Save — I’d LOVE to hear your response to the fact that the United States has been violating the Geneva Convention for the last four years.

There’s no such thing as the ticking time bomb scenario. No one has ever presented evidence outside of the movies that this scenario has ever played out in reality. No one has ever given any verifiable evidence that torture has been used to save lives in such a scenario. Dugger says he would only allow torture in such a scenario and then only envisions that such a case would only come along rarely. So why is he totally wrong? Because his “ticking time bomb” scenario practically guarantees the kind of scenario were seeing now in the NSA-scandal: law enforcement agents making determinations of probably cause that will lead to the violation of civil liberties without any kind of oversight. In other words, the ticking time bomb scenario begins by totally trashing due process. Dugger doesn’t give a shit because he doesn’t care about the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the principles of freedom and human rights that this country was founded on. Simple as that. He would grant the state the power to use the very same tactics used by Nazis, Stalin and dozens of repressive regimes around the world. In other words, Dugger is a fascist.

how many dead innocents OK with you before you would allow any kind of torture of even one terrorist?

Um, how shall I put this? Oh, I know, let me quote Perry Mason: “you have assumed facts not in evidence”.

Who says that torture will prevent the death of innocents?

Torture  doesn t work. There are better ways to deal with captives, CIA director Porter Goss told the Senate Intelligence Committee on February 16…(snip) And a recently declassified memo written by an FBI official in Guantánamo states that extreme coercion produced  nothing more than what FBI got using simple investigative techniques.

Dugger, your friendly neighbourhood straw consumer.

Bonus round: What kind of animal eats a lot of hay? C’mon folks, just channel your inner Alex Corrigan and the answer will come to you.

Dugger

Dugger,

Knowing your sober outlook, I did not believe you would assign Carte Blanche to torture, willy-nilly. But, as I have said the damage this Admin has done through their ham-handedness is going to make future unilateral, quick responses from our military much more difficult after Congress rolls back Executive powers due to the real or perceived abuses of this White House.

Thanks to them, even if true (as Bush said yesterday) they are severely limiting the (torture) who is going to believe him? Remember the childhood story, “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”?

A lot of folks blame Congress for the shackles placed on the
Intelligence Services leading up to 9/11.

Does anyone recall why
that oversight was exercised by Congress?: Iran-Contra brought that on.

When does the torture end? And more importantly, how many tortured US POW s are you ready to accept in order to keep the weapon of torture for us? Because we can t very well torture, while we expect others not to torture our soldiers

I’ve always lived my life under the credo I was taught in my youth, which is if one American isn’t free, none of us are free. It’s a shame that the right doesn’t love our country. They must not, they certainly don’t believe in the ideals on which it was created.

http://www.goarmy.com

As Perry Mason would say, you have assumed facts not in evidence. I have said and do say I would permit torture under certain tightly controlled conditons. That I would not be a moral coward like certain current prominent politicians who are supporting the anti-torture law, but are also smart enough to acknowledge that there may be times when leaders will need to break said law (in the ticking time bomb scenario). Your example seems to assume that there would be blank check torturing of all terrorists suspects which I have never said and would not condone. For me the argument is: is it wise to absolutley ban all torturing? Considering an extreme ticking time bomb metaphor, I say no.

Perhaps a problem is that, per my scenario, I envision two or three times in my lifetime when torturing might be used by the good guys, and the left (you?) think it will become a near every day practice with be-Birkenstocked hippies being made to listen to Slim Whitman day and night.

Dugger

http://goarmy.com

You wouldn’t want to go back on your word would you?

Sign up or shut up.

I am unwilling to forego what makes America great, which is the ideals put forth in the Founding Documents.

So, in your view, WW II and the Civil War weren’t worth winning, since we had to resort to Internment and Martial Law in order to win those.

Gotcha.

As a ‘teacher’ what would you do with a student who repeatedly ducks a question?

I have no desire to harass so I shall drop the point, we both know what has happened here.

Dugger

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2302-2005Jan11.html

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/06/18/torture_1/index_np.html

http://www.amnestyusa.org/stoptorture/officersquotes.html

From the Army Field Manual:

“Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear.”

And so it goes… This all covers the absurd argument that as many as 1/3 of the U.S. population have been saved…maybe…by effective use of torture (that would be almost 100,000,000 people for the census impaired). You can bag and tag the crap that all captured “enemy combatants” are al-Qaeda or even remotely connected, given the easily Googled stories of inncocent civilians held for years, tortured in places like Syria (I thought they were terrorist supporters…oh wait), and eventually released without so mush as a “oops.”

http://www.amnestyusa.org/stoptorture/torturetest/

BTW, the comparison of Vietnam to Iraq isn’t soley predicated on the number of casualties (though, in fact, Iraq has seen more U.S. casualties to date than Vietnam did after 3 years. The big surge in fatalities in Vietnam didn’t begin until after 1964). It’s primarily about the deceptive and often illegal practices employed by government officials to first drag the country into war and later to keep the conflict going. How is Bush’s argument that letting Iraq fall to the “terrorists” (see also, boogeyman) any different than the “Domino Theory” argument in Vietnam? Weren’t we exporting Democracy to Southeast Asia, too? Say, I seem to remember Reagan exporting democracy to Nicaragua via Iran, too, though less effectively than the way G.W. has handled Venezuela (failed coup)and Haiti(successful coup).

