on my soil in 6 years!
In addition, is it the first resort or "always" the answer? No. But it is one tool in a myriad of resources that I certianly do not want to take away from our interrogators. And I find it rather arrogant for ANYONE sitting in the comfort of their home - or on the Senate floor as the case may be - to presume that they know better than those charged with our safety, living this war on the front lines day in and day out.
You are wrong in that assumption. I was making the point that the definition of "torture" as a war crime was made by American jurists at Nuremberg more than 60 years ago, and it was perfectly defensible until the War on Terror was declared.
What I find unfortunate (in the extreme) is that I still think the War on Terror is one of the most morally justifiable struggles that the US has ever been involved in... yet it is beyond our capability (according to the Bush apologists) to conduct it according to our own established LAWS.
If it is criminal to have these same procedures performed on an American citizen by a foreign national (or an American law enforcement agency), then how can it be acceptable for us to use it against someone else? Is our own system so flawed that it can't measure up to the practice of freedom and justice by our armed services and security agencies outside of the US? Is it applicable only to those people and societies that think and act like we do here in the USA?
Are we leading the "free world" by example in this area, or are we simply proving our own system to be as flawed and hypocritical as the ideologies we are combating?
One more thing... let's not forget that my priginal point was when is it a good policy to use such parallel policies in our own actions as the enemy regimes we fought in the past did. To use the same terminology as Barbie and the rest of the Gestapo agents across Europe seems a bit short-sighted on the part of the Administration, if you ask me. This isn't a new topic of debate... it's been raging since the inception of the GITMO faciility, yet no one in the Administration thought to re-word the terminology just a little?
Call it what you will... but I still call that frigging STUPID.
Excuse me? Where is the answer to my other point? I have pointed out documented cases of success with these techniques, so how do you address your ststement that "I have no evidence this works .." as part of your assailment of its practice?
And let me get this straight: if they chnage the name to say, "productive questioning" and can demonstrate to you documented cases where it works, i.e. saves actual American lives, then will you be ok with it? That seemed like a trivial point to me.
In addition, the suspension of HBabeus Corpus; the rifling through the letters of US citizenry's mail leaving this country; the interment of American's of Japanese descent - ALL clearly illegal, and ALL done by war time presidents now considered by history as "great leaders." Was it technically "legal", no - but did it save lives, probably.
Sorry pal, but this debate of executive power and "bending" the law for security during times of war has been around a LOT longer than the inception of GITMO. And I think Bush is in pretty elite company when you consider the presidents I was describing above.
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