[quote name='dopa345']You introduced the constitutional issue so I was just giving my opinion. As far as I can tell, you are willing to extend constitutional rights to terrorists and I'm not. And again you're twisting the scope of the point. Nobody "likes" torture. I think most rational people can agree that torture is distasteful but if you are asking if I want to live in the country that has the stones to do what is needed to protect its citizens including torture as needed in selected cases? Absolutely. Would I condone torture as a routine interrogation method? Absolutely not.[/quote]
Well, maybe not full constitutional rights, but many the core beliefs behind them, such as defined by international law (many of which contain the same protections). Innocent until proven guilty, fair trial cruel and inhuman punishment, etc. I don't think it's a question of who has bigger balls, I think that's rhetoric. Enacting or extending our definitions of torture by means of state policy opens up the door to torture being a routine interrogation method.
But I dunno, say the guy who has the information you want is an American citizen, do you torture him? On something as basic as this i find it hard to justify seeing it abominable to torture a guy from Illinois but perfectly fine to torture a guy from Istanbul. We're supposed to believe that all men are created equal, does that not mean all men are afforded some basic rights?
It's obviously a metaphor to illustrate a point. And you're right, society had agreed on basic rules of conduct. But I don't see the terrorists following through with that. Forgive yet another metaphor but how can you expect someone to play the game fairly if the other side is cheating and not only that, you know they are cheating?
That's what separates us from them. That is what we're supposedly fighting against. Does not lowering ourselves to their level make our job harder? Maybe, but being the good guy often is harder, that's our burden to bear. To tear down one's societal beliefs in an effort to fight an enemy that is bent on
tearing down our societal beliefs seems ass backwards.
The terrorists, as evidenced by 9/11, are very well in our midst. We're not a war with another nation, we're at war with fanatics that transcend nationality and borders. However, at least you are conceding that there are certain circumstances in which you would consider torture as an acceptable option (though you would wait until things got REALLY bad then think about it). That's a start.
I will concede that if we were in a situation similar to Israels and the rest of North America converted to Islam with the exception of say, New Jersey, and we were engaged in open warfare across the continent, ok, maybe then we'd have to rethink our policy on many things.
(edit - I wanted to add that while I understand Israel's belief that their rather extreme situation justifies a rather extreme response, i don't necessarily agree or condone it.)
So now are you conceding then if there was definitely proof that torture was an effective means for obtaining information then you would consider it? More progress.
I don't concede that at all. In the admittedly limited research I've done on the topic, I can't seem to find a single investigation or study that says that torture is a reliable interrogation technique, I see a lot of opinion to the contrary, but no evidence.
There is no full-proof way to extract information. But torture has a chance to work, how can you not take advantage of it when the stakes are so high?
If I took a guys 12 year old daughter and made him watch as I raped and tortured her, he might give up some information, how can we not take advantage of that when the stakes are so high?
Where do you draw the line? At what point have we gone to far? We've had this debate before as a culture, and we've come to the conclusion that torture isn't reasonable.
If we torture, what's to stop Iran from torture, or North Korea, or China, or any number of countries we may someday find ourselves in a conflict with? Dick (Nick?) Greggory asked this of the President yesterday and never got a real answer out of him: Say a US spy is captured in Iran or North Korea and they are tortured, tried, convicted and sentenced to death on classified evidence he wasn't allowed access to, we'd be ok with that?
So is that a yes? No? I'm still not sure what your answer would be. I'm just asking what you would do if it were your call. A simple "yes" or "no" would suffice. Just in case I didn't make myself clear since I don't like waffling on issues, put me down for a "yes".
Then, no.
The Constitution and Bill of Rights were not meant to be a monolithic, unevolving docutment. The founding fathers had the foresight to understand that they could not envision every single circumstance and allowed a means to change it as society changed. Otherwise we would still be considering non-whites as only 3/5 of a person and women wouldn't be able to vote. It was obviously meant to be a dynamic document to adjust to the times.
Then go for a constitutional amendment to redefine the 8th Amendment. Good luck with that.
What scares me is the 'retroactive' part of the administrations bill. They've already done this, now they want to cover their asses before the elections because they know they're fvcked if the opposition gets investigative powers, or worse, when the 11 guys being transferred from the CIA secret prisons to Gitmo get a hold of a lawyer.
ing two year old?
