GolfHos

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/22/mancow-waterboarded-video_n_206906.html

Man up, sissy.

It's crazy how much government sanctioned torture goes on...

i.e.  http://www.fairchild.af.mil/library/factsheets/factsheet_print.asp?fsID=3771&page=1

You can't be *goshdarn* serious.

As a heart attack.  Tens of thousands of American servicemen have gone through SERE and every last one of them has been subjected to harsher treatment than 99.9% of the prisoners poor, innocent victims of the evil Bush regime.  If you happen upon a graduate in your circle ask for a few details. 

"But they volunteered!!!" cry the apologists.  Well, so did the bad guys.

But then I'm not big on coddling terrorists.  *fudge* 'em I say.  If they want to attack our country they're going to get their just deserts.  Everyone wants to apologize for how terrible our military is treating our enemies.  Feel free to not apologize for me and all the other "wingnuts".

I know my opinion is not the flavor of the month so go ahead and pile on.   [sm_mob]

[Thus pigeonholed as having the IQ of a PopTart for not towing the libtard line, Uisce links off to his compound in Idaho or maybe just to church along with all the other morons.]

Let's see what former Navy Seal and SERE graduate Jesse Ventura has to say about this:

Mdn6GscYTuw

Still as great on the stick as he ever was!

Isn't part of volunteering that you can also QUIT whenever you want to? Are SERE "participants" tortured against their will? Are they not taught techniques on how to endure said torture? AND are they not afforded the "privilege" of stopping any torture simulation whenever they want it stopped? This "privilege" is what Mancow Muller and Christopher Hitchens had, and it's the same privilege that blowhard Hannity will have if he ever develops the backbone to experience the simulation himself.

This statement appears to show a fundamental misunderstanding of just what it is that we're talking about.

Torture wasn't being used as a punishment, it was being used in an attempt to gain information.

Historically, it's been used to get information that conforms to a preexisting conclusion that's already been drawn by the torturer.

There isn't any reason to believe that isn't the case here, either.

That leads to:


Pretty sure it was the military loving Bush Administration that presided over the trial of service members accused of 'Mistreating' prisoners. It also becomes clearer that these military members thought they were behaving in an appropriate manner, and were actually following a protocol designed and implemented by the CIA and other intelligence services.

Why did ShrubCo throw them under the bus? is a real question that needs answered.

 
Edited lest I be accused of being a mean old librul beating up on Real 'Merkans 'cause I'm an *bunghole*.

What's fundamental is that disagreeing with the left earns you a label. 

I'm very much a middle of the road guy politically.  I think the Bush Administration was fairly useless.  I think Obama at least has the potential to do some good but I stop short of declaring him The Great Black Hope.  I'm a greenie but not militant about it.  I'm a fiscal conservative (which as you know does not equate to Republican.)  I think helping others is a good thing but I think I am better at it than the federal government.  Reduce my tax burden and I promise I'll accomplish good things with some of it and I'll keep a sharp eye on administration costs.  I think war is a bad thing but sometimes necessary.  I think Sean Hannity is a gob*feces*e just like Bill Maher and Al Franken.  How would it be if any of them could find a moderate position once in a while?  We'll never know.

So on and so forth. 

So I have no problem with the idea of torturing those bollocks whether it be for intel purposes or punishment.  Am I concerned about the process of determining WHO should be tortured?  Absolutely.  I'm not happy about the blinder they pulled on us there.  But torturing bona fide terrorists?  Green light all the way. 

I'm probably just fundamentally misunderstanding things.  How could it be otherwise?  Liberal = intellectual superman.  Other than = dumbass.  Isn't that how it's played these days?  Obviously the conservative talking heads earn a lot, maybe even all, of the *feces* that flies their way.  I don't think all of us who refuse to adhere to the lefty group think deserve the condescension thrown our way.

[And as much as I disagree with you on many of these things MFAWG I definitely recognize you as one who often does call a spade a spade even if it flies in the face of the standard liberal position.  I think we can disagree on this without your first sentence questioning my intelligence (the rest of your post is thoughtful and although I disagree with your conclusion on line #4 I have no problem with anything you say.)  Those digs are what bug people like me about some on the left.  I wish they'd a position without calling every conservative/Christian names.]

 [sm_thumbsup2]

And supporting Obama earns you a label of "socialist" from the wingnuts.

It's interesting that you mention Maher in the same sentence as Hannity and Franken when Maher fancies himself a libertarian and is critical of both the right and left, although he's been far more critical of the right as of late (and with good reason obviously).

To be fair, neither side (if we are to believe there are only two) seems to have a monopoly on condescension, hurling epithets, or claiming intellectual superiority. I agree, if fewer insults and labels were bandied about, it would make everyone a lot more credible in their relative position. I'm not a "can't we all get along" type, per se, as there are hills I would choose to die on and I'm passionate about them and unwilling to compromise.

To me the question is not one of whether terrorists deserve to be tortured, or have otherwise asked for it, but whether America, with all of our claimed moral high ground can afford to have our reputation sullied in such a manner. We are a country who (supposedly) respects the law, and we signed the Geneva Convention. The Geneva Convention forbids torture. I don't think we, again as a law-respecting country, can simply say "yeah, but they aren't good people, so it's okay." I don't believe the way to fight barbarism is to act like barbarians. If we are truly to be the beacon on the hill that we seem to believe we are, that carries with it some responsibility to act that way.

I agree that Al Franken is a gob*feces*e.

