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bachar
Trad climber
Mammoth Lakes, CA
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"countries that promote violence" - like the USA!
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Dick_Lugar
Trad climber
Indiana
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With being a "Superpower" comes "super responsibility" not to conduct pre-emptive attacks (unless in eminent danger) and the use of torture. Why haven't we been attacked since 9/11 Woody? I believe its a combination of things:
1. We've tightened up our homeland security and airport security where it should've been before 9/11.
2. Al Queda is probably content having US troops in Iraq. They can pick US troops off one by one with roadside bombs and snipers. They've doubled the body count from 9/11 and didn't even have to set foot in the US. Sounds pretty savvy to me. When we drop our guard again with either a repub. or dem admin, we'll probably get hit again on our soil or our new military outposts in the ME. They'll have plenty of recruits to carry one out thanks to our presence in Iraq and our leading to the deaths of countless civilians. Ebb and flow, ebb and flow.
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WoodySt
Trad climber
Riverside
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John,
US soldiers are already tortured by the insurgents or haven't you been paying attention to what's gone on in Iraq. Further, they do it, not for information, but for the pleasure of it.
I stand by my past statement that I would use torture under certain discrete conditions.
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GDavis
Trad climber
SoCal
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JB has obviously never played Halo!
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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How come there only seems to be one adult voice in this thread?
And, after all isn't torture a turn on for the N. Cal set.
Google Folsom street fair (images) and see what you get.
one of the milder examples
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Sparky
Trad climber
vagabon movin on
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Waterboarding...
Good enough for the Khymer Rouge. What's the big deal?
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graniteclimber
Trad climber
Nowhere
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We were able to win WW II and the Cold War without using torture. by using torture, George Bush is betraying America and American values. He is lowering himself to the level of the Nazis and he is dragging the country along with him.
Comparing someone to the Nazis is usually wild hyperbole, but I believe this is one of the rare exceptions when it is appropriate.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/05/AR2007100502492.html?hpid=topnews
Fort Hunt's Quiet Men Break Silence on WWII
Interrogators Fought 'Battle of Wits'
By Petula Dvorak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 6, 2007; Page A01
For six decades, they held their silence.
The group of World War II veterans kept a military code and the decorum of their generation, telling virtually no one of their top-secret work interrogating Nazi prisoners of war at Fort Hunt.
When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects.
Back then, they and their commanders wrestled with the morality of bugging prisoners' cells with listening devices. They felt bad about censoring letters. They took prisoners out for steak dinners to soften them up. They played games with them.
"We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess.
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WoodySt
Trad climber
Riverside
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That's laughable. No torture in WWII. I've studied the war most of my life: scores of general histories and autobiographies. There was plenty of torture. The fellows relating their approach above may well be telling the truth about themselves, but that's by far not the whole story or even close to the whole story. I find it difficult to believe that anyone could take what those fellows said and generalize it to claim no torture during WWII on the part of Americans. Be serious.
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GDavis
Trad climber
SoCal
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No torture in World War II, but Nagasaki and the japanese interment camps remain the black eye on our national face : (
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graniteclimber
Trad climber
Nowhere
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Read the story. It is primarily about Fort Hunt during WWII. During WWII, Fort Hunt was the equivalent of what the secret CIA prisons were in E. Europe following 9/11. "High value" Axis prisoners, such as captured U-Boat captains and the like, were taken there to be interrogated. Fort Hunt was top secret and while prisoners were there they officially did not exist. And yet they did not rely on torture to get information.
Torture was widely used in WWII, but not by Americans as part of any official policies. Sure there are always a few bad apples who break the rules, but they were exceptions to the rule.
What is laughable is how chicken-hawks who never saw war, never served in the armed forces, and weren't even born at the time, are so dismissive of eye-witnesses who where there on the spot and served their country with distinction.
One of the reasons why the U.S. followed the Geneva Convention was so that captured Americans would receive the same treatment. By and large, most Americans captured by the Nazis were not tortured.
When Bush redefines torture as not including repeated face slapping, exposure to freezing temperatures, and simulated drowning (or combinations of these), he is giving America's enemies a blank check to treat captured Americans the same way.
This also alienates the industrialized democracies in Asia and Europe that would otherwise by our natural allies.
It may not happen anytime soon, but I would not be surprised if during the next ten years we see an American captured while traveling abroad and put on trial and convicted of war crimes in the International Court in connection with America's post-9/11 excesses. If this were to happen it would be a serious blow to American prestige and a milestone marking America's decline. Like Serbian war criminals today, other Americans may have to avoid overseas travel to avoid possible prosecution.
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mooser
Trad climber
seattle
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Can anyone help me understand the statement that Bush makes again and again that: "The #1 job of the President is to keep America safe"? Cuz DANG!! If that's his job description, the best way he can fulfill it is to retire early.
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jstan
climber
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Mr. Bush has gotten closer to perfection that anyone I have ever seen. Really. When he says he is doing "A", you will be right 100.00000% of the time if you assume he is doing minus "A". He always does exactly the opposite of what he says. Since none of us is perfect I have to assume he has set up several review panels in the WH to assure this complete anticorrelation is achieved.
It is a great strategy for political control. Very smart. Has to be Rovian.
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graniteclimber
Trad climber
Nowhere
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An overwhelming majority of Americans believe that Bush is working against America's best interest. For the numbers to be go this low, many conservative Republicans no longer support Bush.
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