But Jay, my position is morally superior to yours because it’s based on higher principles than mere survival. It’s based on defending those principles in the face of danger instead of surrendering them at the first sign of threat.

Your only guiding principle is that the ends justify the means and you’ve ended up rationalizing an immoral means to satisfy an utterly fear-based end.

You suggest that I am equating our “professional interogators” with terrorists.
Remember, Jay, you’re the one who asserted at the beginning of this discussion that the morality of torture was subjective. Really? So why not the morality of terrorism? Is it because terrorists attack innocent people? But Jay, we sent an innocent Canadian man to Syria to be torture without ever bothering to check any of the evidence against him. Why? Because the torture was supposed to produce the evidence. And guess what? Under torture he confessed to training with terrorist in Pakistan — something that never actually happened.

The fact of the matter is that killing innocent people in a terrorist attack and waterboarding someone are morally equivalent acts because they both proceed from the premise that the ends justify the means.

The only morally acceptable position is to condemn both activities with equal force. That isn’t moral equivalence, Jay, that’s the objective morality defined.

So yes, Jay, I do have the morally superior position. So you can see why it would be utterly hypocritical to play nice with you.

And that’s exaclty the function of euphimism, Jay, so you can sleep while inhumane acts are being committed in your name.

And no, Jay, I was not being a dick. Supporting torture is morally repugnant and I would be betraying my own principles I said it was okay to agree to disagree on the issue. It is not okay to agree to disagree on this issue.

You couldn’t end it without resorting to being a dick could you? I guess you couldn’t take a shot to your rep in front of Factcheck and Midderpidge.

My position is not morally repugnant. Your position is morally bankrupt. Why? Because you hold this position that pretends to make you morally superior. You talk about justice and humanity, but it rests on the completely and utterly absurd notion that there is no moral difference between grabbing a guy by the shirt and slapping him in the stomach and those blow people up, cut of their heads, and fly airplanes into office buildings.

So you go ahead and puff your chest out and pat yourself on the back, congratulating yourself on your own selfish view of being a voice of reason in the arena of justice .

Me? I’ll take a thwarted terrorist attack and won’t lose a wink of sleep knowing the bastard who gave it up was made to feel cold or had to stand up for a long time.

In your mind, the highest moral calling for the government is the preservation of life.

Accordingly, if torture saves lives then it’s a moral good.

But you’ve got it all wrong.

The highest moral calling for our government should be preserving our way of life and the principles we stand for.

That is the moral basis upon which the government can compel its citizens (forcibly through a draft or voluntarily through moral appeals) to give up their lives in sacrifice for the greater good.

Torture runs counter to our way of life. Indeed, it is anathema to our basic principles as articulated in the Constitution. It doesn’t matter if the people we are torturing are not American citizens. “To torture” is not American. That’s what counts.

By advocating and practicing torture, the government abdicates its higher calling of preserving our way of life in order to satisfy a baser, fear-based desire to simply preserve life.

That’s why torture is wrong in all circumstances and that’s why your arguments are, as I said, so morally repugnant on every level.

First of all, my central argument against torture is that it is immoral because it flies in the face of human diginity. You can’t so easily sweep away the steady advancement of justice and human rights that has, for much of the modern era, centered crucially on the aboherrence and abolition of torture.

Like you said, Jay, “People are responsible for their own actions. It’s as simple as that.” and this administration, with the support of people like you, has decided to take us down an immoral path that can lead to no good end.

My point about the guarantees is simple. The only thing, in your argument, that abolsolves torture of its moral malignancy is is ability to save lives. Mind you, not simply its ability to truthful elicit information (which I have never denied), but specifically its ability to elicit information that will save lives.

This is, no mater how you want to slice, an argument that the ends justifies the means. But if the means can’t consistently produce the ends you’re looking for is it still worth it?

How do we justify the use of torture when it elicits merely information and not life saving information? Or what if, which is most likely, torture produces no useful information, that nevertheless requires us to spend resources following it up?

You tell me that torturing Khalid Sheik Mohammed saved 3,000 lives. Really? Only torture could have accomplished this task?

Not increased airport security? Not air marshalls? Not humint on the ground with more informers and investigators? Not better cooperation between law enforcement agencies? In short, only torture saved 3,000 lives and not the hundreds of other things that we could do keep us safer without:

1) Compromising our moral values
2) Radicalizing moderate populations
3) Corrupting our own system of justice

As to the secondpoint, I give you again the French experience in Algeria. The French lost the moral/political war in Algeria and at home because of reports of their extensive torture program. You can dismiss the contemporary response of moderate muslims but we dismiss the lessons of history at our peril.