Or facist.  Or both in the same sentence which is puzzling.  I certainly don't suggest that the situation is one sided.  There are people on the far right who bug me at least as much as the far lefties.  However, I hang out a little bit here and in both reality and fantasy land I have friends among you.  I don't care what the wingnuts call me.  I kinda do care what those friends and acquaintances call me.  I took a long break from this place in the election season partially because it was nothing but an onslaught of smarmy threads demeaning people who hold positions other than liberal ones.


I was identifying gob*feces*es.  Maher can fancy himself whatever he wants but one thing is for sure - he's an *bunghole*.  As I was pointing out the extremists on all sides do not have my respect.  Maher, by any measure, is an extremist as are all people who hate everyone equally.

And if by "of late" you mean his entire career I'll agree with you.   :)

Yeah, in general I think the example we set for the world is important.  When it comes to terrorism I think it's a different game.  I love to read Irish history and it is beyond doubt that Collins/Barry/Lynch/etc. and their guerilla warfare tactics were critical in a small, illegal army in an occupied land taking down the most powerful country in the world.  Obviously it helped that the UK were distracted by a little thing called WWI but you can't take it away from the Irish nationalists.  Even just the 20th century gives us many other examples of a guerilla army beating or stalemating a world power. 

But the terrorists we're dealing with don't even have a base reluctance to kill civilians.  In fact, that's an explicit goal of theirs.  They want to wipe out our will to fight by any means necessary.  They hate us and want to destroy us - all of us - and they put out videos telling us just that.  These sort take a different approach.  I'm not sure using torture will allow us to win (I think the war on terror is not winnable, it is only manageable at best) but it'll allow us to save civilian lives, perhaps large numbers of civilian lives.  Good enough for me.

And how's this for a lefty position...

I absolutely believe that a Manhatten Project for alternative fuels is our best bet for neutralizing those whackos.  Develop the technology, figure out how to make it affordable and give it away to the rest of the world.  Within five years the Gulf nations supporting terrorism will revert to the dung piles they were prior to 75-100 years ago. 

We should be developing alternative fuels for the purpose of saving this planet. As for the whackos, I'm more concerned about the whackos here who aren't ideologically much different from the whackos over there. The only difference is in the tactics used to achieve their goals.

The problem is that we're treating this as a war on terror when it's actually war on religious fanaticism.

The guy is a comedian--not a politician. His job is to ridicule everyone, and his easiest targets are bat*feces*, nutjobs who've been flocking to the GOP since the Bush/Quayle "Family Values" Administration.  As for his own political positions, what's so extremist about them that make him an *bunghole*? That he wants drugs legalized? That he wants the government out of our personal lives? That he believes that our healthcare problem is mostly a personal responsibility problem?

See, you can't resist.  Any far right myopics in the GOP were there long before the Bush/Quayle administration.  So are the bat*feces* nutjobs the Reagan Democrat types?  Are they the otherwise centrist Christians who see the over-secularization of America as a problem and believe the GOP is on their side?   Are they those who who have believed in family values since before Family Values?  I've never voted for a Democrat for POTUS but I'm pretty sure I have for every other office on the ballot - especially at the local-to-state levels.  Am I a bat*feces* nutjob?

I could be wrong you've never given me reason to believe that you believe ANY conservatives rise above swamp creature intelligence.  Even people like me with positions borrowed from both sides.  Maybe you ARE tolerant/respectful of us but if so it's hard to tell.

re:  Maher.  Nor is Hannity a politician.  They are both policital commentators.  Maher is vaguely funny at times so I'll concede he's a comedian of sorts but he's mainly a pundit pure and simple.  The biggest difference in style between he and Hannity is that he says *fudge* more often.  Some of his positions I share but I still believe he's an *bunghole*.  LOL, I share far more of his positions than I do Hannity's.  Maher is mean.  He demeans anyone with whom he doesn't agree.  He goes after them in personal ways.  He doesn't come off as making a joke.  He comes off as a bully.  That's why he's an *bunghole*.  It's not the extremity of his positions that makes him an *bunghole*. 

Religious fanaticism is a belief system.  Terror is a means to and end.  They are not mutually exclusive.  In fact, they are very often very closely tied.

But if there are approaches targeting the belief system I'm all for giving them a try. 

I tend to think that the "they hate us and they want to destroy us" talking point is a bit over inflated. I honestly don't believe they'd really give two *feces*s about us if we were to stay out of the political workings of their side of the globe. If they control the lion's share of the world's oil reserves, well sometimes the cookie crumbles in the other guy's favor and you are forced to bargain from an unfavorable position, that's life. And let's be fair, the Palestinians did get sort of screwed with the whole Israel thing, regardless of which side believes they staked their historic claim on the land first.

Do we have a right to protect our own interests? Sure. Do they have a right to protect theirs? Damn right. Good guys and bad guys tend to be created by which ideology you better recognize. When we were kids and we played cowboys and indians, didn't most of us want to be the cowboys? I know I did. Indians were bad guys. As adults, can we honestly say that the indians didn't have a right to fight for what was theirs, regardless of who wore a white hat? (Yes, I am fully aware that this is really nothing more than libtard self-loathing.)

As for torture, if we are to ignore its legality and focus solely on its effectiveness, my understanding is that the only solid information we were able to extract from torture simply served to corroborate what we already knew from other intelligence gathering sources. Is that worth sacrificing our moral high ground? To me it's not.

It is also my understanding that during the 183 (or whatever the number was) water-boardings of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, we were actually able to get him to admit a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Now, does that prove that there was an actual link between the two, or does it show that sometimes when a guy is being tortured, he'll tell you what he believes you want to hear, whether it's factual or not?

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