| HappySqurriel said: I agree that it is wrong for the government to break its own laws, and it is wrong to torture people but the main reason why waterboarding is "Inappropriate" rather than "Wrong" is because I don't think that it is torture ... but I do believe it is in a dangerous grey area. What I was refering to as far as leeway is in creating discomfort in order to be able to alieviate that discomfort in exchange for co-operation. If you only allow a prisoner to sleep 4 to 6 hours a night it is certainly uncomfortable, but it is not particularly damaging (I did it throughout school because I worked and went to school full time, and the choice was sleep or study), and the same can be said about other methods employed like playing repetitive music. |
I'm not saying the government should have no leeway, I'm just saying that the dangerous grey area is a place we should not go. My attitude is the information we obtain is not worth it, no matter the costs.
The fact that we did the things we did at Abu Ghraib and the fact that we waterboarded people was a rallying point for terrorists. It legitimized their claims that we were really the evil ones. How many terrorists did we help create with those actions? I bet it was a lot more than the number of terrorists that information helped stop. So honestly, even from a military standpoint, I do not think that kind of behavior is effective. We lose our credibility with foreign countries, we lose credibility with the people whose hearts and minds we are supposed to be winning, and even the credibility of the American people. That's just way too high of a cost that helped turn Iraq into another Vietnam.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