And yes, Jay, we don’t agree but I won’t thank you for the discussion. Your position and reasoning is, quite frankly, morally repugnant on every level.

Frame, you haven’t said a word about any ‘guarantees’ until just recently, when it was proven that such tactics do work. So which is it? Are you opposed to using the techniques because of what you believe it means with regard to justice and human dignity or are you opposed to it because it cannot guarantee results?

I never argued that it guarantees results, therefore there is no burden on me.

You simply cannot compare our torture policies to our everday system of government because our system of torture has been designed specifically to avoid the checks and balances that our everyday justice system has built up over two hundred years of jurisprudence.

I’m not comparing the policies. I was merely pointing out your flawed argument about guarantees.

Our system of justice is designed to acknowledge human fallbility and error and is replete with checks and balances to ensure that innocent people are not sent to prison or executed. It recognizes that errors get made and above all, it is a transparent, open system.

Where’s the transparency and openness, not to mention, the checks and balances in the current system we’ve set up for torturing people? There is no transparency and openness. Indeed, there can’t be. That right there is a recipe for abuse, it doesn’t matter how professional you think our torturers are.

Frame, you are arguing a bogus point. These are not American citizens. They are not claimed by any country as they are not soldiers representing any particular country. They are not engaging in any form of conventional warfare. They’re playing different rules. We cannot site back and go through the same motions thinking that treating them like bank robbers is going to be effective.

Jay, we have some how surrvived as a nation for two hundred without officially sanctioning torture. Now you think we should. I’m afraid that put the burden ENTIRELY on you to make the case for why.

We have never faced an enemy like this in our existence Frame. Not all German soldiers in WWII were Nazis. Many of them were simply soldiers. And they fought with honor and dignity and within the boundaries of modern warfare.

This is an enemy that doesn’t play by the rules. For them, there is only one rule: kill as many as you possibly can by whatever means you can. We have to take extraordinary steps to deal with an enemy that is using extraordinary tactics in which to kill people – innocent people.

The fact of the matter is that we have other less morally onerous means of getting information from even harderened detainees that are efficient, are reliable and don’t produce such a counterproductive backlash.

You keep bringing this up and I keep having to remind you about Khalid Sheik Mohammed. He was subject to conventional interrogation methods. They did not work. Didn’t work Frame. Did not work. What worked? A combination of the six techniques I listed.

They were used as a last resort, and only used on a hard case like Mohammed. You’re under the impression that such tactics are going to be used on whim, when there is a long bureaucratic process of higher ups having to sign off before such tactics are used.

A planned attack on the Library Tower in LA was thwarted as the result of information we got from Mohammed. On a typical day, around 3,000 people work in the building.

Now, if the moderate Muslim world wants to get worked up over us using these tactics against somebody like Mohammed, then so be it. I would like to see such outrage directed at the very people like Mohammed who kill in the name of their religion, but I won’t hold my breath.

But why aren’t we using those techniques? Can you explain to me the rationale for using waterboarding but not electro shockor mock firing squads?

And, Jay, one plank of my argument is that torture is immoral, period. The other planks are that it is ineffective and inefficient and that it is counterproductive.

Obviously the last two arguments are subordinate to the first.

Torture is immoral because it violates every principle of justice, human dignity, individual rights and basic fairness that Western civilization has stuggled to articulate and defend for the last two centuries. Torture is inherently wrong because it always violates these principles and rights every time it is applied.

In rebuttal to this argument you have suggested that preserving modern Western principles of justice and rights should be subordinate to the good of saving lives. You make this assertion even though torture does not and cannot guarantee that lives will be saved.

So Jay, the burden is entirely upon you to suggest why, given the serious immorality that torture represents, we should nevertheless engage in it on the slim chance that it will produce some greater good. What is the rationale for using torture if it can’t guarantee it’s effectiveness?

You simply cannot compare our torture policies to our everday system of government because our system of torture has been designed specifically to avoid the checks and balances that our everyday justice system has built up over two hundred years of jurisprudence.

