Politics – In this new book - Torture Team - the international lawyer Philippe Sands, a long time friend of America, describes what happened when the White House abandoned the policy of Abraham Lincoln, who in the middle of the Civil War told his generals that "military necessity does not admit of cruelty... nor of torture to extort confessions."
I see no problem with waterboarding to save American lives. It causes no permanent damage.
The real betrayal of American values is the Democrats wanting to turn us into a Socialist/Marxist Country.
America was founded to be a Capitalist Country and that is what made us a strong Nation. Free enterprise and the incentive to be a success is the backbone of our Country.
Take that away and you have a bunch of lazy zombies here with their palms up looking fore handouts from the rich. Then with no further incentive for the rich to be productive you have no new jobs and no incentive to get richer.
Our founding fathers are rolling in their graves over this one.
Our founding fathers had no concept of those who would become the welfare class. That class was created by discrimination and racism for the most part in the late 19th Century and through much of the 20th. For a free man with no good work is still inevitably a poor man.
It would be nice to think we are not in the grip of a Marxist reality today. The ruling class is surely gaining, not losing strength.
Sheer idiocy to think that deep fundamental change will come to a system that provides the greatest reward for those who discharge the system. Congress is not changing overnight. It would take decades, perhaps a century, barring a revolution, to implement real change. To eliminate the people and parties that now inhibit change and replace them with those who actually represent the people.
After the last 7 years of utter failure a change at the top would be welcome. Perhaps a bit ineffectual but welcome.
You don't agree that America has, in the past, tried to hold itself to a "higher standard?" You don't care that we are now lumped in with countries like Burma, China, etc. as torturers?
Who says Democrats are trying to turn America in to a Socialist / Marxist country? Based on what?
If it's solely on Universal Health Care, which many seem to call socialist, do you believe Canada is socialist? A single-payer system is not socialist medicine. Even if it is, are you saying the UK, our best friend, is Marxist?
Finally, you do know that the #1 cause of bankruptcy in America is unexpected medical emergencies?
The people who don't care about Universal Health Care are:
a) rich, don't need to care
b) Have a job WITH insurance and don't think to the future
c) not retired (see b)
d) have not or through relatives / friends, experienced the bankruptcy / financial ruin because of a medical emergency.
Do you think that the "bottom line" should decide who lives or dies?
Does the name automan, come for the automatic response of democrat/republican, you give for any issue?
The founding fathers forbade torture. Probably they did so because they were in the fight, not sending others to fight, and they faced it themselves.
George Washington forbade it.
You have no problem with torture, automan, because you have no values. You have traded the moral view for the vague 'american' idea that guns and money are the proper measure of strength; that the mere adherence to principle is a weakness.
An automan can tell us nothing of what is good or bad for those with souls.
automan909
"I see no problem with waterboarding to save American lives. It causes no permanent damage."
Two words for ya! " slippery slope! "
The whole purpose of setting up Guantánamo Bay is for torture. Why do this? Because you want to escape the rule of law. There is only one thing that you want to escape the rule of law to do, and that is to question people coercivelyâ;;what some people call torture. Guantánamo and the military commissions are implements for breaking the law. Why build a prison here when there are plenty of prisons in Nebraska? Why is it, when we see photos of Abu Ghraib, we think that it is "exporting Guantánamo"? That it is the "Guantánamo method"?
â;;Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift to the author, January 2007.
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/200...
From the Vanityfair post..
The fog surrounding Guantánamo had seemed to lift on June 29, 2006, when Hamdan v. Rumsfeldâ;;a case scholars have compared to Brown v. Board of Education in its ramifications for this countryâ;;was decided in the Supreme Court. The court struck down President Bush's military tribunals, declaring them illegal under long-established U.S. laws, the Geneva Conventions, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. In a 73-page opinion, the court said that the administration had established the tribunals without congressional authorization and violated international law. At first, the decision seemed a complete victory for Swift and all the other lawyers in and out of the jag Corps who had been fighting what they considered to be Draconian conditions at Guantánamo.
Continued:
The victory, however, was short-lived. On October 17, President Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, creating a new system of interrogating and prosecuting terrorism suspects and denying the 430 prisoners at Guantánamo and others around the world the right to file writs of habeas corpus. "The constitutional issue could not be more stark," Swift declared. "What they are doing is unprecedented."
I guess that you'll have to experience a little waterboarding before you come to your senses.
Please sign up sooner rather than later.
I'll arrange a personal session for you in NYC between 18-23 June for a modest equipment fee & airfare - or we can do it in Central Park as part of the wedding celebration that I'm coming for and pass the hat round.
With luck raise a little money for the mother of the bride who is precisely facing the calamitous health-catastrophe of which others are writing here.
Pay insurance for 30 years with no claims and when the chips are down they do everything possible to weasel out of paying! I'm surprised the US doesn't bill the families of the detainees for food and accommodation.
US Capitalism in a nutshell.
Now about that waterboarding..
The purpose of the right of not incriminating oneself in the Fifth Amendment was to avoid torture. Historically suspects who did not have the right of non self incrimination would be tortured until they confessed, not unlike what we hear about in Guantanamo. These rights were not believed to be American rights but human rights which belonged to everyone regardless of which country they were citizens.
Funny how a president who claims that the war on terror is an ideological conflict, then gives away the high moral ground! 800 years of accepted western law broken too!
A torture memo approved by a lawyer who is now a Bush Federally appointed judge. The memo said if it doesn't aproach death its not torture... can the dead say otherwise after the fact? How America has fallen under "W" and the Republican Senators that still back his vetos!
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PHILIPPE SANDS:
I think Guantanamo has been a problem as Abu Ghraib has been a problem, because it has undermined America's claim to MORAL AUTHORITY in facing up to the very real challenge of terrorism. And, locking them up and throwing away the key is only going to exacerbate the problem. And it's a problem that we faced in Britain, for example, in relationship to the IRA back in the 1970s and the 1980s. That's not the way to go.