History Will Beat Them With A Stick

He' saying: Just win, baby

 

Joel,

I'm trying to be nice, so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're open to the possibility that you might be wrong.

I recommend this story. If you read it and still disagree, then OK.

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

Highlights:
Army Col. Stuart Herrington, a military intelligence specialist who conducted interrogations in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq during Desert Storm, and who was sent by the Pentagon in 2003 -- long before Abu Ghraib -- to assess interrogations in Iraq. Aside from its immorality and its illegality, says Herrington, torture is simply "not a good way to get information." In his experience, nine out of 10 people can be persuaded to talk with no "stress methods" at all, let alone cruel and unusual ones. Asked whether that would be true of religiously motivated fanatics, he says that the "batting average" might be lower: "perhaps six out of ten." And if you beat up the remaining four? "They'll just tell you anything to get you to stop."


...Worse, you'll have the other side effects of torture. It "endangers our soldiers on the battlefield by encouraging reciprocity." It does "damage to our country's image" and undermines our credibility in Iraq. That, in the long run, outweighs any theoretical benefit.

 

You need to master the blue font.

 

If we can't be civil on a thread extolling torture, all hope is lost.

 

If we can't preserve our right to torture, the terrorists have won.

 

that would explain the nagasaki bomb, then

 

Freedom for us, nuts to you!

 

All I know is we executed the Japanese officers who waterboarded our soldiers in WWII after prosecuting them as war criminals.
A war crime, no more, no less.
Bush and Cheney will be like Kissinger in a couple of years, unable to leave the country as the warrant from Hague sits waiting on them as they touchdown anywhere else in the world.

 

Yep, commit to endless war, in a civil war.

Sheer genius, I tell ya.

 

Clearly this is a moral issue, but it's also a practical one. Most of the evidence suggest that torture doesn't work, so what is the point, especially if it could lead to false information?

 

It just feels right somehow. Sometimes you have to go with your gut.

 

Huh??? Ridiculous how, exactly?
Here's a very simple notion ... the reason you "keep hearing" about an obligation to treat prisoners fairly is because our country signed off on some stuff they call the Geneva Conventions. The idea was pragmatic -- if you torture and mistreat people in time of war, you help ensure that your enemies will do just that when they capture your troops, as happens in every war.
If you are really a "moderate" --- and nothing you've posted in this thread would lead one to that conclusion -- there's another moderate named John McCain who feels torture does not work as an interrogation tool. He has some experience in this area.