I’m sure the inevitable response will be something along the lines of “mumble…mumble…COMMIE LEFTISTS!…mumble…mumble…DAMN LIBERALS!…mumble…mumble…YOU’LL KILL US ALL!” The Right seems to have adopted the position that the world is round until the Left says so…then it’s obviously flat…and stop encouraging the terrorists!

I love the argument that any wrong doing by a Dem in the past nullifies any wrongdoing by Bush in the present (which apparently includes WWI and WWII). I’ll have to use that logic on my kids.

“Dad, Olivia is hitting me!!!”

“Stop it Olivia, you know that’s not allowed.”

“But Quinn punched me on Thanksgiving!”

“Oh,…well…that’s different…hammer away, then.”

I might add that the voting public may not love to hear that even terrorists are protected by the Geneva Conventions but there it is. It’s a convention that we are signatories to and thus we are bound to uphold it. I find it hard to believe that the voting public would love the idea that America is not good for its word.

The only time someone is not protected by the Geneva conventions is if they are nationals of a state that is not a signatory to the Conventions. So belonging to al-qaeda does not automatically disqualify someone from the Conventions protections, it only matters what country they claim as their nationality. Here’s a PDF file including the signatories to all Four Conventions:
http://www.icrc.org/IHL.nsf/(SPF)/party_main_treaties/$File/IHL_and_other_related_Treaties.pdf

Signatories include Afganhistan, Iraq, Saudia Arabia, Yemen, Indonesia etc.

Save –

YOu cited the Third Convention. Read The Fourth. It specifically states:

Article 4:
“Persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals.”

So those people who are, at any given time, in ANY MANNER WHATSOEVER, who find themselves in the hands of a Party to the conflict are protected under the convention. No mention of uniforms at all. In case you think this doesn’t include people engaging in hostilities, there’s article 5:

“Article 5

Where, in the territory of a Party to the conflict, the latter is satisfied that an individual protected person is definitely suspected of or engaged in activities hostile to the security of the State, such individual person shall not be entitled to claim such rights and privileges under the present Convention as would, if exercised in the favour of such individual person, be prejudicial to the security of such State.

Where in occupied territory an individual protected person is detained as a spy or saboteur, or as a person under definite suspicion of activity hostile to the security of the Occupying Power, such person shall, in those cases where absolute military security so requires, be regarded as having forfeited rights of communication under the present Convention.

In each case, such persons shall nevertheless be treated with humanity, and in case of trial, shall not be deprived of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed by the present Convention. They shall also be granted the full rights and privileges of a protected person under the present Convention at the earliest date consistent with the security of the State or Occupying Power, as the case may be.”

Check that last paragraph. It bascially says that even if a person is engaged in hostilities against the detaining party, while they lose the rights granted them under the convention, the State is still required to treat them humanely until their full rights under the Convention can be resotred at a later, but not interminable, date consistent with the State or Occupying power’s security. Essentially it means that we cannot torture or otherwise treat in a degrading manner anyone in our custody — even if they are hostiles — and that they must be afforded their full due process rights at as soon as is possible, consistent with security.

The Geneva conventions do not declare anyone an “unlawful combatant” because they guarantee that no one, not even terrorists, fall outside the protection of the law.

Isn’t it the Republican argument that we’re supposed to “do it” to our enemy (and the colateral multitude of innocents) before our enemy does it to us? That makes no sense.

If wars begat peace, this world would be an unimaginable utopia by now. Our history has seen war after war after war. When’s the peace coming all you Bush-loving bomb throwers? It’s not even on the radar!

With conservatives, the message says war is the only way. So we need Bush to transform the Middle East. And we need America to become as barbaric as our enemy.

It’s unfortunate that those of us who don’t go along with this insanity are labeled unpatriotic and cowardly. What’s fortunate is that is not the truth. Thank God! (and I mean the peace-loving God that Christian Republicans refuse to acknowledge).

Dugger;

Your assumption is that all caught in the dragnet are terrorists.
Can you show proof that each captive who has been subjected to
torture is truly one of the bad guys and not some marsh arab or Afghani farmer in the wrong place at the wrong time? Or is that germane to the torture advocates?

When does the torture end? And more importantly, how many tortured US POW’s are you ready to accept in order to keep the weapon of torture for us? Because we can’t very well torture, while we expect others not to torture our soldiers?