Our system of justice is designed to acknowledge human fallbility and error and is replete with checks and balances to ensure that innocent people are not sent to prison or executed. It recognizes that errors get made and above all, it is a transparent, open system.

Where’s the transparency and openness, not to mention, the checks and balances in the current system we’ve set up for torturing people? There is no transparency and openness. Indeed, there can’t be. That right there is a recipe for abuse, it doesn’t matter how professional you think our torturers are.

So here’s where it stands now: There is no guarantee that torture will ever save anyone’s life and there’s no system to adequately ensure that abuses of our torture policy (is that not he height of absuridity) don’t occur or that when they occur, those respoinsible will be punished. Indeed, the lack of openness and transparency virtually guarantees that abuses will go unreported or unpunished because only those involved in committing the abuses will even know that they ocurred.

At the same time, torture doesn’t only hold the potential to save lives. It also holds the potential to endanger lives. This is true because torture inflames moderate populations and that it has a high probability of producing false information that nevertheless must be followed up on, thus diverting resources from more effective and efficient methods of investigation and security.

Look at the French experience in Algeria. How much longer was that conflict prolonged BECAUSE torture and reports of torture radicalized otherwise moderate the local populations? The French ultimately lost that conflict and Algeria won its independence. Many historians have argued that this was the result of the French losing moral support both locally in Algeria and back at home as a direct result of its torture policies.

We know from such historical evidence that torture produces a noxious response from the populations against which is directed, in this case, arabs and muslims. But to turn around and demand that moderate muslims have to ignore their moral reaction and accept our reasoning for torture is simply asking to fail.

Jay, we have some how surrvived as a nation for two hundred without officially sanctioning torture. Now you think we should. I’m afraid that put the burden ENTIRELY on you to make the case for why.

Your sole defense comes down to your beleif that torture saves lives. I think I’ve made the case that there’s much, much more to it than that.

The fact of the matter is that we have other less morally onerous means of getting information from even harderened detainees that are efficient, are reliable and don’t produce such a counterproductive backlash.

The bottomline is that we can, in fact, save lives without compromising our morality.

Afterall, if saving more lives is what counts, why be bashful about techniques? If mock executions, electric shock or surgery could save lives, why aren’t we using these techniques? Are you going to argue that they aren’t effective for getting information? Really? Why?

But we’re not using those techniques, so let’s stick to what is being used.

As for the rest of your comment, what guarantees do we have in life other than death or taxes? Does our system of justice guarantee that no innocent person will be sent to jail? Does obeying all posted speed limits, wearing your seatbelt and having airbags guarantee you won’t be injured or killed in a car accident?

If you’re going to be opposed to what they are doing, then defend your position. Don’t try to back me into a corner by getting me to ‘admit’ that my position is incorrect because it cannot guarantee lives will be saved.

You support torture because the wrong that torture represents is outweighed by the good that torture can accomplish. That good, according to you, is measured by “numbers of lives saved.”

A couple of things flow from this position.

First of all, you can forget playing any more semantic games by calling things like waterboarding an “aggressive interogation technique.” Indeed, why are we even limiting ourselves to waterboarding? Why not bring back the rack or the iron maiden, you know, the full Spanish Inquisition?

Afterall, if saving more lives is what counts, why be bashful about techniques? If mock executions, electric shock or surgery could save lives, why aren’t we using these techniques? Are you going to argue that they aren’t effective for getting information? Really? Why?

But, Jay, let’s also return to your original statement:

“If the techniques used are able to prevent an attack — any attack — and lives are saved as a result, then what we’ve done is served humanity, not lost it.”

Now that ‘if’ at the beginning is a mighty big if. Since I know you don’t like to get hung up on absolutes I’m sure you will agree that torture will not save lives in every instance that it is applied. Afterall, there can be no guarantee that torture will always lead to saved lives.

Indeed, I think you will have to agree that this will be the case in most instances that we use torture. chances are in most instances torture will not lead to saved lives at all and thator that no direct correlation will be able to be made.

So in a sense you do not support torture because it saves lives, you support torture because, in your eyes, it has the potential to save lives.

But if saving lives is the only thing that redeems torture, and there’s no guarantee that torturing someone will lead to any lives saved, how can you justify the use of torture at all?

So to recap, is it morally acceptable to electrocute ten people on the outside chance that they might have information that would save one person’s life?

