Obama’s sheer stupidity is breathtaking.

- Wilson was being tortured for being an individual with wants, hopes, and dreams that were not state sanctioned

Right (except the “Wilson” part). But let’s complete the thought. Why is the state repressing citizens in Orwell’s universe? Because it is inherently evil and sadistic and hates hope and happiness? Recall that in 1984 the proles are allowed to be as happy as they please, as long as they stay out of politics.

Or is it because it has come to see hope and happiness among the Outer Party members as a threat to stability–and therefore deems repression and torture as necessary to protect itself, and, by extension, its citizens?

Orwell’s point is that justifying the means via the ends is a road you probably don’t want to travel.

You are a stunning example of the kind of ethical malaise and confusion that moral relativism produces.

And, btw, what “Americans” stood in for Wilson? We’re talking about illegal combatants here, aka terrorists, the same type of people the Geneva Conventions allow us to summarily execute. As for believing the tripe trotted out by these terrorists whenever someone is stupid enough to give them a microphone, you also conveniently ignore how the AQ training materials specifically tell them exactly how and what to lie about wrt their treatment, and this piece of trash is quoting it chapter and verse.

You, like so many other useless fellow travelers of your ilk, are all far too willing to believe the word of the worst people humanity has to offer over your own countrymen and women who are standing between you and the barbarians. I seriously think you need to look in the mirror and ask yourself just why and when you went so far off the rails that adopting that kind of attitude actually makes you think you have superior morals to everyone else. I suspect that you, like so many other leftists, are projecting how you’d like to treat your political and ideological opponents.

So if we capture bin Laden, we can only deal with him now in a penal, law enforcement capacity rather than use effective methods for intelligence gathering.

If “effective methods for intelligence gathering” happen to be illegal, why not use normal political process and work toward formally legalizing these torture enhanced interrogation techniques, instead of using secret memos?

But seriously, Clinton can blast away a whole nation as Lorica noted and used the same scenario to justify our involvement to this day in Sarajevo. How much are we spending thru NATO to rebuild their infrastructure?

Of course, they are waiting for that Spanish judge to adjudicate GITMO and torture….that is what they really want to do, thereby appeasing the rest of the world.

Alchemist, you’re using a favorite stupid tactic. Sure, there were some mistakes made. But when you base your entire argument on a few mistakes and apply those mistakes to all actions you abandon your argument in favor of clouding the real issue with smoke and mirrors. Nice try, but thinking people don’t buy into that. You may wish to espouse that crap on a blog where such arguments are accepted with the unthinking acceptance shown by all those with “the vision”.

I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you wanted to read about the beatings too.

Abu Zubaida said interrogators wrapped a towel around his neck and slammed him into a plywood wall mounted in his cell. He was also repeatedly slapped in the face, he said. After the beatings, he was placed in coffinlike wooden boxes in which he was forced to crouch, with no light and a restricted air supply, he said.

“The stress on my legs held in this position meant my wounds both in my leg and stomach became very painful,” he told the ICRC.

Or like this?

Often using the detainee’s own words, the report offers a harrowing view of conditions at the secret prisons, where prisoners were told they were being taken “to the verge of death and back,” according to one excerpt. During interrogations, the captives were routinely beaten, doused with cold water and slammed head-first into walls. Between sessions, they were stripped of clothing, bombarded with loud music, exposed to cold temperatures, and deprived of sleep and solid food for days on end. Some detainees described being forced to stand for days, with their arms shackled above them, wearing only diapers.

“On a daily basis . . . a collar was looped around my neck and then used to slam me against the walls of the interrogation room,” the report quotes detainee Tawfiq bin Attash, also known as Walid Muhammad bin Attash, as saying. Later, he said, he was wrapped in a plastic sheet while cold water was “poured onto my body with buckets.” He added: “I would be wrapped inside the sheet with cold water for several minutes. Then I would be taken for interrogation.

It’s not 1 technique that’s the issue, it’s 12-14 techniques used to together until someone is desperate pain. You don’t have to beat someone into bruising, you can chain them in place and let gravity do that (it’s a preferred technique in muslim prisons).

Even sleep deprivation, alone can cause such severe hallucinations that the individual can longer tell the difference between reality and illusion. Afterwords applying the insect is not all that different from applying the rat. Many reports indicate that the victim feels ‘stinging’ even though it doesn’t exist. (BTW: this was Stalin’s favorite…)

If the brain can differentiate reality, the torture is still very much real. I understand the difference. It just seems that you’re perfectly happy letting americans stand in for wilson.

I like Jacobson’s reminder that what is immoral is not necessarily illegal.

By releasing these memos, BHO has as Mukasey and Hayden assert, effectively tied not just his own hands, but those of any future president should we need to reinstate those techniques.

So if we capture bin Laden, we can only deal with him now in a penal, law enforcement capacity rather than use effective methods for intelligence gathering.

Bah. Weakness. Sarkozy was right.

@Tim: no real-life government would ever admit they torture only “for the sake of torture”. It’s always justified by some kind of threat, real or perceived, and always with the intent of saving “countless innocent lives”

Are our agent’s six year old naive children who would take that information and then fire off missiles…..

No Kate the 6 year old idiots who fired cruise missles at nobody in order to destroy nothing left with the Clinton administration. – Lorica