I believe that there are times when good can be achieved and it must be weighted against the wrong to be done in achieving it. We did’t just drop the bomb in Japan based on a whim. It was bad. Thousands of innocents died. But it also prevented a long, bloody and ultimately more violent war in the Pacific.

Jay, is it a mischaracherization of your position to say that you beleive the ends justify the means?

McVeigh was not part of a worldwide organization hell bent on the destruction of all of the ‘infidels.’ In addition, the interrogation techniques were are employing against people like Khalid Sheik Mohammed are not for punishment or even to elicit confessions. It’s used to gather information, and as I pointed out, it has been effective in that regard.

It doesn’t matter if our enemies have “no inkling”of what the word humanity means. We can still lose ours by acting inhumanely towards them.

No, we do not. If the techniques used are able to prevent an attack — any attack — and lives are saved as a result, then what we’ve done is served humanity, not lost it. We can no longer stand by and be reactive, going after these people only after they’ve killed tens, hundreds or even thousands.

But even these “machines” and “mosnters” have been shown to respond to less aggressive techniques if they are handled by professional interegators. There is a way to maintain our honor and dignity as a society and get the information we need.

And I have already stated that these techniques are only used when conventional interrogation methods do not work. Interrogators didn’t drag Khalid Sheik Mohammed and start grabbing his shirt or slapping him. They used conventional methods at first. Even before they started in with these methods, they used false threats like saying they were going to kill his family. His response? “They’ll be with Allah sooner.” It was at that point, they moved on to these other tactics.

So if this is a particularly odious quality of a terrorist, and a reason why we should not care that they are being tortured, what do we call it when our professional interogators show the same ability to physically harm another human being with pride and and without mercy?

This is a silly argument. You’re comparing people who took planes filled with fuel and people and slammed them into buildings loaded with more people to interrogators doing a job to gain information to prevent more of the same.

The Danish cartoon controversy was started when some cartoonists SET OUT to inflame muslim populations. Radicals in the muslim world then stoked that anger for their own ends. The Danish cartoon controversy was created and sustained by radicals on both sides in order to advance radical agendas. I have a right under the First Amendment to hand out racially inflammatory literature on the street. But would only do that if I was a radical racist who wanted to PROVOKE a negative reaction in order to then blame the people I just provoked. So using the Danish cartoon analogy is really a bad way to go Jay.

Oh here we go. It was the cartoonists fault and the newspapers fault. Give me a huge break. People are responsible for their own actions. It’s as simple as that. I guess Theo Van Gogh is to blame for his own murder. After all, doing a documentary on radical Islam was going to provoke a negative reaction. Therefore, he had it coming to him, right?

What rationale, moderate voice tells you that muslims around the world hate us because we arrest terrorists? What reasonable voice tells you that open and fair trials of these detainees would inflame the moderate muslim world? There’s no question that, like the Danish cartoon controversy, radicals would try to exploit whatever it is we do. But it would be that much harder for them to win the support of moderates if we weren’t detaining people without charge and if we weren’t torturing them.

And how did that change anything? What did we do before all of this Frame? What was it that set them off in 1993? 1996? 1998? 2000? 2001? I don’t recall us ‘alienating’ moderate Muslims throughout the late 80′s and early 90′s. Yet they still came at us. What was the response of the moderate Muslim world? “Oh that is horrible, but…”

It is not our job to pacify moderate Muslims in order for them to do what is right. It didn’t work before.

France used torture extensively as part of its counter-insurgency strategy in Algeria. Many of the techniques they used were, ironically, used y the Nazis against the French resistance during WWII.

I would ask Jay, since he believes torture is such an effective counter-insurgency tactic, why France eventually lost control of Algeria.

Jay spends 20 posts trying to prove everyone is just upset with Foley breaking the law while reserving the moral outrage for himself only, when in fact, everyone he accused of caring only for the legal aspects was using the emotional term “pedophile” while Jay argued that no one should use that because it doesn’t legally fit, proving he is only concerned with the legality of the situation while not caring about the morality aspects.

Jay, what is your problem? You goad me on and on about my fear of “debating” you in a public forum only to dissappear soon after I engage you on an issue of your choosing.

I gave a serious response to everyone of your points about America’s torture policies and you have yet, two days later, to give me your rebuttal. What’s up? You started this, remember?

Midderpidge nails it. The hypocrisy of the right on this issue is simply astonishing while your own personal hypocrisy is, well, expected.

Bravo Jay Caruso!